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- [00:02]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Upgrade your laundry routine with a durable.
- [00:04]
Adrian
And reliable Maytag Laundry pair at Lowes. Like the new Maytag washer and dryer with performance enhanced stain fighting power designed to cut through serious dirt and grime.
- [00:15]
Father Bogdan Bokur
And what's great is this laundry pair.
- [00:17]
Adrian
Is in stock and ready for delivery when you need it the most. Don't miss out. Shop Maytag in store or online today at Lowe's.
- [00:30]
Marshall Po
Hello everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk.
- [01:35]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Hi folks, this is Christy and Ryan.
- [01:37]
Marshall Po
Hosts of Soundscapes NYC, a podcast about the sounds of the 70s that have shaped New York City.
- [01:41]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Soundscapes NYC has been named a finalist for the Best Indie podcast at the 2025 Signal Award.
- [01:46]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
The judges recognized our episode Shining a.
- [01:49]
Marshall Po
Spotlight on the Forgotten Women of Disco.
- [01:51]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
From Regine Silverberg, who opened the first.
- [01:53]
Marshall Po
Modern discotheque, to Sharon White, the trailblazing DJ who broke the gender barriers at the Paradise Garage.
- [01:59]
Father Bogdan Bokur
You can learn more about the Signal Awards and how to vote for your favorites@thevote.signalaward.com and thanks for listening to Soundscapes right here on the New Books Network.
- [02:19]
Marshall Po
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:23]
Adrian
I am very glad to be here with two friends whom I'll introduce momentarily to speak about a very special book, the Journal of Joy by Father Nikolai Steinhardt. It is indeed a special book and long way coming. The publication was translation and Publication into English was a true adventure, and my two interlocutors have been instrumental into making this possible. Father Bogdan Bokur, who's a professor of Patristics at St. Vladimir Seminary in Yonkers, New York, has been in the way, the driving motor and bringing everybody, the Attila of this enterprise, bringing Everybody together. And Dr. Rzvan Porum is from the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where he's director of research and vice principal. He has written the foreword and also worked quite a bit on the editing part and the numerous footnotes. The volume has 1800 footnotes, and we'll see why. It is indeed a special book, and I'm personally glad this book has been published. And before talking about the book, I'd like us to get a bit of a background on who Nikolai Steinhardt was, and I'll ask Father Bogdan Bokur to start giving us a bit of a background about his life.
- [04:11]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Hello. It's a joy to do this, and it's a joy to introduce this very special man, the man behind the book, the Journal of Joy. So it's a bit of a paradoxical life. This man is born in 1912, dies in 1989, a few months short of witnessing the revolution that toppled the Communist regime. So he was born in 1912 in Romania. In Romania, in the capital city of Bucharest in Romania, to a Jewish family. When he dies, he dies as a Christian Orthodox monk at the small monastery in Rojia in northern Romania. So this is a Jewish man who has some family ties to Sigmund Freud on his mother's side, who dies as a Christian monastic in the midst of Communism. This is a highly educated bourgeois family, and perhaps this is why his biography includes a very important detail. He was a political prisoner between 1960 and 1964, and it is there, in fact, during those four years that the project of the book we are dealing with was born. So this is a journal of a convert. This is a journal also dealing with the repercussion that conversion has on a very highly educated and cultured person. This is also a conversion that is intimately tied with political resistance in the midst of a very oppressive, totalitarian, murderous regime. So perhaps we should go into a bit of more details about this man. When he starts out, I'll just lead in with this little description. When he was in his youth, he was described as a small, devilish provocateur, someone exuding irreverence in his conduct, a sort of Voltairean spirit, very witty, very ironic, cynical, individualistic. Critical, hedonistic, leading a luxurious life. He was wealthy. When in his last years, he's met by people in literary circles, he is described slightly differently. Namely, he is described as being extraordinarily kind, very wise, very deep, having something saintly about him. And in his own words, in his own words, he is an ex bandit and a steady client of the secret police, a protester against the official puritanism and victorious stupidity of the communist regime. So there you have it. Maybe Rizwan can fill in with more details.
- [07:39]
Adrian
One quick interjection here is that, remarkably, he was not part of the. Let's say he was never beholden to the different extremist movie. The movements that have riven Romanian politics before the rise of communism. Unlike many in his generation, he never joined any of these militant groups. Right. Either right. On the right or on the. On the left.
- [08:11]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Right.
- [08:12]
Adrian
And his background? He studied law. Right.
- [08:14]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
He.
- [08:14]
Adrian
He wrote his dissertation on. On comparative law. But then he.
- [08:18]
Father Bogdan Bokur
He.
- [08:18]
Adrian
He's very much active in the literary, cultural life of interbellum Romania. Right. Which in Bucharest, which was known as the Little Paris. Right. A very.
- [08:33]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Right.
- [08:33]
Adrian
So he was part of that culture.
- [08:37]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Right?
- [08:38]
Adrian
Very much. And therefore his trajectory is even more interesting. Yes, please, Razvan.
- [08:47]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Yes.
- [08:47]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Well, thank you, Adrian. And yeah. Just to say, you know, glad to be here again and to meet you guys, basically. Yes. Like you said, Adrian, he was a very. How shall I put it? An intellectual, but very European slum, a very cosmopolitan. After he finished his PhD, he traveled a little bit to complete his studies. It's unclear what courses he followed exactly, but he went to France and to England. He came as far as Oxford. He spent some time here. He spent a lot of time in Paris. Yeah. There are some glimpses into the life he was leading back then, mostly in the letters he wrote in that period. There is no other document, you know, but yes, like Father Bogdan was saying, he was surely a very Voltairian spirit, very witty, always kind of manifesting that, you know, resistance, sort of. What was the word that Father Bogdan also used?
- [10:20]
Adrian
An irreverent irony.
- [10:22]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Irony. Irreverence. He was an irreverent man.
- [10:27]
Adrian
Yes.
