- published in Apostrof magazine, no. 2/1990. Translation notes belonging to the editors of this site are placed between square brackets.

Dear Emil, 

I long to see you and embrace you. I would like to meet with you and your lady in an open environment, with no people around, where we can be all alone and live together, for a few moments, the pure joy of a visual environment that only saints and children can still enjoy. After all, St. Augustine points out, truth is what is seen. This is obvious, since outside this delimited space [of lived existence] only the fabrications of our imagination and the empty speculations of reason can be developed, lacking any truth, going nowhere, although sometimes they are  indeed relatively useful. 

Please allow me to assert that we are very much alike, although you practice an unlimited sincerity, and my daring thoughts are limited by the faith from which I am unable to distance myself. I move between God and my nation. Outside these terms, I see nothing significant between heaven and earth. However, I would like to say a few things about man in general. I would like to write a work in five volumes entitled MAN.

Vol. I Problems (Man as a questioning being, searching for useful but untrue solutions Concerning all fundamental questions and all the rest, I will try to expose random solutions, aporias and errancy. Autonomous man cannot overcome useful solutions and paradoxes.)

Vol. II Systems (Man's attempt to capture unities logically, moving in parralel, always incapable to discover, if unassisted by grace, real unities)

Vol. III. Styles (Windelband asserts that - as if this would be a big deal - only greeks and europeans practiced philosophy. I think only europeans have styles - although this isn't some kind of feat, either.  I am going to start with the Greek apollonian and dionysiac, passing through all known styles within Europe, until today.)

Vol. IV. Disciplines (Natural sciences, governed by mathematics. If mathematics are neither correct, or incorrect, just mentally convenient, as Poincaré pointed out, what can be said of experimental sciences, just as useful and untrue as mathematics? Man seeks, of course - although searching is not [itself] the way to truth - solutions to escape the captivity of nature and community. He is always stimulated by the illusions of progress. After all, not even his questions, ways of seeking  and solutions are his own, because they are predetermined. He imagines himself a discoverer, inventor and even creator. This reminds me of an expression from The Sophist, as I remember it, "God creates and man imitates".

Vol. V Dogmas (In this realm "Man's ways are replaced by God's" - Bossuet. Certitude is vehiculated by faith in the truth that came from above. A historical perspective shows there is no other truth. Becoming? A mixture of dance and slaughter, as you well stated.

I would like to thank you for the undeserved remarks about me in La Nouvelle Revue Française ("The New French Review", n.ed.)

I assure you of my unalterable friendship, and please give my regards to your lady.

P.S. I have one request. Please buy my studio, because I don't want to die as a tenant: maybe it will serve you when you will come to Bucharest, with your lady. It is in the center of the city, close to Cişmigiu (Bucharest's most romantic park, n.ed.). In a property that belongs to Cioran I would never feel like a tenant.  

Petre Ţutea
Str. Episcop Ambrozie nr 2-4 et. VIII, ap. 49, sect. I, Bucureşti