{"id":7757,"date":"2011-09-30T12:35:18","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T10:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=7757"},"modified":"2011-10-11T16:44:15","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T14:44:15","slug":"come-and-see-three-apocalipse-knights-in-the-reading-of-the-fourth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=7757","title":{"rendered":"Come and See [Three Apocalipse Knights in the Reading of the Fourth]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=right>by \u015etefan Bolea<br \/>\ntranslated by Oana Popovici<\/p>\n<p align=right>click <a href=\"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=7593\">aici<\/a> pentru versiunea rom\u00e2n\u0103<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=justify> <br \/>\nThe Herg Benet Publishing House opens an exciting chapter in the post-post-December Romanian literature (so <em>post-<\/em>, that maybe we should stop referring to 1989 as being our zero historical year, and decide upon 2010 instead!). Taking pride in its <em>avant-garde<\/em> and nonconformist poetry publications as well as in its virtual <em>cult novels, <\/em>the publishing house that already celebrated its one-year anniversary, could have a brilliant future through the exhibition and unveiling of the traditional Romanian <em>Untergrund<\/em> that murmurs like a volcano under the heavy concrete. Can you hear the clatter? <em>It\u2019s the Earth\u2019s call\u2026<\/em><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>1. \u201cAnd I looked around and there it was \u2013 a dirty-yellow horse and the rider\u2019s name was: Death; and Hell was chasing him behind\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The first knight: <strong>Cristina Morgothya Nemerovschi \u2013 <em>Satanic Blood<\/em><\/strong> (note for the feminists: knights were multigender!)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the grey and endless nights I often put myself to comfort with the thought that this world is so filthy, shapeless and stupid that no matter how deep I may plunge into misery, no matter how much I would abate away the stringency and I would give in to my sweet heart, the black witch that is tearing my flesh, causing my organs to bleed and slowly, treacherously and concisely killing my neurons, whenever I will see my reflection in the water or into the mirror, I know I will always remain the most wonderful human being that ever existed on Earth.\u201d What an <em>intro<\/em>! \u201cVanity \u2013 my favorite sin!\u201d (a statement understood as a call for transforming vices into virtues) So much vanity! But could this idea be expressed otherwise? Definetly not! If we were to look upon this with an eagle eye, everything is an ecclesiastic vainness, everything is misery \u2013 whereas when we focus the attention towards our souls, our microcosmos is, as Culianu also suggests, infinitely wider than the macrocosmos. \u201cI am a king within myself.\u201d Everything we need is within ourselves and it is difficult (if not impossible!) to attack the solipsism. So by oscillating between an exaggerate feeling of inferiority and, correspondingly, an exaggerate trust within one\u2019s own being, with an eye we see the misery and the vainness, while with the other we see how complete, unique and more than perfect we are (\u201cQuit being perfect! Let\u2019s evolve!\u201d). Before being a project of destruction of our society, <em>Satanic Blood <\/em>is a love novel. A love that mingles with hate and eventually explodes like Nietzsche\u2019s spirit in Torino.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>2.  \u201cCome and see. And I looked and there it was, a black horse and its rider had a scale in his hand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The second knight: <strong>R\u0103zvan T. Coloja \u2013 <em>The Red Crop<\/em> <\/strong>(a blast from Oradea!).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Palahniuk\u2019s shadow wafts above us like a kite sent from Hell. Palahniuk endowed us with eloquentness, the same way Tyler speaks with our mouth. (And it is at this moment that I would like to present my regards to the young poet from Basarabia Ion Buzu, him and his readers know better why). Whoever did not fight after seeing <em>Fight Club <\/em>is a flop! If you walk around the Romanian rural area, especially around the historical Maramure\u015f, carrying Coloja\u2019s book in your pocket, don\u2019t forget to take with you some matches and gas &#8230; \u201eOne day, after the Third World War will have finished and the survivors will have crawled their way out of the ruins, hunger and disease will keep them busy enough that whichever manifestation of religion will have lost its meaning. Two generations from now and their children\u2019s children will assault whatever will be left of the churches, opening brothels and paramilitary centers of operation in pulpits. The charity box will be the place where the highest in rank will deposit their munition, and the robes with elaborate designs will be used as bandages for those wounded in battles.