Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  Made a long speech yesterday at the Court of Justice—more than an hour and a half. I had a lot of difficulties to resolve, in attitude, tone, and so on. I had to prosecute the case, yet at the same time I didn’t want to push too hard. In that respect at least I think I succeeded. I felt that others were listening to me, and for an hour and a half their attention never seemed to waver. But maybe I am wrong. Paul Moscovici, who heard part of the speech, told me this morning that he hadn’t been satisfied with it. He said that the “ironic amenity” of my speech had not been the right tone for that court. Probably he is right. He also said that the judges had not listened very closely. That’s more serious, if it’s true.

  Still, I’m glad that he gave me his opinion. It makes me watch myself more closely and stops me from feeling too pleased with my “talents”—though I don’t think I’ve ever got carried away with too much self-admiration.

  Yesterday I was at the Military Court, where some Iron Guardists are on trial for kidnapping and torturing the liberal student Aurelian Rădulescu in the Guard’s headquarters. Nae Ionescu made a witness statement. I copy from the newspaper what he had to say: “Professor Nae Ionescu, replying to a question from Counsel Vasiliu-Cluj, set forth a theory of constituted organisms, whose particular sensibility means that they have a right to respond to an action whose consequences affect that organization.

  “[. . .] in reply the witness pointed to the fact that, in Western student centers, at Oxford and Cambridge, corrective beatings are commonly applied in student associations.

  “[. . .] in reply the witness tried to justify beatings from an educational point of view, saying that he himself had often received one and that it had proved beneficial.”

  On Thursday evening, a Hermann Scherchen concert at the Philharmonic: Beethoven’s Symphony No. i, Mozart’s Serenata nottuma (a delightful piece, but how much I prefer the Kleine nachtmusik!), and Mahler’s fifth symphony—a splendid, unexpectedly beautiful work, despite my fear that it would be pretentious, grandiloquent, and absurd.

  Sunday, 4 April

  Exhausting days in court, not so much because of the physical effort as because of the nervous tension.

  Bogza’s arrest has really shaken me.2 It seemed to me an act of madness, which would pass as soon as things were explained. I was sure that he’d be released after a night with the police. Chasing newspaper editors, making phone calls, driving around by car—it all depressed me. Again I felt how deplorable was my alarmist temperament.

  A conversation with the examining judge (Cornel Stănescu from Office No. VII, a smug flunky type affecting moral outrage) left me groping for words. I tried to convince him and read some of Bogza’s less scandalous poems—but none of it had any effect. The man was slavishly obeying orders, or else he just has the cruelty of an imbecile. Maybe I made a fool of myself talking to him so heatedly. In any case, he was laughing away.

  The next day the arrest warrant was upheld. I realize that I spoke with too much obvious feeling. An attorney should not appear so involved in a case. But will I ever be able to do anything—anything at all—without some passion?

  Besides, I don’t need to blame myself. It was a lost cause anyway: if the warrant was upheld, it could only have been because someone else ordered it. For the other counsels, V V. Stanciu and especially I. Gr. Perieţeanu, showed much greater detachment in presenting the case— and we still lost. To lose in such a trial (where legal justice, not to mention the other kind, cries out to heaven) is enough to make you forever disgusted with the Bar. Personally, though, I didn’t need anything else to make me feel disgusted.

  It was not so much the confirmation of arrest as the judges’ attitude that aroused my indignation. All the time Puiu Istrati had a mockingly skeptical smile on his face, looking as absent as someone propping up a bar in a café. I felt that, whatever was said, the verdict had been fixed in advance—fixed by his position on the bench, his lack of sensitivity, his force of habit, his indifference. What power in the world can jolt the shriveled conscience of a judge with the mind of a bureaucrat? And to think that Bogza’s liberty is in the hands of such people! They are the state, the constitutional authorities, justice, morality, truth. . . .

  Poor Bogza! He is certainly not aware of anything that is happening—he who is so naive, so childlike, so harebrained!

  I used to think that there could be no disagreement on such questions among people of the same background as mine; that, once a threshold of sensitivity was reached, certain things were accepted as a matter of course. Well, how astounded I was at lunch today to realize that Mircea Eliade sides with Puiu Istrati rather than Bogza!

  First of all (Mircea says), Bogza is not a writer. He’s not even a member of the Writers’ Association—and he’s more of a journalist than a writer. Second, his poetry is pornographic and pathological.

