CASPECTS OF MARGINALITY AT VASILE ERNU. WAYS OF PRECARIOUS LIFE IN EASTERN COMMUNISM
(Abstract)

The ways of life summarized by the author are mainly close, unfriendly and, thus, marginal and hardly known. With the unexcelled advantage of the native, in The Sectarians [Sectanţii] or with that of life experience in The Bandits [Bandiţii], Vasile Ernu comes close to their possible story which finally turns to be real, even if not irreducible. The oversight of the religious aspect in favor of the historical one in the first volume (The Sectarians) or the limitation  of the  underworld diversity to almost stereotyped typologies in the latter (The Bandits) leaves the auctorial census open. In both cases, the writer might be blamed for telling less than he knows. The trap of conventionalizing these altered ways of life could be a problem in the absence of the compensating biographical element at Vasile Ernu. One of the representative characters belonging to the ex- Soviet underworld, namely the dread guide who introduces the narrator in the delinquents’ malefic world, revealing him its most intimate resorts, The Professor, understands the similitude between these worlds: though by different reasons, they both fight against the mundane Leviathan, the state, sharing the same pariah condition.

Keywords: Vasile Ernu, marginality, way of life, discipline, sect, bandits.