LIVING IN THE DEEP HEART. EXPERIENCE OF INTERIORITY IN THE WORK OF VIKTOR E. FRANKL AND NICOLAE STEINHARDT
Abstract
Background: The article is based on Olivier Clement's statement that the "deep heart" - which is another expression for human interiority - is accessible to humans only in flashes; in situations of love, beauty and death. I try to illustrate this experience based on the example of two figures - Viktor E.
Frankl and Nicolae Steinhardt. They both lived and resisted situations of death in hard regime prisons, respectively under the Nazis and the communists.
I have analysed their experiences as described in their autobiographies. For Frankl, contact with his own interiority connects him with his inner freedom, which is inalienable, and which also enables him to adopt the right attitude in unalterable and absurd situations.
According to Frankl, in adopting this attitude, everyone is free in every situation. They can fill their life with meaning.
Steinhardt uses the situation of prison, the suffering, and the nearness of death as triggers for his inner transformation. The key question for him is whether God is present.
He begins with Jesus' experience and the words he shouted from the cross: "My God, why have you abandoned me?" From this he reaches the discovery of God's presence in the most unlikely place, as he says, in his own heart. Conclusion: For both authors the experience of the touch of death opened the way into their interiority and at the same time the contact with their deep heart enabled them to resist those situations and to find meaning and even happiness in them.