Any hell could become bearable if the paradise of culture was strong enough to withstand it. And the pages of the diary were evidence that paradise was strong enough to resist, even in Ceausescu's Romania. They describe the road to paradise as a way of liberation and inner freedom. The nightmare world at once became bearable; it just took a little Latin, a little Greek, a little German and the pious reading of the great books of humanity. But culture here was not simply an academic exercise. It was not just a matter of "becoming cultivated," but rather of a transformation at a deep level; it was 'Bildung,' paideia, a birth of the ego, of individuality, of autonomous thinking, plucked from the world of forced and planned imbecilization.
Constantin Noica
quoted in "The Paltinis Diary"
Gabriel Liiceanu