  “Why should I be up in arms over Bogza’s arrest?” he shouted. “They’ve arrested him? So what? He’ll spend a month in jail and that’ll be the end of it. What’s really serious is that those youngsters are being martyred with ten years’ imprisonment. . . .”

  “Which youngsters, Mircea?”

  “The nationalist youngsters. Yes, they’re being made martyrs of. And for what? Because they beat Gogu Rădulescu’s arse a couple of dozen times? In Oxford and Cambridge, where students have the sensibility of a constituted organism . . .”

  I couldn’t take the rest: not only because it seemed stupid to hear him repeating Nae word for word, but because I was scared at the way his mind was succumbing to platitude.

  I stopped him.

  “Mircea, old man, I think we should change the subject. It’s Sunday. I haven’t seen you for four weeks. Let’s talk about something else—otherwise I feel we won’t reach the end of our lunch. That would be a pity.”

  And we did change the subject.

  But is friendship possible under such circumstances?

  This morning at the Ateneu there was a Bustabo concert, an American girl of sixteen in a white dress with a big behind—the Lola Bobescu type. Tartini’s Concerto in D Minor, Beethoven’s C minor sonata, Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, Szymanowski’s Nocturne and Tarantella.

  Yesterday evening, from Lyons P.T.T., a Mozart bassoon concerto.

  On Friday evening, a Fenerman recital: Locatelli sonata, Beethoven sonata, Fauré’s Après un rêve, Albéniz’s Tango, a Frescobaldi sonata.

  Thursday evening, Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, conducted by Perlea.

  This last week, of course, I haven’t given attention to anything literary. But I did have the idea of a little essay that I may write sometime in the future: “On the Mediocrity of the Theatre.”

  A play by Denys Amiel (Ma liberté) and various thoughts about my own play have made me see once again how impoverished, how conventional, how schematic, how facile and mediocre the theatre is as a genre—at least the “psychological” drama in three acts.

  Bucharest. Monday, 18 October 1937

  On my way home today, my heart beat fast at the thought—doubtless absurd, but which I may never shake off—that I may find a package from Paris with the missing manuscripts.3

  I cannot stamp out the childish wish that this bad dream will end. I cannot convince myself that I really have lost the red folder forever, with its hi pages. Everything is still so vivid, so present within me. . . . I can’t let it go. I can’t believe it. Yesterday I opened the drawers that I had locked on my departure, and it occurred to me that in one of them I would come across the red folder and the yellow notebook. Maybe it really wouldn’t have surprised me to find them there. And now, as I write, I feel that I have them somewhere in my room, among the books on the shelves or the papers on my table—and that I need only look to have them in my hand.

  Each time I think of that accursed moment when I first noticed the suitcase was missing, I have the same feeling of gloom, the same refusal to believe it. It seems absurd, ridiculous, farcical—and I well understand why I laughed that night in the
face of disaster. I’d laugh again now.

  I compare my present situation with that of two months ago, and I can only rue the collapse. I have lost so much—I who had so little to lose.

  A bungled trip, a lost novel, a play withdrawn from rehearsal, probably for good. I was facing an autumn of riches, a winter of hard work. I was looking forward with curiosity to so much that seemed certain to happen—and now I no longer look forward to anything. I’m left with Roman’s office, the articles for Independent^ a revulsion against being awake and conscious, a terrible desire to drink, sleep, and forget. I feel at the end of my tether. No one in the world can do anything for me. I have so few deep reasons to live that a happening such as this (which for someone else, in a different situation, would be painful but not disastrous) becomes a reason to think of death.

  And today is my thirtieth birthday.

  Wednesday, 20 [October]

  On Saturday evening I went out with Leni and Froda, first to the Carul cu Bere then to the Melody. I drank a lot, on purpose. (I’d like to drink all the time, so as to forget. . .)

  At the Melody, while the three of us talked about this and that, I was “feeling up” Leni beneath the table; she not only “let it be done” but discreedy helped me along. I spent the whole evening with my hand between her thighs. I watched her, but nothing gave her away. She was talkative, cheerful, attentive, pleasant, and self-assured. And her husband was sitting next to her. And she looked him in the eyes. And that is the woman I loved like a dog for two years.

  I too finally know Leni the petite putain charmante,4 the one everyone but I has known—of course.

  In all likelihood my play will not be performed. There are anti-Semitic pressures that the theatre has no reason to resist. The national conscience does not allow a play by Mihail Sebastian to appear on stage in Bucharest. Well, that’s all right: there are enough plays by Fodor László, Pius Fekete, or Franz Molnár.

