TITU POPESCU: THE AESTHETICS OF PARADOXISM (second edition). Translated from Romanian by P.

Georgelin,
F. Smarandache, and L. Popescu. Rehoboth: American Research Press, 2002, 100 pages. ISBN: 1-931233-53-5

Titu Popescu

Paradoxism after paradoxism

 In 1995 - when this monograph is published for the first time - we may consider that the
paradoxist literary movement, initiated and organized by Florentin Smarandache, being
accomplished as concerns the doctrine and having outlined its basic principles of action. In other
words, coherent in theory and in the initiatives following from here. Its fundamental texts were
elaborated and published. And these have aroused very different reactions - from the appreciation
of its innovative character and satisfaction in face of its boldness to a cautious mistrust. But the
novelty has won and the leader has been an untied organizer and has stimulated the creativity of
its adherence. And the literary paradoxism began to outline its stimulating character at an
international level too. Supporting voices and favorable opinions could be heard, together with
paradoxist texts coming from all over the world, the internationalization gaining ceaselessly in
amplitude.
After 1995 paradoxism has developed in two great directions: the ceaseless creation of
new texts by the leader of movement, author of some non-conformist and often shocking
formulas of expression, on the one hand, and the spreading of the international space of receiving
and support, through concrete creations, on the other hand. In consequence, we shall follow the
development of paradoxism as a theory and movement, after the doctrinaire paradoxism was
launched. We shall meet the shocking formula of the lexical and stylistic inventiveness, the
effects of the alternative language, of the seductions resulting from the intelligent alleatory
games, of the artistic use of non-expressiveness. The innovative and pamphletary non-obedience
makes often the delight of reading. The language showed itself in nude to the author.
Smarandache is considered by many an unique case. His production, seeming
inexhaustible, is well accompanied by the huge production of references on him. The incipient
paradoxism in Romania - as a dissimulated antitotalitarian revolt - was licensed on the American
ground of all possibilities, including here the impossible of paradoxism. And from there it has
spread in the world.
Lets remind that paradoxism does not cultivate an extroverted way, but a dissimulated
and wise, aesopic and plurisemantic language - then Marian Barbu was right to name it as another
hidden logos. Unlike the static forms in cubism and surrealism, the paradoxist avant-garde
exists only through action, its insurgence being essentially dynamic. It is exemplary for the
agitating character of movement the identification of the authors destiny with that of his current.
Florin Vasiliu rightly noticed that Smarandache has not launched only the manifesto of current,
but he also remains the most productive author in this spirit. He is the first subscribed in the
movement and later he proved to be the most fecund paradoxist, well integrated in the doctrinaire
requirements of this way of writing and in the specific vectors of movement. His work constitutes
the top of the movement that he launched and assures its tension in time. Authors energy
transposes in paradigmatic works the dynamics of movement. That is why the evolution of
paradoxism in the last five years is in much measure identical with the stylistic innovations
introduced by the author in the recent period or with his support by confirming other works.
The experience of recent period proved us that the intensely denying accent of paradoxism
is still actual, that it is not old-fashioned. And it is actual not only related to the recent history of
Romania or other East-European countries, much or less retarded by insidious neo-communist
forms. But he can be extended to the general human nature, willing sooner to deny and to mock

