A.M.: What?s more, the fissures, resources and opportunities that are there in a very bad world will be explored with the intensity of the alternative. Today, the offer is much more varied, yet that leads to a less spectacular result in terms of a qualitative search.

Andrei Pleşu: Indeed, we enjoyed and benefited from that moment to a larger extent, and so did the public. When the Păltiniş Diary was published, the Romanian world shaked with a vibration that one can no longer imagine today. On the contrary, its effect now is more of a counter-vibration. I often feel that the Păltiniş episode and group are now scrutinised with a rather severe, critical eye. But back then, the book and everything that happened in Păltiniş brought about a sort of emulation in our world. In therapeutic, hygienic terms, that emulation was very important. I would say that both we and the surrounding world were enriched by that episode in a way that would no longer be possible today.

A.M.: For us, its readers, the Diary was the proof that acts of high culture could be performed that were alive and shaping. It was a sort of axis and a guarantee that we were intellectually alive, that we could participate in such a feat, be it only by means of our readings.

Andrei Pleşu: This is indeed a thing to remember or to be reminded of in case it?s been forgotten. For the drive to judge that episode by a sort of political exigency or ?political correctness? ? which has nothing to do with its actual data, its real contour ? is bound to fake things completely. If we cannot understand what truly happened not only with Păltiniş as such, but with its entire impact, the reverberation into a whole way of life and thought it produced, we will analyse a phantom, not a fact of life.

A.M.: Păltiniş itself consisted of several circles.

Andrei Pleşu: In this respect, Noica had a sort of symphonic genius. Without our realising it then, he orchestrated several Păltiniş?. There are other groups, too, that claim participation in the Păltiniş atmosphere for themselves. Any of their members could say, Et in Păltiniş ego. Noica was not necessarily keen on making these groups communicate, he had separate strategies and projects for each of them. Signs have actually become visible of parallel Păltiniş?. There was, for instance, a Păltiniş of Vasi Zamfirescu, who even wrote a book on it. Other voices keep being heard too, claiming regular contact with the place and correspondence with Noica. So Păltiniş witnessed a playing on more than one clavier, which makes of it a reality that is so rich and so specific to that moment. A unique reality, too.