I, the Saturnalias!

It was about the end of the ‘70s. I had written then one of the poems that caused me a lot of problems. It was called "About the Saturnalias." Happy to be in my city of birth, Timisoara, I read the poem to the audience there with a subversively calm voice, which unsettled some of the people. In the evening, while dining at the Bastion restaurant, I was warned that "repercussions will come." And they did.

To try now and turn into prose a poem would be stupid of me. All I want to say is that the poem attempted to suggest that the then rulers lost contact with the ruled. And reminded the ancient custom at the feast of Saturnalias, when the masters washed the feet of the people who served on them for the rest of the year. Modern sociology may interpret the Saturnalias as a sort of social safety valve that would let out the exact amount of pressure keeping the social pot from blowing up.

In December 1989, after the Romanian pot did blow up, I worked for seven years in Romania and the Republic of Moldova. I was into programs dedicated to rebuilding and consolidating the civil society. Soon enough I started to worry that the gap widened between the self-proclaimed leaders of the civil society and its rank-and-file members. I cried "danger" once or twice, but repercussions occurred promptly. One such leader even took her case to court.

One stupid enthusiastic initiative of mine was to design a project that some labeled as "populist." The idea was to open a small Bistro of Ideas called "At the Saturnalias."
People interested in exchanging ideas would have paid low prices for ordering food while talking in a friendly and civil atmosphere with Liiceanu, Manolescu, Plesu, Dinescu, Patapievici, Bernea and Blandiana [names of Romanian nowadays famous intellectuals]. Customers would have ordered mushrooms cooked in white sauce by Gabriel [Liiceanu], pan-cakes tossed over in the air by Andrei [Plesu], or strong black coffee boiled by Ana [Blandiana]. While I, or Iosif Sava, Biju Morar, Mihaies or C.T. Popescu [other well-known names to the Romanian public] would have served the customers.

I went that far as to design the napkins, to draw the advertising posters, to find really funny aprons and even a friend willing to put his money into sponsoring this adventurous plan. I managed to share my "populist" plan with only a few friends. N. was pretty into it, but skeptical about the availability of the big names for the new line of work. For his part, M. thought the project was so good, that the little restaurant could easily be open for business. Then, for a number of reasons, I dropped the idea.

The cyber-forums of Romanian publications may play a part in bridging the gap between those that write them and those that read them. Furthermore, starting the dialogue is fully optional. But it cannot do any harm to find out the reactions stirred by the opinions you first aired in your op-eds.

It sometimes happens that opening the dialogue in cyber-forums finds some of their users also abusing them: some use these forums but are not clear about their purpose, while others vent their frustrations in foul language and figuratively (so far) trash over the people they see signing in the newspaper. But this should not mean doing away with forums posted right under each article.

Being prude did not raise the number of virgins, and American prohibition did not lower the number of alcoholics. And then, it is so much funnier to read in an op-ed that all that came to the writer’s mind while stepping into the Oval Office [in the White House] was to check whether his fly was zipped up, then reading the supposedly funny call to the journalists: "Hey, you, shut the f … up!"
Fed up with the latest theories of communication I get back to the clear thinking of Montaigne: "The word half belongs to the one that utters it, and half belongs to the one that hears it."
So, I try one more time: Mr. Tuca [editor-in-chief of Jurnalul National], tear down this (fire)wall!