Sorana Ţopa – Journal Pages

Abstract Sorana Ţopa’s Journal, whose manuscript was donated by Mrs. Lucreţia Angheluţă to “George Enescu” National University of Arts, is not just an unsettling testimony of the qualms that marked the actress’ life, but also an essayistic guide, which can lead us to ourselves. The fragments we have chosen – dated October 31st 1971, November 5th 1971, November 9th 1971 and November 14th 1971 – help us understand that she lived under the sign of empathy; her angsts were generated by the worry for others and the deterioration of man’s relationship with nature. The events of the day go through the filter of reflection on human destiny, seen as a journey between self and ego. Her pages are a plea for a life lived in harmony with oneself and others, an invitation to abandon frivolity, egoism, and to re-establish non-negotiable value axes (“It means not allowing yourself to trade with them”); a return to the natural matrix. But how many of us are able or willing to do this? I am reading and I am shaken by the actuality of her words, of her vision on (ir)responsibility, survival, humanity; and all these starting from our attitude when we suffer from... “a trivial flu”. I have the feeling that I’ve opened a window into time, to receive a deep warning signal about a trap swallowing us: “An almost bestial, animal-like attention – regarding physical survival, this we know, yes, and we fully feed it. But God forbid the winds of the unforeseeable blow and stir deeper than the surface the murky waters of our consciousness, as our attention doesn’t instantly grow in a significant way! Do not stir dead waters – is a book title that would have tempted me at some point.” Questions spring from between the lines, with the sound of shards. Sorana Ţopa’s Journal shows us a broken mirror of our prejudices and nothingness, it urges us to feel the smell of “self-awareness”, to accept that life cannot be lived from the outside, or in pieces. Reading her testimonies and confessions must be done in the key of responsibility and accountability, of recovering spiritual dimension. Sorana Ţopa remains a still insufficiently known actress; perhaps the road to understanding the thoughts she laid on paper is longer than it seems, the vibrations are on another frequency, and the meaning... different. Comments can only push us even further away; “the cinder of words can hurt”. Perhaps the silent, interiorized, multiplied reading will draw us closer, giving some meaning to the liquefied passage of time.