2 certain trees;” that he experienced a terrible impression especially when he saw himself in the mirror after so much time.1 5. Three decades before Gramsci, in the late 19th century, Oscar Wilde gave the history of universal thought his personal testimony of the suffering caused by his incarceration, in his renowned De Profundis (1897). From the Reading prison, he wrote that, for those unfairly detained, "there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more."2 6. It is possible that étranger D.D. Tibi experienced the same feeling as étranger Mersault that matters pertaining to the detention and the proceeding were treated “leaving aside” the detainee, reflecting the “tender indifference” of the exterior world (chapters IV-V). As for Gramsci, almost the only thing left to the étranger of Albert Camus (L'étranger, 1949) was the passing of time; as “light and shadows alternated” it was “the same day ceaselessly passing in the cell,” and the worst hour was when “the noise of the night came from all the floors of the prison in an entourage of silence” (chapter II). Mersault also had only the memories of a life that no longer belonged to him (chapter IV). For him, all days passed “watching, in their face, the decline of the colors that lead from day to night,” the latter being “like a melancholic truce” (chapter V). 7. In his critical pages on conditions of incarceration, immortalized in his renowned Memoirs from the House of the Dead (1862), F.M. Dostoyevsky reflected that "le fameux système cellulaire n'atteint, j'en suis convaincu, qu'un but trompeur, apparent. Il suce la sève vitale de l'individu, l'énerve dans son âme, l'affaiblit, l'effraie, puis il vous présente comme un modèle de redressement, de repentir, une momie moralement desséchée et à demi folle. (...) Les souffrances morales pèsent plus lourdement que les tourments physiques."3 Hence the importance and pressing need –the great universal writer added- of humane treatment of detainees: "(...) un détenu, un réprouvé, il connaît les distances qui le séparent de ses supérieurs, mais ni les chaînes, ni les marques de flétrissure ne lui font oublier qu'il est un homme. (...) Un traitement humain peut relever jusqu'à ceux chez qui l'image de la divinité semble obscurcie! C'est précisément avec ces `malheureux' qu'il faut se comporter le plus humainement possible, pour leur salut et pour leur joie."4 1 . A. Gramsci, Cartas do Cárcere, Rio de Janeiro, Edit. Civilização Brasileira, 1966 (reed.), pp. 135136 and 370. 2 O. Wilde, De Profundis, Madrid, Ed. Siruela, 2000 (repr.), p. 54. 3 . 115. F.M. Dostoyevski, Souvenirs de la maison des morts, Paris, Gallimard, 1977 (repr.), pp. 51 and 4 Ibid., p. 174. . .