Dear Mr. Stefan Kolzeriu!

I don’t have a page in that great social network on the Internet that has been home to about half the world’s population for about two decades. If your text, which was published some time ago on Facebook, had not been about a publishing house with which I continue to have a strong relationship, I would not know about it today. But after looking at the publishing house, they sent it to me. No comments. Just as a reminder. I read it carefully from cover to cover. Especially since she captivated me from the first paragraph. Short, just two sentences: “I’m still wondering if the time has come. But there is always a good time for the truth.”

Well, these two sentences have a majesty that makes you vibrate. I remind you of the Stoics, Montaigne, the moralists. To apophthegms and sentences. In the words of great people. In addition, they also have a crazy bravery, since their author does not speak tell the truth, thus understanding that it will be a specific truth that applies to a specific situation; but in short fortruthwhich, of course, the author can cut further in all its Platonic solemnity.

Therefore, I entered your text with special interest. And when I saw that it was a project of a publishing house, for which I still feel a suspicious sympathy, curiosity was added to interest. And this, gradually, was also accompanied by some anxiety. “What have you done,” I thought, “publicly discussed a project created between you and the publisher, a project that did not go beyond agreement and prior certainty as the final product: a two-volume textbook on ancient Greek compiled by ten German teachers whose didactic and cultural the genius excited you by offering us to translate it and, after publication, to use it in free public seminars at the Humanitas-Cişmigiu bookstore.

What prompted you, I thought, to announce on an open stage a volume that still remained behind the scenes of publishing? Where did you want to go? I thought you were going to make a plea about the immense importance of knowledge, however rudimentary, the language that made it possiblealong with Latin, the mind of the West. I thought there was so much enthusiasm for this project and its stake that you felt the need to talk about it, even if the timing would require some restraint and prior discussion with the publisher’s marketing department. As for the three with whom you worked on the project and whose names you promote in strict hierarchical order: Gabriel Liicanau, Lidia Bodea and Radu Harmacha.

After this preamble, proceed to the part of the text where the reader will learn what prompts you to make known the honorable intentions of the translator and publisher that you are. In this case, nothing more and nothing less than the passion of a terrible admiration for the Department of Classical Languages ​​of the University of Bucharest! The reader, simply hypnotized by this logical leap, may not understand why a project to popularize the Greek language, carried out in impeccable academic conditions by a private publishing house, would upset the very department of the university, which would not have reasons for joy. the idea that in the future more and more young people, motivated by the textbook you translated and the excellent intention of the seminars held, will be able to discover their vocation as philologists and thus increase the number of students enrolled in Classics. Or the other way around: how would Humanitas feel influenced in its editorial activities, as well as you as a translator and constant initiator of textbooks and Hellenic, by the activities or plans of the Department of Classical Languages ​​of the University of Bucharest?

That’s right, shortly after falling into confusion, the reader of your text will find out what worries you: you know about the huge project of the Department of Classics in Bucharest! Say: “And I found out that the Department of Classical Language in Bucharest decided to hold Latin and Greek classes at night with middle and high school students in the faculty premises. free. Dear, what can I say! Good job guys!”

At that moment I felt sad. The majestic tone with which you began the text, the one in which the direct path between you and the Truth was opened, disappeared as if by a wave of a magic wand. I got the impression that it was the same actor as in the late 70’s David Esrig’s Commedia dell’arte play Three Venetian twin brothers, disappears behind the scenes for a moment, changes his costume and comes on stage again in the skin of another character. Could it be a dual personality in your case?, I asked myself. I admit that after “Bravo, neissilor!” you lost me In fact, I no longer knew who you were: a bookish, intelligent, well-spoken, well-behaved young man whom I had met once or twice? translator Baked paterik from Humanitas? Or the author of a recent text in which a vindictive tone harmoniously intertwines with drops of gangster language? Pardon my confession, but you have made me wonder, as in so many other cases, what good is high culture if it is not accompanied by at least a rebound of its values ​​and a shred of character.

For God’s sake, Mr. Colceriu, what demons have been gnawing at your heart since I last saw you? Because after shouting “Bravo, Neysilor!” you solved in a style that I liked: as if you were babbling in my place in a five-episode series (about four or five years ago) the teaching staff of the faculty. of philosophy in Bucharest for the stagnant puddle in which philosophy has been stuck for more than two decades since the fall of communism: mediocrity (said a lot), fraud (said mildly), courses taught by masters of boredom, competition with an agreed result, cumulative norms, more than one the driver – Dragnia, who was taken in hand for his doctoral dissertation by the dean with aphasia, several advisers of Iliescu, and then the minister of culture, a plagiarist in a very original and paradoxical doctoral dissertation (since the author talks about ethics theft), named Ethics between theology and philosophy. The moral value of work in the Christian ethos; other honored guests, such as Petre Roman and Teodor Brates, are dedicated to explaining the “truth of the revolution” and are invited to speak to students during a course called An ethical and anthropological view of violence… –Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro