“An invaluable friend and an admirable man, of an endless delicacy of soul”

My friend Sandu Tudor is a great poet, and he has written several Akathists, of St. Dimitrie Basarabov, of the Burning Bush, which is not only of great literary beauty, but contains a whole theology of the prayer of the heart, the Akathist of St. Calinic of Cernica and, in prison, the Akathist of St. John the Evangelist, which I happened to hear there, and when I returned I put it down on paper; it’s monumental!…

These are not friendly words. Friendship, on the contrary, embarrasses me in the eulogy I would have liked to give. The Burning Bush Akathist reached Paris, where it made such a strong impression that it was proposed to publish it immediately, in Romanian and French. And in a magazine, under the signature of a well-known personality, an article appeared on the subject of the Akathist: L’ortodoxie, ou le Buisson Ardent.

For those who did not know him well, Sandu Tudor was always an element of scandal and an endless source of defamation. But he was, in his intimacy, quite different from what was said about him. He was, however, a difficult man, sometimes very difficult to bear and for some deeply unpleasant, with a direct way of speaking, without mincing words and, I would say, without any hypocrisy. But fortunately for those who could bear him, he was an invaluable friend and an admirable man, of infinite tenderness of soul, of great originality. He knew many things, and in certain fields he was a scholar, he had the knowledge of a scholar. But he also hid himself, and by a rough way of being he protected himself from people and, strangely enough! – from their admiration, which he surely could have had.

Throughout his life he tackled a great number of problems, and if his manuscripts were to survive they would provide material of exceptional value.

(Alexandru Mironescu – Florea de foc, Editura Elion, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 193-194)