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than to make positive efforts. Therefore it can be talked of a political and moral actuality of the
movement of Smarandache. Both can be easily established. Smarandache exasperated the
negation that exists in all modern movements, in all innovative initiatives, extending it from the
existential to the ontological.
The paradoxist manifestations posterior to the foundation has confirmed the productive
role of the conscious character of the specific astonishment. The habitudes of language are
deliberate violated and the effect is mathematically foreseen. The linguistic plays and the
grammatical deviations result from the applied gift. Smarandache deliberately want to elaborate
bad (defective) patterns of texts and to comprise in them a pure paradoxist spirit. The cavalcade of
styles, themes, subjects, methods, deliberate infringements etc., belong to the provisions of the
non-conformism practiced by author within the frame of movement, whose statute becomes again
two times paradoxical, through a direct consequence (if I shall be swore by many critics, that
will mean paradoxist will have taken its effect!). Perhaps the assuming of the specific destiny of
an author is paradigmatic for any constant creator in a movement (It began me to like to be
despised, offended, humiliated, thrown in the mud of the hardest anonymity and mockery - that I
expect them with almost sick feelings).
The widely insurgent character of Florentin Smarandaches writing has imposed as a
notorious phenomenon that cannot be overview and to mention him is something spontaneous
that comes as a relational requirement of time. He gives and individualizing measure for the
mobility and the diversity of actual conscience. He contradicts as much as he provokes. The
unforeseeable dynamics of his writing takes to the limit the experiments placed in the service of
unorthodox expressiveness. The desired vulgarity attacks the academic or pudic hypocrisy, the
derision laughs at the artificial sobriety, the play relaxes the routine logic, the elliptic banters the
rhetoric, the composition overpasses haughtily the form. Nothing is forbidden for the paradoxist
literature, which, in principle, abolishes the taboos. The devilish writing comes from an
exasperated temperament. Its political visa is not explained only though the initial releasing
experience from the (Romanian) biography of the author, but also because the sustained charge
automatically calls the politic into the sphere of its targets. Paradoxism is the generalizing of anti-
literature in the all domains of human existence.
The critic Constantin M. Popa anticipated a new dimension of the Paradoxist Literary
Movement; this took form in the while of the luster that we try to summarize in the present
chapter. The liminary, shocking non-conformism needed this period that the readers accept it, to
become a habitude, then be standardized as an aesthetic experience (in the sense of discipline).
But not only through a publishing organizing paradoxism is issued into an international
circulation, but also from a specific movement of the great and correlative concepts. In
mathematics there are commented and analyzed functions, Smarandache sequences and
paradoxes; in philosophy he generalized the hegelian dialectic in the neutrosophic formula (see
Dictionary of Computing by Devis Howe), which he applied also to mathematics; in literature he
has comprised all of them within the large specter of paradoxism. In the end, this doctrine
celebrates the full liberty of man that follows the gaining of a liberty unlimited by chose. That
means, in fact, the dynamic No, because what is no for something, is yes for other thing. And
when the man becomes free, automatically becomes free his expression too. The paradox is the
form through which the normal breaths. But within an elitist aesthetic movement, with a
supervised rhythm - that one given by the technique of writing. It is the panacea that transforms
any closing into an opening.
The development of paradoxism, as we have the occasion to establish within this chapter,
is at the same time the continuity of - voluntary, involuntary - supplying from our every day

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paradoxes, from the paradoxs ontological dimension. Theoretically, the synchronism between
the paradoxical reality and its reflection is infinite and inexhaustible. As a rule, its duration is not
limited. Philosophically, the paradoxist semantic is the lifes semantic because they have the
same common denominator attuned in the boundlessness. The complete release from under
compulsions is an experience that cannot be dated, as it is a permanent desideratum. So,
paradoxism founded something that is the farthest from its insurgent-iconoclast doctrine: its own,
inevitable tradition.
Of course, the anticipation neither have to be overview nor minimized, but situated in
their anticipating place and not in a paradoxism still inexistent at that time. We identified
ourselves, at the beginning of this research, paradoxist anticipation within the Romanian and the
European perimeter. Now I consider that I have passed rather in a hurry over avant la lettre
paradoxism of Blecher, whose known novel, Happenings in the near reality, has stricken the
habitudes with its full originality: without a subject, with a multiple superposed discourse,
without psychological definitions, a shuddering moldering after the unpredictability of reality.
Indifferent as regards gnoseology, the author lives happenings lacking in consistence and
relevance, with an indecision between dream and reality, in a tragic limitation of knowledge and
self-knowledge, that you dont know if the apocalypse is inside or outside, or in both of them.
The innovation ceaselessly prolongs the intention into action.

In paradoxism all is due to its initiator and organizer, whose role of a founder cannot
be anymore contested or ignored, as happened in the last years. We may consider this luster
between 1995 and 2000 as a crystallizing period for the paradoxist formula through the tireless
directly productive and organizing effort of Florentin Smarandache. On the measure of his
perseverance in that formula, it finalized itself regarding its concrete requests.
Although it appeared in 1994, then one year before the period which this chapter refers to,
the book I Exist against myself has to be remind here because it launches, in the vision of the
mathematician-poet, the problematical poems theme. Gh. Tomozei deciphered in them the
special value of some debates in the unknown. The humour and the (self) irony give gravity to
the ludic. The negation is equally literary iconoclast and fixed in the phenomenology of existence.
The Smarandache function in literature shows itself to be that one of a sad mockery, of a
parodic insurgence, of a gentle insolence. The book is a multiform extroversion of paradoxes:
imaginary interviews, poems of different wavelengths, lyricized theorems, theater and anti-
theater. The whole persists into a special scriptural regime: the charm of every text lies in its
solidarity with the entire context that he represents and which has priority. The reader is solicited
sympathetic availability to be able to infer how the time is perpendicular on the heart and why
the saints putrefy into churches.
In Emigrant towards Infinity - American lines (1996), the author becomes the lyrical hero
of (self)bantering, concentrating towards himself the voluptuousness of derision with a clever
cynicism. Folklore patterns are imitated, but some paraphrases seem like street jokes. The author
is an emigrant towards infinity, towards the country of experimental novelties.
Defective writings (1997) comprises a heterogeneous set of paradoxist experiences
concerning the circumstantial language, or, more properly said, the bills of language extracted
from certain situations. The book may be read as a journal of the appearances of paradoxist
experiences into language. Its extravagance goes from the hermetic to the grotesque despite the

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classic, deductive logic felt like paralyzed by the author. The expressiveness comes from the ludic
objectualization of language. The paging itself gives a semantic incongruency impression of the
circumstantial languages. The pictorial signs, the blank segments, the multi-linguistic
constructions, the interjectional stereotypes taken against the grain disassemble by assault the tics
of normality. The apories of thinking bring Zenon into a paradoxist modernism of an excessive
detachment. Unlike the normality, the defects bring liminary corrections. The Party press tics are
mocked as senseless enormities. The convulsive attitudes in the book assume themselves the
assumption of the chaos. As a whole, the volume is a recipe of a narrative mesianism (Marian
Barbu). The master of paradoxist ceremonies amalgamates the grotesque, the caricature, the
bantering, the derisory of language, the dehumanized automatism - all under the sign of a furious
ingenuity, the author not having anymore the patience to enjoy effects only in the thin plan of fun.
A few used formulas: the autobiography of non-existence, the triumphant hymnal charge, the
physiology of the oriental-communist pleasures, the handbook of failing in life, the bulletin of
manipulated news, the upside-down letters of adhesion, ideo-tellegrammes, linguistic solfeggios
in gibberish language, exercises of onomatopoeic phonetics. It is dialogued in monologues
and there are used alternative formulas for the common language.
In 1997 too, appears Through tunnels of words - the summit of virtuosity in the one verse
poetry. Is there any contradiction between the champion of formal liberties and the elaborated
essence of the one line poems? But this kind of poetry, having no context, gives much interior
freedom, while the shortness may be taken as a challenge. The poet does not deny the
voluptuousness of negation and the dynamiting of the foreseeable. The unforeseeable is the
declared prisoner of the adventure of writing. A certain retroactive tenderness comes through the
folds of experiments. All trees at our place descend in lads. As well as in his haiku collection,
The silence bell, the inherent rigor of formula is taken into smarandachian possession.
In 1998 appears his anthology of universal poetry Affinities, realized by Florentin
Smarandache in conformity with a single ordering principle: the spiritual relationship. The
ignoring of used circumstances in such anthologies is a typical paradoxist attitude. The affinities
with the persons are also affinities with the works through: the concentrate of intelligence, the
accusation of crisis through irony, the sensorial and sapient abstracticism.
Also in 1998 we read Paradoxist distichs, where it is contained The theory of paradoxist
distich, which establishes the antithetical character of dual versic construction and its technique
of creation. The author includes the oxymoron among the essential paradoxist data and draws
attention upon the continuos re-form of concepts at the end of millennium - towards a lyrical
adapting to the anti-lyric, an anti-poetic robotization. Sometimes the antinomic dualism is
constraint only to concepts: comfort/ uncomfortable, passivity/ violence etc., whose short-
circuit is illuminate by the title (and the reverse). The smarandachian antinomic distich
concretizes the logic of contraries developed by Stephen Lupasco, the third referential term within
this frame being just the title. The author stages also his effect of good-humour as a kind of
captatio benevolentiae of the reader. We met the moral disapproval of the clichs (The right
man/ In the wrong place), the ironical paraphrasing of the stereotypes of language, the bantering
of the duplicity in behavior. The manifesto contained here launchs again the investigative
necessity as regards the destiny of the actual poetry, put in danger by the informational. The
reforming character of movement is fixed into a stringent actuality, having the role to
synchronize the formulas of poetry (lyrical adapting to the anti-lyric), named into the frame
of paradoxist distichs; the tautology seen as a way of sense deepening, at the frontiers among art,
philosophy and ...puzzle, involving especially the paradox resulting from antinomies. The
manifest suite names producing mechanisms: the derisory as anti-academism, the oxymoronic

