“I never thought about writing my memoirs. Why? Well, because I don’t have the memory of past times. And because I don’t think people would find them interesting. There are moments worth living and writing about but my interest in such things is next to none. The only viable biography of a writer is a spiritual biography. The bare happenings of his life will speak nothing of his existence.
A critic or a historian that says a poet writes love poetry when he loves and sad poetry when he is down is as stupid as they come. The mystery of creation is in its texture and not in the occurrences that started it. Recently, a book appeared including a lot of letters exchanged between Eminescu and Veronica Micle. What can these letters reveal to us about Eminescu’s poetry? Nothing.
We can learn about their romance but we will learn nothing about his work. True poetry is not like a chambermaid’s journal that spies her masters through the keyhole. I will not write my memoirs so I am not concerned with what I would write. I am old enough and I had the time to say what I wanted to say. If there is something that I failed to say, I will not start now. The intimate moments of my life, I will never reveal, they are only for me. I met many people who loved to exhibit their “virtues.”
There are a few people that I like to remember. One of them is my Philosophy teacher at the Sibiu University – Lucian Blaga. I never fully realised the totality of this experience – meeting him. He was a recluse and it took a communist dictate and personal humiliation for him to reveal his true self and magnitude. The influence he had over me as a writer was felt only later.
I also met Arghezi. His influence was not overwhelming though. I could never talk about an “Arghezi model” like I feel compelled to speak of a “Blaga model” when they ask me about my own conscience. If I was to remember facts that later revealed their significance I would speak of a certain moment of my childhood.
It was a bright summer, I was in the 5th grade and I received the visit of a friend from another village. He was carrying a literary magazine. I had never seen one before and when I held it I felt this strange emotion washing over me. I felt like this was something magic and important. I was not aware of it at the time but I had met my destiny – literature. I don’t remember if I actually read the magazine or not but from that point on I devoured all magazines I could get my hands on.
The second such important moment was when I got out of prison. I was not beaten or tortured but they had done worse things to me. I was interrogated, humiliated in all possible ways. I never hated the people who interrogated me but I came to hate the “system.” After I got out I knew I would never be the same.”