\u201d From a dystopian perspective, we could ask ourselves how the post-religious man would look like. How does a hunter\u2019s and gatherer\u2019s society look like at the end of a historical period and of a civilization that lost its meaning? The West is dead, long live the postmodern East. Playing Mozart with a cobza and in an Eastern tonality, the robotic <em>Sheherezada<\/em> will speak foreign languages and will give us all quests that will be even more memorable than those given by the Delphi Oracle.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>3. \u201cAnd another horse appeared, red as fire, and its rider was assigned the mission to take away the peace from humanity, people to stab one another; and a big sword was given to him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The third knight: <strong>Lucian Mare\u015f \u2013 <em>The Evil\u2019s Diary<\/em><\/strong> (The true Conan of the Romanian literature).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If someone could bestir a social riot (or even metaphysical one), like those from London or Athens (that are so much regretted by part of the unsatisfied, contra-cultural Romanian elite), a Saint Bartholomew\u2019s Night (spiritual or not, just as with Cioran), then that someone is Mare\u015f. You feel like breaking windows or pushing away with your body 100 obstacles, all for his novel. But what is of interest and not only in the case of Mare\u015f, but of all the knights in general, is the way he plays with religion. They are not atheists, but antitheists. If Nietzsche is considered to be one of the most profound religious spirits in history, then the spiritualism of these authors (even expressed <em>\u00e0 rebours<\/em>) confers them a deep and complex essence: They are the true insiders, not the ones whose belief emerges out of collusion, those who give their consent without understanding or those who are obedient for they fear punishment. And those who have a sheep mentality will shout \u201cThere comes the wolf!\u201d without understanding that the prose writers are critical of an <em>infamous<\/em> shape of religion, without excluding the authentic devotion and a superior faith that is alimented by the elusory lack of faith. When you instantaneously kill, you lose all the relish. The fast crime is only efficient. No passion and no sublime feeling is invested in it. Strangling, drowning, impaling, slow torturing, flaying, mutilation, are all sublime ways of killing that manage to keep the beauty, the charm and the symbolic meaning of death. All the slow killing methods have a contemplating valence, and contemplation brings illumination. Slow killing resembles a prayer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>4. \u201cAnd I saw the moment when the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four beings thundering: Come and see. And I looked around and there it was, a white horse and its rider had an arch; and he was offered a chaplet and he started off as a winner wishing to gain victory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fourth knight: <strong>\u015etefan Bolea-<em>Gothic.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll be quick because I don\u2019t want to \u201cbrush myself up\u201d. I discovered that the poems, even if not real, in time, do acquire a certain value of truth. I often lively feel my own verse, sometimes as a victory, some other times as a punishment. Yesterday, as I was walking through the city, I realized that the first poem from <em>Gothic <\/em>expresses a real, undisputable truth:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201c in the vicinity of my tomb<\/p>\n<p>lovers pass by<\/p>\n<p>tourist ride bikes, elders walk their dogs<\/p>\n<p>and young summer brings about fresh hay aromas<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>although I am buried alive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Sometimes death is truer than life (although life may be more frightening). Sometimes we must descend into hell to find awakening.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The three knights\u2019 books are at the moment only available in Romanian and can be ordered <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.libraria.hergbenet.ro\/?category=3&amp;product_id=34\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><\/strong>. Place them on the same book shelf where you keep your Bible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by \u015etefan Bolea translated by Oana Popovici click aici pentru versiunea rom\u00e2n\u0103 &nbsp; The Herg Benet Publishing House opens an exciting chapter in the post-post-December Romanian literature (so post-, that maybe we should stop referring to 1989 as being our zero historical year, and decide upon 2010 instead!). Taking pride in its avant-garde and nonconformist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,739],"tags":[516,1128,1153,1123,317,750,713,39,312],"class_list":["post-7757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-egophobia-32","tag-cristina-nemerovschi","tag-editorial","tag-egophobia-32","tag-english","tag-mares-lucian","tag-oana-popovici","tag-razvan-t-coloja","tag-stefan-bolea","tag-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-217","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7757"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7773,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7757\/revisions\/7773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}