20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Orientalism in the prose of Ioan Petru Culianu 581(ibidem), Jesus is called on his Arab name Isâ, “Mohammed, called Rasul”(the “Messenger”), Allah’s and the Prophet’s name are accompanied bythe courtesy formulas mandatory in the Islamic world (“blessed be Hisname” / “blessed be His name for ever and ever” / “peace and blessings beupon Him”), female red-haired djinni also show up. The story is practicallya rewriting of the myth of creation, where the Master(s) of the Soundattempt, through their power, to recreate the world (in a Faustian way) andmanage to do it to a certain extent, even if not completely. The revelationis that nothing and nobody can compete with the power of God, and themessage is that we must enjoy the little, simple and beautiful things of thecreation, born from the pleasure of God’s play.An interesting fragment, by the profundity of the ideas expressed, isrelated to the conclusions regarding astrology, in words put to the mouth ofal-Kindî, about whom we know to have been a genuine astrologer (notablefor the disputes he had about the theory of conjunctions) and who influencedGiordano Bruno and Marsilio Ficino: “(…) his ambition was to treasure upall the science of the world. (…) After he wrote deep words about astrology,al-Kindî got confused, because all the science in the world would seem tohim too vain, because individual fate, just like the one of a clan, empire, theearth and of the entire universe that Allah, blessed be His name, had createdthrough his Word, the fate of all these was actually predictable and couldnot be changed. Knowledge does not mean to become aware of liberty,but of your own limits: it means to find out what has already been preestablished”.The Master of the Sound is a complex story, entirely Oriental, about therevelatory character of Knowledge and, at the same time, a subtle rewritingof the myth of Apocalypse in a scenario of Islamic inspiration, that wecould also read in its Christian version in the novel Hesperus.Alergătorul tibetan (The Tibetan Runner), belonging to the sameshort stories volume of Ioan Petru Culianu, Pergamentul diafan (TheTransparent Parchment), as suggested by the title as well, is inspired by theTibetan Buddhism. Starting from the temporal placing of the action into theannual Chinese zodiacal system referred to in the text, that is the year of theWood Rabbit and of the Metal Tiger, and up to characters and the messageof the story itself, they all come from the Tibetan area. Unlike other stories,we have a fiction full of fantastic events and voyages to the endmost places,where the real and unreal get mixed together. Buddhism believes that themechanical and long repetition of an action (i.e., reciting Mantras or Sutras)is meant to cause enlightenment. This is what the Tibetan runner rTe-hu isdoing: he runs just to send some messages which, taken together (one istrue and the other is false), make him reach the state of meditation and