Not only that, I’m exhausted by the secret struggle that I wage without hope of a swift victory. When will it be over? Will there still be glints of it in my eye on the day of judgement? And who will judge me?
I have a feeling that this summer – spent tragically suffocating in rooms beneath a blazing hot roof – will be the last. How bizarre that sounds... for I’m not thinking about death. I know that I have to live for a long time, because I’m filled with so much hatred. But I think my spiritual tribulations are coming to an end, and that I will soon acquire a different viewpoint, which will allow me to see the world in new ways.
From now on I won’t be inventing ‘memories’ for myself. I’ll stop wearing my black tunic and won’t be tormented by all those silly little temptations. I’ve deserted my friends, and they’ve deserted me. Whenever we meet, we laugh, we flatter each other and wonder about the future, the same as always. But I’m well aware that we only do this because it’s all we can do. And that whatever our inner lives once had in common no longer exists.
This tears my soul asunder, just like it does to my friends. I can feel them going, one by one, and my soul becomes more and more barren, more devoid of love for my fellow human beings.
There are so many faces that I’ll never see again, so many habits that I’ll lose, only to acquire new ones.
And even this adolescence that I’ve lived through, wallowed in, and rebelled against, will now be consigned to the past so I can insinuate my way into côteries of conceited young men with long hair. I’m tempted to feel sad about it. So many years, so much pain, so many hopes.
I don’t know what lies in store for me on the other side... Will I make new friends? Will I have to change again, change so profoundly that I’ll look into the mirror and not recognize myself?
I know nothing at all, and my heart is filled with fear. I’m afraid I’ll have to stop being myself. I’m afraid of myself, of life. And yet I go on suffering as I wait to find out, wait to discard the ragged clothes of this world, clothes that I have long outgrown, and to which I am still attached by the most squalid of chains.
It’s hotter than ever now, and I’m still just as alone. I only go out at night and avoid other people, wander the boulevards and the Cişmigiu Gardens, telling myself: ‘How beautiful life is!’ And then I wonder, disconsolately, if I have a reason to live. And I don’t know.
What am I missing? What am I missing?
I re-read my notebooks with all my memories. All that seems so far away now... my friends, my ‘characters’, have changed so much. As for me, I’m a stranger. I pretended to be happy, and even hid from myself. But how can I be sure that what I’m writing now is actually the truth?
Summer .. I’m left alone to finish the struggle, while the great host of my enemies rises up from within me. I don’t know what I’m fighting against, but I feel the pain of combat and the red-hot brand that cleaves me in two. Why did I want to be alone? Why is there no one by my side? No one, no one... on hearing these words, the soul falls silent.
Once again I think about these eighteen years that I’ve wasted. My legs carry me blindly into the night, where my eyes see only ghosts. The hours go by, and still I don’t know if I’ve answered all the questions that my soul is asking. And then I come home again, where I wander from room to room, my mind sinks deeper and deeper, and the years are scattered before me and I stare at them.
I can’t do any school work. And I wonder how I’ll ever get in to university. I wish it would rain, keep on raining day after day. I want for so little now.
The day of judgement will be truly painful. But I have to overcome this predicament as well. One morning, this silent, exhausting, tyrannical despair will disappear; and then I’ll forget these summer nights with their scorching heat and sadness. I’ll find I’m a different person with a clean, fresh soul, and my eyes will embrace the sun, fill themselves with it like a pitcher. And I’ll settle my account with adolescence. My soul will be filled with so much bitterness, so many wounds will be reopened... I’ll remember the nights that began for me in the Cişmigiu Gardens, envying other people their happiness and looking down at my sad, empty footsteps as I wandered the pathways. And all those longings that I succumb to even now, almost without putting up a fight. And the pain I’ve suffered at twilight, because I’ve felt so alone. And all these lines in my notebook, which is nearly full. Who will be the victor?
My adolescent jottings are coming to an end. When will I dare start my novel? Notebook after notebook has been finished, each one dated with a different month or year. Where are all these shadows now? Where are my desires, my fears, where are all my tears?
I have the feeling that everything I’ve believed in so far has gone up in smoke; that everything I’ve done is crumbling to dust; that my whole life has been a dream. Never before have I felt so estranged from myself.
I’m tired and depressed, all alone in this house weighed down with memories. Why am I so overwhelmed by memories? Why does the summer night surround me with the plaintive cry of crickets and the waning of passions? Has my strength abandoned me? Has my soul truly collapsed? Does it have to change? Do I have to change? Do I have to go out into the street, bend down and pick up help and love wherever I find them? Do I have to earn friends?
Everything that I have now come to understand fills me with pain to the deepest depths of my being. Am I so feeble that a single summer night can reduce me to such a state of collapse?
I’d love to know what I’ll be feeling and thinking when next summer comes... And if my soul will finally allow me to cry.
Buffeted by the Wind
But is this really all there is to the world?
For the past few days I’ve been tormented by questions of a different kind. How can I explain? It’s as if something has been missing from my life for years, something profound, vast, definite and essential – something I could meld with. I could have had a friend by now. But I’m alone, seared by doubts that tear my soul asunder and dissipate my desires.
