It is remarkable to think that
Matei Călinescu’s The Life and Opinions
of Zacharias Lichter (Viata si
opiniile lui Zacharias Lichter, translated by Adriana Călinescu and Breon
Mitchell) was published in 1969, during the Ceaușescu regime. Appearing in a brief period of thaw in
Romania, it was nodded through by the authorities on the grounds there was
nothing overtly hostile to the government.
However, it is a long way from espousing socialist principles; in fact
the titular Zacharias Lichter does not conform to the norms of society of any
kind. Insofar as there is a message it
is a plea for individualism during a period when life was regimented, and
Lichter is the supreme petit-bourgeois asocial element. That publication did Călinescu’s career no
good in the long run is indicated by his move to the United States in 1973.
The title hints that the book
will follow the picaresque style of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It is presented in short sections, a mix of
brief essays, reflections and poems, depicting a fictional biography and the
milieu in which Lichter moves. Norman
Manea in his introduction notes Călinescu set it in the 1930s (to avoid the
imputation it was a critique of the current situation), but while the style has
a ‘60s counter-culture ambience hinting at influences from Nietzsche, Herman
Hesse and existential meaninglessness – all modish at the time – there is a lack
of specificity which gives the setting a weightless feel.
From a Jewish petit-bourgeois family,
Lichter had been a brilliant student, but he rejected a conventional path of
family and career along with the normal comforts most people demand. He had had a divine experience in which he
considered he had been struck by God’s flame when he collapsed in a public park
and experienced visions (so perhaps is epileptic). He is highly intelligent but has chosen to
tread his own path as a beggar in Bucharest, though he gives away anything he
earns to other beggars he considers more in need. He rejects the idea of work as it constrains
the spirit, considering modern existence to be inauthentic and full of
trivialities. He lives in a disused
garage, his only possession a bible.
Uninterested in opposing social
conventions, he merely ignores them.
When arrested by accident for a crime he did not commit he disdains to
protest his innocence, and is only released when the actual criminal is
caught. Having acquired a mystic bent,
he ignores the minutiae of everyday living and politics but has plenty to say
about the things he is interested in to a demi-monde
band of acquaintances, to whom he is ever-ready to present his general
philosophy. His best friend is Leopold
Nacht, though Poldy is not much of a conversationalist as he is generally
drunk, despite which Lichter considers him a significant philosopher. As in much of life, appearances can be
deceptive and bear an arbitrary relationship to underlying reality.
Street philosopher Lister’s
stock-in-trade is the absurd. He
incorporates the figure of the clown, displaying both laughter and tears at
life’s ridiculousness, but able to see more clearly than those who cannot move
beyond surface impressions, which they assume to be coherent. Adrian Leonescu, a professor of English
phonetics (not literature, phonetics) is a foolish character who is obsessed
with the pronunciation of words, but not their meaning or the ideas they
represent. He symbolises a fetishisation
of phenomena rather than the search for an understanding of noumena. Lichter sees people as belonging to the realm
of ‘the stupid’ because of their attachment to possessions and narrowly
superficial view of the world.
Lichter prefers speech (Thus
spake Zacharias, as it were) to writing because it is impermanent, his sole literary
activity being the creation of terrible verses he immediately discards, only
for them to be frequently retrieved by his ‘biographer’. Unlike most philosophers, he considers his
life, not a literary output, to be his work, in which he celebrates
contradiction and unpredictability: his most notable achievements are his
suffering and poverty. He attacks
writing because it corrupts memory and ossifies experience, and prevents the
creative process of forgetting.
Ironically Lichter’s biographer,
by writing about him, has subverted the essence of Lichter’s view of life. In an epilogue Lichter attacks the project
despite not having read it, claiming the biographer is actually writing about
himself. Given what Lichter has said
about writing, he sees the effort as a betrayal, so that God’s flame, which
initially inspired him, will freeze instead of burn. The biographer is filled with shame and
considers burning the manuscript, but Lichter remarks that the sin was in
writing it. Yet without the book,
Lichter and all he represents will vanish in time. His is a philosophy that eats itself, in
danger of disappearing down an epistemological rabbit hole. However, for the first readers, stifled by
political orthodoxy, one can imagine that the individualism it represented was
refreshing.
Călinescu’s own attitude to
Lichter is hard to fathom, but presumably it is one of admiration for standing
outside the mainstream while, as an author, disagreeing with the notion that producing
a book is sinful or that all writing is a form of autobiography. Of course Lichter’s sense of freedom is only
possible in a society kept going by the efforts of others. This is not a programme for universal living,
fortunately. Lichter’s unprepossessing
appearance, which is oft-remarked, hints at a degree of anti-Semitism (he
possesses a ‘peerless Semitic nose’), but in the end he is merely a mouthpiece
for a rather turgid philosophy Călinescu surely did not endorse but probably hoped
would irritate the authorities, an endeavour which was ultimately successful.
