For Two Thousand Years (Penguin Modern Classics) by Mihail Sebastian

Author:Mihail Sebastian [Sebastian, Mihail]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780241189627
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

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The November issue of Der Querschnitt features a long essay on Mircea Vieru’s work, with photographs, scale models and reproductions. A special section on the Uioara project.

So, success. Definitive, incontrovertible success, from beyond the horizons of Bucharest. Who would have said, years ago, that it would come so soon?

When the professor took me the first time to Vieru’s house, I found him at the lowest point of his career. He was close to giving up the fight. If Ralph T. Rice hadn’t appeared from nowhere, Vieru would have been a broken man. I still don’t know today how he managed to put up with so much.

I couldn’t open a newspaper without finding a piece of news, an act of treachery, a farce. Everywhere, in the gossip columns, the society pages, in humorous magazines, in caricatures, the ‘affair of the day’, everywhere Mircea Vieru, only Mircea Vieru, every day Mircea Vieru. Every gaffe was attributed to him, every piece of nonsense was spoken by him, every joke was on him. In the summer, in the Cărăbuş review theatre, Tănase, with a trowel in one hand and a brick in the other, recited a couplet explaining the whole ‘affair’. Everybody laughed terribly, and I remember I found it amusing myself at the time. I later learned that Vieru had made a point of not leaving Bucharest that summer, so that it couldn’t be said of him that he was trying not to be seen. What cruel moments he must have lived through, he who is so proud, so sensitive to the smallest detail, such a child when it comes to slights and revenge.

It was mostly out of curiosity that I accepted when the professor offered to recommend me to Vieru for a place in his workshop. A second-year student, I didn’t have high hopes of any great personal success with an architectural firm; I lacked even a basic grasp of what was going on with which to orient myself. But the man interested me; he had initiated so many attacks, got involved in so many struggles, and aroused such opposition. Everyone was against him: the press, his peers, the school, officialdom, ministries, all Bucharest, all Romania, the whole world.

‘You’re going to meet the most detested person on the face of the planet,’ said the professor, climbing the stairs ahead of me, to the office.

The most detested person on the face of the planet! Blond, blue-green eyes, a bright, open smile, a modest bearing, with unexpected flashes of pride, nervous hands, a deep, even voice, never raised, though often giving an impression of vehemence, by emphasis, phrasing, pauses … The abominable Mircea Vieru looked something between a schoolboy and an amateur botanist. Only later, getting to know him, did I realize that his forcefulness, of which they make so much, is not imaginary. On the contrary, it is very sharp and penetrating. It is an intellectual force, an objective force in the world of values and ideas, which has nothing to do with his personal goodness and limitless generosity.

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