- [10:30]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Quite well off, very refined, free of obligations. So he was a free spirit, you know, sort of traveling through Europe. And it's interesting because, of course, all of that was to sort of come to a halt when the war started. And when he went through, of course, he went through a sort of an initial purge against the Jews when Romania was briefly a fascist state. And then, you know, a Longer period of, you know, tribulations under the communist regime. We can speak, and I think critics speak about two Steinhards, if you like. There is first, the first Steinhardt and the second Steinhardt. Perhaps even we can even speak about three Steinhards which have something in common, but are very different. So this young Steinhardt has very little in common with what is closer to what we've come to know through, for instance, the Journal of Joy. I think it's fair to say that the second Steinhardt begins after having been imprisoned by the communists. So he's a changed man. A lot of the ideas that he had had in the interwar period are changed. There are certain things, there are certain commonalities, but he's certainly a different man. So I don't know where to. Where to start. I think I'll briefly say that he suffered much more during communism. Not only because communism was. Lasted longer, as it were, but also because he had. During the fascist dictatorship, he had had a sort of privileged status. His family, they were Jews of second category, every de categoriadoa. Not sure how that's translatable, but they had a special status closer to that of Romanian ethnic people in Romania of those days. So he did not feel the sort of anti Semitic forces of those days with, with that much force. He. He was, he. He was somehow spared, you know, he. He did have to. I mean, he did lose his job and had to engage in some menial works, you know, but he does not, strangely, in a sense, has not been that bothered by those moments. That has, by the way, been a subject of polemical interpretations by other Jewish authors who found his sort of serenity in the face of the abuses committed against the Jews in those days. He just felt he was a bit. His attitude was a little bit unrealistic in a sense, and kind of almost portraying that period into romanticized fashion. But it is also fair to say that he ceased to have any sort of privileged status. He. His. Him and his family during communism, when he lost everything after. I mean, there were. After the war, there were a couple of years of uncertainty. And then with the coming of communism and was it 47, 48. He started a very troubled period. So he. I'll just try and give you some facts. This was the period he called the swamp of his life. He lost his. All his properties. He had to go through forced co. Tenancy which was colocazione, was a favorite thing for the Communists. They were forced to live together under one roof with several other families, finally ending up sharing a tiny studio flat with his father. So he, he was in, you know, he went through a number of jobs. He was a functionary, he was a translator, chief registrar. He spent some time as a public defender, some time even as a principal attorney and then legal expert, legal advisor. So he sort of jumped from one job to another, in his words. He said in the journal, I had many different jobs after 1948. None of them made me rich. So in the personnel offices, wrote hostile or is not trustworthy or worse than a legionnaire in my files. This was the favorite formula of the Jewish personnel chiefs. I would be of great use to the secretatis investigators, which forced me to begin looking for a job again in 1952. I get badly stuck and the note, absolutely unsuitable, puts me in a position to never be hired again.
- [16:19]
Adrian
So.
- [16:24]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
It'S somewhat clear that he was not a comfortable person in terms of his relationship with the newly established regime. He was not liked anywhere he went, which is again part of retention of that spirit of, you know, resistance which Father Bogdan was, was mentioning. That spirit of. What was it? Irreverence and subversiveness.
- [16:58]
Adrian
That.
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Dr. Rizvan Porum
And subversive.
- [16:59]
Adrian
One of the themes of the journal.
- [17:01]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Yes, absolutely. Furthermore, actually, he started being a dissenter relatively early in 1948. He immediately drafted, together with some friends, among whom were Rado, some petitions and reports which they sent to the west, for which Radoescu later got into great trouble, was imprisoned, and finally died in prison. Interestingly, he never, he never told on Nikolai Stanhart. He, he kept his anonymity safe. So, so this is what Stanhard appears like. He, he's no longer the, the, you know, the careless young sort of intellectual. He, he's going through some very bad stuff. And yes, later on he finds himself mixed with a group of intellectuals who are seen as reactionary intellectuals. They were all sort of like minded, more or less a sort of group formed around philosopher Constantino. So as it was the fashion in those days when Constantino was, you know, convicted, all his entourage, you know, fell under, you know, what's the word?
- [18:41]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Suspicion.
- [18:42]
Adrian
Yes.
- [18:43]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
So basically he was a part of that, of that lot of. He was initially interrogated, later imprisoned, and like Father Bogdan mentioned, later on he decided to become a Christian in prison. However, interestingly, actually, in that period of his life, following between the end of the war and the coming of communists and his imprisonment, that was also not just materially a very difficult, difficult period for Stahart, but also spiritually, in a sense, he was going through an existential crisis. He was depressed. He had tried in his youth to come closer to his traditional, to his family's faith, Judaism, and he couldn't. He couldn't take that on. So he had no rudder. But very slowly he started to come closer to Christianity. And I will read here his words. This is not from the journal. So he said, I was seeking with increasing determination my refuge into churches, in Christian books, in prayer, in hopes which were leaving the realm of ambiguity and gradually acquired a contour and firmness. I don't know whether I would have had the courage and self assurance to make the decisive step of becoming a Christian, perhaps out of laziness, of inner turmoil, of a scattered mindset so that I wouldn't upset my relatives and friends. So that's part of his reflection. He ends up saying, you know, it was coming across Constantin Neukker who brought him to faith in a sense, essentially. So his baptism in prison was not just like very abrupt epiphany. He had flirted with Christianity quite a long time, and Christianity, in a sense for him, had been the only thing that had coped him through his existential spiritual crises immediately after the war and then, of course, after. Now the Journal of Joy covers, in a sense, his prison periods. He finds Christ in a rather personal manner and not just like theoretically, but he encounters Christ, he lives a life of prayer, in a sense. He goes through many spiritual experiences which leave him transformed for the rest of his life. And then later on, yes, when he comes out of prison, he continues to write. Literary criticism mostly. Well, I think probably only literary criticism after he comes out of prison, and I think four or five years after he leaves the system of prisons, he starts drafting the Journal of Joy. So it was on the back of his mind all this time, but then he. He had to crystallize his thoughts in the form of this journal, which he. Yeah, so.
- [22:30]
Adrian
Yes.
- [22:32]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
No, I don't know where.
- [22:34]
Father Bogdan Bokur
So the journal brings to.
- [22:35]
Adrian
It's fascinating how it brings together all the various threads that you mentioned and starting with his youth and his intellectual and spiritual journey. What is regarding the 50s period, his, you know, we may call it the desert years. Right. It's fascinating that I don't think he was part of the Rugula Prince burning bush, although he knows some of the people who attend that spiritual renewal movement at the anti monastery. But as you say, he's part of the circle of the philosopher Constantin Neukke. And Neuka never becomes a committed Christian himself, which is interesting that Steinhardt chooses to embrace Christianity in a much more Committed way.
