Fragrance (novel) [2]
Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș
Fragrance
(novel)
*
After all, what does it mean to be actual? Because novels are not kitchen recipes, but lived universes. Nothing is more false than the actualness of a novel, as long as it is a personal matter. A museum painstakingly constructed for to be painstakingly deciphered. Whatever I write is actual, because I live it now, in the present moment. I paint now, I eat now, I love now. Those who come after me will have their own world to live in, but that doesn’t mean my world is dead. Because I, like them, are part of the same world, everyone’s world. And our personal worlds are our world, everyone’s. What we write and what we live are put together. On the same page. You can read each page, you can see yourself in me, in my desire to continuously explain myself, you can move forward every day. But you are formed of everything you have stored. And it’s good that things are like this! Because, without storing every day, we are without expectations.
– Why don’t you start now?! What do you mean, in definitive?!!, told me William Shakespeare, who died in 1616. Who was born and died there too: in Stratford-upon-Avon[1]. Coordinates: 52°11′34″N 1°42′23″W[2]. The lack of relevance is apparent. Because I started before, long before. When I received The Story of speech [Povestea vorbii] and I didn’t think I wasn’t capable of it. It was the first book that the first librarian in my life gave me. She wasn’t exactly a Librarian, but she was a Romanian Teacher, she was Mrs. Geta, she was incisive, she asked you what you understood from the book. And, apparently, I answered her, that I passed the test, that I returned the book to her, and that’s how I started writing within myself. Because Anton Pann’s things didn’t seem different to me from my thoughts, from the way I put my thoughts into words, even though I didn’t know I was doing it. That I had started doing this from the first years of my life.
When I started reading churchly books, again, I didn’t have any linguistic shock: their writing was my mode of speaking. God was preparing me from then on for hymnography, for the Lives of the Saints, for the translation of the Divine Scripture and for my theological writings. The writing was not a fad, but a necessity. The writing was not from time to time, but necessarily. And I realized this when grandfather Marin had a friend of his, Agarici, I don’t know if it was his real name or a nickname, write my letters calligraphically. And according to his letter pattern I learned the letters, I learned to write and read them, before learning them at School, and, of course, I started reading, although I didn’t know that what I was doing was called reading, writing, the beginning of my literature.
I smell the books, I understand their abyssal simplicity, I enjoy their wonder, of great books, in the life of humanity. For 25 euros[3] you enter the islamized Hagia Sophia Cathedral and that’s for a few iconographic wounds on the walls. I see wounds, where others see christian reminiscences. The books, these fragile arms, manuscripts, papyri, all artifacts must be taken with care and transposed into the pages of the online. Because that means preserving them, transmitting them. The cultural affairs are paltry. We give money to hide information, to prevent it from passing on to everyone. What did Nichita Stănescu’s readers look like? What did they understand from his overflowing dedication? And I ask this when I myself am one of the readers. Of those readers today. Beyond the theatricality of his gestures, of some of his gestures that I cannot appropriate, I search everywhere for his thought, his feelings. And with his love, with his friendship, I resonate with everything, I am also his friend, not just his reader.
Why did Adam[4] want us to be friends for the last hundred meters? He kept me at a distance, he didn’t want us to have any audio or video meetings, but left himself to me in writing. Because he also left himself in writing. He was probably saturated by the visual afflux that takes you away from writing, from the place of direct sharing. And he saw me writing and said to give himself to me through writing, because the writing is what remains. And his falling asleep was an entry into writing, a ceasing to receive new photographs from him, from his yard and from his house, because the writing is what matters. The writing must be deciphered, must be lived, must be understood, in order to be friends with it. Because otherwise you only drink the wine with it, but not the wine of its words.
I start praying faster, because I have more loves. More people for whom I pray. I don’t believe in a man without qualities, if there is a great Gatsby, there can also be a great Gică, and Mann’s mountain can wait, because a strong metaphor can also be my hill, on which memorable things can happen. Because you, the author, put consistency in things! You call others to yourself. You reveal yourself, you have something to say, they will love you, they will come to you, because those who scream impersonally are many. Because you assume the living voice of man, of a world that says essential things for after-ages.
[1] Cf. https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare.
[2] Cf. https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratford-upon-Avon.
[3] Cf.https://istanbultouristpass.com/ro/blog/places/the-magnificent-hagia-sophia-everything-about-hagia-sophia-istanbul.
[4] I’m referring to him and the book lived together with him: https://www.teologiepentruazi.ro/2023/01/18/bucuria-de-a-fi-cu-adam/.