Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  I think about her with pleasure, distracted by her memory and hoping that time will relieve me of its more painful edges.

  Saturday, 20 July

  Too hot for me to write. For sometime now I should have liked to note here at least a long conversation with Nae and then—in another order of things—a very complex dream of which I was quite aware during the night because I repeated it several times on waking up, but of which now, after a few days have passed, I can remember only a few vague remnants.

  A desolate moon, with absolutely nothing there. Three days in Constanta, which could have been restful, did me no good at all. I returned feeling ill, with a temperature of 41 degrees [106 F.]. I am still not back to normal. I have no wish for anything. Ashes and glue—that’s all.

  Unfortunately I am fully cured of love’s passions and torments.

  Sunday, 21 July

  I shall try to write down a dream just now, as I wake from sleep. . . . I am reading an article by Crevedia3—in Porunca Vremii,4 I think—which praises Dinu Brătianu5 to the skies.

  . . . I am at Dinu Brătianu’s house. I am holding a jug of water or something like that (I don’t think it was a jug of water). Feeling embarrassed, I put it down on the table. He gives me his hand and, when I tell him who I am, he says that he knows me and is extremely friendly.

  . . . I am in an adjoining room where there are a lot of people—a meeting, perhaps. Dinu Brătianu says that he had his picture taken earlier in the day. I tell him I have seen a good photograph of him in the window of Julieta. He is surprised: it is years since he has had his picture taken. But I tell him that I did see it.

  “That window,” I say, “is a fragment of topicality—topicality that lasts a few hours or less, but is nevertheless alive. Whenever you do something that causes a stir—a speech or a letter to Mr. Tătărescu—your photo appears in the window.”

  What I say seems to have a lot of verve, because everyone laughs and I myself am happy with the effect I have. Meanwhile, however, the bow tie I am wearing has somehow climbed onto my chin and now my mouth, so that I am no longer able to speak. Feeling embarrassed, I apologize to Dinu Brătianu and go into an adjoining room, where a friend—a kind of chauffeur or secretary of mine—arranges my bow tie.

  When I return, I find the room is silent. Everyone is listening to a report on student movements. The tone is very anti-Semitic. I feel awkward.

  At that point a wedding party for which we seem to have been waiting all this time returns from church. Puia Rebreanu enters wearing a lamé bridal dress. At that same moment Dinu Bràtianu (who has stepped out of the dream) is no longer sitting on his chair; Liviu Rebreanu6 is there instead. I make a sign that we should stand up, but Rebreanu makes a sign for the lecture to continue. Then the wedding guests rush in. Camil Petrescu7 holds out his hand to embrace me, but I have two big sweets in my mouth and am unable to reciprocate. He embraces Ionel Jianu8 and then Paul Moscovici. Meanwhile I have removed the sweets from my mouth and also embraced someone. I think it is Paul Moscovici.

  The procession keeps moving, but now it seems to be a baptism rather than a wedding―or both at the same time. Auntie Caroline enters with a baby in her arms and passes alongside me. She is followed by Uncle Avram. Apparently Baba and Frida have died that very day. They have been to the cemetery with the baby and all the wedding guests. They want to name the child after the old ones. At the cemetery a lot of funny things happened with an old woman from the family whom no one recognized; she wept loudly for some distant relatives who died dozens of years ago.

  That was roughly it. I think there were some more confused things toward the end. But I have lost quite a bit of the beginning of the dream. Further on, almost everything is there.

  Friday, 30 August

  Only a last-minute oversight before leaving (it will be four weeks tonight) made me forget this notebook at home. Had I had it with me in Ghilcoş, there would have been so many things to write. I probably would have recorded in it the stages of my detoxification—because a detoxification is what it has been. My natural aptitude for happiness is great indeed. I confirmed this in Ghilcoş, where, after the first days of lazing in the sun, I was cured of the whole business: my confused state following the unhappiness of July, the painful remnants of the affair with Leni (which, fortunately, I now think is well and truly over), and my apathy burdened with so much renunciation. I could observe a total return to health, both moral and physical. One indication of this is the ease with which I now fall asleep, without all those complex mental constructions that I used to enter night after night—before my departure for Ghilcoş—in order to find my way into slumber.