- [23:33]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Yes. Steinhardt would disagree. I think he would say that Naika was a profound Christian. But yeah, you're right. I mean, like I didn't take such radical steps, you know, like monasticism or you know, writing in the same vein of sort of Christian witness as Father Nikolai. But yes, for him it was. He. Steinhardt would. Yes, Steinhardt would speak very highly of him indeed. And I think in his sermons he referred to him later on as a monk, as a Christian, you know, despite appearances, if you like. You know, there are a number of personalities which he, you know, sees as profound Christians who, you know, in practice have not done anything as radical as he. As he did. But he surely, I mean, even an insistence to ascribe to Eliade, for instance, Christian, profound Christian character. When Eliade himself, I know that he had had towards the end of his life, Mircelia Adem and for the listeners who don't know, was a great historian of religions of Romanian origin. I think he taught in his later years of his life at the. Was it Chicago? So yeah, he. Yes.
- [25:19]
Adrian
Father Bogdan, is there any aspect or facet that you would like to add to what Dr. Porum is talking about? About.
- [25:30]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Let me continue on the same trajectory with this kind of political inconvenience that he represents throughout the years of communism. I mean, the Journal of Joy that the book that we're talking about is the product of imprisonment. Its core is an experience which we will mention shortly. An experience that Steiner has behind bars. It's behind bars that he is baptized behind bars that he has the core experience which then is radiating, as it were, into the 5, 600 pages of the journal. So he's a political prisoner. And when he exits the secret police, the well known Sekuritate has little trouble figuring out that imprisonment has not cured him. He is still unrepentant of his views. He is not in love with the regime. I mean, I don't know who could have become. But the main thing is he has.
- [26:49]
Adrian
There were others. Sorry, there are others who did become. I was reading either I. About Nikifor Kranik, one of.
- [26:58]
Father Bogdan Bokur
I bet probably not necessarily by conviction. It's by. I mean, measures of duress, by blackmail and so forth. They were forced to say things, to write things. We can easily say that the sort of intellectual and moral prostitution into which Steinhardt himself never allows himself to fall. And he is this very, very difficult type, but they consider him benign. You know, he's a bit of a lunatic. Protected for a while by the. By this aura of a convert who is extreme in attending services, in networking with fellow inmates, former inmates. He locates those who need help, those who are sick, family members. He carries food. He does all kinds of things. And his friends, some of whom are reporting on him, are trying to protect him by telling the secret police that this is how the man has become. He's a bit of a crackpot, but he's benign. You know, he's a sort of Christian. In prison, he used to give his food to those who needed it more. After prison, he does this. They were trying to present him as a bit of a fool for Christ, if you want, even though that's exactly what Steinhardt would criticize. This sort of extreme, showy manifestation of the faith. This protects him for a little while, but pretty soon they find out through a denunciation, a very dirty kind of denunciation, that while he's working all kinds of jobs, unqualified labor, you know, hard labor, he's also writing something. And he's actually written this book. Dasheklade finds out in 1972 that all these years this little man was not simply this orthodox lunatic, but actually writing. The journal, which the Securitate interprets, has its own exegetical perspective on things as a work that is hostile to the regime, that is hostile to the Marxist Leninist ideology, that exalts people whom the regime finds to be enemies of the state. In short, this man is not simply a nuisance, but an enemy. And surveillance starts in earnest interrogations. It's very harsh, of course. They want to know what this journal was for, what brought it about, why did he write it, how many copies he has, who knows about it, does he intend to smuggle in to the west, across the Iron Curtain and so forth? And surveillance becomes even more focused after 1977 or so. And even when Steinhardt eventually ENTERS MONASTICISM In 1979, 1980, as a monk, he is under increased surveillance by the Securitate. In 1984, the secret police realizes that despite all the measures, this guy is still able to send books to the west, inform his friends in the west, of course, these reactionary Romanian diaspora, as the secretary calls them, these are people who want to know what is going on culturally in Romania, what is going on with literature, what the policies of the regime are. And Steinhardt gives them an authentic picture of what's going on. All of this is then discussed at the so called hostile radio stations of Radio Free Europe and Deutsche Welle and Voice of America. And who has been giving them all this information? Zigutade finds out is this little man. How is he able to do this? How is he able to establish an entire section of reactionary. Of course, using air quotes here, literature, that is, literature produced by those Romanians deemed horsehat to the regime that had found refuge in the West. Eliade choran, ionesco choronescu, etc. Etc. How is he able to have those under lock? It's true, but as a section of the library that he is caring for at the little monastery. So after 84 there's an increased attention and there are hundreds of agents and what they call operative technology. There's microphones. The security offices in all the regions are surveilling him. Anytime he takes a trip from Rochia, from his little monastery to Bucharest, people he's meeting, literary circles he attends. He is one of the important targets of Sekiritaze in 1988 and 1989. He is openly seeking to make contact with dissidents. He tries to meet and encourage Doina Corner, who was one of the dissidents of the regime in 1989, just months before dying. And remember, this is a very frail man who suffers from heart problems, stomach problems his whole life, but especially in his old age, who has gone through beatings and torture in prison, and in other words, doesn't really have the energy to do the things that he does with so much energy. And there is. Let me show you a little booklet. There is a book that has been published not that long ago by an American anthropologist, Catherine Verdary. Name of the book is My Life as a Spy. The young anthropologist who travels to Romania to do anthropological research and who unbeknownst to her, is deemed of course, a CIA agent. A Hungarian American spy spying on I don't know what in Romania. Well, Steinhardt. He is contacted by her and that of course rings all the alarm bells. They see him and understand him as a great threat. And you've got to remember he is an old 70 plus year old monk who writes and speaks and thinks and is completely free. But they harass him as much as they can. And the point is, as much as they can harass him, he apparently harasses them. They feel harassed by his very presence and the segritate tries to get rid of him in any way possible. They would have eventually, perhaps brought to fruition a plan they have been concocted for some 10 years of actually removing him not only from the monastery, but stripping him of his monastic status, so that he could finally be, as they repeatedly say in the secret files Marginalized, isolated, discouraged, basically, put him in some corner in. Bury him somewhere so that. But he's making friends all the time. This is a man who attracts young men. This is a man who exerts influence without seeking to. And all of this, all of this activistic straight string of personality has as its center the event that gives birth to the book. But we should return to the book, I think. Yes, yes.
- [34:47]
Adrian
And before you talk about that event, that crucial night, not dark night of the soul, but. Or night and then the baptism, or. I think. But we haven't mentioned that. In fact, the very fact that we have the book is sort of a miracle, right, because the manuscript was confiscated. Right. And then he had.
- [35:15]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Actually, the adventure of the manuscript of this book is a winning story in itself.
- [35:23]
Marshall Po
Maybe.
- [35:23]
Adrian
Okay, Rizwan, can you tell us that adventure? And then we can start with the event of the conversion, the baptism, and go to the book, Please, Rizvan.
