+ Steinhardt in english
Monk Nicolae Steinhardt
Nicolae Steinhardt was born July 12, 1912. He was jewish and mostly known for his “Happiness’ Diary”. His father was the architect and engineer Oscar Steinhardt. In 1934 he graduated from the Law and Literature School of the University of Bucharest. In the same year he published under the pseudonym of Antisthius the parody novel “The same way as Cioran, Noica, Eliade…”. He refuses to join and to agree with the communist ideas and becomes a truck driver for a food shop during the communist regime until he has a serious car accident. Following his friends’ pleads he re-enters the literary activity again. In 1980 he becomes a monk and he dies in March, 1989 before he got to witness the Romanian revolution against communism.
From The Happiness Diary: 1968
From The Happiness Diary: 1935
From The Happiness Diary: 7 March 1960
From The Happiness Diary: 3 – 4 January 1960
From The Happiness Diary: Lucerne, 1938
Nicolae Steinhardt – Wikipedia
COMMUNISM – THE REFINED LABORATORY OF TERRORISM
Maciej Bielawski – “Nicolae Steinhardt and his “Journal of Happiness””
2 comments so far
Leave a reply
“Indeed I was to be released the very last day: my name begins with an S, I haven’t had any kind of wangles, I haven’t been an incurable sick man, I have been “insincere with the inquest”, I wasn’t present on their lists of squeak informers (…) and couldn’t have been counted amidst the re-educated individuals.
But the event of my release is coming and may happen every minute now. Alone, in my little cell from Zarca, I am kneeling and making a sum.
I went in prison blind (with vague flashes of light, not on reality, but inner ones, autogenous flashes of the dark, which split the darkness without dispelling it) and go out with my eyes wide open; I got in spoilt, pampered, I go out cured of fuss, smirks, whims; I got in discontented , and go out knowing Happiness; I got in impatient, grumpy, sensitive to trifles, and go out indifferent; little told me the sun and life, now I know to taste the thin slice of bread; I go out admiring above all the Courage, dignity, honor, heroism; I go out reconciled: with those to whom I was wrong, with my friends and my enemies, even with myself.
I stay thus on my bended knees and thank to Christ the Lord and promise Him to do my best to behave from now on as a gentleman, cold in the face of all adversities, obstacles, discomfitures, merely blithe, always grateful for every joy, every good word which would not be curse or oath; and I rather choose death than doing clamant sins. ”
Nicolae Steinhardt, fragment from “Happiness Diary”.
[...] time his books I’ll post a message on them on this blog, you can also read about him in this page. I try my best to see a lot of the Orthodoxy through his [...]