Gheorghe Grigurcu’s autobiography: the self-discovery and the negotiation of identity

Abstract

This paper sets forth to investigate biographical data in the Gheorghe Grigurcu written confessions. Considering elements of his most revealing interviews conducted by the writers such as Flori Balanescu and Dora Pavel, the profile of a contemporary writer engaged in the negotiation of his own identity is outlined. The autobiographical references drawn from the writer’s confessions will help us understand his individuality and creative spirit. Gheorghe Grigurcu’s hypersensitive personality projects empathy towards the oppressed and the helpless. He feels an acute but repressed nostalgia for his homeland. The “Bessarabianness” was also revealed in his attitude towards the work of B.P. Hasdeu and Paul Goma. Disappointments resulting from friendship and love relationships amplify the feeling of inadaptability. The feeling of marginalisation is balanced by agape love, which creates the compensatory universe indispensable to the writer. Trained in the process of negotiating his own identity, Gheorghe Grigurcu finds that human harmony can all be easily disturbed by the temptation to compare himself with those around him, by the obsessive Other.