NOTE: In a few months there will be 19 years since professor Ioan Petru Culianu's assassination within the premises of the University of Chicago. His murder has not been solved yet, and as years go by, the chances of finding his killer decrease dramatically. What we can do is keep his memory alive and live his final dream for a better, wiser world. ---------------- We know little of Ioan Petru Culianu. Little, and without significance. We know he belonged to the restricted class of exceptionally gifted people. They, together with the mentally retarded are condemned to the bottomless pit of history and remembrance. If the ancient Spartans used to throw their "defective" babies into a precipice, history has reserved an even more cruel fate to the exceptionally endowed - living in a world of mediocrity. We know that Ioan Petru Culianu took over the professorship of History of Religion at Chicago University from Mircea Eliade. We know he was an exceptionally endowed man, having obtained three doctorates and being proficient in eight languages. What we don't know is the depth of his spirit, the degree of his worldly torment, and the reasons for his premature death. The facts are so cold and empty, that we extract little knowledge from them. Born in Romania, on the 5th of January 1950, he emigrates in Italy at the age of 22 and completes his first doctorate in France, at the Sorbonne, at the age of 37. Beginning with 1986, he starts teaching at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, USA. On the 21st of May 1991, professor Ioan Petru Cullianu is assassinated - shot in the back of his head in the restroom of the University of Chicago. Up to the present, his murder has not been elucidated. We have no idea who and why killed him. What we do have of value is a small glimpse into what Culianu's inner world may have looked like. His futuristic novella Hesperus tells of the fate of humanity, divided after a programmed end of the world. The most intelligent people, considered worth saving and fit to breed, are sent out into the space on Hesperus spaceship. Meanwhile, a few other people escape into an underground secret city, Hyperboreea, where they continue to exist as an almost different species. The Hesperians return on Earth after thousands of years, only to set up a society very similar to the worst Orwellian nightmares. Meanwhile, the underworld thrives, producing genuine examples of intelligence and refinement. But the fear of surfacing lives on and the Hyperboreans perpetuate a cultural taboo of encountering "the others". In the context of Culianu's mental isolation from his kin and peers, the book sounds like a cry for help. Hunted by the Romanian Political Police "Securitate", he had to run away, to plead for political asylum and forsake all his family and friends. But the ending of Hesperus is even more prophetic and symbolist than anything we may imagine. One day, the people of the underworld simply come up to the surface. They don't realize what made them break the age old taboo, but they surface, only to find a pitiful world set up by "the chosen ones": a culture of fear, distrust, spying and treason even among close friends and families. Divided by their fears, embittered by their hate, they have long lost the qualities which had first recommended them for survival. No work of art or science has ever been produced by the Hesperians and all the technological advancements they inherited from the old "men" are available and employed solely for the functioning of an oppressive, repressive and all knowing regime. The Hesperians are defeated by their own weapons and fears. They cannot defend a world and a civilization which no longer have a meaning for them. The Hyperboreans invade them simply by coming into their world, and conquer them simply by living among them. Could this be Culianu's final dream for humanity? For himself? Could he have envisioned a world where he would fit in? And if it is so, in what world and sphere is his spirit now roaming, in accordance with the dream?