Conferences
Ion Mircea: On Caressing. A Short Incursion in the Metaphysics of Touch
On Sunday, June 5th, at 12 o'clock in the NTB's Black Box, Ion Mircea will hold a conference on the subject: On Caressing. A Short Incursion into the Metaphysics of Touching.
About the Conference
The purely aristocratic feeling that the man of touch experiences has its roots in a hidden coat of arms, one that offers man a rare privilege: being part not of a military order, but of an order with purpose. The man of touch belongs to an order, but not an ordinary one, an order of love: Ordo amoris.A citizen of love, he understands that he could not have been thrown into destiny just like a die at the game table in a casino. There is no hazard in a divinity ordered world, if we admit that existance itself is not the product of pure hazard. It would be completely illogical to attribute universal existance to hazard; scientists have undoubtedly disproved this theory. Their argument runs like this: ‘The age of the universe is infinitely smaller than the time needed for "a hazardously produced order" to emerge'. This means that life could not have emerged through a series of random events' (Friedrich Cramer). From our point of view, evolutionary theories cannot account for the step humankind has taken from touch to caress. We shall say, as a paraphrase to the argument above, that the age of humankind is infinitely smaller than the time needed for the step from touch to caress to produce exclusively through the evolution of our species. Ion Mircea
About Ion Mircea
He was born in Sărmaş (Mureş County) on September 1st, 1947. He is one of the founding members of the Echinox group and student cultural magazine (1968). In 1971 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology, Romanian-Italian Department, in Cluj-Napoca. From 1990 to 2000 he was the editor-in-chief of Transilvania Magazine, Secretary of the Association of Writers and President of the Constantin Noica European Center for PoetryCultural Dialogue in Sibiu. He is currently the Director of the Department for Romanians Abroad (Romanian Cultural Institute). and East-West
He writes poetry, drama, radiophonic and movie scripts, fiction, essays, literary criticism and translations.
He has published poetry volumes: Istm (1971), Tobele fragede (1978), Copacul cu 10.000 de imagini (1984), Piramida împădurită (1989), Poezii, author's antology (1996), Şocul oxigenului (2002), Pororoca (2004). The fairy tale Nu Am Nume sau Pereche în căutarea unei inimi inspired the radiophonic script for Pereche în căutarea unei inimi (dramatization: Claudiu Tiţa, art director: Cristian Munteanu), a National Radiophonic Theatre for Children production (1997). In 1998, the play Noe care ne străbate memoria e o femeie received the Best Play of the Year Award from the Romanian Association of Theatre Artists, an award offered by The Princess Margarita of RoumaniaFoundation. The following year, the play was printed at Unitext Publishing House. Ion Mircea is the author of the play Iisus Nazarineanul (art director: Gavriil Pinte), a National Radiophonic Theatre production (2004).
He has translated from Italian The Byzantines, an antology of studies on the history of mentalities, coordinated by Guglielmo Cavallo, preface by Claudiu Tiţa(Polirom Publishing House, 2000) and Der Mensch des. 19, coordinated by Ute Frevert and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (Polirom Publishing House, 2002).
For the volume Ocolul României în 80 de poeme, cu un jurnal de bord de Ion Mircea, he signs the antology selection, the critical commentary and the foreword (Fundaţia Pro, 2005) and Nichita Stănescu, InvizibilulSoare, antology, preface and note on the edition by Ion Mircea (Corint, 2007).
For the volume Copacul cu 10.000 de imagini the author received the Poetry Award from the Writers' Union of Romania(1984). In the same year, he received the Special Poetry Award from the Luceafărul Magazine, while the Amfiteatru and the Viaţa studenţească Magazines named him ‘the most popular Romanian poet of 1984', after a national survey. The Poezii Antology received the SOROS Award from the Writers' Union of Romania in 1997.
Ion Mircea's poems have been awarded many awards and distinctions and have been translated in over 15 languages.
The author has been nominated to the Mihai Eminescu National Poetry Prize. In 2004 he received the Order of Cultural Merit, Commander.
