A.M.: At the end of the Păltiniş Diary, a question is raised by G. Liiceanu concerning the validity of the life configuration there: ?But was not this ?liberation? (in spirit) a fleeing from history?? This lateral, subdued and undertone liberation, that might be held guilty for its intellectual egotism, was and continues to be the form of survival for some of the greatest values of today?s Romanian spirituality.?

Andrei Pleşu: If that means we practised a form of culture that was passive and escapist, it is only now that such words can be said and such analysis undertaken. But, I will repeat it, we did not live that episode in circumstantial awareness, peeping over to the larger context. We acted in a spontaneous and fully committed manner, following an inner necessity. Another theme is worth discussing, though: to what extent philosophy, which usually connotes also wisdom, is an efficacious existential attitude. I in particular was stirred by this interrogative demon, as I was looking for very direct solutions of embodying wisdom, and not only for a living and exploring of it at the level of the text. That was, so to speak, my daily private mutiny, which Noica denied in its principle, saying that I was practising a sort of search that was not ?disinterested?, that instead of allowing ideas to carry me along, I was always looking for ?recipes?, always looking for techniques. But that was my search, and maybe that was not the appropriate place for it to exist. In Păltiniş there was no delivery of techniques, and neither was there a delivery of political programs, or conspiracies. What was delivered there was what Noica himself called the ?pure joy of culture?. He meant culture in its traditional sense, so to speak: ideas, texts, dialogue.

A.M.: After the Păltiniş episode, the grace of which was also due to its community life, you made your dissidence explicit and so had to move away from Bucharest: the Tescani episode followed, one that proved to be much more demanding ? an episode of solitude. Is your act of dissidence, and hence the Tescani period, related in any way to the Păltiniş lesson?

Andrei Pleşu: It?s a strange thing. In Păltiniş, I was the one who did not fit in completely to the schema of the place. Or who had moments of guilty inadequacy. At Tescani I became more of a Păltiniş man that I?d use to be while in Păltiniş proper; I felt I was re-constructing the model. I might not have had the Tescani option without that model. After all, I was banished from Bucharest and the exile could have taken me anywhere. The first variant was Bacău. Tescani became possible also due to the existence of the archetype of that way of life. When I went there, I did it with the awareness that I was being offered a chance to recreate something of the Păltiniş way of life. Which literally happened. I, for instance, am not in the very least fond of walking, but there I respected a regular program of cyclical walks, as I did my program of reading and studying. Unfortunately I was deprived of the chance of dialogue, except in the rare moments when I had visitors. And dialogue was a decisive element of Păltiniş. Even so, I remember being ready, whenever I had the chance, to revive the Păltiniş-like stylistics of dialogue, either by reading from what I had written in Tescani, or by provoking discussions on a given theme. It was an almost abstract need that grasped any occasion presenting itself in the form of an interlocutor who chanced to pass by.