Paris
Paris Alexander Ionescu, my grandson, left us in the small hours of 19 December 2015 at the unpardonably young age of 28. Paris was a young man of ideas and imagination, often holding conversations with himself, in print or vocally, who might be awake at any hour to test or pursue a train of thought. His mother, Caroline awoke early with a cold and noticed a light in his room. She found him curled up as with cramp, already lifeless.
In many ways, Paris had lived his life upside down. Early on in his childhood he began to think about death, without fear but with nostalgia and regret for what it might deprive him of. Several girlfriends of a later age spoke at his Memorial Service of earnest but far from morbid conversations, touching on this sense of early loss. The tributes paid him then and in a subsequent torrent would have done honour to an octogenarian: they came not only from his contemporaries but from bearded academics who had had discourse with him, seen and discussed his work and been privy to the development of his ideas. Too young to receive formal recognition in life, his intellect became immediately and abundantly acknowledged upon his premature death.
Due to the physical distance between us, our direct participation in his childhood and growing manhood was fragmented, relying mostly on twice yearly visits we were able to make to New York. However, that had the advantage that our relationship developed without all the domestic tedium of a Victorian novel, but rather through a series of well-remembered milestones.
Paris with his Father, Dan
There was our visit to Jersey City, after a frugal Continental Airlines had introduced me to Mrs T's an alcoholic Bloody Mary Mix and I had decided it would make a good Gazpachio. When the 3½-year old passed his judgment, 'This is excellent!', we knew he was destined to continue the family's literary tradition.
On the occasional collections from primary school and then Browning, the adolescent began to demonstrate his good taste by ignoring the trivia and stopping to gaze at more artistically displayed wares. More importantly, philosophical discussions developed as we rested on public park benches to probe each other's minds.
Graduation at Bard was an introduction to the true American collegiate system. The richly displayed wealth of the parents was beginning to be matched by the achievements of their progeny. Someone had evidently been hard at work to call forth their abilities. Paris demonstrated his by introducing us to its venerable and musically prolific President, Leon Botstein, and laying the groundwork for an association with our Keyboard Trust.
In common with all of us, the President had assessed in him an intelligence well above the norm, accompanied by evidence of an active inner life. Rare moments of conversation quickly became ping-pong matches as I was forced to heighten the pace and follow his kaleidoscopic succession of ideas. One felt it was not just flexing of intellectual muscle, but the growth of solid and original substance.
That makes the abrupt ending all the more tragic. Had he but known, rather than very possibly suspected, he would have found himself one more time in sympathy with the prescient words of one of his heroes, Leonardo da Vinci, 'All the time I thought I was learning to live, I have been learning how to die.' There is no direct evidence, but I suspect his lively appreciation of Art was influenced by the inchoate, the awe of beauty and the unspoken tragedies within it.
His Master's thesis also bore that imprint. It ended with the binary relationship of possible/ impossible which, whilst beginning to resolve itself in historical terms, he saw as fatally limited by the complexities impeding our ability to act and take advantage of results already achieved. Given time, he would have been able to break this impasse with the recognition that, however improbable, mankind's progress had at crucial moments been promoted by its willingness to subject itself to laws and restraints of its own manufacture.
Yet it would be very wrong to assume that all his life was beset with torment and uncertainty. On the contrary, there is overwhelming evidence of wit and gaiety which shine also through much of his writings. I have an hilariously-earnest piece of spoof literary criticism of 'The prep school novel as a genre'. And memories of Halloween and pranks galore. Paris had the gift of communication, both literary and oral, especially when free of social inhibitions. He loved to chat with down and outs, and I suspect - like St Francis preaching to the birds - to try out his ideas for a universally accessible philosophy.
And then his smile George Eliot said, 'They are never dead until we have forgotten them.'
That alone, Brave and Beloved young Paris, will ensure that you remain with us for the rest of our days.
Not only in our memories, however. His last project was to expand his Master's thesis as a qualification for doctoral studies, based on the passion for philosophy born in successive seminars at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee. The Swiss Alps, as discovered by great artists and intellectuals through the ages, are conducive to both thought and the construction of beliefs. That particular corner of Paradise was able to complement the beauties created in the enquiring mind with the frozen stillness of an alpine lake.
Since the 19th December of 2015, Caroline had kept Paris's room as a Quiet Room to house his physical relics, tidy and gleaming, with his computer and electronic equipment in place but firmly shut down. Yet when she entered the room again on 1 January, not only was the screen live, but it showed, in the most beautiful colours, the magic lake of Saas-Fee. No sound, no other function, only that uniquely lovely eye of God.
The lake symbol was to follow Caroline around in a variety of emanations. Other signs of his proximity would follow, not bound to New York but also on visits elsewhere, even in Mexico. When she came back from there, I imagined the empty apartment and ordered a rather trustworthy-looking toy puppy to greet and guard her; then it appeared that Paris had spent his life begging her for a small city-sized dog. Other friends became increasingly responsible for similar 'coincidences'. All this mounted to the extent that it could no longer be dismissed as caused by a hypersensitive imagination. And the computer screen with the Swiss lake switched itself on and off at self-determined intervals.
Small wonder that Caroline is sustained by this strong sense of his abiding closeness. That is further cemented by the website she has lovingly constructed which records his life, and above all his thought and work. www.parisforever.nyc offers a near-complete history and profile of a young mind of exceptional intensity with a precocious ability to ask all the right questions. It seems that, before going to his rest and with undiminished vigour, he remains determined to demonstrate some of the answers.
Grandfather’s Eulogy for Paris
Paris talking philosophy with Grandpa John