  I was decidedly happy there. Everything seemed right—easy and harmonious. How lucky I was to be reading Charles Morgan’s Fontaine, so appropriate to my own mood during this blessed August. If I had taken this notebook with me, I think I would have filled whole pages on such themes.

  How welcome and diverting was the episode with Margo, and how well concluded. It is a pity that I could not record its various stages— from the time she arrived at the hotel in the provocative company of that Herr Direktor Hellmann from Oradea, to the evening after he had left when I went to bed with her. Everything was so nice that I feel obliged to answer her letter, even though the story is over and done with.

  Let us draw a balance sheet. I have come back refreshed, or “re-created.” I am proud of myself when I look in the mirror: so young, so visibly healthy (perhaps too visibly). This afternoon I shall go to the photographer’s—so that that at least will remain, if nothing else can.

  Pensiunea Wagner—a wonderful establishment!

  Saturday, 31 August

  Had a long conversation yesterday evening with Mircea,9 Nina, Marietta,1 and Haig.2 I was very happy to see them again, and everything seemed in keeping with my optimistic frame of mind.

  On the other hand, my walk in town this morning disheartened me. It is still very hot: summer is not yet over. People are pale from the heat, tired, prickly, reluctant to work. I went to pay Montaureanu for my journals3 and felt depressed by everyone’s long yellow faces. And when I went to see Ocneanu,4 to tell him that I would soon be delivering the manuscript, I found him completely listless.

  How long will I manage to keep my present optimism among such bored, indifferent, dead-tired people?

  On Monday I go to the office; this evening to the journal.

  Saturday, 7 September

  Lunch at Capşa with Comarnescu and Soreanu,5who suggested that I do a weekly French bulletin for Excelsior.6 Maybe I’ll accept, but it would be a little sad to find myself on Soreanu’s payroll! Another opportunity to reflect, with resignation and no ill will, on my ineptitude in practical matters and the happy adroitness of others. I shall never get beyond a more or less bearable level of poverty: I shall never have a career, never have money . . . And, speaking quite frankly, without any reason to deceive myself, I think that I am indifferent to money. All I want from life is a little peace and quiet, a woman, some books, and a clean house.

  Comarnescu told me something which, if I were feeling less skeptical at the moment, would strike me as quite monstrous. He has made peace overtures to Credinţa!7 He has had lunch with Stancu! I should say that he is unspeakable. But I shall content myself with observing once more how naive I am. I fell out with the Credinţa people over that business; I refused to shake hands with Sandu Tudor. —All that to end up now with such a capitulation. When will I stop getting carried away in my relations with other people? To be disinterested and neutral, never indignant or approbatory: that is the best of attitudes. I am old enough to have learned that at least.

  Yesterday evening at the Continental, Sandu Tudor was at a table with Devechi and Onicescu.8 Two years ago he asked me to put in a word so that Nae Ionescu would bring him onto the journal. Nae laughed, but I think Devechi would have found something like that really bizarre. A cretinous journalist—that is how S.T. would have seemed to him.

  But what
counts is not whether people are stupid or clever, good or bad, honest or crooked. The only real factor is power—and that can be obtained through money, blackmail, social position, or whatever. Then every other criterion ceases to apply. But it was a pleasure for me to go over to their table and speak to Devechi and Onicescu without noticing Sandu Tudor. I too have my little acts of revenge; others obviously don’t care much for them, but they give me satisfaction.

  I must admit that, if I went into the Continental yesterday for no particular reason, it was only in the hope (perhaps not openly avowed) that I would meet Leni there.

