“Calmly, calmly, we wait on crosses of torment…”
The Romanian Gulag: Paradoxes and Spiritual Resistance
The Romanian Gulag was a place of paradoxes, where the violence of torture and the brutality of the torturers produced a freedom of spirit that was the basis of the prisoners’ resistance to this world of death. If the communist prison system “offered” hunger, cold, isolation, and beatings to the prisoners, it also offered to the torturers, and to us today, creations of the spirit that went beyond the barbed-wire fence of the dungeon.
For the prisoners, the festivities were moments of spiritual intensity, when all their suffering was transformed into a spirit of prayer. The Nativity, by definition a family celebration, accentuated the longing for home for those who remained beyond the prison walls, in the great prison that was communist Romania. This is why we find the evocation of Christmas as a leitmotif in prison memoirs, with most authors describing how the prisoners experienced this holiday.
“Joy flooded me in the depths and the heavens opened up in astonishment…”
One such moment is the Christmas of 1949, experienced in the midst of re-education in Pitești and described by Ioan Ianolide, who sums up the entire spiritual effort of the prisoners in this dramatic context of extreme violence aimed at de-Christianising the prisoners:
“On Christmas Eve I went to confession, at the signal of the radiator pipe, in a cell where there was a priest. He gave the instructions for confession. Each one of us gathered before God and looked at himself, as if in a mirror, in his nakedness of tempted humility. Thoughts are intense and tormenting in a dungeon where you spend sixteen hours a day condemned to inactivity. After everyone had gone to bed, I remained leaning against the headboard, eyelids drooping, head up, praying to the rhythm of the pulse I could hear and feel well. I tried to discover Jesus and call him in this short prayer of the heart. I forgot about hunger, frost, and fear. Time stretched, became slow, immense and still. The soul covered the world and escaped from the dungeon. I tried to leave everything behind and stay only with God. In the depths, joys flooded me, new meanings unfolded and the heavens opened up in an amazing way. Finally I decided to come to my senses. The priest was saying the prayers for the sacrament of Holy Communion. I reached into a fold of my coat, with dozens of patches piled on top of each other, and from a tiny silk bag I took out a small pearl of the Holy Sacrament, hidden in a grain of millet, which I kept as my most beloved scent.”
Prison Songs
We can even find information about the preparation for and experience of the Nativity in prison cells in the Securitate files, which mention the prayers, liturgies, and carols sung by prisoners. Such activities did not go unpunished, with solitary confinement and starvation being the punishments easily meted out by the guards.
For example, in an information note on the work of Valeriu Gafencu and those close to him in the Târgu-Ocna prison, we learn details of the carols the prisoners sang in their cells:
“He also sings in his room alone and together with the chamber choir, which he seems to have initiated, religious carols ‘Lin, lin, we wait on crosses of torment’, ‘O what wonderful news, those in prison are waiting for you at dawn’, and ‘O beautiful fir tree’ with the lyrics ‘In the cold of the dungeon I shiver’ and ends ‘And I find the dungeon the tomb of my youth’.”
A significant chapter, perhaps the most representative, of the prison lyric was the carols which, once created, immediately entered the “prison torment,” being memorised and shared with the other prisoners.
Alongside established authors such as Radu Gyr and Nichifor Crainic, poets such as Ștefan Tumurug, Eugeniu Indreica Damian, Zorica Lațcu, Traian Popescu, Gheorghe Popescu-Vâlcea, Ovidiu Vasilescu, Valeriu Gafencu, Valeriu Anania, and Constantin Dragodan also stood out.
“Today Santa Claus is no longer coming / Only the sadness is gathering…”
Carols, by the depth of their message, can be considered cultural translations of suffering, expressing in a full way the dramatic tension of detention. These creations are part, along with memorial works, of the Romanian gulag heritage.
Seen from a historical-theological point of view, these carols sum up the major themes of the experience of detention in communist prisons. First of all, the theme of remembrance, of longing for those beyond the prison wall, stands out, the image of Christmas spent with family contrasting with the loneliness of the cell:
“Oh, beautiful tree, how holy you seemed / In another holiday… / Today Santa Claus no longer comes / But only the sadness gathers / To cry at my door. / I weep, filled with longings, / And the prison seems to me the tomb / Of my youth.” – Radu Gyr
The same theme, of memory and longing for home far away, is also found in the Romanian prisoners sent to Siberia:
“Under the window of memory we gather, / We sing the song of yesteryear. / The magi of longing pass in a caravan, / Over the cold forehead of the warrior.” – Ștefan Tumurug
Suffering as a Gift
The suffering of imprisonment is another motif often encountered in carols, a suffering manifested seemingly contradictorily. On the one hand, the lyrics describe the weight of imprisonment, but on the other hand, the “instruments of torture” and the suffering itself mentioned become gifts offered to the Christ Child:
“We carol hungry and naked / In the porch of song / The years hover over us / Dreams burning… Heavy staves lie at the door / Our wounds ache / Chains are bells / Our prayer is a chorus. / Lord, stretch out your hand / Over your servants / That in the depths you may light us up / Star of whirlwinds. / Hearts, in wreaths / We will bring as a gift / Over their sacrifice we will gather / Great nimbus of grace. / As incense we have prepared / Heavy tears in cups / Gold: rusty chain / Myrrh: blood in wounds.” – Constantin Dragodan
Suffering, fully assumed, becomes a cleansing sacrifice that brings the imprisoned closer to Christ:
“The servants of the Lord sing / In the yoke of His yoke they sing, / But their song is mute, / Because it is torn from suffering, / And it is increased with prayers. / In the heart of the servant / The Lord makes His manger / On Christmas night. / Near the little child / An angel stopped / Whispering sweetly: / Today Christmas has moved / From the palace to the prison / Where the Lord is imprisoned; / And the child in the sky / Has come to the prison / To live a great feast.” – Valeriu Gafencu
The child referred to in Valeriu Gafencu’s carol, as Ioan Ianolide recalls in his memoirs, is Father Gherasim Iscu himself, the abbot of Tismana Monastery, to whom this creation is dedicated and who suffered a martyr’s death on Christmas Eve 1951, in the dungeon of Târgu Ocna. Together with the ascetical life that completed his biographical path, Father Gherasim Iscu remained in the memory of the Romanian gulag by the serenity with which he lived his end, forgiving the very torturer who had caused him so much suffering.
Eucharistic Carols
As a corollary to these creations-testament, Ovidiu Vasilescu’s carol stands out, which becomes a Eucharistic prayer, in which the imprisoned boldly invoke Christ, aware of the sacrifice dedicated to Him:
“Lord, tonight I thought of asking you / To send a young and beautiful angel / With incense and cypress smoke / To sanctify, Lord, my poor dungeon / And to bring out the Good One from under the promorow / And to bring more, Lord, for us / For the hungry and empty hungry / The steam from the bread we dream of / That warms us when we all taste it / The holy bread in which, Lord, You break / And the aghast in which Your tears break / You forgive me, Lord, for all I ask / But in the despair we are in / The saints themselves, Lord, would have need.”
Source:
Dragoș Ursu, “Lin, lin, we wait on crosses of torment…”, The Light Newspaper, electronic edition, December 24, 2017