FROM THE STREET OF THE MOON
TO “ROMANIAN SOCRATES”

COSMIC ROMANIA 16

-text and photos Andrei Dorian Gheorghe;
design Florin-Alexandru Stancu-

“Mysteries are supernatural and represent the only way to escape from the cosmic chaining,
from the limits of community and from the personal borders.”

-Petre Tutea (1902-1991, philosopher,
nicknamed “Romanian” Socrates)-

One day in April 2013
I found out one of the shortest streets in Bucharest,
named… the Street of the Moon!
Firstly, its name was a mystery for me,
but looking at its buildings from the times of King Carol I (1866-1914)
I saw on one of them an artistic metallic semi-circle,
equally divided into more slices.
I counted 14 such slices,
so thinking that the Moon completes its orbit around the Earth
in almost 28 days,
I supposed that the artwork represented a half of the Moon
and was the main reason for the name of the street.

The Street of the Moon ends with another surprise:
the house of Simion Mehedinti (1868-1962, geographer,
geopolitician, etnographer, academician, educator),
nicknamed the “father of Romanian modern geography”.
In spite of his exceptional cultural merits,
or rather just for them,
the communists interdicted in part his opera
and persecuted him in his last years of life.

As a revenge over time, today his house
has become the seat of the Geographic Institute of Romanian Academy,
and I remarked on its façade a semi-sphere which,
taking in consideration Mehedinti’s profession,
could suggest the Earth.

So, a real astroarchitectural system, in which
a street of the moon meets a house of geography!

Toned up by these conclusions,
in that night I tried to photograph my piece of Earth, and the Moon,
and I was lucky to catch the planet Jupiter in the same picture.

But the Earth-Moon system would mean nothing without the Sun.
So in the next morning I photographed the sunrise from my parents’ apartment.

Then I started to the 3rd surprise.

A few streets further to the Street of the Moon
there is other old street, named… Priest Sun!,
obviously after a man so luminous
that the people of that district compared him with our supreme star.

From my point of view,
this street approximately respects the East-West apparent road
of the Sun in the sky,
and I saw on its buildings a few interesting cosmic symbols.

Then I prolonged my celestial quests into the court
of the Church of Priest Sun (created in the 1740s),
right when it was spoilt by the sunset.

In that place there is also a statue of the Romanian philosopher
Petre Tutea (1902-1991),
nicknamed “Romanian Socrates.”

Being an admirable free thinker,
Tutea was imprisoned by communists for 11 years,
his opera being interdicted until 1989,
the year of Romanian Anti-Communist Revolution.

In the end of Tutea’s life, as a compensation for eternity,
Gabriel Liiceanu (philosopher) and Constantin Chelba (artistic technician)
made an exceptional movie series, Exercise of Admiration (1991).
This series presents dialogues in the distance between
Petre Tutea (placed in Bucharest)
and Emil Cioran (1911-1995, placed in Paris),
his dear fellow in the 1930s,
who had emigrated to France and received the Rivarol Prize in 1950,
becoming internationally recognized as an excellent philosopher and writer.

So, two great Romanian philosophers with two different destinies:
one tortured by a totalitarian regime,
the other praised by a free world.
And it is to note that Emil Cioran said about Petre Tutea that
he was an extraordinary man and a genial spirit with a unique verve.

Meditating about Petre Tutea’s personality,
an astro-quotation from his “Dialogues with God (4)”,
in which the Creator speaks with four illustrious astronomers,
occurred my mind:

“God:
Galileo, Heisenberg, Einstein, Schrodinger,
after 10 minutes I’ll go to see what is new in the 6th Universe.
Do you come with me?

Heisenberg:
Probably.

Einstein:
Of course.

Schrodinger:
Yes and no.

God:
Galileo, don’t you want to come…?”

Still walking in the court of the Church of Priest Sun
and thinking that in the heavens
Simion Mehedinti, Emil Cioran and Petre Tutea debate about a better Romania,
I had a vision with some of the most famous philosophers in history,
talking about the Universe:

Zoroaster:
The Universe depends on Truth and Lie.

Confucius:
The Universe depends on Altruism.

Laozi:
The Universe depends on Path.

Pythagoras:
The Universe depends on Theorems.

Socrates:
The Universe depends on Dialectic.

Platon:
The Universe depends on Ideas.

Aristotle:
The Universe depends on Aether.

Descartes:
The Universe depends on Morals.

Spinoza:
The Universe depends on Ethics.

Looke:
The Universe depends on Liberalism.

Kant:
The Universe depends on Reason.

Hegel:
The Universe depends on Immanence and Transcendence.

Schopenhauer:
The Universe depends on Will.

Cioran:
The Universe depends on Skeptical Optimism.

Tutea
(appeared in the meantime):
Fellows,
you know I suffered on Earth more than each of you,
so all I can tell is that
all the time the Universe depends on…
a spiritual phrase!

FROM THE STREET OF THE MOON TO “ROMANIAN SOCRATES”

FROM THE STREET OF THE MOON
TO “ROMANIAN SOCRATES”