Confesiunile Ninei Cassian ca „melodie en dehors” a unei biografii de excepţie
Nina Cassian’s late confessions as an “en dehors melody” of an exceptional biography

Summary/Abstract: Written as a triptych confession, Nina Cassian’s Memory as a Dowry reveals a very bold range of feminine themes, subsumed to the identity core. The most significant spectrum of motifs used both in the young woman’s diary and in the mature woman’s memoirs refers to a particular form of sexuality that shaped not only Nina’s private life, but also her socio-professional and artistic existence. Even the polyvalent education or the turbulent relation with the Communist Party is marked by the insatiable passion for life of this controversial woman that never stops to seek for the perfect partner, on a personal, but also a social or a political level. Surprisingly, until her late confessions, the octogenary diarist does not hesitate to define herself through sexuality or love and to name the last passion, met and lived with maximum intensity in the USA, “the en dehors melody of my life”. Of course, I will point out the fact that not only the affective fulfillment, but also the confession itself, could be perceived as such an exceptional biographical song. Analyzing its confessional reflection, I will follow the three axes around which is organized the unique ensemble, composed of the diary pages and the memoir annotations, written between 1975-1985, and 1987-2003: eroticism and socio-political engagement (both particularly visible in the first two volumes), respectively the aging exile, perceived as the last, definitively boundary of the being, which in her case is superimposed on the actual exile experience (in the last volume, entirely written after Nina’s establishment in the U.S.).

• Details
• Contents