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development, new creative formulas, embezzlements of sense, the ridiculing paraphrasing of
patterns, pretext, intertext, anti-text, non-text, the annexing of daily/ordinary language etc.
Professor in Africa (1999) is a late appearance (at a publishing house in Chisinau) of the
Moroccan Journal (between 1982-1984). Here we sooner find the roots of political revolt out of
which paradoxism has born as an original protest. The first confrontation with the free world
arouses the vehemence of opposition that will work a strong personalized literary career, at
Florentin Smarandache. The observation is built on precise details and the memory of writing
experience he is released. The disgust is a preface to the later iconoclasty: The nostalgia and the
patriotism proved to worth nothing!.
Ask me that I ask you (1999) reproduced also a previous publicistic volume, a dialogued,
this time, Interviews with Fl. Smarandache (1998), where one of the interviewers, Veronica
Balaj, names him the man wit a bipolar structure. In a interview in 1996 he had already found
that I have come into contact with different writers from all continents, especially through the
Paradoxist Literary Movement.
Tricksters famous deeds (2000) - theater for children - shows the clever popular hero
in a paradoxical meeting with an alien, upgrading, thus, his known deeds through SF means,
proving that not even the anticipating fantasy cannot be strange to the experimental literature, to
whom nothing can be alien.
Suburb songs (2000) capitalizes the argotic side of language (in the manner of Gelu
Astalos), but adding a personal infusion of billingsgate (gypsy-like). The verses have their charm,
especially in the portraits of genre (She not only drinks, but she drinks deep! / She knows how to
handle you/ and she beats about the bush, / Woman with airs/ or camp fevers). The livresque is
bantered ... like a gypsy (He rigs himself out a dress coat / walks bare-foot by Zaharia Stancu/
and he cant / Ive caught him in the act). The orthography is seen from tent: It was raining
above us / with the question mark. The author makes fun with playful words. Sometimes the
play is purely musical: (Man and wife / with beak / they speak in trick... ). The erotic is at
home. The argotics are sooner suburb sentimental songs than exercises of virtuosity as at George
Astalos (that is why, it is no need of a dictionary for special terms, as gives the Parisian writer).
The alternative language contains also a shadow of sentimental compassion, that makes part in
the paradox of making up. It can be seen that the argotic Oltenian is more lenient linguistically
than the one from the suburbs of Bucharest, used with more terrible experiences.
Time for joking (2000; co-author: Gheorghe Niculescu) is a collection of genres
corrupted to paradoxism: micro-fables whose moral lies on the fun of the different
presuppositions (Croaking in a gliding flight / A crow dropped on my head; / I say angry, but
resigned/ Well that the cow cant fly), in the ambiguity of homonyms (cabbage / object and
cabbage in spirit), the parodying of patterns (the grig and the ant), the ingenuous use of
polysemantism, fable from which spreads a certain cruelty of the moral and an ingenuity of the
narrative pretext, parodies(malicious, even of a livresque inspiration), epigrams (its remarkable
the inverse symmetry bordering the absurd: then, everybody knows/ the small drop makes the
big lake/ But, as a matter of fact, I come back and say/ The big drop makes the small lake ?),
epitaphs (epigrams with a funeral pretext), paradoxist quatrains and sentences (the grasping of
logic in demonstration of formal logic, with a demonstrative intention, especially in the cycles
Proverbiale distichs and Paradoxist rhymed dialogs). As it can be understood, it isnt about an
expansion of the formal genres, but an intensification within accepted frames through an
emotional exploitation of the unexpected.
Through white and classical late groins (2000; co-author: Gheorghe Niculescu) develops
the ingenuity from Time for joking (or inversely), here, the formal patterns being less taken into

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account. Might be the word classical in the title a (voluntary, involuntary) suggestion to the
already classicization of the movement? (Is the white a sign of the intuition of the boundless
liberties of a paradoxist author?).
Destiny (2000) may be considered as a symbol for the formal heterogeneity of
paradoxism, because includes short stories, tales, drama, essays, poems, interviews and even
folklore collections. It seems to be an already traditional re-launching in the paradoxist views,
to prove that the avant-gardist exclusivism of movement is not so much ...exclusivist. The
radicalization of negation does not forget the place of departure (where, inevitably, will come
back). The iconoclasty can be recognize here and there, in expressions or in the conception of
some sequences: the rendering of a football-match through the reactions in the stands; the pages
are adorned with diplomas, puns, tales to be read to sleep (the children) with Oltenian
reminiscences, theatrical sketches, essays (sometimes at the dimension of a note) and still others,
among which the experimental verses. The book summarizes the fundamental way covered by
the movement - from the split into tradition to the generalizing of negation.
Collection of poetical exercises (2000) brings back in the documentary actuality of
movement the prepoems edited in 1982, at a publishing house in Morocco. The stylistic liberties
are fore-shadowed and they will become programmatic once the doctrine is constituted. It is
launched (and re-launched in the new edition) the idea of virtuosity and even of the inventive
gratuity in conceiving the writing (I live in a single /word/ to write Writing).
Sentiments manufactured in the laboratory (2000) brings back, at its turn, in actuality
poems from the literary beginnings of the author (edited in 1982, in Morocco), realizing, the same
as the above Collection, an a rebours documentation on the magic of formal liberties for which
the mathematics professor from Africa has been programmed for long time ago, through an
irreversible decision.
How I discovered America (2000) also contains excerpts from an older diary (1991-1993).
It is graphically reproduced the direct improvisation of the notes, spontaneously born in the most
different situations: a living seismogram of the American life reflected in some essential moments
of attitude...Other paradoxist directions of initiative and action crystallize from this source. As a
human experience, it may be read as an American-Romanian version of the mondo cane theme.
Paradoxism is seen as inciting-exciting. The action is replaced by sequential nervousness and
confessing alert. The author sends us a cable on America seen both from outside and from inside,
that helped to give the movement longevity, after its opponent beginning into a totalitarian
Romania. It appears the term of macro-literature, which would suppose also a micro-
literature (an elitist one?)... Then he finds out his situation (deliberate at the beginning, soliciting
later) in the destiny: I have become the slave of an idea: Paradoxism. What in Romania would
have seen with mistrust, gains an aura in America. It is tenaciously built with the authority of
the non-authoritative.
In seven languages (2000) is exactly what the title points out, that is translations of poems
of genre in Italian, Esperanto, Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Arabian. The linguistic
diversity gives an idea on the paradoxisms universality. Moreover, translations are made among
the mentioned languages, an innovation that tells about the textual and contextual migration of
movement.
The Third International Anthology of Paradoxism (2000) re-launches, in the beginning,
the program with its guiding principles. As an illustration are anthologized contributions of genre
of authors from: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, England, India, Israel,
Eire, Italy, Romania, Russia, Spain, USA (a partial synthesis of the fellow travelers).

