Elated and Traumatized Self(ves) in Autobiographies from the Romanian Front

Abstract

In the article Elated and Traumatized Self(ves), the focus has been on the horrific images witnessed by which the nurses changed their initially optimistic discourse on war. In his study on the memory of the Great War, Paul Fussell identifies recurring elements such as miracles and perils, rituals, magic numbers, a magical, otherworldly landscape, social arrangements that culminate in pompous ceremonies, the constant training of the protagonist to prove himself against danger, and the fact that the protagonist and his allies often constitute a group of solidarity or “community of the elect” (Fussell 1975, 135). Looking for these elements in the nurses’ narratives, I have identified them in their attitude towards the war before they reached the front. The situations of shock they faced caused them to abandon the “heroic pageantry of war” (in Claire M. Tylee’s terms) and to replace it with a language of trauma that desisted in intensity after witnessing bombardments and after patients with horrible injuries became ordinary events in their lives.