Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent

by Mircea Eliade

  And now another springtime is drawing to a close, and still I sit in the library waiting for evening to come, and then walk home alone. I keep telling myself that I’m happy. But don’t I know that this isn’t happiness?

  I’ve changed a lot. I’ve realized that I have to lead a double life. That’s why I’m not the same when I’m with my friends as when I’m alone. I’ve tried many times to discover who I am. But I didn’t succeed, and that made me very sad. Yet the next morning I was completely self-aware. This was a great comfort to me.

  Dinu is more handsome than ever.

  Perhaps I’m only writing this because I feel I should write as much as I can in my Diary, to make up for a whole year. But how do I know what happened over the course of a year? I spent every morning looking forward to going to the library. Once in the library I was no longer myself. I was someone who read. While reading, I would become unconscious of my surroundings. That’s why all those hours spent in the library seem so strange, I can’t place them in the flow of time. It’s extremely difficult to identify here the subtle differences that I discovered about the ‘me’ in the library and the ‘me’ during the rest of the day. It’s only in the latter that it becomes possible to perceive time. That is where memories are found, nowhere else. But it’s so barren. So much time spent reading that now I have hardly a single memory of the entire year. I don’t know what happened to the winter, I don’t know how spring came. All that remain are one or two days of the Easter holidays, and a few weeks during the summer. Apart from that, nothing.

  Every night I would fall asleep thinking of the book I had left on the table. Every morning I woke up regretting that I had wasted so much time while the book was still unfinished. My thoughts were only on the future, I wished only for more books, and everything I did, I did for the future. And the days went by one after another, dull, grey, monotonous, lit only by the this same desire.

  When did I see the first flower? And when did I smile as I watched a white butterfly? When did I feel sad, overwhelmed by those cold, red sunsets that trickled down the walls and turned the boulevards the colour of blood?

  Petrişor is at university now. We see each other occasionally, and he tells me all about it. I greatly enjoy listening to him, and think about how it won’t be long before I’m a student too, leading the life of a student.

  But I know that that’s not how it will be.

  During this year, nearly all my friends have fallen in love. Not one of them has escaped. Except me. I’m delighted about this, and tell myself it’s a sign of virility. But don’t I know that when I say this I’m lying to myself, and bite my lip to stop myself crying? And don’t I know that when I force myself to smile and mock those who are in love that I’d also like to be in love, because my heart is overflowing with a whirling, boiling mass of love?

  But today I feel sad. That’s why I’ve written so many useless pages. I closed my book so I could read my ‘novel’, and now I’m wasting time with it, suffering like an adolescent. The truth is that today I’m sad, which is to say an idiot. But tomorrow I’ll be strong as always, and I’ll put up a fight. And after the fight will come the victory. All this lamenting over a year that is past, a year during which I read two hundred books, is worthy of a hero from a novel by Ionel Teodoreanu.

  It’s true that I get tired occasionally. That’s when I feel faint, and write these sentimental, sucrose, doleful pages. But they’re completely false. If I were to re-read them when I wake up at dawn, I’d laugh. Such sad moments are fleeting. I either set them aside deliberately, or the life that is within me does it for me. I can feel it, this life, boiling in my veins, my chest, my temples. A life that not one of my friends ever experiences. A life that grows and becomes stormy, that foams and bubbles, that boils, that grows, that threatens, that shakes the foundations of my being. A life that I find very difficult to conceal, but which I experience whenever I’m alone, and which fills me with the thrill of battle and victory. Those who tell me that I’ll be a man of learning are mistaken. All they see in my erudition is erudition. But I understand. I know that beneath all this lies something else: raw desire. And I shudder at this desire of mine, shudder at the thought of it being unleashed on the world.

  That’s why the sad moments are fleeting. They’re just shadows in my powerful, passionate life that surges up from deep inside me. No one suspects what my life is really like. But I won’t be able to hide it for much longer.

  A year has passed and I am left with very few memories. It’s better that way. What would I do with memories? Memories are a sign of wasted time. I didn’t waste my time. I worked. Continuously, persistently, patiently, fired by a sacred thirst for knowledge, penetrated by the tremblings of my inner life. Work that I accomplished with a groan, a gasp, a cry of victory or pain, gnashing or gritting my teeth, my face contorted or expressionless, my eyes fixed constantly on my goal. At night I fell asleep regretting all the hours I would have to spend motionless in bed, sighing or snoring. Or I dozed off from exhaustion, my eyelids drooping, my brow hot and clammy. And I woke in the cool of the dawn, curled up in my nice warm bed, but my body rebelled and got up. Shivering, I put on some clothes and sat at my desk. My face dried, my eyes took on a bluish tinge and sunk into their sockets, and the furrows on my brow grew deeper.

