I bought Entrancethe last book of the philosopher Gabriel Liicanu (Editura humanity, Bucharest, 2023), from the first days of its appearance. That is, in May, on the occasion of the launch of Mille. But I put off reading under various pretexts, each time telling myself with a certain cowardice that no, not yet.

Naturally, we knew from the very beginning, as the author tells us, that it is not very pleasant to read texts whose subject road to death. How they got through it life event four different people. Konstantin Noica, Horia Bernea, Emil Cioran, Monica Lovinescu. This, despite the fact that “any mortal who is aware of his finitude can understand, scandalous as it may sound, that death is life“, as the author rightly notes in A short word before books And also Mr. Liiceanu reminds us of a wise saying of one philosopher, according to which we are in the process of non-being. This means that finitude is written on our road map of existence from our first moment on this earth. No, we don’t know how we will die, Gabriel Liicana reminds us, because “if you determine your destiny, the way you die cannot be integrated into your destiny.” but death is, after all, the only absolute certainty in life.

I also knew that death, like illness, is a sensitive subject. Hence the warnings that the author received from colleagues in the publishing house. Hence, probably, my procrastination. Reading the above A short word beforei remembered this a few minutes after finishing a great show with Hearts with scarsbased on the dramatization of Max Blecher’s novel, staged by Radu Afrim at the Constanti Theater, the late Magdalena Boyangiou whispered to me yes, it’s good, but it won’t last. It will not attract the attention of the public. People are reluctant towards illness and death. Among other things, and for this reason, the passage of the play through the reality of the Romanian theater was unfairly ephemeral.

And now, reading four texts written at different times, between 1996-2008), anthologized in Entrance, I realized that the delay mentioned above is ultimately for nothing. And only because I have read several (many?) other writings on this topic in recent years, especially in recent months. From Mourning diary stored in Cultural columnist Battles of Ioanid to the book of Ioan Stanomir Mother. Diary of love and separation or to the volume of Mirchi Mihayes About mourning. A year from the life of Leon V. and, last but not least, I remembered articles written in the last two or three years of my life by George Banu. First published in Cultural columnist and in An old dilemma and collected in the first part of this year in vols Gaze (Publishing house June) and Last time (Publishing house Tracus Arts).

Coincidence or not Last time it ends with a few lines mentioning Constantin Noika and the advice the philosopher from Peltinish received from a shepherd who, seeing him at work, told him that the time had come prepare. Reading what Gabriel Liicanu wrote about the path they cooked his four friends (actually, Constantin Noica and Monica Lovinescu were even more than that, they were his adoptive parents, the first appeared in the early years of his career, the second in what we usually call nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita), comparing my own life experience or the reader’s with what I read, I proved the philosopher right, who in a certain way says, moto books, such as: “Perhaps when we lose our closest beings, they take us on an equal footing with them. It is because a part of you migrates with the dead that death is largely relieved of its difficulties. Maybe we die looking at them. And perhaps in this way we experience death in a milder form.”

It could be death happy, as Camus said? READING a descriptive text that lacks any trace of rhetoric and the story of the mouse, whose quest obsessed Noika in the last days of her life, I would say more. Death can sometimes be gentle, even if it plays with a person, giving him hope that for the moment he has forgiven him and that he has transferred him to another term, as was the case with Horia Bernea. But it is cruel, especially when it comes gradually through illness. About the disease that affects memory, thinking, as it happened over time and mercilessly in the case of Choran. And it can be absolutely terrifying, as it happened to Monica Lovinescu. It was, it is, it seems to another reader, who, perhaps, also because in the last case Gabriel Liiceanu made the most of his state of witness. One that allowed him to believe that the mind of the one who had been the price for decades was not just a great voice Free Europebut took the place of consciousnesses that fell asleep intentionally or unintentionally, broke in two. One part is still present, the other has already passed into eternity, where the Mother was already. Ekaterina Beletsou. And where was Virgil Yerunka. They both have to meet in his room Virgil. The one whom Kateryna Beletsoi did not know, but loved. In this regard, we have evidence from her correspondence with Monica Lovinescu, written in To the water Babylon and, finally, the book Doyna Yela This love that binds us.

The disease, at first outwitted, pantomimed, preventive, with the hidden thought of sheltering Virgil Yerunka, then demanded a terrible tribute, and after the death of Virgil Yerunka, it became even more relentless. Described in lavish detail like a clinical review WITNESS Gabriel Liichanu.

Of the four whose end Gabriel Liicanu’s book narrates, I knew Monica Lovinescu the best and the longest. Not directly, no to do what do, but thanks to his show. By Theses and antitheses in Paris and her weekly contributions from Romanian culture news. And after April 1992, when the Paris Bureau named after free Europe was closed, only from books published on Humanitas. Perhaps this knowledge is also what excited me the most when I read the ending pages in Monica Lovinescu. Perhaps, this is precisely where the question arises about whether it is worth publicly testifying about how terribly some of our loved ones ended up. IN ORDER. Would they agree that what happened in the most difficult period of their lives became a common good? – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro