Pray for Brother Alexander

pray for brother alexander Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ https://punctumbooks.com/support/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contri- butions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our ad- venture is not possible without your support. Vive la open-access. Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490–1500) pray for brother alexander. Copyright © 2018 by Constantin Noica and Octavian Gabor. This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 Interna- tional license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Rugați-vă pentru fratele Alexandru © 1990 by Constantin Noica Originally published by Editura Humanitas, Bucharest Translation published in 2018 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way. https://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-1-947447-52-3 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-947447-53-0 (ePDF) lccn: 2018936900 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress Book design: Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Proofreading: Joyce King Cover image: Annett Müller, Fort 13, Prison of Jilava (2015) Constantin Noica Pray for Brother Alexander Translated by Octavian Gabor Contents Translator’s Note · 11 Romanian Publisher’s Note · 13 Preface · 15 ◊ i · 17 ii · 23 iii · 27 iv · 33 v · 39 vi · 45 vii · 55 viii · 61 ix · 67 x · 75 xi · 85 xii · 95 xiii · 103 xiv · 111 xv · 119 xvi · 127 xvii · 133 xviii · 141 translator’s note After the end of World War II, the Communist Party took over power in Romania. The social and political changes transformed the life of philosopher Constantin Noica as well. Considered an “anti-revolutionary” thinker (the files of his trial reveal that his writings on Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit were considered anti-revolutionary*), Noica was placed under house arrest in Câmpulung-Muscel between 1949 and 1958. In 1958, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was freed after 6 years; Pray for Brother Alexander covers his experiences during this time. For more on his life and philosophy, see my article, “Constantin Noica’s Becoming within Being and Meno’s Paradox.”† This is the third volume by Noica published in English. The previous two were both published in 2009, both translated by Alistair Ian Blyth: Becoming within Being (Marquette University Press) and Six Maladies of the Contemporary Spirit (University of Plymouth Press). For this edition, all footnotes belong to me, unless other- wise noted. At times, I have chosen to keep Romanian terms, explaining their meaning in a footnote. The register of Noica’s writing varies throughout the book. At times, it reads as a diary, while at other times as a philosophical treatise. I remain indebted to Dana Munteanu for her continual support during the translation of this volume and for reading and * See Prigoana: Documente ale procesului C. Noica, C. Pillat, S. Lăzărescu, A. Acterian, Vl. Streinu, Al. Paleologu, N. Steinhardt, T. Enescu, S. Al-George, Al. O. Teodoreanu și alții (Bucharest: Vremea, 2010). † In Zara Martirosova Torlone, Dana Lacourse Munteanu, and Dorota Deutsch (eds.), A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 300–311. 11 pray for brother alexander offering helpful suggestions. My wife, Elena, and my son, An- drei, have often suggested the right word whenever I could not find it. For this and for sharing their lives with me, I am forever grateful. 12 romanian Publisher’s note This book was written by Noica after his release from political prison, in 1964, but it remained unpublished until 1990. Its chapters were sent to England starting in 1971, as letters addressed by the author to his first wife, Wendy Muston, with the idea that Wendy would translate them and publish them abroad. One version of the manuscript was kept in the author’s archive; this version was at the basis of the edition published by Humanitas in 1990. As will be seen, that version was incomplete. The present volume contains four new chapters compared to the 1990 and 2008 editions: XIII, which was present in the previous versions in the form of a summary written by the author (we maintained this summary within brackets), XVI, XVII, and XVIII. These texts were found in the archives of the former Securitate,* and were returned to Mariana Noica, the widow of the author, by Virgil Măgureanu, the chief of the Romanian In- telligence Service, in 1994. Marin Diaconu published them in Viaţa românească,† year LXXXIX, November–December 1994, nos. 11–12, and we have took them from there. We thank Marin Diaconu for his help and kindness. * The secret police during communism. † Romanian literary journal. 13 PrefaCe Toward the end of World War II, a nunnary from Moldova* was occupied by the conquering Soviet troops. The nuns left and looked for refuge in other places. When they returned, they found a note on the altar: “The commander of the troops that occupied the monastery declares that he left it untouched and asks you to pray for his soul.” Beginning with that moment, the name of Alexander is mentioned at every religious service. Pray for brother Alexander! You too, reader, pray, because this name does not concern only the commander of the vic- torious troops (But what have you done, brother Alexander, in the meantime? Have you spent your days in prison or have you become a conformist? Have you slaved on the fields like the others, or have you written books and sent them abroad?†), but it also concerns all the other brothers Alexander, the insecure victors. Pray for brother Alexander from China, but do not for- get brother Alexander in the United States; pray for the strong everywhere, for those who know, physicists, mathematicians, and super-technicians, but who no longer know well what they know and what they do, for all those who possess and give or- ders, together with their economists; pray for the triumphant wanderers through life without culture, but also for the wander- * Moldova was a province of Romania. Since the monastery was occupied by the Soviet troops, Noica probably refers to the part of Moldova which was annexed by the Soviet Union first in 1940 and then also of the end of WWII: Bessarabia, the current Republic of Moldova. † Due to censorship during Communism, writers from the Eastern bloc sent their manuscripts to the West with the help of acquaintances. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, for example, was first published in the West. 15 pray for brother alexander ers within culture; for the European man who triumphed over material needs, for the modern man who triumphed over nature and over the good God. Pray for brother Alexander! 16 Pray for Brother Alexander i When a victor asks you to pray for him, it means that he offers you his victory. “Can you do anything with this victory?” he seems to say. It is true, not anyone can triumph over his own victory and feel as deep as brother Alexander that he has nothing to do with it. At his own level, however, a common man offers various victories on the market, victories that he cannot always use, so that today’s world seems to be one in which victories are suspended, are for sale. At every step, there is a victory of the modern world, having no master, being certain of itself. Being certain of their deed, some say, “Take, eat, this is my victory, which spills over the world for you and your happiness.”* Others, more uncertain about what they have to do, say, “Here is my victory; see what can come out of it.” A few get angry: “Don’t you see what I accomplished?” As good mercenaries, the scien- tists, the politicians, the technicians, all of them won the battle, receiving their money and glory. The rest of the people are, with or without their will, for sale. But don’t we find a human miracle and a blessing even in this situation? The conditions for a deeper solidarity among the people of today have been created through it; a solidarity between unequal people. It would have been such a spiritual disaster if victory remained in the hands of victors, if the physicists, the biologists, the sociologists, and the politicians knew what to do until the end, or if the super-technicians became better manag- * During the Orthodox Liturgy, at the moment of the Eucharist, the priest intones the words of institution at the moment of the consecration of the Eucharist: “Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you for the remis- sion of sins.” See also Matthew 26:26. 19 pray for brother alexander ers! It would have been such a disaster if brother Alexander had the conscience of a victor when he entered the monastery! The world would have been separated between human subjects and human objects or, rather, between privileged humans, the victors, and the sub-humans.

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