A spectacular scene! I was standing in a line, waiting. The delay allowed me to notice a small television turned on at one end of the room. On it, a fashionable fellow dressed in a bright red jacket was holding a microphone and singing excitedly. I did not know him, nor could I hear him, since I had headphones on. But he was certainly one of the most famous singers of our time, because he sang on a sumptuous stage, backed by a huge band, with fifteen backing vocals correcting his voice. And there were many, many people in the audience. However, it was none of this that I noticed. What amused me was imagining that at any moment the women in the audience would throw their panties at the man, as they usually did a few decades ago. When the camera brought them into focus, the looks on their faces confessed that the moment was near. Then I began to notice that there was something strange about that show. That I did not know the artist was not strange: I would hardly be able to identify a single face among the ten best known these days. But something did not fit. It was not the red jacket, nor the showy hair… the keyboard player? Ah! so I understood! And it was not without astonishment that I distinguished, behind the stage, the details of the environment. They switched the shot and, from another angle, I was sure: the show was being performed in a church!
Category: Notes
Friday!
Something absolutely impossible for a man of other times would be to understand what goes on in the chest, veins, and mind of the overwhelming majority of modern men when the calendar declares it to be Friday. Friday! Wonderful Friday, when the sun rises and heralds the liberation of millions of souls! And modern man, bathed in this magnificent blessing, is overcome with an exhilarating and indescribable euphoria. Once a week he experiences an outpouring so strong that men of other times might go their whole lives without feeling anything like it. Tears, jubilation, screams, and gratitude to the heavens! Smiles on the face and the chest wanting to explode! On Thursday there is never any hope, it is as if the slave had already been working for long exhausting years, tired, unhappy, depressed, and aware that he would have to spend the rest of his mediocre and frustrating life this way. Then Friday! always unexpected Friday! the full proof that God exists and life is not so bad! There is no way that a man of other times would be able to understand it—and, probably, neither will those of the future, since the secular world no longer needs the luxury of a Christian calendar…
Notebooks, by Emil Cioran
My dear Emil Cioran said, in these Notebooks,—published posthumously,—that what left of a thinker is his temperament. What a beautiful observation! And I notice that, when I think of Cioran, what I remember is exactly his temperament. Impossible not to smile. In these Notebooks, where the human dimension of a philosopher who conceded several of his best pages to pessimism—or who, as Fernando Savater said, had the vocation of a heretic—are exposed practically all the scenes that come to my mind when I think of Cioran. There are almost a thousand pages that endow his work with a very rare coloring: it is the philosopher writing to himself, on one page, commenting on Buddha and Jesus Christ, on another, accesses of rage he has experienced in grocery stores, or unusual situations he has lived through. How can one not smile when seeing a wise man, after some editor rejects a preface on Valéry that cost him long hours of work, exclaiming to himself “I will have my revenge!”; or when seeing an athlete say that, returning from a twenty-kilometer walk, a girl offered him a seat on the train; or even, when seeing a master of sarcasm relate that, while talking to Jean-Paul Sartre, he heard from the Frenchman that his “Romanian grammar” was very good… I think of Cioran and what I remember from him is the supreme humor, which stands out above all his other intellectual qualities. Cioran, perhaps my favorite friend to accompany me through the darkness of thought, is also one of those who can most easily bring a smile to my face.
Words of Order and Words of Hate
Two things spoil the beauty of a religion: words of order and words of hate. A fanatic will immediately object, “It is the duty of the righteous to hate what is evil!” Oh, but of course, my friend! And bad, of course, are they!… If we analyze the destructive and pernicious effects of religions, if we try to understand why so many corpses and so much blood have been shed under the pretext of praising and honoring them, we will see that everything goes back to the lamentable tone in which several of their pages were written. The tone of order degrades the believer to a servant, and the pride of the servant requires him to demand from others the same servile posture, even if he is not ordered to do so. What can we say about hate?… an evil quality, responsible for blinding man and tearing his humanity from him, an inciter of pride and ignorance, a catalyst for a worse human being. Religions debase themselves from the moment they start talking about adherents and not adherents.