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 *

As it can be noticed, the 2000 jubilee year was very fruitful for the movement, realizing
through the efforts of its mentor a kind of a mirror-balance of what will become the paradoxist
dowry for the new century. The very idea of a illustrative summarize lied at the base of making up
the third paradoxist international anthology. In truth, the theme of content and the geography
presented by authors, provide its illustrative and representative statute. Firstly about the authors:
their number is 100, disseminated geographically from Australia to Ukraine, passing, of course,
through Romania, but the greatest share having the American writers. The grouping of the
majority of them is not an immediate effect of the necessities of anthologation, many of them
proving also other editorial initiatives in the genre, whence it can be seen that the movement has
many faithful and enthusiast people. Emphasizing their originality would be a parallel action (of
course, not the parallel action from Musils book) in face with the very postulate of sans
rivages originality, principially required. More suitable would be to name the species of this
originality, especially that no commentary could replace a direct knowledge of this kind of texts.
Here they are: dedications to those who no longer exist, lettrist progressions, texts in the
mirror, musicalized sentimental dilatation (a virtuoso: Dan Danila), essaystic repressing of the
movement (starting just from the Bible), extrapolated theorems, folklore of the running to and fro
fellows, absurd legislative proposals, remade maxims and, finally, all kind of spatial, geometrical
or graffiti arrangements, inventively concentrated on page, lettrisms semantically played,
circulars, schemes and definitions, graphical administrative automatism, liberties on the
computer, zodiacal schemes, linguistic exhibitions ( Mirela Roznoveanu) etc. The temptation is to
lie the paradoxist ludic training, its inventive verve, within frames well-defined through the title
of Anonymous association of assurance for glory (a play in a semi-act).
Paradoxism points out a new world literary order.
The smarandachian plays are short, energetic and pass from absurd situations to a strict
reconsideration of the traditional means of giving. The absurd shows an alarming imbecility and
the powers aggression against individual security. The author is ceaselessly concerned with the
aggressive role of lie, that is of the false ideals insidiously manipulated. For instance, a policeman
is very watchful searching for the one who committed an ideological crime, that is the
ascension to spiritual heights. A play without actors, scenery and dialogue consists in the
reaction of the audience to recorded vocal stimuli, with the stage-managers indication that the
interior of a phenomenon assumes, through paradoxical extension, its exterior. In other words: it
belongs to him also what it doesnt belong to him. Another play is exclusively onomatopoeic.
Extreme changes take place in versification: the already showed scale of the paradoxist
distichs, quatrains of the same genre, vagrant verses (like the suburban ones); the logic and the
dual (sic!) distichs intersect the versification with the formal impossible (pars pro toto - the
paradoxist part for the paradoxical ontological whole). The endlessness through definition
and the destruction of idols, clichs, false formulas assume also the authenticity of the argotic
literature (more authentic than literature). The authenticity of these writings absolve the
licenses of frivolity, if we understand their intention. The intellectual cordiality of the leader of
movement is equally boundless. He is the first responsive to this language which may let ones
indifferently or may upset others. The authenticity of these texts being, naturally, of a paradoxist
structure, the author sometimes drapes himself in the posture of collector (popular poems,
songs and expressions from Romania and Basarabia), displaying them as some documents of the
movement founded on the popular soul. I found, screwed up in a sequence, an epigram worthy of
Pastorel: Mister Graur takes pain / To teach us Romanian. / We should trust him if he had / The