- [35:32]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Yes, the manuscript was confiscated as soon as it was published. And this, I mean, the story of the manuscript is. I mean, the whole story of Steinhardt during communism. It has almost biblical qualities, I guess, that you have betrayal so deep and so sort of unbelievable that it's almost like, you know, it belongs in telenovelas or just sensationalist literature. But it just. It was true that he. You have to imagine that he had a very circle of close friends. And out of these close friends, he chose the closest friends, right? Which were about four, I think, or five. And he gave each a copy of this Journal of Joy, just, you know, freshly finished. And I think it's a matter. I think it's the next day or the day after the manuscript reaches sekuritate. We're talking about his very close friends, chosen specifically not to. As he was certain that none of them would divulge, you know, the existence of this book. And of course, it's futile because one of them is an informant of the security. And this gives you. At the same time, it gives you a sort of picture of that crazy world that you really could not know who your friends and. Or your enemies were. And of course, you had this category of informants greatly encouraged by the secretate. People who just, you know, were waiting for opportunities to, you know, tell on their friends. I mean, very Orwellian.
- [37:36]
Adrian
You know.
- [37:38]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
In Orwell, children betray their fathers. You know, it's not. Their parent is not that far off. So, yes, so he gets into trouble, like Father Bogdan mentioned already, because the secretary doesn't like this book. Obviously it's not. And basically he's forced to give some statements to the secretate, whether he, why he wrote the book. He's trying to sort of explain himself that he had had the spiritual sort of, you know, crisis and then a spiritual, you know, revelation and that his. He needs for himself in a sense to go through that and to put it on paper to clarify his own sort of journey, if you like, and that he's trying to say it wasn't the purpose, wasn't to sort of criticize the, the government, the, the Communist party, but. So he. Yeah, they don't really believe him, but his statements in those periods are pretty interesting the way he's trying to. You can see him struggling to remain honest, but at the same time tell them what they need to hear so that they leave him alone. I believe that after a while, I can't remember how many years, after some interventions from some of his high placed friends, he gets the manuscript back. In the meantime, convinced that he will never get his manuscript, his first manuscript back, he sort of concocts another one. I think it's fair to say that there are a number of manuscripts. One of them is At Rohia. It was published well after many years, after the original Pandit was published in romania and when 92, I think it was. So I think in the 80s, when he reenters in, you know, the focus of the Securitate and the surveillance system, they find the manuscripts, the initial manuscripts and, and you know, they confiscate it again. They, they never give it back to him. The 80s were a very troubled period. It was the, the height of, you know, the closer we get to the end of the 80s, the, the higher we get in terms of communist paranoia and persecutions and so on. Although the purge, you know, there was no purge like in the 50s, you know, sort of, you know, putting thousands of people in prisons for sometimes, you know, very flimsy accusations and certainly not many of them not even true. Now we deal with a more professional apparatus in a sense that it's a world of informers, it's a world of more technologically advanced. We have microphones everywhere. And this is the story of the manuscript. Very convoluted and indicative of what was going on at the time in Romania. Perhaps we should go back to the book.
- [41:23]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Definitely.
- [41:25]
Adrian
And so the current edition, just to clarify, is a merger of the two versions, more or less, right?
- [41:33]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
No, no, no, this is the actual initial original version, as far as I understand, based on the original manuscript, which was published in Romania in 1992.
- [41:50]
Adrian
And was that Retrieved from the security? Or was that somehow retrieved after communism.
- [41:57]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Fell in 89 absolute has been lost.
- [42:00]
Father Bogdan Bokur
We know that there were copies circulating that have not been found again. We know that he made more copies, and we know that he lied to the secret police with abandonment. He enjoyed it very much, saying, well, you know, there's no obligation to be noble with the pirates. Why tell the truth? So in 72, he lamented the loss of this work. And when he petitioned to have it back and explained that is important to him for his own spiritual needs, of course he didn't tell them that. He was determined to rewrite it anyway. And the whole thing is, as Rizwan said, very convoluted. But it resulted in this manuscript circulating in the west and being quoted from on Radio Free Europe, to the dismay of the securitad, which once again realized that in this cat and mouse game he had managed to beat them. Now, in this book, rather, the frame for this book is in the declaration that Steinhardt gives. The frame for this book is that it is all a lengthy, how should I put. Comes out of a very concentrated core, which is the account of an experience. But then this experience connects with memories of the past, with people he'd met with, the experience in prison, especially in general, with aspirations he'd had, books he'd read and remembered. So it radiates in all directions and at all levels. And in a way, the journal is the account of this experience, but it is also multiplied, refracted, as it were, refracted through all these other experiences that he's talking about, as I said, the numerous things that he's heard, people he's met, books he's read and so forth. The core experience is that of his baptism. When Steinhardt enters the prison, he is convinced that he would have no chance of living very long. Because the initial welcoming beating is so severe. It's pretty clear to him he doesn't really have objectively serious chances of surviving the years of imprisonment. And convinced that it's a matter of months, perhaps he finds it. He now has the critical mass inside, the convincing thing to move him to take the decisive step towards baptism. And he asked to be baptized. He is catechized first. Although we would say, we know today that he had been reading a lot. And very seriously, books and all kinds of things. He was very, very, very thoroughly educated in terms of theology and Orthodoxy, especially Byzantine spirituality, but also Christian spirituality more broadly. Well, he's catechized nonetheless, and eventually baptized. This baptism takes place inside the prison. Of course, it's a clandestine act. It's forbidden, should not happen. Happens. Nonetheless, the description he gives is really memorable. I kept thinking whether I should quote or not.
- [45:49]
Adrian
Yes, I think you should. Yeah.
