Mircea Vulcănescu, “a luminous figure”

Among those who devoted themselves to the work of spreading their knowledge, the luminous figure of Mircea Vulcănescu has been engraved in my mind and heart. He seemed to be a walking encyclopaedia, he had a vast knowledge in many fields and he narrated it with great talent, accompanying it in the most attractive way with all sorts of personal memories and anecdotes, some of which have remained in my memory to this day.

I was also very close to him because his wife had been my French teacher at high school and she often asked me to tell her stories about her high school days. Like a real old school teacher, he was also very concerned about the moral aspects of our life in prison and had even written a sort of code of conduct for prisoners, covering both relations with the administration and relations between us.

This code was not just an intellectual exercise for him, because Vulcănescu lived it with all his being and died a few years later in Jilava[1], in a damp punishment room, having given his clothes to save another[2] whom he considered to be in a worse situation than himself.

(Ion Diaconescu, Temnița, destinul generației noastre, Nemira Publishing House, Bucharest, 1998, p. 54)

[1] Mircea Vulcănescu was to die on 29 October 1952 in Aiud, not in Jilava.

[2] The cause of Mircea Vulcănescu’s death was “myocarditis and double pleurisy T.B.C.”. The untreated T.B.C. was fatal to him, and he contracted it because he made himself a coat to save a young man while he was being punished with solitary confinement in the Jilava’s cells. The philosopher sat down on the wet and cold cement to hold the young man, who was in a serious condition, on his chest, but after this sublime gesture Mircea Vulcănescu fell ill with a lung disease and the prison administration “took care” to exterminate him by denying him any medical assistance.