Conferences

Video-streaming 

On Sunday, October 26th, 2009, Octavian Paler held at NTB the conference entitled With Melancholy, about the Barbarians.

About Octavian Paler

Octavian Paler (1926-2007), Romanian writer and publicist. "I’m afraid I am a monologue man. I am afraid that I was born barricaded in myself and that I did not manage, during my existence, to get out of this intimate prison, apart, to communicate with the world ", said Octavian Paler, in the show" Professionals ", made by Eugenia Vodă on TVR 1. His books and public appearances may have contradicted him. Octavian Paler always knew how to leave strong phrases behind, like crumbs for those who believed in reason.

"I am a misanthrope. That's right, a defensive misanthrope, not an offensive one. I lack faith in man. Divinity seems to me necessary as existence. Because if God does not exist, many things are inexplicable in this world. Probably for the comfort of our reason we need to believe in God ", Octavian Paler added. He has published many books. These include "Shadow of Words," "Life on a Platform," "Galileo’s Defense," "Subjective Mythologies," "Self-Portrait in a Broken Mirror," "Cordial Polemics," and more. In the book "Octavian Paler - Conversations with Daniel Cristea-Enache" (Polirom Publishing House), the essayist answered many questions, outlining a self-portrait that remained as a landmark of integrity. Here is what Octavian Paler replied to the literary critic Daniel Cristea Enache: "You ask me if I recognize myself in the 'figure and behavior of the knight of La Mancha.' The first impulse would be to say "Yes." And I would have an argument. To get out of the crying tone of my last books, not to gloss over old age and my illnesses, I started working on a book (it's about "Mythological Slander") where I rely on an inclination of mine, (a bit masochistic, maybe) to discredit myself, on the border between "game" and those "truths" that are too serious to be told on a serious tone: I hold (I told you, I have the impression) "conferences" of moths who make their ballet numbers through my room whenever they get bored of hiding. Sounds like fighting windmills, right? Even if I miss a squire. " "What drew me to Don Quixote on first reading? Since I want to respect the bet of sincerity, I will not tell you anything about possible "aesthetic emotions". What I know for sure is something else. I was undergoing a crisis then: I was trying to overcome my complexes, shyness and introverted inhibitions, doing great. I was trying to hide the night from me (I suspect that all introverts have an inner night, through which they grope and hide from others, because they do not know what it hides) through childish bravado. Remember, I broke glasses at the student balls! And that I was a virtuoso in the "art" of throwing a knife, like the Indians, at a distant target, thrusting it into something: a tree or a board! "" Doesn't my ridiculous zeal prove that I still have certain affinities with Don Quixote? I had the horror of ridicule in public, but in intimacy I did not hesitate to embark on funny dreams. Since I have been meditating, I assure you, with much application to the idea of ​​retracing Don Quixote's path! I'm almost moved by the thought that I could take myself seriously. I was just careful not to expose myself to anyone. ”

Between 1949 and 1961, he was an editor of cultural programmes at the Romanian Broadcasting. In 1964, he was Agerpres' correspondent in Rome for three months. After the events of December '89, he founded together with Ana Blandiana, Gabriel Liiceanu and others The Social Dialogue Group, which stands out through its anti-communist positions. He became honorary director and editorialist of the newspaper România liberă, then editorialist at Cotidianul and Ziua. He remains an acclaimed journalist and commentator. Participates in talk shows, on topics of politics, morality, etc., on various television stations. In the last years of his life, he became a fierce critic of the Romanian political class. He made a television movie dedicated to his native village, Lisa. He passed away at the age of 80, following a cardio-respiratory arrest. He was buried, with military honors, in the Holy Friday Cemetery.

Quotes Octavian Paler

* Hindu sages claim that there are four seasons in life. One to study and discover the world. The second to establish a home. The third to reflect. And finally, the fourth, in which, freed from inhibitions and obsessions, you become a kind of traveler without luggage.

* We today are a country of lonely people. So lonely that even the unhappy are not in solidarity with each other.

* What we do not live in time, we never live again.

* Do not despise small things. A candle can do at any time what the sun can never do: shine in the dark.

* Whoever rose up against silence always risked silence around him. People forgive you a lot, but they do not forgive you when you point the finger at cowardice. They want to look noble even when they do nothing about it or especially when they do nothing.

* I learned that it takes years to gain confidence and that in just a few seconds you can lose it.

* There is no happiness to remember without sadness.

* You never had enough imagination to imagine the world without you. Even if you did not go with the vanity to the paranoia of believing that the world revolves around you, that it is eager to hear what you say, you lacked the intelligence or the power to accept that you meant nothing more than the yellowed photos that someone, after you, will throw in the trash.

* A mediocre life can be justified. Especially in a mediocre world. But the mediocrity of illusions has no excuse. Nothing stops us from dreaming without measure.

* The goals we have set ourselves are essential. No one could stop Don Quixote from storming the windmills. Neither the laughter nor the realism of the others. I do not know a clearer example that you can be a loser without being a mediocre one, that a life can be fulfilled not only by a success, but also by a failure.

* I think love lifts us into our own eyes. And how much you want to be the way the other person sees you! You would like, and even try, to close the gap between what you know you really are and what you intuit the person you love sees in you.

* I think I could list a few hundred smells of grass, depending on the time of day, rain, sun, season, earth, shade, height, humidity or dryness. I could distinguish now, I suspect, with my eyes closed, the wild blackberries from the blackberries grown in the bushes, the rustle of a beech from the rustle of a fir tree. Instead, many of the lived ones faded, leaving gaps behind, like in a half-burned forest. This discovery forces me to admit that my memory now resembles a broken mirror, which restores fragments of my life.

* To die means to move to a star.

Octavian Paler - Self-Portrait in a Broken Mirror

Translated by Simona Nichiteanu