How I spent my free time as Erasmus student (more chapters from my memoirs)
By: Tudor Călin Rațiu
Tags: Aphorisms, Theatre, Memories, Readinglist, Cinematography

In the coronavirus pandemic, I will write a capriccio with Venetian residence; I will write it for my friends.

On Emil Cioran

The more you read a philosopher, the better you will get to know the wisdom he shows you.

There is one thing that you should know about Emil Cioran, about his writings, from Cioran himself: What you formulate is, as intensity, degraded. I often read him in France, when I was an Erasmus student. And what made his writings one is the purpose of his writing, overcoming despair. I never wrote as Emil Cioran did, not aphorisms. A view from the future: Today, after reading more of his writings, I can say that Emil Cioran is an inductivist thinker. A method that Cioran uses is, sometimes, induction; and induction is the beginning of many of his errors: Consider, for instance, his portraits.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

In Orléans, they turned William Shakespeare’s Hamlet into a rap musical; my first.[1]

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the king’s son must kill those who murdered his father –like in the Torah, life for life.

Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain

Subtract a mistake from Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain and add the truth: To live forever, the first man does not eat the tree of life sap, but its fruits.[2]

Peter Webber’s Hannibal rising

In Peter Webber’s Hannibal rising, young Hannibal Lecter does to them as they did to his sister –and they murder her and eat her.[3]

Len Wiseman’s Live free or Die hard

Len Wiseman’s Live free or Die hard shows us a vulnerability to a rare event, one caused by cyber criminals; and, after they deal with it, their situation can go to past levels.

Paul Scheuring’s Prison Break

In Paul Scheuring’s Prison Break, Michael Scofield does not just think; he overcomes failure.[4]

On the same themes

I behave in the same way with different women, rather than in different ways with the same woman.[5]

As a student, I went both to the cinema and the theater, sometimes alone, at other times with friends and other students. I think of cinematography as a continuation of theatre, in particular (some plays were turned into movies), and of literature, in general (not only plays were turned into movies, but also novels).

To avoid a superstition, consider the questions: How often no disaster happens and you cannot link it to the number 23? How often a disaster happens and you can link it to the number 23? And how often a disaster happens and you cannot link it to the number 23?[6] [7]

[1] I enjoyed it –being a rapper myself (in my adolescence), I knew how to judge it.

[2] In other words, replace a religion with another.

[3] It would be sufficient for young Hannibal Lecter, if he were to just kill them.

[4] Planner or doer? Both: Thinker (that is the meaning of the word in Hebrew, as a French scholar will show). But one who knows how to resist change by redundancy (as a Spanish philosopher wants you to be).

[5] My answer to Frédéric Beigbeder.

[6] Commentary to Joel Schumacher’s The Number 23.

[7] Another thing: If you (falsely) believe that number 23 can be associated with any negative event and do the calculus, you will associate it with any bad event.