I first saw the name Andrii Plesha many years ago in a bookstore in a small provincial town. In those peaceful times, the ideals of official Romania did not seem to exceed technical and industrial prowess. I bought a monograph on Francesco Guardi (Collecion Clasicii picturii universale, Meridian, 1981), no doubt pretentious to my then-adolescent nose – but a sign of an early fascination with art history – not knowing what it was to represent, in my life, a happy starting point point for humanitarians Many years later, after 1989, when I was enjoying his books, I met Mr. Andrii Plesha under circumstances related rather to my desire for spiritual heights in everyday life. In the secret of these erudite climbs, which Andrii Plesha knew, without wasting his talent, I told him how important it is for a young man to learn from his older brother that any mountain forces one not to deceive and to be honest in his choice. . And that without the “impossible” and the “unknown” – things that only an experienced climber knows due to his connection with the mountain – there would be no more adventures.

Recently, after the madness of the pandemic, I had the honor of reminding Mr. Andriy Plesh that Volodymyr Gika knew that you can bring someone comfort only when you do not find comfort for yourself. A faithful man, an old prince who became a priest of the Church, understood that under the storm of difficulties, before blaspheming evil or proclaiming the inevitable end of history, it would be more useful to direct his attention to an encounter with Heaven and others, to understand that a painful experience can reveal something much more more valuable than personal comfort and well-being. For our part, to face suffering means to enter into direct competition with our own uncertainty, as well as with the constitutive poverty of the nature from which we are born. But with the comfort that you are not alone, that there have been others before you who have walked this path with heads held high and hearts humbled, the path suddenly takes on a natural consistency.

Thanks to his works and speeches, Andriy Pleshu found an audience that, unlike politicians, opened to him with devoted affection. The halls are packed, the audience (regardless of age) is enchanted by the luxurious impulse of a person who is able to captivate only with the resonance of his erudition, the way he chronicles the emergence of the world, but also the pleasure of his existence in the universe of bonhomie. The world of his books is filled, certainly, inspired by the spirit of the parables of Jesus – about which he offered us a memorable book in the Romanian theological field, which is not very familiar with the spirit of literature. Thoughts, dialogues, essays, and especially books testifying to the classical sense of culture, for more than thirty years offer the content and taste of dignity “in the depths” of our nation, the true dignity that we deserve I believe and hope to continue.

“It would seem that for a while our highest competence is despair,” Andrii Pleshu thought about hope in The forgotten beauty of life. He clearly noted the propensity of the Romanian sensibility to catastrophe, to hysteria and to the kind of morbid humility for which we Romanians sometimes retain the satisfaction of the general conviction that “it’s bad, it’s very bad, we have no reason for it.” hope.” Andrii Plesu is one of the few intellectuals whose voice was heard in the Romanian agora to speak the serious truth at the same time with seriousness and humor, lowering eyebrows and at the same time making people think. He helped us to understand that virtue, as a rule, does not correspond determinism of circumstances, and vividly repeated that “hope is not a simple virtue, a pink cure for evil. It does not pretend that it is not cold, or that cold is good. It allows itself to grumble, get angry and, in any case, writhe… A hopeful man takes cold for cold. And believes that what is essential in his human makeup does not depend on this ‘cold’ find…” – Read the rest of the article and comment on Contributors.ro