Iulia Hasdeu Castle (1)
Member of a cultural dynasty which enlightened the Romanian culture all the way through the 18th and the 19th centuries,an encyclopedic spirit, Bogdan Petricescu Hasdeu is still shining above large realms of history,linguistics, ethnology, literary history and criticism.
Iulia Hasdeu (born on the 2nd of November, 1869-died on the 17th of September 1888) showed remarkable gifts from the first years of her life: she could speak, read and write French at the age of 3;at 5 she wrote poems and plays; at nearly 7, her first historical novel was completed and at the age of 11 she graduated the Gymnasium and the Academy of Music in Bucharest. She continued her studies in Paris, at the Sevigne College an dat only 16 she was the first Romanian student at Sorbona,both at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy an dat the School of High Studies.
As she knew seven languages, Iulia Hasdeu`s existence unfolded on two levels: accumulation and artistic creation, be it literature,music or plastic arts.
At only 19 a merciless illness,tuberculosis,put an end to her life.Iulia`s tragic death opened for B.P. Hasdeu the doors of a world parallel to ours. His life was bound to a new belief, the unique "scientific belief": SPIRITISM. "...it was in March,on a rainy and dull evening; I was sitting alone at the desk in my room... I don`t know how, I really don`t know, my hand took a pencil...started to move, for maybe five seconds. I felt many short raps in my temple...like a telegraph. When my arm stopped and the pencil fell down from my fingers, I felt myself as being awaken from a deep sleep. I looked over the paper in front of me and I could read very clearly: "Je suis heureuse, je t`aime; nous nous reverrons;cela doit te sufire,Iulia Hasdeu" (I am happy, I love you; we shall see each other again; this must be sufficient for you, Iulia Hasdeu)."
From beyond the grave, Iulia Hasdeu maintained the relations with those she had left behind, giving answers to questions about the human existence, there in the eternity.
Her spirit also revealed very accurate data about the construction of two monuments which were later ordered and carefully supervised by her father. One was Iulia`s Tomb in Bucharest and the other the Castle from Campina.
During a whole year,through the most famous mediums of the time, B.P. Hasdeu received from his doughter the plans of the building,directions concerning decoration and furnishing. The entire construction is an interweaving of symbols. "Numerology" is everywhere, nothing is hazardous.
Spaces gravitate around the "chapel", the central hall in which a huge Christ stands above the symbolic singn of the Holy Grail. Here, at certain moments of the day and night, the Saviour`s Face was enlightened by a mystic aura.
Iulia`s messages (most of them in French) were transmitted day after day, at night or in the daytime. In that narrow room,the walls of which were once beautifully painted, her spirit entered, revealing the eternity on paper. Proof to all these are: the spiritistic archives, the library, many photos of spirits, the piano which sometimes played without a player…
"Iulia Hasdeu Castle" has been the place of mysterious secret communications between a sad father devastated by grief and his briliant doughter,a prodigy child who had passed away in her very youth, to the world of spirits.
Creation of Iulia Hasdeu`s spirit, the spiritistic temple from Campina has a strange atmosphere, born from the revelation of immortality. Silently, its monumentality charms you with the history written on the walls: "Death is just a paint in immortality", a gate to the existence as a spirit.
Dan Andreea, IX F1