- [45:50]
Father Bogdan Bokur
You think I should. Okay. Well, then briefly, this is a. This is. How should I put it? A. A moment where you have, in contrast, the. The prison environment, which is absolutely atrocious. He calls it a fairly accurate approximation of hell. And within this hell, he says that he's had the most joyous experience of his life. So you have two detainees that block the peephole. And then Father Mina, a monastic that he's found there, utters the necessary words, marks me, he says, with the sign of the cross, pours all the contents of the kettle on my head and shoulders. The cup is a kind of chipped kettle, and baptizes me in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And I'm born again of wormy water and a swift spirit. Now, this is. This is it. It's a very small. It's a very small detail in the life of the prison. They want it to be over with quickly. But with this begins something extraordinary. He, more than once, in the Journal of Joy, in later interviews with friends and so forth, says people who have been baptized as children, as most orthodox Christians are, can't know what baptism is. He has, by God's grace, let's say, the advantage of having had an experience that makes more vividly clear what is otherwise happening, unbeknownst to most baptized, and writes so whoever was christened as a small child has no way of knowing and cannot imagine what baptism means. Above may dawn ever more frequent assaults of joy. One might say that each time the besiegers climb higher and hit with greater relish and precision. So it's true. It's true that baptism is a holy mystery and that holy mysteries do exist. Otherwise, this. This happiness that surrounds me and fills me, clothes me, overcomes me, wouldn't be so unimaginably wonderful and whole. Peace and sweetness in my mouth, in my veins, in my muscles, a sense of absolute certainty, a mescaline, like merging into everything and a perfect departure into clarity and the newness. I am a new man from whence so much freshness and newness, Revelation, the book of Revelation, is proven true. Behold, I make all things new. And Paul also, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have made, been made new. And he finds this experience again and again and again. He speaks about these attacks of joy, as he calls them. He says, well, you know how it is when you can't sleep because you have worries. He says, well, after baptism, I had this joy that was so aggressive that I would have danced, I would have sung, I would have woken everybody up to tell them what I'm experiencing. And it is twinned with an experience of light at some point, one that is typical in orthodox hagiography, in literature, lives of saints and so forth, which is quite rather typical. An experience of an uncreated, overwhelming presence of God as light, specifically presence of Christ as light. So these two facets of the experience, light, which he calls uncreated, he calls it the light of the transfiguration and joy, an intense joy. This is the experience that he says transforms him, and this is what he wanted to write about, but he himself says it is new, overwhelming, but also ineffable. How to put in words something that is beyond words and beyond the concepts that would be coming out as words. And the struggle to give an account of this experience is what births, as it were, the core of the journal. And this experience is also what measures his other references, because the same kind of experience of light and joy occurs in interactions with fellow inmates after he leaves prison, also later on. This is really at a very high intensity of spiritual face to face with Christ. What starts the process of change. And what we might find very often in the journal is a. An echo of it, a trace of it, because the experience itself, he deliberately obscures it or minimizes it. It's somewhere in the journal. But what is speaking very loudly is how this mystical experience, I do think we can call it that a mystical experience. How it is then converted, translated into a number of ethical guidelines for life. In other words, it meets an environment of everyday life which is sinister. And just as, to use an analogy, I hope it works. When you have an explosion of a volcano somewhere on where there's ice, thick ice, the hot lava that explodes meets the ice and forms these volcanic bubbles, they're called. They look like glass, like crystal. It's crystallized stuff. It's very beautiful and very. I mean, it's very beautiful. Well, this mystical experience of his meeting the reality of. Of everyday life cashes out as some very clear and memorable, I think, ethical commandments. And that's the core. That's the. Sorry, the stuff, the bread and butter of the journal. And this is what I think many of us who read this journal first, after it appeared in post communist Romania, remember best just how the ethics that flows out of that mystical experience is so compelling. I think Rizvan, who's written quite a lot about that, can detail this ethical trace of the mystical experience.
- [53:05]
Adrian
Just to add a bit. And before Rizvan intervenes, I like very much how you center the whole journal in this experience, because he didn't do it.
- [53:19]
Father Bogdan Bokur
This is Steinhardt's own account. Both when he's interrogated by the secret police and later in the late 80s, when he speaks to very close friends, he gives the same kind of account. This began as an attempt to speak about those unspeakable experiences, and then it grew out of that, you know, in circles that echoed, as it were, that central experience and how that central experience.
- [53:48]
Adrian
Brings the various threads of. Of the journal together. Because otherwise, at first glance, it seems rather this disparate and fragmentary and, and rather daunting for, let's say, a non Romanian audience who's rather taken aback by. By this, you know, as he's writing about everything. Right. And. But it makes sense to explain how, like you put it, that it's this experience that somehow for him transfigures everything else for him, going back and going forward. Right. And then also the ethical dimension, which again is very important for him and rather unique in the Orthodox context.
- [54:43]
Father Bogdan Bokur
It's an absolute must. I mean, it's impossible to have fire without generating heat and smoke. Let's say it's impossible to have this encounter that he narrates without having this afterglow, this ethical afterglow. But as I said, Rizvan is really someone who wrote about this in detail.
- [55:07]
Adrian
Please, Dr. Porum, please.
- [55:11]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Well, I think. I don't know what to start with. I think, I mean, yes, this is. First of all, this is the story of someone coming to the faith. So I think we need to make.
- [55:30]
Marshall Po
That.
- [55:33]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
You know, mentioned, because we people tend to think of Stanhart as a. As an Orthodox monk, you know, as a father of a monastery and so on. Now, this journal was not written by a monk, not by the person on the. I mean, the same person, but not in that attire. You know, this was an intellectual finding Christ. So he had a certain freedom in approaching themes which he found to be essential. Of course, the fundamental message is that Christianity is a recipe for happiness. So this is an existential theological. He repeats that, I think three, four, five times throughout the book. He says that Christianity, call it what you want. Christianity is dogma, Christianity is doctrine. But above every. But first and foremost, it's a recipe for happiness. So the joy he experienced, of which Father Bogdan spoke just now. He stayed with him as a sort of constant which. Which in a sense defines Christian life. He goes as far as to say, you can recognize a Christian looking, you know, if you know whether he's happy or not. If a person is sullen, agitated, morose, angry, that person is not a Christian. He says in a very radical.
- [57:15]
Marshall Po
May I.
- [57:16]
Adrian
Actually, I have that passage and it's one of my favorite passages which I'd like to cite for readers to get a feel of his writing. It's page 572 as we are getting. As for getting closer to Christ, the test that doesn't deceive, the definitive criterion is a good disposition. Only the state of happiness proves that you are the Lord's. The disgruntled, virtuous person isn't the Savior's friend, but one who longs for the devil. The moody ascetic isn't authentic. In art there are objective means of recognizing the authentic work and setting aside the copy in order to distinguish the Christian from the caricature or imitation. There's no procedure more certain than investigating whether the aspirant is or isn't cheerful and content. If the individual is intolerant or sullen or agitated or ill tempered or troubled, he is not a Christian. No matter how perfectly faithful to virtue he may be. He is virtuous, but he is not a Christian. The Christian is free and therefore happy. This is also the meaning of Kierkegaard's brilliant and inspired statements whose obsessive hold on me I can't escape. The opposite of sin isn't virtue. The opposite of sin is freedom. The aerial toll houses are numerous here in the world at the toll house. That can't be fooled. The proof consists of the state of happiness. Yes, and also this Kierkegaard quote that he repeats obsessively that the opposite of sin is not virtue, but freedom. Can you talk a bit about that? Because in the introduction you speak about this trilogy, I think Freedom, Happiness.