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bit, he, unfortunately, lacks. We also find the cheerfulness from some publicly occult texts of
Creanga.
But the most unexpected - as much unexpected could something be into these frames -
recent initiative of the mentor of movement is the passing of the iconoclasty in a pictorial key. A
bulky album of painting he was edited in country (2000), having the introducing emblem of
ultra-modernism as coming in the artistic succession of the long debated postmodernism.
Unsuited to the traditional ...tradition, the paradoxist non-artist gives free scope to the imaginative
free will of his own non-conformist tradition.
As a non-verbal art the paradoxist painting does not astound, like the vehemence of
writing, the abolition of the existing frames of communication. The coming out of the syntactic
logic and, then, even out of the word were capable to illustrate a new, extra-verbal convention of
communication. The overthrow was wholly and unanimous. In the plastic image, the ultra-
novelty cannot abolish all the known means of representation - lines, colors, forms, emptiness and
fullness, rhythmicities - because then the one will come to the blank page, to the already
consecrated empty frame of the paradoxiste literature. Then, the ultra-modernism of here
cannot be but a little attenuated. Something has to be taken over, that may be deduced that it is
something related to painting. I cannot imagine how the title alone, as is the case of paradoxist
poetry, could suggest that we are now in the field of the plastic arts. The author himself was
forced to use some elements of recognizing. How far can get the irreverent overthrow in painting?
A few methods and attitudes can be noticed: non-figurativism, the drawing of abstract painting
near naive art, futurist juxtaposition of art on computer, between pop-art and the one of the
infantile mannerism, design with casual lines. So, it is let free space for any seen improvisation
and the absolute liberty of the seen improvisation might be the paradoxist mark of painting.
Otherwise the author declares himself incapable to represent after the tradition of the
subjective picturing of images. In exchange, he imagines the subjectivity as an observed
mechanics, a combinatory free technique. Being a seen act, the paradoxist painting is
fundamentally heterogeneous and improvised, deprived of emotional premeditation. It is
elaborated in the moment of execution and does not follow a model or a presentiment of
coherence. It is an objective, abstract and formal presence of a visual disorganizing of an area.
What should be artistic (in the classic sense of term) here? Deliberately, nothing; involuntarily
(but not just completely) - the projection of disorganizing in an aesthetic valued space. How look
these in the mentioned work? - naive landscapes gnawed by their own imperfection, high,
emptied spaces as if watched through the microscope, strong and strange contrasts, chromatic
luxuriance in contradictory geometry, imperfect balancing and, then, an uncertain infinitesimal
brownian movement, vague laboratory instruments, disillusioned oases of tale, the flowers are X-
rayed their hidden structures, the submarine images see also aerian profusion, the Indian
totems are dis-bewitched; decomposition through constuctivist juxtapositions and collages; the
geometrisms amalgamate small but firm spaces and introduce the simple colored line;
arithmetic, in palimpsest, is canceled, by color, with a ludic exposing duration (aesthetic
experimented mathematics) - as a message of prevailing soul coexistence (also in the written-
painted variant); emphasizing of the support (paper) through color; a few mechanical connections
disassemble, through the joy of the genuine play, serious themes; until the graphologic
incontinence caprice specific to childrens dexterity; the doubling of sense in some designs finds
ingenuous solutions in departing (having in memory the picassian cubism); the design on the
computer exercises a well elaborated deconstructivism; super-photo obtains effects from
redimensionings. A Freudian reflex sometimes guides him to poetical images of space - through

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delicate colors enchained in elevation, through little glitters cut out of everyday life, through
unifying the background in chromatic graces. Even paradoxists, we are still men!
The developing of paradoxism through insistences and dilatation has taken place
experimentally in genres: in fables, parodies, epigrams, epitaphs, puns, mathematics and painting.
On the other hand, the followers of paradoxism take over and move into the frame of the leaders
initiatives, whose manifestations of genre have also a programmatic intention. He gives the first
example of algorithm of creation, embezzling of sense, parodies of clichs, producing of
contradictions. The formal inventiveness, the organizatoric dynamics and the active receptivity of
the adherents maintain the paradoxist show in actuality.
The wish of the initiator of the movement to explain himself is normal, because the
proclaimed novelty gives rise to natural suspicions. It explains himself in documentary confession
texts, interviews, explanations in press, at symposiums an conferences. As a remark, in 1995 the
conference at the New Mexico University on the difference between paradoxism and the other
avant-gardes (previously he had undertaken a tour at universities and literary associations in
Brasilia, with the same purpose). Then it is not at all accidental that for his anthologies he
receives collaborations from a so large geographical area.