The days when I found solace in chemistry and insects are long gone. I don’t think about them anymore, they’re of no interest to me. Gone, too, are the days of Felix Le Dantec and Haeckel, which would end with me sitting innocently staring at my fish bowl full of newts, as are all those nights spent poring over the Bibliotheque de Philosophie Scientifique, with its red binding. Almost without me noticing, the foundations of my soul have been shifting. Things that I once valued, I now view with indifference. All those weeks during the autumn and winter that I thought were dull and pointless, and which I spent resignedly reading things that seemed irrelevant, have sown new ‘seeds’ in me. How can I describe them, if not as ‘seeds?’ I awoke enriched, brimming over, yet still tormented by the feeling that there was something missing, something I knew nothing about. Oh! It’s so hard to write about things that I haven’t learnt from books; I can’t find the words, I don’t know where to start...
But the end result of all those weeks is plain to see. I feel different; decidedly different. And yet it still distresses me that my sense of achievement, renewal and having surpassed myself is accompanied by one of absence, emptiness. I understand so little about the rays of light and dark that streak my soul. All I know is that during these years of crisis, they’ve become more intense. I know they don’t affect those adolescents who glide to the other side without encountering a single obstacle or moment of despair. And I assume that all this confusion will soon disappear, that the mist that hangs over my soul will lift; only then will I understand why all these changes were necessary.
That’s why The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent will never be written. How could I describe in words the bizarre movements of my soul? And even if I were to succeed, would my notebooks actually constitute a ‘novel’? Could the five hundred pages that I’ve written provide enough material for even a few chapters? I’ve been gradually taking less and less notes a
bout other people. I’ve tried to understand myself in depth, but haven’t succeeded. Every time I look through my Diary, I’m horrified. I’m still a long, long way from a novel.
But as I write these words, I ask myself: would someone else be capable of producing a novel like mine, one that is a complete and accurate reflection of my adolescence, of our adolescence? More than anything I wanted to write a book that would give a full account of the inner life that I’ve lived on the fringe of school, of adolescence, an adolescence that I believed I was about to leave behind. I’ll never succeed.
But who is this confession addressed to, all these things that I’ve known for so long? I’ve decided to stop writing in my Diary, because – without my ‘novel’ – there’s no point. Every now and then, although increasingly rarely, when I’m feeling particularly sad or in the depths of despair, I open it, read a few pages, and occasionally add to it. I no longer collect material for it, and don’t regard myself as a budding novelist, like I did last year. If someone were to read it, they wouldn’t understand it. I haven’t attempted to trace – and in any case, it would only be possible to do that in my imagination – the constantly changing forms of my soul. Any reader would see the hero as an endless contradiction.
I wonder how I got to this point: my major question, a novel about adolescence. It’s a problem that can only be solved by giving up completely. Since I’m unable to even recognize myself on many pages of the notebook, and occasionally appear ridiculous and conceited, I asked myself how I managed to create a character for my novel who is so embarrassing and contradictory. I also wondered that if I were to make some alterations to the character in my Diary, I would still be realistic. And if my decision to not imitate reality is literary or not. I told myself: does the adolescent in the novel have to be a pupil at the Lycée Spiru Haret in 1924? Of course not. Nonetheless, I still wanted my novel to be based on real life, a personal confession, a settling of accounts.
I couldn’t explain why I decided to write this kind of book about adolescence. Yet I can understand why I decided not to write any more when I realized how ridiculous the hero was. I was afraid that readers wouldn’t see why I needed to ridicule adolescence, while still insisting on the need for heroism, nostalgia and mediocrity.
*
But I began by noting my spiritual state, which is as new as it is intense: one of utter discontent. This is no passing mood, like when books lose their flavour, but sadness hovering on the brink of despair. I don’t recognize my soul as it is now from any of the sad ‘chapters’ in my Diary. I’m calm and relaxed. Yet I sense the inadequacy of my inner life, and feel constrained by horizons that I used to regard as wide and expansive. That’s all it is; and yet it’s a lot. I could go on saying it forever: is that all it is? Is that all it is?
I don’t know why I’m so annoyed about my scientific work. I’m sure it was always done in a spirit of spontaneity, unhampered by rules; that’s why I can’t complain about the lack of any major results. Besides, I know so little now about fundamental things. Every time I want to find out the real causes, I feel so overwhelmed, dissatisfied, completely at sea. I’m convinced that I’m going down a dead end. The very thought of it fills me with frustrated rage, because I don’t understand where this conviction of mine comes from.
One evening, after a period of intense self-scrutiny, I told myself that I should set aside these scientific questions until I was at university, and to content myself with history for now. But like everything else we read that doesn’t shake us to the core, history is just a form of opium. Books force us to waste our time intelligently. Yet this intelligent waste of time is no less absurd than any other, because it leaves us exhausted and alienated from ourselves.
I now sense that science, history and philosophy are all pointless. I’m filled with a burning desire for a pure, single truth, the certainty of a faith, an infallible ‘guide.’ I don’t know why, but I envy adolescents who are Roman Catholics.
