„Notebook VII”, excerpt from „the story of my poor life”. Inedit writings of Ion D. Sîrbu

„Ion D. Sirbu’s idea of memories dates back, according to his own testimony in 1979,when he decided that: „I will buy a tape recorder. I wish - because I have a special gift of oral storytelling, live speech of heart to heart confession – I wish [...] to „tell” (as in the park, pubs, cemetery) those memories that cannot be written because they were too lived!!”

In 1980-81, Ion D. Sîrbu bought a tape recorder MAJAK 203 and recorded on two ORWO tapes, of 360 m, some of the memories (childhood, adolescence and the early months of his student life in Sibiu). On June 7^th, 1989, „urged by the ghosts of my insomnia, I open a new notebook and start - for the first time - to write the story of my poor life. I will not be concerned at all to be precise, the memory began to leave me, nor do I care about my life as reality but as a story: thought, dreamed, told dozens of times and, especially, lived. „

He wrote 75 pages, the latter probably before the end of the month, since, on 1^st July, dictates to his wife a letter to David Prodan. The story line „breaks” the day he left for war.

This fragment (ms., Pp. 23-28) and the three letters, all unique, we have included in the volume: Ion D. Sirbu Latest ..., soon printed”. (Toma Velici)