Le phénomène de la réflexivité dans Ziar de lagăr. Caracal – 1945

Abstract

The literature of the Communist prisons and concentration camps (hence the Romanian Gulag) was discussed freely and openly in Romania only after 1989; „Non-fictional writing” (Ruxandra Cesereanu) was an important part of this literature. Most of the testimonials on the Romanian concentrationary hell were written after the authors had been released from prisons or from the camps. This is why they bear the imprint of time and thus an unavoidable degree of detachment. There is, however, one exception, a work that was written in the very place of expiation, Onisifor Ghibu’s concentration camp diary, Concentration Camp Journal. Caracal – 1945. He was able to write the diary there because in 1945, when the author was
imprisoned, the Romanian Gulag was not yet very thoroughly organized; it was more of a pre-Gulag set-up. But Onisifor Ghibu’s dairy fills up a void, being a direct testimonial, one unaltered by the passage of time, on the period immediately preceding Romanian Communism. Starting from these premises, this paper aims to analyze Onisifor Ghibu’s concentration camp diary in terms of its intentionality, as related to the time of the enunciation, the intensity of the emotions, the functions of the writing, as well as the educational dimension of this work.