Ion Desideriu S\u00eerbu holds a special place
\namong the intellectuals opposing the communist regime. He truly wrote what
\npeople call drawer literature, as many of his books remained unpublished due
\nto communist censorship. After the collapse of the communist dictatorship, some
\nof his volumes were published, and brought to light the model of Victor
\nPetrini, the protagonist in Marin Preda’s The
\nmost beloved of earthlings. Just like Petrini, I.D. S\u00eerbu was a philosopher
\nsentenced to prison in the 1950s for refusing to denounce his teacher, playwright,
\npoet and philosopher Lucian Blaga. Dana Jalobeanu, a professor with the
\nPhilosophy Department at the University of Bucharest, told us more about
\nS\u00eerbu’s missed philosophical vocation, but also about his great talent for
\nwriting.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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\n
<\/p>\n
S\u00eerbu
\ntook his PhD in philosophy. He was a student and disciple of phisolophers
\nLucian Blaga and Liviu Rusu, both with the Unviersity of Cluj. At one point,
\nwhen he was 28, he became the youngest associate professor at the Phisolophy
\nFaculty in Cluj. Years later, as he himself writes, he became the oldest
\nwagon-pusher at the mine in Petrila, aged 44. Ion
\nDesideriu S\u00eerbu was someone whose fate was fiercely trampled by the cruel history
\nof the 20th century. He survived writing literature, which was his
\nway of taking revenge for being denied a career in philosophy. Shortly after
\n1990, his novel, Farewell, Europe, had a huge impact. I couldn’t believe
\npeople could write something like that under communism. It wasn’t the only
\nnovel to be released, there was also a collection of letters, Letters to
\nmerciful God and The journal of a journalist without a journal. In the
\n1990s, therefore, I was amazed to discover this author known to very few
\npeople, as only part of his writings and theatre plays had been published by
\ncommunist authorities. Besides, there was this powerful aura surrounding Ion
\nDesideriu S\u00eerbu. And people who actually knew him well were very surprised by
\nthe power of his literature. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Arrested in 1956 and condemned as an enemy
\nof the regime, at first for a year, then his sentence being commuted to seven
\nyears, Ion Desideriu S\u00eerbu worked in a mine, shortly after his release. The area
\nwas familiar to him, as he himself was the son of a miner, born in 1919 in the
\nPetrila exploitation site close to the city of Petro\u0219ani. In 1964, he was
\nforcefully relocated to Craiova, where he managed, after great efforts, to get
\na job with the National Theatre as a literary secretary. He was constantly
\nwatched by the local and central secret police. Still, his moral compass remained
\npristine, as literary critic Cosmin Ciotlo\u0219 told us. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
This is someone who, no matter how many ordeals he suffered,
\nno matter how many years he spent in prison unlawfully, refused become an
\ninformer for the secret police. He refused to become a collaborator, and he
\nactually wrote about it. He came from a miners’ colony in Petrila, where
\nturning in your fellow workers was the lowest you could get, as S\u00eerbu
\nhimself writes. It was the lowest line of moral integrity anyone could cross.
\nAt one point, S\u00eerbu wrote: ‘Judge me not for what I’ve done, but for all the
\nthings I haven’t done, I’ve refused to do, although I could have. This was his
\nfirst stand. There’s another episode he recounted about his time in prison. All
\nChristian religions were represented in prison, and S\u00eerbu managed to persuade
\nhis fellow inmates to celebrate Easter together, all on the same night. It was
\nan ecumenical gesture, it goes without saying. But to me, it is more than that.
\nI see a man who’s struggling to bring together religious sentiment. To him, the
\npurpose of that moment was to save the souls of those people. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Right now, S\u00eerbu’s home in Petrila has
\nbeen turned into a Memorial House, hosting a cultural center curated by
\ncartoonist Ion Barbu, who knew the writer. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I met I.D. S\u00eerbu for the first and last
\ntime in 1988. He had come for a summer visit to Jiu Valley, as his sister,
\nIrina S\u00eerbu lived in Petro\u0219ani. One afternoon he decided to walk from his
\nsister’s house to his parents’ house, in Petrila, accompanied by me and my brother,
\nMihai Barbu. We walked 4 kilometers, making numerous stopovers and telling
\nstories about the old Jiu Valley. When we reached his house, we crossed the
\ncemetery, visited his parents’ graves, and even stopped the local school where
\nI was doing voluntary work with children. I was teaching a drawing class,
\ncreating a history of Romanian literature by drawing portraits of writers. Some
\nof them drew a sketch of S\u00eerbu, which was later included in an exhibition
\nopened at the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest. We then went to my
\napartment, where we spent another couple of hours. In the end, we shook hands
\nand I’ve been boasting ever since I was the last man in Petrila he ever shook
\nhands with. He was the warmest person I had ever met, telling some amazing
\nstories that have earned my everlasting admiration of him. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Passed away in 1989 after struggling with
\nesophageal cancer, Ion. D. S\u00eerbu never got to see the demise of the communist
\nregime, which came three months after his death. (V.P.)<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ion Desideriu S\u00eerbu holds a special place among the intellectuals opposing the communist regime. He truly wrote what people call drawer literature, as many of his books remained unpublished due to communist censorship. After the collapse of the communist dictatorship, some of his volumes were published, and brought to light the model of Victor Petrini, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":50395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45210],"tags":[45622,45621,45620,45623],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-169807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rri-encyclopaedia","tag-cosmin-ciotlos","tag-dana-jalobeanu","tag-i-d-sirbu","tag-ion-barbu"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n