A bright conscience: Alice Voinescu

Twenty-five years ago this year, on the 3rd of June, Alice Voinescu, a leading cultural figure between the two world wars, Doctor of Philosophy from the Sorbonne, Professor of Aesthetics and Dramatic Literature at the Royal Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Bucharest, a brilliant lecturer much appreciated by the general public and the author of volumes of essays, died: “Montaigne, homme et oeuvre” – published in 1936 -, “Aspecte din teatrul contemporan” – published in 1941 – and “Eschil” – published in 1946.

In December 1953, Perpessicius described Alice Voinescu’s role in Romanian culture as follows (I quote): “The extent to which Mrs. Alice Voinescu’s many and varied activities have served Romanian society in these last decades of our culture hardly needs to be mentioned. The legions of students of her courses and the audiences of her numerous conferences testify to the immense service that this equally active teacher and orator has rendered to those who love learning, beautiful thoughts and, above all, a fair and subtle initiation into the mysteries of the universal drama. In the same vein, her substantial work as a theatre chronicler should be placed in the same order. With her theatre chronicle, Alice Voinescu, in addition to her teaching, has revived a discredited genre, following in the footsteps of the great theatre chroniclers: Eminescu, Caragiale, Delavrancea, she has submitted to the meditation of authors and performers the opinions and judgments of one of the most knowledgeable connoisseurs of the dramatic phenomenon”.

Today’s evocation, here in Freiburg, is the first I have made in exile, after years of efforts in the country, with a group of former students and spiritual children of hers, to keep alive her memory, which the officials had covered with a wave of silence after her imprisonment in Jilava and after her death. Our action materialised only recently – in 1983 – with the publication of the surprising volume – 900 pages – entitled “Encounters with Heroes of Literature and Theatre”, with an introductory study signed by the professor and art critic Dan Grigorescu. In addition to the three essays mentioned above – with the exception of the study on the theatre of Claudel, considered a mystic poet – the book contains a series of dramatic reviews published in the Revue des Foundations Réales, as well as unpublished pages from the manuscript “Encounters with tragic heroes”. These are the pages in which Alice Voinescu, in dialogue with the most representative figures of ancient tragedy, expresses the problem of the end of a life lived at a high level of awakened human consciousness, both in the context of her own spiritual evolution and in the face of the dramatically contradictory problems of her later years.

In the euphoric climate of the beginnings of a great Romania, Alice Voinescu put her chosen and vast culture and her noble communicative personality into the endeavour to create, by means of exemplary cultural prototypes, clear and high benchmarks for the formation of a society in full revaluation.

Her lectures on the history of the theatre at the Conservatoire, her conferences at the King Carol I Foundation, at the Dalles Hall and in many youth educational institutions, polarised an enthusiastic public, enchanted by her unusual grace, born of a deep and pure experience of the most chosen and eternal forms of human existence.

The publication of the book in 1983 did not go unnoticed by the new generations, but it was immediately sold out and received with enthusiasm by the youth, who had been brought up in a materialistic ideology, proving their ability to assimilate a message that proclaimed above all the spiritual virtues of man.

Would Alice Voinescu, in her isolation after her years of imprisonment in Jilava, in a forced residence in a village near Târgu Frumos, in northern Moldavia, have thought of these moments when we met to talk about her here in Freiburg, not far from her beloved Marburg an der Lahn, where, at the beginning of the century, she was preparing her doctoral thesis on Hermann Cohen’s neo-Kantian school, “L’interpretation de la doctrine de Kant par l’ecole de Marburg”?

One could speak endlessly about Alice Voinescu’s life and work, but since I have the privilege of possessing the only magnetic tape with her voice, recorded shortly before her death by the sculptor Lucian Murau, one of her beloved spiritual sons, I think it is more appropriate to let her share with us some of the decisive moments of her moral-spiritual formation. Let’s listen to her.

Finally, my former colleague, the actor and poet Dinu Ianculescu, will read you extracts from Alicea Voinescu’s unpublished “diary”, namely her meetings with Andre Gide and George Enescu.

Freiburg, October 1986

(Virginia Șerbănescu, “A luminous conscience: Alice Voinescu” in Buletinul Bibliotecii Române. Romanian Studies and Documents, Volume XIV (XVIII), Series Nine, 1987-1988, Romanian Institute – Freiburg i. Br., pp. 393-395).