- [59:20]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
I was looking now for the. This is what Giorgio de Leano is the first and still one of the greatest sort of critics to have written on Steinhardt. Very. A monograph which is sort of very useful up to this day. Georgia de Lan he speaks about a triangle of faith, freedom, happiness. These are all faith, freedom, happiness. They're all interconnected in Steinhaus view, which bring him, of course, freedom. He was writing essentially from prison. I mean, at least sort of aprecu as he says, you know, his mind. He set his mind back in prison, which wasn't very difficult. Because as he says, he walked from a smaller prison into a larger one. You know, when he was released from prison, Romania itself as a concentrationary, you know, universe, totalitarian country, very much resembled, you know, a prison. You were always, you could always be under surveillance. You were always. Yes, there was a. There was a sense felt by the entire population of, you know, oppression and abuse. But freedom, I think obviously, in a sense is what he focuses on. Freedom is very important for Steinhardt. He wishes freedom from speaking about the faith. He wishes everyone to find faith in absolute freedom. He, he doesn't like any idea of coercion of any kind, like any sort of attempt from any sort of power to impose morality, you know, as it was the case of the communists, obviously, hypocritically, you know, onto the society he, he finds. Which, by the way, was seen positively by some, you know, priests and Christians at the time, which, you know, it was very sort of ill conceived. So. But what's interesting that he very quickly combines freedom with. Well, first, well, freedom. He sees freedom in combination with courage. Courage is what keeps you free. Ultimately, what keeps you free. The most fundamental thing that keeps us free is the courage to oppose the aggressor, the tyrant, even to have the courage to oppose it, even up unto death. So that's kind of his view, radical, you know, on freedom and preserving one's freedom. And somehow connected to that is his intense loathing of what he calls the greatest sin of all, which is that of being an informant, being an appeaser of a tyrant, you know, or a totalitarian regime. So betrayal, you know, these are the most abject failures of humanity in his view. And again, related to that, he's trying to define freedom starting from Orwell's definition. If you remember, he said something like freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four. And everything else will follow from that as long as you're in a sense of freedom to state the facts. Freedom from, from lies, from deception, from spin. That was Orwell's, of course, very interesting still definition. But for Steinhardt, speaking from his Christian perspective, someone who was attempting to live a life in Christ that was not entirely satisfactory. So he engages in this whole thing of two plus two equals four, which he. He's trying to shift the focus from the, you know, cold reality of facts, which, yes, of course, it's important to be aware of that. But in terms of truth, he would like truth to be defined differently. And here he gets, he takes an ethical approach in a sense that the truth, you know, that really Needs the truth. Capital T that needs to be spoken is the condemnation of the injustices that happen in the world around you. Of course, he had. He was writing from a totalitarian universe, but for him, speaking of the injustices of the system against the population, that was two plus two. That was the truth that really mattered. For him. It was almost, as he says, it was almost frivolous to sort of engage in things. Every truth that avoided this fundamental truth was a sort of waste of time. He, curiously, he, for instance, speaks about. Who was it? I think speaks about Kalinesco or. Who does he speak of?
- [65:52]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Yes, it's very nice to Romanian literature, but also theologians. He speaks of Stanley, for instance, as well.
- [65:59]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Yeah. So all of these people speak of nice things. Karen asked about Eminescus legacy and standing lie about criticism of the Catholic universe. But, you know, does this really matter? Is that really what people need in a, in a, in a, in a period like this, in a, in a.
- [66:25]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Situation with a, with a, an example. At some point, he, he refers with some disappointment to Richard Wurmbrand, another Jewish convert to Christianity, and he says, I'm surprised. This is somebody I heard only good things about. But Wurmbrand finds it necessary to give a very fiery discussion, a speech about the theological failures of Jehovah's Witnesses. And Steinhardt says, this is so disappointing. It's not that he wouldn't agree that theologically, yes, Jehovah's Witnesses are what he considers bad theology, but this is not the truth about Jehovah's Witnesses. The truth about Jehovah's Witnesses is that they are behind bars, that they are being tortured, and that they are martyrs, that is, they are witnesses to their faith. That's the truth about Jehovah's Witnesses. And to discuss something that seems true, that is factually accurate but irrelevant, this is missing the point altogether. So this is how. This is the essence of speaking truth. The truth must be relevant, and the relevant truth is usually the one that's inconvenient. Somebody doesn't want you to say that truth. And if you play that game, then with all the appearance of truth, you're not really truthful. Same since we mentioned Steinloy. Stanloi wrote a number of articles about the ills of the imposed union, that is the union of the Orthodox Church in Transylvania with the Roman. See, well, that happened in 1699, and it was indeed imposed by force by the Austrians. Yes, but is it true? Well, it is factually accurate, however, to write about that kind of factual truth at the Time when the Greek Catholic hierarchy is being suppressed, oppressed, killed or jailed by communism and when the communist, Romanian Communist authorities are actually doing the opposite of what the Austrian Empire had done, and when the Byzantine Catholics don't have a legal status anymore, they've been stripped of that church has been legally terminated. Then he says it's ridiculous, it's frivolous, and it's unchristian to write about what happened 200 years earlier. It's not that it's not true historically, but that is not the truth that ought to be spoken. And he has a number of examples. All of them, I think, hit home for the reader today because that kind of dilemma always presents itself. What is the true truth? And how can we so easily be deceived into thinking that if we are free to know that there is sunset and sunrise, we have spoken all the truth that can be spoken?
- [69:37]
Adrian
And as I hear you say this, that he doesn't like any type of legalism or pettiness, right? Because one of the refrains of the book is the aristocracy of Christ, right? Which I associate with the virtue of magnanimity. And Steinhardt disliked pettiness and this type of constant, you know, squabbling. And what can you say? Why does he always speak about aristocracy, Right.
- [70:20]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Boeri, according to his witness, this is how he experienced God in Christ, as it were, a nobleman, somebody who is trusting, somebody who is generous, somebody who. Who does not bring up the past. Somebody who when he forgives, he forgives completely. Somebody who is extending friendship before you can reciprocate, somebody who is empowering, somebody exceedingly generous with himself. And he was himself, Steinhardt, transformed in this way. This is how he himself is described when he is an old man that young writers are meeting and they don't know that this is a monk. He doesn't dress as a monk to go to these symposia, but they sense that something like this is going on. So this is how he experienced God. And as I said, the afterglow of his experience is that this is how this is part of the portrait of a Christian. So it is aspirational for any Christian to move in this direction. This is also, I think, what makes him, we use the term subversive. It's not only that he is politically subversive. That's pretty clear, right? I mean, from what we've said, he is a very inconvenient individual that cannot be reformed. He cannot be reduced. He cannot be. His wings can't really be clipped effectively enough by the regiment.
