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roMania | 291 Marcel Petrişor (b. 1930) A native of Transylvania, deeply rooted in its traditions, Petrişor devoted much of his energy as a writer to a loving reconstruction of the Transylvania village life he knew from firsthand experience. In this respect he joins the ranks of so many other Romanian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who found their inspiration among their country’s rural people. His debut volume of stories, Serile-n sat la Ocişor (Evenings in the Village of Ocişor, 1971)—Ocişor was the name of Petrişor’s native village—set the pattern of picturesqueness, vivid characterization, and the intertwining of the mythical and mystic typical of such subsequent volumes on rural life as Temeri (Fears, 1985), Căruţa cu scînduri (The Clapboard Wagon, 1990), and Strigoii Ocişorului (The Ghosts of Ocişor, 2005). In 1952, when he was a university student in philosophy in Cluj, Petrişor was arrested for the first time. The charge? Borrowing a book by the poet and literary critic Ovidiu Cotruş (1926–1977), who was considered an enemy by the Communist regime. Cotruş himself had been arrested in 1950 and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Petrişor was released in 1955 but then rearrested the following year, charged this time with belonging to a student conspiracy inspired by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He was condemned to death, and although the sentence was never carried out, it hung over him like the Sword of Damocles until August 1957, at which time it was commuted to life imprisonment . By the terms of the Amnesty Decree of 1964, Petrişor was at last a free man, after spending seven years (after his first jail sentence) in such prisons as Aiud and Jilava. After his release, he pursued a degree at Bucharest University in Romance languages and literatures (French and Spanish). In 1970 he began his career as a secondary school teacher in the Romanian capital, first in the Iulia Hasdeu school, named for the talented but prematurely deceased daughter of the philologist and historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu (1838–1907), and subsequently in the Lycee Spiru Haret (now the name also of the largest private university in Romania , established in 1999). Petrişor’s literary activity flourished in the relatively more relaxed period of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1977 he published two novels, Măreasa and Crişan; two interesting travel books, Călătorie spre Soare-Răsare (A Journey to the East) and Drumuri întortocheate: Jurnal de călătorie în Europa, Asia şi America de Nord (Winding Roads: Journal of a Journey Through Europe, Asia, and North America, 2001); several essays of a literary and philosophical character; and memoirs. After the downfall of the Ceauşescu regime in 1989, Petrişor was at last able to bring to light the recollections and impressions of his years in prison. His first prison book, Fortul 13 al Jilavei: Convorbiri din detenţie (Fort 13 of Jilava: Conversa- 292 | roMania tions in Detention), appeared in 1991, the second, Secretul Fortului 13: Reeducări şi execuţii (The Secret of Fort 13: Reeducations and Executions), in 1995, and the third in this loose trilogy, La capăt de drum (At the End of the Road), in 1997. After 1990, Petrişor was a founding member of the Christian Democratic Union and part of the post-Communist de facto legislative body, the Provisional Council of National Unity (PCNU). In the following excerpt from Fortul 13 al Jilavei note that Gore Bolovan is the fictitious name Petrişor uses for Gherghe Calciu (Calciu-Dumitreasa , 1925–2006), a Romanian Orthodox priest who was imprisoned from 1948 to 1964 and again from 1979 to 1984. He eventually was able to leave Romania and settle in the United States, in Alexandria, Virginia, where he served as a priest in the Holy Cross Christian Orthodox Church. The following excerpts are from Fortul 13 al Jilavei: Convorbiri din detenţie (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1991), 182–88; Secretul fortului 13: Reeducăre şi execuţii (Iaşi: Timpul, 1994), 34–36, 43– 49; and La capăt de drum (Iaşi: Institutul European, 1997), 59–65, 75–77, and have been translated from Romanian by Harold B. Segel. from Fortul 13 al Jilavei “Therefore, may I repeat, Mister Bolovan, your version of the account and interpretation of the ‘phenomenon’ through which you passed and to which you say you were subjected.” “More precisely...

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