In 1995 Florentin Smarandache is granted the prize of the Academy of Letters and Arts in
Perigord (France) and is co-opted as a member of Poetic and Artistic Association of district Haut
Comitat, after before he had received the adherent card at the Center of Poetic Researches and
Studies in Bordeaux. He is a member of the Writers and Artists International Association, led by
a versed in the paradoxist phenomenon, Teresinka Pereira, from Brazil, - but also of the Cultural
League Oltenia in Craiova. He is co-opted as a member by many artistic associations and
different academic forums, whose stringing would give a long list and a geography with many
points. Although, as an illustration and to not minimize with ingratitude the rewards of
recognition, I mention Francophone Academy (Paris), International Poets Academy (India),
World Poetry Research Institute (Chorea), IBC Advisory Council (England), Academy of
American Poets (New York); or, after his own declaration, he is a founding-member of Rebel
Academy.
He is named in many catalogues of records which are periodically issued in the United
States and England: Small Press Record of Books in Print, Whos Who in the World, American
Biographical Institute, New Hope International Review, Dictionary of International Biography,
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Forthcoming books, Ulrichs
International Periodicals Directory, Writers digest books, International Poetry, Books in Print,
Poetry Society America News, Journal des Poets, Writers Digest Books etc.
He is co-opted in the International College of the Avant-garde Review Poesie in India;
from Italy he receives the great prize Goccia di Luna; is selected in the poetical anthology
LHumour (Paris); is a honorary member in International Biographical Center (England); is
granted the diplomas of the Society Les amies de la Poesie (France) and of Cultural Center of
Felgueiras (Portugal). Receives letters from all over the world and conscientiously answers to all.
Paradoxism is quoted in international media beside the large effect of the literary-insurgent
posterity named by Tristan Tzara: Neo-Dada and beside the scientific paradoxes in ON Ruginas
System of Thought (modern logic of the unstable equilibriums); is mentioned in many
anthologies, encyclopedias and biographies which appeared in different country.

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 In 1995, Larry Seagull publishes, in Humanistic Mathematics Network (USA), Poem in
arithmetic space, on the base of Smarandache sequence of numbers, together with the display of
the paradoxist numbers of Smaradache type.
In Romania appears the book Puzzle Humour Paradoxism (2000) by Gheorghe Niculescu,
built on the principle of the inevitability of paradoxical regime in human communication. The
author emphasizes the seriousness of the intentional play and proves deftness in unorthodox
genres: punctuation signs poem, letters merging and prolonging, minimized maxims, fables and
enigmistic. Out of his inventivity the humour is born.
Many Romanians writers and publicists have pronounced their opinions in this period
(1995-2000) on paradoxism: Mihail I. Vlad, Virgil Dumitrescu, Ada Carstoiu, Nina Josu and Al.
Bartos (Chisinau), Daniela Pisoiu, Marian Barbu, Anatol Ciocanu, Ov. Ghidirmic, Emilian Mirea,
Dumitru Crudu, Ion Cocora, Ilie Traian, Florin Vasiliu, Mircea Brenciu, Geo Vasile, Al. Florin
Tene, Dumitru Augustin Doman, george Coanda, Cezar Ivanescu, Evelina Oprea, Ion-Radu
Zagreanu, Daniel Deleanu, Ion Soare, Dan Topa, Mihaly Bencze; and, among the Romanians
from abroad: Dumitru Ichim (Canada), Dan Romascanu (Denmark), Titu Popescu (Germany),
Radu Enescu (Spain), Al. Mirodan (Israel), Constantin Craciun (Australia), Theodor Damian
(SUA), C. Corduneanu (SUA), George Bajenaru (SUA).
Ada Carstoiu, an expert of the phenomenon, summarizes in a concentrated formula: The
logic / illogic of the sayings of S. emphasizes an accumulation phenomenon of desperate,
disparate, separate, marked, repeated, added, printed, irritated, annagrammate, swelled, breathed,
respected, dissolved, saved, helped, adjusted, miniaturized, prefabricated, enciphered,
disciphered, associated, disjointed, fascinating, wondering, intersected, overloaded, deflated,
agitated, interpreted, interpolated, annoying but well-reading, informed and pedantic, piquant,
striking, scared, accelerated, undisciplinate, used, poured, amplified, retarded, undressed,
overthrown, animated, inciting, idolatriesed, unwired, unstopped, performing, crucified, retarded,
veiled, judged or adjudged syntagms. A genuine paradoxist definition!
A recent monographist of the movement - Ion Soare - puts the justified question on the
smarandacheian school of non-literatures survival chances and, eventually, longevity. But
paradoxism? - asks him. It would be natural that this movement should live as along as
paradoxes and contradictions would exist in society, in human thinking and in its sonorous (and /
or spoken) cover - the language. That is a long time, then the internal contradictions of objects,
phenomena, ideas, communication systems etc. will last, practically, for ever, even though in a
permanent changing and becoming.
From all these it results that the name of the professor of mathematics from University of
New Mexico spontaneously evokes a genuine encyclopedia of the intellectual displays; The
amplitude of his concerns consists in the sum of his keen intuitions. In mathematics, the
specialists recognize and study Smarandache notions - functions, sequences, constants, paradoxes
- in the same time included in the great world encyclopedias. He has generalized the fuzzy laws
into the neutrosophic logic, called also Smarandache logic, in Dictionary of Computing by Denis
Howe (England). The same, he has proposed the generalizing of classical probabilities, as well as
the indefinite one, to the neutrosophic probability, defining it as a tridimensional vector whose
elements are real subcrowds. While this chapter is written, at New Mexico is prepared the first
International Conference on Neutrosophy, time when the restless Smarandache is discussed and
disputed, but the rumor about him is spreading all over the world and he is set up, little by little, a
statue. What he desired so ardently, he has to support stoically now!

