I saw him then in prison for a moment as long as eternity

I think it was around 1960 when I was taken to the fort at Jilava, but I didn’t stay there more than two weeks. I was put in a dark, damp room with 32 bunk beds, 32 people, I was the 33rd. An airless dungeon, where in the morning you had to line up for the “famous” stretcher. But we could talk to each other. We didn’t go to bed at night and we didn’t get up in the morning. On one of those days I was struck by the sight of a man, I would say ageless, with a face like a Byzantine icon, sitting in a meditative posture against the wall of the room, his head slightly bowed, his hands folded across his chest.

He seemed to be withdrawing into himself again, lost in his own thoughts – who is this man? – I asked one of the prisoners. What, you don’t know who he is? No, I didn’t. He’s the poet Vasile Voiculescu, author of “The Imaginary Sonnets”. I didn’t know Vasile Voiculescu at school or at university, but I had heard of his name and of the “sonnets” that were circulating in manuscript. Was that also blasphemy? I saw him in prison for an eternal moment. In divine suffering. I would only see his face again on the covers of the books printed after his death.

(Testimony of Ion Ioan Diaconu – Vasile Voiculescu. The Martyred Writer and the Burning Bush, Vol. I, edited by Sabina Măduța, Florile Dalbe Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, p. 40)