  These are the little victories that I’ve won day after day, and which have vanished from my mind. But I have to remember them. Otherwise, my year will have been barren and empty. And people will accuse me of leading a boring life and label me a bookworm. But they know nothing of my passions, my doubts, my fears, my struggles or my victories. Yet this was my year. For me there was no love, no friendship, no bucolic twilights, no melancholic autumn, no mournful calling of cranes, no dreamy contemplation of the sea, no pleasures of the flesh. Or – if I did experience them – I’ve forgotten them. Because I wanted to. I wanted to forget them. In which case my year is a wasteland of futile, sentimental frippery, an empty, monotonous and feeble waste of time. But it was still my year, the year of my desires, which I’ve infused with my blood, quickened with my life, tempered with my thoughts. The fruit it has borne are mine and mine alone. And tonight, as this miracle is revealed, I am proud of my miracle. I glorify myself, sing my own praises. Because I alone am the master of my body, I am the God of my soul. The One omnipotent master, God.

  Friends

  I’ve been so isolated for the past few months that I began to think that I had almost no friends at all. I realize that our different aims have forced us apart, that we have forged links with other lives. This might have upset me were it not for the fact that I wanted to be alone. My path has led me away from my friends, while their paths have led them away from me.

  And yet here we all were today, together again in my attic, everyone from the good old days of our adolescence. We talked about things that had only just happened, and how they seem such ancient history now, so old and sad.

  But we didn’t allow ourselves to be overcome by our memories, we all felt the need to talk about them, to admit that we are bound together by the same sense of melancholy.

  We were here to celebrate a visit from Radu. He has run away from boarding school in Braşov, because he knew he was going to have to repeat a year. It’s the second time this has happened. Up till now we’ve always met during the holidays, him in his drum-shaped cap, short-sighted, with huge teeth and big, cracked lips. He has learnt some Hungarian expressions and German jokes. To make him feel better we all laughed. But our friend is like a fish out of water.

  He drinks ţuica in the morning, smokes fifty cigarettes a day, and tells silly stories. With every holiday he gets more and more foolish. Up there in Braşov, where he sneaks out of the dormitory after midnight and comes back straight from the pot-house, drunk and bleeding, he has lost his good character, his sparkling wit, his talent for observation and caustic remarks. He has made friends with a landowner’s son who is as stupid as he i
s strong, and who is the terror of all the local nightspots and forces his friends to drink alcohol by the bottle under threat of physical violence. He has become cynical and vulgar. He can’t eat or sleep without ţuica.

  And now he has run away. He told us quite calmly about the welcome he got from his father, who made a scene, and first threatened then pleaded with him. Radu remained unswerving: he didn’t want to go to any more schools. He said he would only start studying again when his heart was in it. But for now, he simply couldn’t study.

  ‘Because Mama has just died...’

  Immediately the attic was filled with a profound silence.

  Radu smoked a cigarette, and looked slightly embarrassed. And then I saw the resigned and bitter expressions on the others’ faces, filled with more pain than a night of tears. No one had been expecting this remark. We had only seen our friend on the day of the funeral, just after he got off the train. He had looked bored and tired. Not once had he shed a tear, or sighed. He was smoking.

  ‘I knew she would die...’

  We were appalled.

  ‘What a cynic.’

  Then all of a sudden, from among our murmuring there appeared a new face and a new soul. I would have liked to cry, to cry with him, to comfort him. My friends seemed very upset. Then his joke promptly broke the strange, awkward silence. Without looking at him, we all smiled. And it occurred to me how pointless it is, this Diary where I sketch out characters that I stumble across, without any form of continuity, badly, inaccurately, in fact deliberately so. It saddened me to see how little we knew about each other, for each of us has secrets that we never reveal. It sometimes happens that a sunset, a walk in the moonlight or a moment of great joy in springtime will suddenly shine a light into the darkest recesses of the soul, for those who are able to see it. At these times I clasp my friend’s arm and keep my secret to myself. And I smile whenever I realize how strange my friend must appear to others, how they might think his behaviour is like that of a madman.

  After we had listened to Radu’s jokes, one by one we began to talk about our plans for the future. There was only a month to go till the exams. The new Baccalaureate filled us with dread: we would be the first year to take it. Those who in the past have simply swotted are now pushing themselves to the limit. No one knows exactly what the Baccalaureate consists of. The masters are all nervous, while the boys are absolutely terrified. Instead of a kind, friendly committee chosen from among the teachers at our lycée, who have known us since we were young children, we will go before a series of strict examining boards who will take three minutes to weigh us in the balance, and decide whether we are good enough for university or not.

  Fănică is horrified at the thought of the big exam. He hasn’t made any plans at all for the future.

  ‘Only to hold a diploma in my hand...’

  But we are still brave enough to laugh. We envy Furtuneanu and Bricterian, who are now students, one reading Law and the other Philosophy.

  ‘After the Baccalaureate I’ll have a party, and then it’s Law School here I come!’

  This is what Fănică says. He’s afraid to assume that things will turn out well. What if he fails? We remind him that his tendency to become highly emotional could be fatal. Fănică bangs his fist against the corner of the table, a look of terror on his face.

  ‘Stop playing the prophet of doom, it’ll bring bad luck!’

  Robert wants to be an actor at the National Theatre and a university lecturer in French Literature. We don’t waste the opportunity to make fun of him.

