“It was the sum of the human being’s sublimation”

– Dear Mr. Vasile Boroneaț, when did you meet Vasile Voiculescu in prison and under what circumstances?

– In February 1961 I fell ill with a severe form of polyarticular rheumatism and after a long series of sufferings I was admitted to the small prison hospital. I was exhausted and the ward was quiet. Shortly afterwards, probably as a result of the injections I had received, I fell asleep on the bed where they had put me. When I woke up after a while, unable to move, I just rolled my eyes around the room, trying to get to know it.

Then I saw an old white-haired man lying on a bed in the corner of the room with a holy aura about him. His posture and face radiated peace and gentleness. That was the moment I met the dearest person I had known in my ten years in prison – the poet Vasile Voiculescu.

I suddenly felt a great attraction towards him. The feeling was mutual, because towards evening I heard him ask: “Who is the young man who was brought to us? Help me to find him.”

In a short time he sat down on the edge of the bed brought by several suffering brothers, including Jidveanu. He gently asked me who I was and where I was from. Barely holding my breath with the pain, I replied, then we exchanged a few words, after which he left happily, telling me that although he felt helpless, he would come to my bedside again. A week after I went back to bed, I visited him again. We had become friends. He was a great dreamer and loved to tell pleasant stories about his life and that of his family.

I think the second time he came to my bedside he told me he had had a strange dream: it was that from the funnel of the gramophone he had at home – a gift from Queen Mary when he was a doctor in the Dominions – a voice told him to “go to young Vasile who came to the ward and talk to him”. He asked me, “Do you believe in dreams? I do”. The answer was as expected. We never told each other how we ended up in prison. The conversations with him were like the continuation of a dialogue of the soul that only the two of us knew. We communicated with our whole being.

– How did he treat other patients?

– It was impressive how he treated everyone around him. He seemed to be nourished by the Holy Spirit and was a perfect Christian. He didn’t have much interest in sharing his food with others. A circle of profiteers had grown up around him who sometimes took his food without asking. One day a sick man, who had just had an operation, rushed to take the food brought to him by the common prisoners. His reply to his colleagues was: “Leave him alone, he is also God’s creature and if he rushed to take it, it means that he needs this food more than I do”. His words stayed with me forever. It was the epitome of the human nature’s sublimation!

– Did you meet any other personalities during this time?

– I also met three other great personalities at the hospital: Dr. Aurel Marin, a prison doctor, the writer Constantin Gane, author of the famous book “Trecute vieți de doamne si domnițe”, and Ion Jidveanu.

Of all of them, my communication with Vasile Voiculescu was a special one. During the three weeks we spent together, I got to know his family, his house and his close friends. He recited to me in silence his sonnets, which had a divine musicality in their utterance.

– How did you part from your good friend?

One day the door opened and I was told to pack. It was not that I was sorry, but that I was parting from a dear friend whom I would almost certainly never see again. With tears in our eyes, we hugged each other goodbye and promised to meet again when we were released. We couldn’t keep our word. It is not the times and fates under man, but man under the times and fates. But I still think of him as a great friend.

(Testimony of Vasile Boroneaț in dialogue with Sabina Măduța – Vasile Voiculescu. The Martyred Writer and the Burning Bush, Vol. I, edited by Sabina Măduța, Florile Dalbe Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 28-30)