“He was a particularly good man and he didn’t want us to suffer because of him. His mercy and faith were extraordinary.”
A few steps further on, after escaping the congestion of the Unirea metro station, the noise dies down. I hurried down the quiet street of the United Principalities. On the right, the emblematic dome of the Patriarchate rises into the clear sky, and on the left, I mentally count the streets with evocative names – Ienăchiță Văcărescu, the Olympic Museums – as if in a ritual that I am repeating for the umpteenth time? – on this journey of the soul. I am moved by the thought that, perhaps even forty years ago, these houses had the same eyes that looked at him, that my footsteps are now following in the Magus’ footsteps, treading on the same stones that happily received his steps. In the almost rural courtyards, children will have stopped playing for a moment to gaze intently at the gentle, white-bearded, saintly-looking passer-by.
Like him, I will ring the doorbell of the house in Olimpului Street, I will climb the stairs and he will open the same hand to me, the sweet smile of his beautiful daughter will greet me, the smile of Mrs Gabriela Defour Voiculescu. There is also a kind of memorial house for the poet, here where his soul lived and where many writers and Voiculescu enthusiasts search for his now sacred footprints. Here, Mrs Gabi lovingly shows me some of the things that belonged to him, simple things that have become priceless, ennobled by the poet’s gaze.
Here, says Mrs Gabi, is the icon of the Redeemer that she had kept in her memory during her imprisonment. Once a day, at a certain time, with her eyes closed, she would imagine this image of Jesus and say the “prayer of the heart”.
On this earthly globe, which my father bought in an antique shop, my mother marked the front lines of the Second World War with little flags, often pointing with her index finger to the City of Light, where my two older sisters, Marta and Sultanica, had gone to study.
There’s also the massive oak-framed crystal mirror in front of which my father used to do his exercises.
Very few copies of his books remain, some confiscated, some scattered. A few autographed books, a few small objects and old icons that he gave me complete the dowry of my soul, which I keep with piety.
– I would like to ask you, Mrs Gabi, to tell us about the most tragic episode in the life of the writer Vasile Voiculescu and his family.
– In 1958 there were mass arrests, not only of intellectuals accused of conspiring against the new regime, but also of those who did not want to use their skills for communism.
As a man of great moral probity, my father did not want to lie, he lied. At the insistence of the writers Zaharia Stancu, Șerban Cioculescu or Mihail Sadoveanu, he remained firm in his decision not to collaborate.
They did not forgive him and arrested him. They took him away from our house at 34 Dr. Staicovici Street after an agonising and humiliating search. They confiscated his manuscripts, his books and anything they considered suspicious.
For four years we had heard nothing from him, not even knowing if he was still alive. I sent numerous letters to the authorities and received no reply. You can imagine the despair of our helplessness, especially as we had learned that Barbu Slătineanu and the mathematician Plăcințeanu, who had been arrested at the same time, had died during the investigation.
Our letters were censored and stopped, and I remember telling the sisters in Paris about his arrest, writing that our dog “Bucucu”[1] had been taken by the dog handlers and we could not find him anywhere.
We were in the Securitate attention and, like many others in our situation, under constant surveillance.
We lived like this, meekly enduring their visits, sometimes despairing, sometimes hoping. Although I had two degrees (in art history and French), I could not teach because of my “tainted” record, and I could hardly get a job as a librarian.
Around the beginning of May 1962, my brother, Radu Voiculescu, a doctor, received the news of my father’s release from Aiud prison and, finding him waiting at the T.B.C. dispensary in Turda, brought him home by train under extremely difficult conditions. In prison my father contracted tuberculosis of the spine, one of the most serious forms. He could hardly stand on his feet and was in great pain. He was so weak that I hardly recognised him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take the morphine that would have relieved his pain, and the xylin that my brother Ionică gave him was too short-lived. He was admitted to the T.B.C. Hospital. He was treated with Kanamycin, a drug that caused sudden deafness. It was terrible, it was the hardest thing for him to endure. We communicated by writing notes to each other. He didn’t even want to talk, he just prayed to God to save him from life and pain.