  And I did meet her. . . . She was there with her sister Olga, Froda, and Solacolu.9 She is beautiful. I was pleased to see her, and she seemed glad too—but I am well aware that her suddenly flashing smile is only a tic, not an expression, and that it would have been just as nice, just as enveloping, for anyone else who had approached her table.

  Otherwise nothing has changed. She has the same things to do in town that she had in the summer—the same troubles with her dressmaker and hairdresser, the same shopping, the same haste and indifference, the same air of frivolity, the same visible lack of sensitivity.

  Nothing has changed, but now it will certainly be much easier for me to break things off. I think I have succeeded in eliminating all the painful aspects of this love, though some of its roots have remained. Watch out, kid!

  I saw Lilly one evening: we went to a cinema and then to the Corso (where absolutely all the stares directed at us had a kind of shocked and aggressive surprise). I was glad to see her again, and I fondly imagine that one day I will attain the same point of calm and dispassionate sympathy with Leni. I think Leni is less interesting outside a context of love. But in terms of love, let her make herself at home!

  [Wednesday,] 18 September

  I have seen a lot of people this week, but I was too lazy to write a page in my journal for each. Too tiring. I write here only when it gives me pleasure—though I know that the real pleasure is in rereading, and that I should therefore be a more diligent “journalist.”

  The evening before last, I had something more than a surprise with the painter Siegfried.1 I felt bored at the thought of our meeting, having stupidly arranged it in a careless moment because I wanted to be friendly.

  When we met, he was with “Jojo” Orleanu—and at first I tried to keep him with us. “An evening with two homosexuals,” I said to myself. “It’ll be entertaining; I’ll be able to observe all kinds of gestures and play-acting.”

  How hastily I judge things! Orleanu left soon afterward and Siegfried proved to be an excellent conversation partner, an intelligent, sensitive, and modest young man. He talked about Paris, and he had an exact manner of speech filled with details that evoked the city much better than nostalgic outpourings usually do.

  He spoke about his painting and his studies with André Lhote, explained the technique of etching—all very modest and simple, but clear and precise, with a host of accurate observations. He was quite simply instructive.

  I do not know how exceptional a person he is. But everything he said to me was tasteful and measured. He is working on the scenery for a play by Géraldy at the Bulandra, and he spoke finely about his future projects. A pleasant evening.

  Yesterday evening I repeated the experience with another stranger, a student of Nae’s called Mircea Niculescu. Not so interesting, of course, but undoubtedly clever—and, most important of all, a new face, someone from outside my usual circle, another world, other stories, other books.

  We spoke “politics”—which was not terribly exciting—but he said useful and heartening things about the chances that Hitlerism might collapse. He is a radical, and that is such a rare species among Romanians.

  Finally a day with women.

  First a visit to Dorina Blank,2 who had suddenly and insistently invited me round on such a childish pretext (she wanted me to read and explain a novel she did not understand) that it was obvious she was after something else. She has taken a fancy to me, and she does not try at all to disguise this incipient béguin. Marietta Rareş3 was also there, and Ţoţa Soiu4 later turned up unexpectedly, but she did not feel inhibited in front of them. “Oh, Dorina, I don’t understand you at all,” said Marietta, a little embarrassed.

  Naturally I shall see her again. (An amusing detail: she, Dorina, was the one who, on the eve of my departure for Ghilcoş this summer, never stopped pestering me on the telephone. For a whim, it has lasted rather a long time. Another, equally amusing, detail. Dorina insisted that Carol Grünberg5 invite both me and her round to a lunch. The lunch was last Sunday, but Carol did not invite me, even though we had been together on Saturday evening at the premiere at the National. Jealous?)

  Finally, on leaving Dorina’s, a visit to Leni. The first since our parting in June.

  I am content with myself. Apart from a few little gestures of irritation, I did not make a wrong step. She complained that she didn’t recognize me, that I had grown cold, etc. (without pressing the point, however, because she is basically indifferent), and I objected with as much good faith as I could affect. Anyway, it was enough for her.