- [71:58]
Adrian
And it cannot be categorized. Right. It's his sweet henness.
- [72:01]
Father Bogdan Bokur
But in religious terms, his brand of orthodoxy is also a bit of an oddity, precisely because he brings up these virtues that we don't hear much about. I don't think it's only an orthodox matter. Have you often heard about the virtue of courage being so central? I mean, it sometimes does happen, but rarely within East European systems, where people tend to like order and protection and some kind of a father figure at the top, much more than courage. And Steinhardt reminds us that the first ones to go to hell, according to the book of Revelation, are the cowards or the virtue of freedom. And how you can't really have any virtue if it is not something that you engage in freely. So when he talks about issues that are controversial today, he talks about, for instance, the decree that was passed in 1966, I believe, the decree about banning abortion. It's a very difficult topic. It's a decree passed by the communist regime, I think decree number 770, 770, which was designed to prevent legally abortion. And a number of priests, some of whom are people that we know very well, and the people that he regard as saintly people, say, well, finally, the regime is doing something good because this is moral, because this is pro life, etc. Etc. And Steinhardt says, I cannot bring myself to agree with these admirable priests on this matter because they seem to have forgotten that virtue can only be accomplished by engaging in it freely. So why are we not looking at where this law comes from? What is the intention? It comes from the same spirit, the same devilish spirit that imposes lie and terror and fear upon the entire country. It's a law that is designed, and we know now, it was designed to engineer a 30 million Romanian country within. I forgot, by 1989, we were supposed to be 25 million by 2030. 30 million people, something like this. It was a measure of social engineering which had everything to do with control, with the invasion of privacy, with complete lack of freedom, complete lack of dignity for individuals. And Steinhardt sees these details and says, well, where is the morality in that? Not that he is in favor of abortion as a Christian monastic or as a Christian or as a religious person in general. You wouldn't suspect him of that, but he notices things that were conveniently neglected by others. And this is what he calls intelligence, that a Christian must be intelligent. You must see behind the appearances. Sometimes the devil disguises himself in all kinds of ways, and sometimes it looks like morality, but it's morality that lies or morality that shoves things away, or morality that simply says everything right, minus freedom, can you ensure decency by force? And he has a nice passage in which he speaks about the hippie counterculture in Romania. And he notices that people are blaming these young men and women who are wearing long beards. Nothing about my beard here, long beards and flowing hair, and are mixing sort of a jeans thing, which was of course smuggled in from the black market from Yugoslavia at the time, and crosses and things like these, you know, the, the time of the, of the late 60s, early 70s. People are saying that these people are immoral and, you know, free love and then mixing tradition with modernism and so forth. And he reminds everybody that the reality is these people don't want to fit into a society that has been coerced into order by force. And he says there is a monstrous coalition that is being born now, a coalition between the secret services, the establishment of the party and state, on the one hand, and the old people who have been suffering because they have been broken, have been made to be afraid, and now they have sided with, with the establishment against the young because they don't understand why the young are not afraid. And why, as Steinhardt puts it, don't they just go along, buy their refrigerators, enjoy their standard of living insured by the Romaine Communist Party, cut their, their long hair and just get on, you know, get with the program. And he finds that the youth are right because they conserve freedom and that this is indeed a monstrous coalition. It doesn't look on the surface. It's always, you know, in tune with the, with religious, with religiously infused morality as protecting society and so forth. It is subversive, but I think this is what makes it saintly.
- [77:42]
Adrian
But I, as you were talking, and I had a question for Rizwan, as he mentioned 1984. What if Steinhardt had become more familiar with the other dystopia, Brave New world, right? With the real effects of the hippie looseness in the west, the hippie culture that has now become mainstream cultures, right? The hippie have become the yuppies. Everything is allowed. You dismantle all institutions, you anti authority, anti hierarchy. And we are very much living through the effects of this culture, right? So I'd be curious to see what would he have said about how would he have reacted to the brave new world, right? Because, R. Svan, you talk a bit about that in your forward about. Well, how, how does this book fair of 30 years after the fall of communism, right? And what does it have to tell us, right. In our contest, today's context of technology, hedonism. Right. The. The. The new and limitlessness. Right. That we. That's. These are some of the trends of the Brave New World.
- [79:13]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Well, I think it's hard to speak in terms of trying to project what Steinhardt would think today. He surely would be worried. I think I mentioned that in the forward. Perhaps he would be worried about emerging totalitarian societies. That was his thing, you know, like, he. I mean, of course, he was all. He was always conservative, but I think that that would have been his main focus. And, you know, it's all to do with freedom, essentially. You know, like, I don't know about the specific hippie culture. I think you have to expect to be surprised with Steinhardt. He may have had some sympathy for their strength of the spirit of opposing the powers that be. The. The attempt to remain free in that sense, of course, when it comes, when issues of morality are involved, of course, he would have been a bit more careful. But from his point of view, if you have a totalitarian state, then Christ that is opposed to finding Christ in faith. It's. It's. How should I put it? It's the main enemy of fate.
- [81:02]
Adrian
Yeah. But for me, that's a much easier scenario than Brave New World because you wake up in the morning and you know, the enemy in Brave New World, you're supposedly free and you're pursuing all of the things. And I think it's a much more devious and tricky scenario to be. Right. But nevertheless, he becomes a monk, right? He, as free spirit as he is, he does the ultimate.