  ‘Just as long as you don’t muddle up the two roles, and give a lecture at the university as if you’re playing the juvenile lead.’

  Robert gives a superior smile. He says that his teachers at the Conservatoire predict a bright future for him.

  ‘And as for university, you all know my abilities...’

  ‘Oh yes, we know! We know!’ we all hurriedly reply in unison.

  ‘I won’t have any difficulty getting a chair in French language and literature...’

  We remember how Robert first started reading French, with two books that Dinu had given him; how he had borrowed my Balzac, how he became enamoured with Faguet’s criticism, how he learnt Musset off by heart, how he ‘understood’ Corneille after reading a monograph about him. Each of us had half-forgotten details to dust off. Like Robert in short trousers in a class photograph taken when we were in the Fourth Form. Our minds went back to when we were small, discovering books, lending them to each other, writing in our first Diaries, struggling to get our first, anonymous pieces published in literary reviews. The others remembered my passion for science, which was long spent. Each of us had his clutch of memories left over from a childhood and adolescence spent in a lycée and an attic.

  We talked away so happily. So why am I feeling so despondent now, so overwhelmed by sadness and despair?

  The others asked me how I was getting on with my novel. I lied, and told them that I was on the second part. But surely I know that I’ll never finish The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent, because my memories and observations will never make a novel? They asked me to read a few chapters. I gave them some fragments from this notebook. I told them that this impromptu gathering of ours – perhaps the last time we would get together before leaving school – would be the subject of a whole chapter.

  And then, when I began to speak, they all stopped interrupting and making comments. I don’t know why, but I was feeling very emotional. Forcing a smile, I told them that we would now go our separate ways, and that our friendship of the last eight years would simply come to a close. We would make new friends, some of them might be girls. And, who knows, maybe today would mark the end of a stage in all our lives.

  So a Baccalaureate party, like we’d been planning for years, just wouldn’t happen. A lot of us wouldn’t pass the Baccalaureate in the summer, and would have to retake it in the autumn. And even then, how many would get through the second attempt? But we would meet up again in five years time.

  ‘I think we’ll be far unhappier than we might imagine...’

  As I spoke these last, gentle words, my eyes ran along the shelves full of books. Why was I suddenly seized with premonitions of death?

  I didn’t even have the presence of mind to reproach myself for this melancholic outburst. Bricterian, Radu and Furtuneanu sat sadly on the edge of the bed.

  Nostalgically they looked round my little room.

  ‘How long have we been coming to this attic?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  Radu lit a cigarette, his eyes filling with tears. But he was obviously thinking about his dead mother. The others leafed through magazines. Marcu laughed, an affront to our sad thoughts. But I understood, and gave him a discreet little smile. Only Fănică was unaffected.

  ‘See, they’re crying! They’re all crying!’

  This annoyed us, so we decided to change the subject. By now it was getting dark. Through the open windows came the squealing of the trams out on the boulevards.

  None of us had the courage to leave. The thought of not seeing each other again left us confused and disconcerted.

  By the middle of May, however, we were drawn into the streets, to stroll under the chestnut trees in the cool of evening. And then on to the Cişmigiu Gardens and the main avenue, like we had in previous summers, before my friends and I went our different ways.

  I put out the lamp and we went down the wooden stairs without saying a word. We spent a while in the garden, with all its flowers. It was a long time since the eight of us had been together in my attic.Then we said goodnight, and everyone made their way home.

  So now I’m sitting here, all alone again. It’s the first time I’ve started to be frightened by the thought that this attic won’t always be mine. I look at it, study it, let my gaze rest on its every corner.

  I certainly know that sum
mer is here. I’m feeling so sad and tired, so depressed. Of course, it’s just a bout of melancholy. I’ll be happy when my schooldays are finally over.

  But this isn’t the time to be thinking about all that. I should be glad that I’ve found a new friend in Radu. Perhaps he won’t get bored talking to me, long into the night.

  But I shouldn’t be thinking about that, either. I should be concentrating on the Baccalaureate. I’m sure that Vanciu will fail me...

  Who knows when I’ll write in this notebook again?

  Summer Sorrows

  Here I am, alone again. Everyone left school, happy to have passed the Baccalaureate or hoping to do so in the autumn. I failed – as usual, – so now I’m waiting till I’ve got some money or pluck up the courage to leave. It’s hot, and I spend my time in other parts of the house, which remind me of my childhood and the games I used to play, and of my brothers, who now live far away.

  I find it almost impossible to read. But I’m not sad, and I’m not filled with bitter thoughts about the pitiful end to my school career. If I think back seriously, there were so many wasted years when my face was just as gaunt, and my glasses just as uncomfortable. But I passed through the final frontiers of adolescence a long time ago. So I know that whining and self-indulgent melancholy are utterly pointless.

  But the truth, the simple, unvarnished, unsentimental truth, is that I’m tired. I’m bored and oppressed by this finale that seems to be perversely prolonging its own death-throes. I’d like to know – whatever the risk – this very second, precisely what fate has in store for me. I’ll either go to university this year, or I’ll waste month after disillusioned month, waiting to take another exam.