Time For The Sublime

Just as there comes a time for getting married and for retiring, there also comes a time for the sublime. After one has knocked together some fortune, he starts thinking about growing rich spiritually, too... It just won't do to own a dwelling with an inner staircase. No, one also has to melt with enthusiasm while listening to Vivaldi's "Seasons." A head waiter who has been fattened and raised dizzily by tips and key money would seriously think about intellectualizing and refining his personal life. The crowding of material goods would suffocate, strangle him. Only some poetry, some art, some ecstasy in front of the Italian Renaissance would aerate and relax him."Two cars, two dwellings – one in Bucharest, one in Breaza – are enough for me, now I need some art. I don't have valuable paintings, I only have a Florentine book case with nothing in it... it's a disgrace."He goes very, very far with his need of culturalization. He reaches heights that used to be inaccessible for him."Sometimes I think about starting to learn Latin or whatever... I also need things I don't necessarily need... just like that..."Art also plays the role of a moral regenerator as it gives one the power to change his biography in the most favourable way."If you get emotional, for instance, by listening to Mozart, you forget that you have just received a tip, everything becomes sublime... And then Luchian's flowers make you a better person, a more sensitive one."In the end he managed to establish a connection between the usefulness of the Dacia 1300 car and the miracle of Luchian's painted flowers. Out of this confrontation, Luchian's flowers would definitely turn out to be the winners:"A car gets worn out, but the value of a painting rises." Albatros, 1976


by Teodor Mazilu (1930-1980)