He shared a room with his two elder sisters, Florica Stefanescu and Maria Ivanescu. Our house had been requisitioned and new tenants had been brought in, with better rooms. The three sick old people were crammed into a small, dark room with a window looking out on to the neighbouring house. One of my old aunts slept on a sideboard where she had placed a mattress, which she reached by climbing up a stool. I shall never forget the image of my sister Sultanica, who came from Paris to see my father, slumped over the bed, almost covering him with her rich blonde hair, sobbing uncontrollably, while he received her tears in absolute silence.
– Who visited him at his bedside?
– Although he was so seriously ill, my father kept his wits about him and – in general – refused visits, knowing that to visit him was to take certain risks. Perhaps he didn’t even want to be seen in his seriously ill state. Nevertheless, a few close friends did come. I remember some of them, like Nicu Stănescu, the lawyer and publisher, Lascarov-Moldoveanu, the writer, Father Bulacu, Father Octavian – Father’s confessor, the Egyptologist Professor Constantin Daniel and Șerban Cioculescu. I know that once, when Șerban Cioculescu brought him oranges, I warned him about the danger that lurks for those who come to my father, but he reassured me by asking me not to worry about him.
– Did he tell you anything about his time in prison?
– No, he didn’t want to answer our sometimes persistent questions about his years in prison. He avoided such discussions, reassuring himself that it was better for us not to know. He was a very good man and didn’t want us to suffer because of him. His compassion and faith were extraordinary.
I would like to tell you that after my mother’s death in 1946, he withdrew into asceticism. He loved her very much and I think that the “Sonnets” are inspired by their great love, distilled in the rhetoric of the time. He wrote all the time and ate very little. A mouse had crept into his office, but he wouldn’t let us catch it. He wouldn’t let us fix the broken window in his room either, because a big spider with a cross had made its web there, and he couldn’t imagine disturbing it, chasing it away. He loved animals and children. He used to take my daughter Daniela with him to Cișmigiu, where he usually went for his walks. If he hadn’t been arrested, I’m sure my father would still be alive and writing.
– Gabi, why do you think his contemporaries nicknamed him “the holy unmercenary”?
– My father practised medicine all his life. From the beginning of his career, he did not charge poor patients for consultations and even bought medicines for them with his own money. During the First World War, he was mobilised to the Moldavian front and worked as a doctor at the military hospital in Bârlad. There he contracted exanthematous typhus, but even during his convalescence he did not leave the hospital, staying on to look after the wounded and sick victims of the typhus and typhoid epidemics.
The book of poems “From the Land of the Juniper” is the fruit of his impressions and experiences of that period.
He was a great patriot, he was concerned about the problems of the country and he attached great importance to the situation in Transylvania.
I would also like to mention a situation relevant to his moral standing. When he received the National Poetry Prize in 1941, he did not think of using the money he received for his family’s needs; and despite his mother’s protests, he donated it to a church in Transylvania to buy a bell. He saw poetry as a sacrifice, not a means of making money.
– Dear Mrs Gabriela Defour Voiculescu, thank you for your moving evocations. How would you like to end our conversation?
– With an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my mother when she was a doctor in a rural health circus, when she was only 27 years old. My mother’s name was Maria, but he addressed her in his letters as “Dear Lica”.
Here is a revealing fragment about his aspirations and destiny:
“I look for facts and thoughts within and without myself, in people, in books… and I can’t find them. I feel the need to do something great, something special, at least if all the greatness would be known only after a hundred years, and at least I would suffer for this something – I don’t know what, deed or thought – at least I would suffer all my life, the hardships, the hunger, the struggles!
Bucharest
January 1992
(Testimony of Gabriela Defour in dialogue with Măduța Sabina – Vasile Voiculescu. The Martyred Writer and the Burning Bush, Vol. I, edited by Sabina Măduța, Florile Dalbe Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 31-35)
[1] His granddaughter Daniela, whom Dr Voiculescu was very fond of, called him “Bucucu” instead of “Bunicu”.