Petre Țuțea – lecturer in the Aiud dungeon

In Aiud, the other rooms of the second section were blessed by the presence of the philosopher Petrovici, professor and former minister of Antonescu, of whom I have already spoken, or Petre Țuțea, whose lectures on philosophy, universal and Romanian literature, were always real doctoral theses. The story goes that one evening a colleague asked Petre Țuțea to give his opinion on two German philosophers. True to his style, he slowly, slowly, slowly began to draw a parallel between the two great philosophers of the world, and slowly, slowly, in a normal voice, he captured the attention of the whole room, fascinating his listeners.

Among those in that cell was a former chauffeur, a nice man, polite and respected, but without a school education, who listened religiously to the whole exposition. The next day, a colleague, who had seen how attentively he had followed the lecture, with the intention of helping him to better understand what was being presented, asked him: “What did you understand from last night’s lecture?

The driver, a fair and honest man, replied: “Mr. X, I’m honest, I didn’t understand anything, but I realised that Mr. Țuțea was saying such interesting and beautiful things that I was trying to understand something and I couldn’t close my eyes or do anything else”.

I was also told that after closing time even some of the guards listened at the door out of curiosity, without interrupting the lecture.

(Aurel Sergiu Marinescu – Prisoner in his own country, Vol. II, Du Style Publishing House, 1996, p. 131)