Translated from Romanian by Tudor B. Munteanu, © 2009, all rights reserved. One of the few texts Ţuţea saw published (in 1985, in a holiday almanac for the Viaţa Românească literary review, under the pseudonym Petre Boteanu). The illustrations are two views of  "Socrates"  by Constantin Brâncuşi, a sculpture whose perspectives vary wildly. The image captions are from one of Brâncuşi's notes (in French).