The Pandemic Diary or Wuhandemia - 2020, by Ion Hadârcă: The Spectacle of Decline and Survival

The object of our investigation is The Pandemic Diary or Wuhandemia - 2020 by writer Ion Hadârcă, the first diary about the pandemic from the Bessarabian literary space, in which we find the reverberations of a lucid mind capturing daily statistics about the pandemic situation in Romania, the Republic of Moldova, as well as in the countries of the European Union and the USA. Beyond the pandemic framework, understood as the decline of the biological marked by a state of general psychosis and disastrous apocalyptic scenarios, other signs of moral decline are also recorded, such as the barely perceptible distance between the "mask" and the sociopolitical "masquerade", which the diarist observes and comments on, including from the perspective of his position as senator in the Romanian Parliament during the 20162020 legislature. We were particularly interested in the reflection of the diaristic self's inner experiences in relation to this dehors impregnated with all the maladies of the century, a self embodied as a lucid observer, often critical and ironic towards a drifting world, who saves himself through art and literature.