Mes départs: dall’erranza all’esilio in Panaït Istrati

Abstract

The experiences of exile and perpetual peregrination are two of the main issues in Panaït Istrati’s literary work. The Romanian prose-writer of French expression was in fact an eternal traveller and revealed in his writings, especially in the novelistic cycle of Adrien Zograffi, the extreme and painful conditions of the emigrants and the banished people he met in the colourful universe of the Balkans and the Mediterranean Sea. In Mes départs, the novelist describes both his own exile and that of the Greeks, Turks, Romanians, Albanians, Bulgarians and Jews who lived together in his native town Braïla, creating a fascinating multicultural space. In this narrative the autobiographical hero endures all the sufferings caused by exile, but this traumatic experience and the perpetual wanderings are also the expression of a meaningful search of identity which will turn later into his literary work.