And yet any Church is an anathema to me. Any dogma that I can’t understand or explain infuriates me. After all the efforts made by science, it seems ridiculous to accept biblical nonsense and the horrors of Catholicism. But what if all these things are not the Church, in the same way I’m convinced they’re not Religion?
I have an amateur interest in mysticism. I’ve read about the lives of Saints in the same way I’ve read other people’s memoirs: out of curiosity. I’ve always been tirelessly curious, but if I were to become a monk, I’d still have a library of naturalist and erotic books. But I don’t understand mysticism, although I came to the conclusion long ago that it doesn’t have to be understood. I can’t really share the spiritual life of the Saints, because I’m afraid of being converted by auto-suggestion, out of a desire to believe, and not from genuine evidence.
I’m not even sure if what I lack is faith. Every time I think of the word faith, I feel annoyed, even offended. I simply can’t accept faith in God, in a Saviour, in Saints, or in a Church. In the past I was content with my open-minded attitude. But now it makes me uneasy; what if faith means something else? What if I haven’t yet stumbled across the real significance of faith, and regard it as sinister superstition rather than something sublime that I’m too far away from to see?
But I’m straying from the path that I wanted to follow in this notebook. Nothing I’ve just said about faith is very clear or helpful... Perhaps I would express myself better if I pounded my fists against my forehead, closed my eyes and swore not to get up until I found an answer worth considering. But there’s no point, at least for the moment. I’m anxious about this new vision that’s come to me, I’ve no idea from whom or how long it’s been happening, and almost no idea what caused it.
Today I was seized with a sudden and painful sense of dissatisfaction with myself and my work. When I asked myself: ‘Is this life? Is this all life is?’ I actually meant: ‘So this is all I’ve seen of life?’ I no longer see anything in the books and aspirations that have filled me with enthusiasm in the past. It seems as if I lack an awareness of what the point of these books and aspirations really is. But why should I call them mine? Don’t they stem from the fundamental needs of my soul? Aren’t they actually my authentic soul, the soul I’ve always had?
Perhaps I’ve become estranged from my preoccupations. Perhaps I’ve had too many intensely personal experiences that have led me away from scientific books. But that’s not a good enough explanation. I still have as much admiration for scientific books as before. Yet I ought to add something I wouldn’t have said earlier: are these the kind of books that will fire my imagination, satisfy me and fill the rest of my life?
I’ve surpassed myself; that’s for certain. I’ve come out of myself in order to move forward. With every book I’ve read, with every sorrow I’ve suppressed, I’ve taken a step in that direction. So why is the fact of surpassing myself so obvious today, and why, instead of being satisfied, am I saddened by it, overwhelmed by this feeling of absence? What am I missing? My inner life as I’ve experienced it so far, my visions, my aims, my values – why have they caved in all at once, without any reason, without a crisis of some kind?
Perhaps I’ve been building on sand, perhaps the material I’ve gathered is of no use. But are science, philosophy, and history of no use? I can’t believe how far away they all seem now. So why the sudden collapse of the last few days, which has only just come to an end?
However hard I try, it won’t make things any clearer. Despite all my theories and explanations, one fact remains: I am being buffeted by the wind.
I sense that I’m going to live through more than the simple experiences that you have while reading a book, or those undergone by a character in a book. I sense that I will offer up my entire inner life. But to whom? I can’t imagine it will be the Church. I’m not a mystic, nor am I a fiendish, cynical, desperate atheist. So how can I come to Jesus?
This is what I feel: I’ve been take
n out of myself and hurled against a lot of sharp corners, and then put back in my soul, and then taken out again. That’s all I know, and I don’t understand anything at all.
The Baccalaureate
A slight attack of nerves during the retake. Marcu and I both give quick, detailed answers. After three years, Vanciu has managed to teach us maths. In the written exam we got all the questions right. We went home without any great excitement and now wait for the results.
Then came the anxious days that led up to the Baccalaureate. Many of those who retook it in the summer had failed, although only because of a few stupid questions. This didn’t frighten me enough to make me spend the whole summer re-reading all the books from my last four years at school.
I tried to work out exactly what I needed to know, and what I knew already. I made a list of all the subjects, but the list never seemed never-ending, I didn’t have much time, and my willpower began to waver. I told myself that the Baccalaureate was a test of general education, not the sort of details that anyone could memorize from books. I kept forgetting what my classmates – who had taken it in the summer – had told me about it. Marcu came over to my house so we could revise in the attic. I started with physics, while he did geography. But within an hour we were arguing about biology and literature. That’s what always happens. So I revised physics by myself, and he did geography by himself. Then we met up again in the evening, and wandered off into passionate and cynical discussions, making plans for the work we would do at university, he in Medicine, me in Greek.
The results of the retake, registration for the Baccalaureate, which included a high fee, and the nerve-wracking wait for the exam itself, all these came and went.
Then it was autumn, and we were all seduced by the wistfulness of Bucharest, a tormented and melancholy city beneath a coverlet of dead leaves. We were humbled by the bright, cloudless mornings, by parks reinvigorated by the rain, by the narrow brown alleyways with their cold paving stones and white houses.
Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent Page 17
