How I met Steinhardt

I met Nicu Steinhardt in Jilava. He writes in “The Diary of Happiness”, he has a chapter called “Cell 13. Jilava”. There, in his kindness, he tells how he met me.

In his holiness, Steinhardt only mentions what I gave him, how I taught him the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom – a liturgy I also learned in prison, along with the Latin, Catholic Mass.

I had also learnt these liturgies in Jilava, 3-4 years before I met Steinhardt. There was an infirmary where the Catholic Bishop Chertes and my friend Matei Boila were. Bishop Chertes used to transmit these liturgies to me through the wall, in Morse code. You can imagine the slowness with which these lessons were conducted…

Nicu Steinhardt doesn’t mention the many lessons he gave me. He entered the prison long after I did and had a lot of news from the outside. He had news of many mutual friends, friends who in some cases were also in prison with him and me. But he also brought me news of some books he had managed to read during the five years I had been in prison. He had read Eugene Ionesco, among others. When I was arrested at the end of 1955, I had not heard much about Ionesco’s great successes on the Parisian and world stages. But I hadn’t had the chance to read them, and seeing them was inconceivable at the time. Steinhardt had read the first two volumes of Ionesco’s work published by Gallimard. Some books from abroad were beginning to find their way to Romania.

Steinhardt had read these volumes and they were still fresh in his mind. So I had a good time in the dirty cell of Jilava, listening to him recount how he had interpreted the Ionesco plays in those first two volumes, down to the smallest detail. It was something to see Nicolae Steinhardt’s masterful interpretation of The Bald Singer in Jilava’s cell, I can say – having seen and then seen again, in freedom, this play performed by the great actors of the world, I can say that no one interpreted these plays more beautifully than Steinhardt. I also saw J.L. Barrault when he came to Bucharest to perform “Rhinoceros”, I also met Ionesco and told him these things, I saw him cry when I told him about Steinhardt’s play, but I will never forget this wonderful man, his play, the Jewish humour with which he performed all these plays, his specific salt and pepper, all of which made these plays enjoyable in a prison.

(Nicolae Balotă)