  She is still the same. She would like me to love her—not me in particular, but tens of thousands of men, including me. She spent nearly twenty minutes on the phone with a guy who had called to speak with her sister, Olga, but who meanwhile enjoyed “teasing” her a little.

  Then she apologized to me, but I tersely said there was no need.

  “Don’t apologize, Leni dear. I’m happy that you thought me a good enough friend to do something you would certainly never have done with a stranger.”

  She took the point, but I should not be so naive as to think that she regretted anything. Her capacity to forget is formidable.

  No real catastrophe, then. It is still possible to end everything, without suffering. I still have moments of stupid melancholy, when I find any number of excuses for her and make all kinds of plans. I really must stop doing this.

  It would be wise not to call her for a fortnight or so. At the moment that doesn’t seem too difficult. What if I were to try it out? But I don’t know how to make that kind of pledge, nor do I have the courage to do so.

  I end the day now, at ten o’clock, by listening to a musical broadcast from Munich. A Bach fantasia and a Schumann symphony. This is a fine epilogue to a few trifles of which, if I were serious, I should perhaps feel a little ashamed.

  Saturday, 26 October

  The radio is tuned to Juan-les-Pins, which is coming over loud and clear this evening. I have listened to a fragment from Ravel’s Ma mère l'Oye and to Debussy’s Ménestrels. Now there are some romances.

  If I were to record here everything I have listened to recently, it would come to a very long list. At first I thought it a wild idea of Ghe-orghe’s6 that I should write music reviews for L’Indépendence Roumaine. I accepted for the money, with strict guarantees of anonymity. But I am used to it now, after my third contribution, and my weekly concert evening gives me great pleasure.

  I have heard a lot of beautiful pieces: a wonderful piano concerto (the third) by Prokofiev, Rhapsodie Espagnole by Ravel, a suite for string orchestra by Corelli-Pineli, Beethoven’s Third Symphony (conducted by Molinari), Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, Jacques Ibert’s Escales, Respighi’s Fountains and Fines of Rome.

  I don’t know why it is so long since I have written here. Disgust at dwelling so much on myself. . . . But this evening I am pleased that I stayed home and read a book (Esquisse d'un traité du roman, by Léon Bopp); I shall correct the proofs of Oraşul cu salcîmi.7 I have allowed myself too many wasted nights recently.

  Tonight, after the opening of the opera season, we went to Zissu. Maryse was wearing a delightful white dress (like a film actress), Gheorghe in evening dress, Marietta Sadova too, and myself in a tuxedo. Few people, excellent atmosphere, whisky, cocktails, cigarettes. We danced a lot. Maryse was movingly delicate and sensitive, saying many things that disarmed me with th
eir sincerity and forthrightness. “You don’t know how much I love you.” And I am stupid enough to be flattered by that.

  Yesterday morning, at Alcalay,8 a guy suddenly came up to me with outstretched hand, smiling heartily and eager to talk.

  “Are you angry with me?”

  “Angry?” I held out my hand without knowing who he was. Ocneanu then introduced us.

  “Mr. Niculae Rosu.”9

  I was taken aback by the thoughtlessness of it all. “I don’t bear grudges,” he said to me several times.

  I greatly enjoyed using a formal style of address with him all the time.

  “You see, my dear sir, I am not angry. But one thing I must say: your bad faith is monumental.”

  He grew pale and spluttered something. Ocneanu wrung his hands and tried to make peace between us—but I kept calm, continuing to speak with exaggerated politeness. It was the only way I could hide my repulsion.

  The man was a walking platitude. He spoke to me about the Jews— about how they are intelligent and cultured, how they are this, that, and the other. He holds Jews in high regard. He holds me in high regard. He reads what I write, always has. My culture, my style, my talent, etc., etc.