Chapter 1
Estimated reading time: 5–6 minutes
“For reasons known only to himself, the mathematics teacher had taken a liking to me.”
At Gheorghe Șincai High School, I walked each day along a corridor that seemed to vibrate with history and Latin declensions. The teachers? Some of them linger in your memory like thorns you are oddly fond of.
In those years, the elite lycées of Bucharest (Șincai, Lazăr, Sava) had become a “refuge” for many university professors.
The communist regime had stripped them of the right to lecture at university on political grounds or because of their social origins.
David Popescu, a Latinist, not only spoke of Rome as though he had been a colleague of Caesar’s, but also convinced me that a measure of Latin and Roman logic never did anyone any harm. In truth, it was rather more than a “measure” — if you did not know enough, you failed, and you truly failed. This could happen in any subject, Latin included. I later discovered that he had been one of our great classicists, persecuted by the communists.
Every subject mattered, and yes, in those days you risked being held back a year if you did not study. We had exceptionally good teachers, strict but fair.
I have mentioned Professor David Popescu because I was fond of him — he radiated a profound culture — and also because much later, after the Revolution, I came across a reference revealing that he had been one of our foremost classicists, marginalised by the communists.
https://www.viataromaneasca.eu/revista/2018/03/un-mare-clasicist-roman-persecutat-de-regimul-comunist/
Nor can I forget the celebrated physical education teacher, Victor Tibacu, who taught me from the fifth form right through to the end of school.
I have dedicated a short chapter to him; perhaps a fellow “Șincai man” will visit the site. He deserves a book.
Gal Marius, the renowned teacher I had for physics. He was extraordinarily rigorous.
“My dear fellow, physics is not a love letter to the universe,” he would tell pupils who were rambling.
He prepared his students so thoroughly for the university entrance examinations (Polytechnic or Physics) that they had no need of additional private tutoring.
He is remembered for his numerous collections of physics problems, which have remained standard works of reference.
I had the privilege of studying chemistry under Professor Mironescu, a former university lecturer who, whenever one of us got a chemical formula wrong, would reel off every famous laboratory he had worked in or visited, assuring us that he had never once encountered that formula there.
There were other former university professors at the school, though I was not taught by them.