DRAGOSTEA CA O CALE SPRE LIBERTATEA DE CONȘTIINȚĂ ȘI CUNOAȘTEREA DE SINE
Love as a Path Towards Freedom of Conscience and Self- Knowledge

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses the feeling of love as a tightrope that is a preferred way of achieving freedom of conscience and facilitating the knowledge of the fundamental meanings of one’s existence. The analysis focuses on a concrete novel, The Fourth (2013), written by Moni Stănilă. For the feminine character, love is a spiritual initiation into the esoteric meaning of existence. It is a mystical novel of symbolical trials that unite two souls in an impossible love. The adventure of fleeing into the woods, the suffering caused by disease, are part of a scenario of the supernatural, adjusted to today’s reality, while being accompanied by concrete references (In the ending part of the novel, the feminine character mentions the website moldova.org, which actually exists). The mystic topos of theological and esoteric inspiration is illustrated through the character of the old wizard and adviser, through the height of the mountain – which imposes asceticism, offers spiritual revelations and hidden meanings –, through the unexpected meeting with the other, the saviour, who goes into the world “to prepare the way”, and so on. The search is no longer for the other, but it becomes a search for the profound meaning of one’s own experience.“What is happening to me?”,“Who am I?” are the torturing questions of the woman who transfers the issue of mystic eroticism into a symbolically configured identity issue. The filter of love is a theological one.

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