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 ...And the paradoxist offensive goes on fighting on all fronts with a prodigality of
intelligent munitions. The initiator of the movement shocks again his readers and sympathizers,
astounds once again the mistrustful ones, publishing an autonomous volume containing
dedications written by authors on books sent to him (Dedications, 2000). Being aware of the
unusual deed, the author worries again his lectors: this is an anti-book (here is a new term in the
formularistic of movement!), which , in fact, does not concern the readers: it is dedicated to
myself. As it appears through other books, this book is also named meta-book; this enterprise
could be suspected of auctorial self-pride. But, if paradoxism were not be also self-pride, would it
be paradoxism in the whole?
The writer takes care that re-launches the critic echo of his movement (only a part of it, of
course, its amplitude couldnt be seized exhaustively), in an anthology of interpretative texts: The
hermeneutic of paradoxism. The selection - it belongs to him - cannot be discussed, but, anyway,
every anthologized author expresses interesting opinions on paradoxism. It is obvious, also from
here, that it has been built a real literature of criticism concerning paradoxism, and the sequel of
the enterprise (it is mentioned that it is only the first volume) cannot but to fix the level of
reference to the smarandacheian manifesto crystallized in a movement. It has to be noticed here
the attitude of the editor (the same Florentin Smarandache) regarding the way of constituting the
anthology - which is rigorously conceived, after the subject requirements of explanation: through
selection, the introducing of every author, the prefacing of the texts with significant excerpts, the
addition of bibliographic explanations. Paradoxisms Odyssey is marked out by the Iliad of its
struggling with the critique. What we can find out is that, when it looks in the mirror, paradoxism
examined itself with the seriousness of an expert in physiognomy. In fact, it is another paradoxist
attitude, this concomitance of denying the negation and its taking seriously into account. We are
warned that the second volume of Hermeneutic of Paradoxism will include references of critique
in foreign languages.
In order to emphasize their spirit lets scour together briefly a few critical opinions come
from Romanian fellows:
the vitality and verve overwhelm him, certify his existence as a divine datum (Marian
Barbu);
I think that you are cited as a literary school chief and studied by students in the first
university course in the world (Florin Vasiliu);
this terrible enfant of the postmodernist literature (G. Bajenaru);
a prodigious ars combinatoria (Cezar Ivanescu);
paradoxism is just a reaction to postmodernism and means the release of all the
conventions of literature (Ov. Ghidirmic);
the generous paths that he has opened - in the domain of the grotesque, of the caricature
of verbal automatism and of the parodying of the language used in the time of totalitarian epoch
(Ion Rotaru);
an illustrious master of paradox and negation, that became a world-wide celebrity due to
his unique artistic gift (Serban Papacostea);
I agree with almost all the axioms of paradoxism, moreover, some are my daily
principles (Sabin Tabarca);
in the natural evolution of every literature, periodically, always appears, as a necessary
link, a more striking throb of denying, an avant-garde (Slavco Almajan);
Florentin Smarandache is a real institution (Vasile Barbu);

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 increasing of the artistic personality, its placing on ampler and deeper coordinates
(Constantin Cublesan);
a new breath and a rebel spirit, full of charm (Gabriela Melinescu);
F.S. accomplishes a terrible lexical autoflagelation of the real, in order to identify both
himself and what distinguishes the life from the totalitarian nightmare (Geo Vasile);
I see him quoted with a quasi-religious respect in specialized reviews from England,
Switzerland, USA (Ion Adam);
the hope to drive paradoxism until paroxysm, in the most positive sense of the word
(Radu Enescu);
the playwright comes to a kind of essence of the theater through a paradox: he renounces
to the pronounced word and keep only the actors gesture (Dan Tarchila);
it could be possible that the Romanians... give the world another great playwright, after
Ionescu (Doru Motoc);
In the intimate laboratory of his creation, formed of algorithms, computers and
glossaries, the writer-mathematician has canceled the frontiers of some domains which
seemed incompatible, founding a new science/ art of creating, called PARADOXISM (Ion
Soare); etc.
Paradoxism politicizes itself through the firm exploitation of some grotesque
circumstances: the inverse theorizing of the abnormal as humanism; the totalitarianism as a
specificity of the aberration, the non-identity of the new man free all life of the thinking effort,
the paradoxist virtuosity of successive/ alternative languages in the crepuscular period of
humanity; the disclose of the plays in acts, as some despair acts; the silent pantomime as
political lampoon in movement, the delirious polemic projection of the language being at a
highest level of liberty, the large use of improbable probabilities; the interchanging between the
lifes and arts scenes, the researching of the seen and unseen semantic stratification of words, the
disclose of the repression and outpression patterns, experimental linguistic with a boundless sigh
of the luxuriance of the content senses and examples. Everyone may, of course, add something -
what is not paradoxical at all.

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