Constantin Oprișan – A man of extraordinary complexity
Since the beginning of my imprisonment, the most impressive thing has been our solidarity. Personally, I became attached to my suffering brothers – and not only to the legionaries – that is, to those who opposed communism. Many of those in prison were like angels. The one who impressed me the most was Constantin Oprișan. We spent a year in the same cell. He was a man of extraordinary complexity, a master of various fields, from music and art to mathematics and philosophy. By nature he was very affectionate and lived everything to the full. He was subjected to the greatest ordeal of all, there was no one more crushed than he; he took a beating for every young legionnaire, with an enduring, unparalleled heroism. (…)
Oprișan was an old legionnaire. Before 1940, during the period of the Legionary Government, he had held an administrative post, and after Antonescu’s coup d’état in January 1941, he went to Germany, where he was interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He returned to the country in 1945 and was appointed head of the F.D.C. in the country. As well as being one of the most responsible chiefs, Oprișan’s intelligence placed him at the top of the Romanian intellectual pyramid.
With his philosophical training and genius as a poet, he made an enormous impression on those around him. He was the son of a “răzeș” from the county of Tecuci. He enrolled at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Cluj, where he amazed his teachers. Thanks to his vast knowledge, acquired during his stay in Germany, his lectures often replaced those of his professor, to the latter’s admiration, of course. While I was with him, I had the highest intellectual aspirations.
At 30, Oprișan was in an enviable position. Like Pascal, he was a brilliant mathematician and a formidable thinker and logician. To pass the time, I asked him to give us a lecture on the history of philosophy. His lectures were not ex cathedra, but heart-to-heart, and so pleasant and engaging that for eight hours a day we seemed to forget our hunger and the world outside. The 11 months I spent with Oprișan in his cell were for me the most pleasant months in prison. I was linked to Oprișan because I had entered the hell of the Pitești debunkings with him, thanks to a simple informer. Then I heard that he ended up as a martyr somewhere in a “secret” of the Jilava prison. Oprișan was not only a philosopher but also a poet. Some of his poems were memorised and taken out of the prison.
(Dumitru Bordeianu – Mărturisiri din mlaștina desperării, second edition, Scara Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, p. 102)