Professor Alexandru Mironescu, the man who had the “genius of friendship”

Next to Sandu Tudor – inseparable from him in presence and image, though distinct in his own personality – Alexandru Codin Mironescu must immediately be mentioned. For many of those close to Antim monastery, this university professor of chemistry-physics, writer, well-known journalist and literary critic, but above all “himself”, brought the gift of a clear, modest maturity: in constant exchange with others, the younger ones in a privileged way.

If we were to say that he had the “genius of friendship” – and not only that – we would not be exaggerating the feeling confirmed at every meeting. Of course, from his years of study and training in the West, Alexandru Mironescu had integrated, with the seriousness that was appropriate at the time, the substance of culture and, at the same time, a savoir-faire of its practice: always attentive to the formulations of others, open to innovation, encouraging critical dialogue. These moments are remembered as a kind of celebration of the inexhaustible freedom of the living human being. His wide-ranging study “The Limits of Scientific Knowledge”, published in 1943, was innovative in many respects at the time, and we believe it still contains some of the cardinal questions of the philosophy of science. His friends, or those who met him for the first time, often remarked on his “frankness”, his lack of malice: to his dry humour was added an impression of comfort, a refreshing good humour… I found in him a man of essential hospitality, at a time when this title of sacred nobility of being was becoming a political offence. His home, thanks to his family, always remained open and welcoming. Which, of course, was a serious accusation at the trial of the Burning Bush. Alexandru Mironescu was arrested with his 22-year-old son Șerban, also in 1958. 

(Andrei Scrima – The Time of the Burning Bush. The Spiritual Master in the Eastern Tradition, 2nd edition, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 2000, p. 129)