L’ÉCRITURE DANS "L’ÉVASION SILENCIEUSE" DE LENA CONSTANTE
LENA CONSTANTE’S AUTHORING AND ART OF WRITING IN "THE SILENT ESCAPE"

Summary/Abstract: Lena Constante (1909-2005) was an elite visual artist of Romania, also a theater stage designer and a distinguished folklorist. In January 1950, she was incarcerated by the Romanian totalitarian regime, whose general secretary was Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. The inhumane conditions in the political prison could not bend Lena Constante‘s will and her resistance. She had neither writing instruments nor paper in prison, as she was forbidden to write. Moreover, as a form of torture, she was forced to be completely alone in the cell for 3000 days (but in panoptic surveillance). The present article focuses on Lena Constante‘s authoring. This pursuit had started in jail when she was composing in her mind a unique testimony of endurance. The limits of this endurance are the limits of the body itself. The book " The Silent Escape", written in French first, takes the form of a prison diary with exact framing and real data. The present tense of writing, applied to the past, creates a hypnotic dimension of the visual imagery oscillating between two poles: life and death, power of mind vs. real walls, self-coherence (deliberate exercises of concentration, self-imposed efforts to train the mind) vs. self-fragmentation and distress. Primordial for Lena Constante is to share an ontological experience, rather than to be called a writer.

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