- [81:31]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Not only that, but he's a very serious ascetic. From the accounts that we have, few of them from people who've seen up close how he ate, how he slept, how he prayed, how he prayed in solitude. Very, very dedicated, Very, very harsh with himself at the same time. Never imposing anything on the others. Courteous, polite, very clean. He had a thing for hygiene that is not necessarily always a monastic virtue. He notes that funny humor is part of his format for being a Christian, but very serious as a monk. Very dedicated. And this lasts up until his last hours. He dies an exemplary death. He asked for the Psalter to be read. Then the book comes to an end. He asked for the book to be closed and he dies. Almost like in, you know, the most exemplary of saints accounts. But at the same time, I think we can say that what he considers to be an important Christian virtue, this kind of moral intelligence that you should not allow yourself to be duped, to be taken in by the disguises of evil. And he was very open. He had a very, say, apocalyptic perspective on reality. He believed in the reality of demons. And friends said he spoke about it very, very openly, that behind many of these things are the actions of the evil one. And I think he would have recognized them in any kind of disguise, whether it's left wing or right wing extremism, whether it's in policies, in public policy, from the right or the left, whether it is hippie or some kind of conservative ways of doing things. And speaking about hippies, he has biting criticism of hippie like manifestations in Western Europe in the 1970s and 80s against policy of resisting or confining the Soviet Union to where it was, in other words, or the Israel manifestations. And he finds it unbearable. He finds that the fact that they don't believe us, they don't believe Solzhenitsyn, that they don't believe Zinovia, that they don't believe that this is indeed very bad and that they have this angelism, this idea of how things are, which in reality has nothing to do with the reality of the day and this lack of, lack of practicality, which he finds actually sinful. He finds it unbearable and says, a billion and a half imbeciles in the west side march, kidnap, yell, write, go naked, grow beards, make love in public and throw Molotov cocktails to achieve the ideal what that the kind of impoverished life that communism provides at the thought of that billion and a half, whoever thinks about it goes crazy. So this is the context of him analyzing communism as unfailingly leading to misery, poverty, dictatorship, totalitarianism. And he finds it is unbearable that people don't see through the sly. So it's not about which lie, it's about seeing through whatever kind of lies.
- [85:31]
Adrian
Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Beautiful quote here. I mean, he says on page 475, in order to be liberal, a society must submit to morality first. Who does not want to understand this necessity and does not agree to openly acknowledge this? Who resorts to subterfuge and declares, listen closely here. The society needs true and deep culture. It is a formula that weighs a thousand tons, but inside it is empty. You need to have the courage to say it like it is. Culture is not enough. You need morality too. This is the word that everyone avoids and is afraid of. Morality.
- [86:07]
Father Bogdan Bokur
It's probably total, but remember what morality means, that it is something that can't be imposed. At some point. He says, in an ideal world, I would love for there to be a church and a brothel and a tavern on Main street, but the brothel and the tavern have no business. And I imagine he says the devil being so frustrated he doesn't have customers. Yes, but the option exists and must exist because if you pass a law outlawing the tavern and the brothel, then that's no longer Christianity. I mean it can be anything else if you want. But a state imposed mandated morality, I think is Steinheim's nightmare and ought to be our own.
- [86:58]
Adrian
Well, thank you. This is really very relevant and helpful. Father Bogdan. Before closing, I'd last I want to ask Dr. Purum to offer some concluding remarks. There's a lot to say and we're limited by time, but I think our conversation has offered a few inroads into this incredibly deep and insightful and beautiful book. So please, Rizvan.
- [87:30]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Yes, well, I was thinking that perhaps, you know, going back to the book and sort of attempting to say a few more words about the book, I will self servingly perhaps quote a bit from the foreword to the book which speaks about the book and about the journal and what kind of book it is. So I'm quoting now from myself. His Journal of Joy here of course we refer to Steinhardt reflects a playfulness, energy, fortitude and sparkle that Steinhardt also displayed as a person. As the author himself dutifully informs us in his brief prologue, the book takes the form of a stream of consciousness. In his words, no chance of having a pencil and paper in prison, so it would be dishonest to try to argue that this journal was written chronologically. It's written apres coup on the basis of certain fresh and living recollections. Since I couldn't arrange it at the time, I think I'm permitted to present it out of order according to what I've seen of the succession of images and remembrances and thoughts in that torrent of impressions that we like to call our consciousness. The effect no doubt tends towards the artificial. It's a risk I must accept. And I end the quote here. The journal is indeed composed of seemingly random fragments, memories jumbled up with stories, but mostly thoughts and reflections. This gives the work the appearance of a long form reflective essay. Chunks of stories and reflections are often preceded by a place name and associated with a month and year, which locates the respective episode in space and time. Larger chunks of text are often divided by smaller passages which serve as interludes relaying tidbits of conversations, mostly from prison, often unrelated to the main text. Humorous and extremely Diverse. The prisoners talk about French equivalents for obscure Romanian words, give differing opinions on historical events, and relate anecdotes on various themes. Each of these unconnected but sparkling paragraphs bears an equally playful subheading Boogie Mumble Rag, a selection of music and dance styles that hint at the unusual mishmash of ideas, topics and exchanges characteristic of that particular prison universe. And I'll stop here. I think this is a sort of succinct description of the book itself.
- [90:17]
Marshall Po
Thank you.
- [90:17]
Adrian
Maybe I'll just cite one of these. Boogie Mambo rug and then we can end. You didn't need to be a Great Strategist in 1939 to understand that France would be defeated. Demolished. Frederick II, who used to say that the sovereign must be the first servant of the people, had long since declared another truth, that war isn't won by armies, but by the moral resistance of a nation. The mandala is a mystic Chinese circle that where it starts from, the entire Polytechnic school came from Vienna professors and students to see the wonders of Wanderer Czernavoda, the first long bridge in the world made entirely from steel and with the cantilever trust. And it continues. And then just a short fragment from the other side of the book. In Christianity, suspicion is a serious and horrible sin. In Christianity, trust is the moral way of creating persons. Only a human being forges his neighbors in proportion to the trust he places in them and shows them. Unbelief is as deadly as infanticide. It destroys the humanity of those upon whom it manifests itself. Man himself, made in God's image, transform his neighbor into a person through a second act of creation, thanks to the trust he shows towards him. And he's referring to Paul Claudel. I want to thank my interlocutors for coming here and talking about this wonderful book. And I hope it nudges you. It encourages you to go and buy it and read it or get it from a library. Before ending, I'd also like to acknowledge the translators. The translator was started by Paul Bobok as an act of love, as Father Bogdan explains in the introduction. It was revised by Father Peter Antonake and further revisions and explanatory notes by Peter Andronake. And then we have several people who have worked on the numerous and detailed footnotes around 1800. And so we have Bogdan Bokur, Nikolai Dragushin, Brenda Mikitic and Rizwan Porub. So I hope. And this was indeed an act of love. And we're very grateful that this book has been finally published in an excellent edition. I dare say the edition is better in many ways than the Romanian edition because of the incredible apparatus. So thank you for this.
- [92:58]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Thank you for inviting us to do this presentation of the book, for having us.
- [93:03]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Thank you for having us.
- [93:04]
Father Bogdan Bokur
Somebody who loves Steinhardt. I know that you've enjoy the publication as well as our dialogue very much. Thank you.
- [93:11]
Dr. Rizvan Porum
Thank you.