  Sân-Giorgiu literally said to Camil: “I have five thousand lancers at my command, and I’ll never accept for one moment the staging of Sebastian’s play. I’ve informed Sică of my decision.”

  For the moment I’m not fully aware of the factors that led to the removal of my play from the repertoire. I don’t think that Sân-Giorgiu’s threats are sufficient explanation, nor are Iorga’s articles in the press. There must be a whole set of machinations. But I don’t have the patience or the tenacity to clarify matters. I’ll let them take their divinely appointed course. I give up.

  On Sunday evening I went to the Comoedia to see the Caragiale play.

  Conabie, much less eager to please than he was this summer, addressed me in the second-person singular.5 Axente, the typist, asked me with false concern:

  “But isn’t your play still due to be performed?”

  No, it isn’t. If it had been, Conabie wouldn’t have spoken to me in that familiar way, and Axente wouldn’t have been so offhand. Pathetic trifles at which I laugh, but I can’t help noticing them.

  Zaharia Stancu offered me (through Camil, because we don’t speak to each other) an engagement at Lumea românească. I turned it down, of course. But how sad when something like that becomes possible or plausible, in any event not absurd: that I should be in the employ of Zaharia Stancu!

  Camil told me of a conversation he had with Toma Vlădescu. Then he started probing:

  “But what’s all this with you and Toma Vlădescu?”

  I had to remind him that in 1931, when I was on good terms with T.V., he (Camil) got me involved in his dispute with V.—without asking or consulting me.

  I don’t have any regrets, of course. But isn’t it rich that today I am still “at daggers drawn” with Toma Vlădescu, whereas Camil has lunch with him and asks me in an angelic voice: “What’s all this . . .”?

  What childish aspects I must still have if I retain such trifles and even record them here?

  Saturday, 23 [October]

  Nevertheless, I can’t just sit around forevermore lamenting what happened and what has become of me. There is something stupid in it all, but I have to swallow it and move on. My inclination to do nothing is too strong, and I could encourage it further with another shrug of the shoulders.

  So let’s draw a circle round the disaster and see what can be done from now on. In the first place, I have to accept that the manuscript is lost for good and stop expecting that it will turn up. (Yesterday evening at the Foundation, as I opened the door, I caught sight of a package on Cioculescu’s desk and felt an absurd shudder of hope that it was my papers, my books.)

  Is it possible for me to rewrite the manuscript? I sometimes think so when I consider its broad outlines, for I remember the succession of events in it with sufficient clarity. The difficulties begin as soon as I think about the details: I’ll never be able to reconstruct those. I wasted whole hours for one word, one shade of meaning, one description of a gesture. I certainly won’t recover anything if I try to remember sentence by sentence. On the other hand, if I write at all freely—without remaining faithful to the first version—I’ll always suffer from the thought that it is well below my previous standard, and I won’t be able to achieve anything this time.

  Also, if I was so pleased with the five chapters I wrote before, it was because I saw them growing and was myself surprised at each new element. Isn’t it too depressing to write something that no longer holds any secrets for you?

  Anyway, I’ll try nevertheless. I’m determined not to go out in the evening any more, not to waste any more nights. This year I’ll stop being a “first-nighter.” And were it not for the three thousand lei from Independenţa, I’d give up going to concerts.

  I’d like to do work that is a little more dull and mechanical. I think I’d feel good in the army.

  Monday, 25 [October]

  On my way home tonight I felt an irresistible need to remember my novel. Thinking that I could reconstitute there and then at least the fifth chapter, I sat at my desk and wrote until three o’clock. Some passages I can recall quite easily, others have disappeared without a trace. There are gaps that I find quite disconcerting. I can see the missing pages well enough, I know where each bit, each sentence fitted on the page (top, bottom, middle), and I seem to have retained the rhythm of the sentences: I hear them, I have the measure of them, I can feel them breathing. And yet I am unable to write them down. With every sentence that I recall only in a mutilated form, I feel all that I am sacrificing, all that I have lost.

  What am I to do? It seems out of the question to work through it methodically from beginning to end. For the time being, I’ll try to save what can still be saved: that is, the passages still present in my mind, the ones I can still find alive and unspoiled. Then I’ll see if anything can be done with all the sheets that have the value of a mere outline.

  I won’t promise myself anything. It’s an attempt, not a hope as well.

  Thursday, 28 [October]

  I have just finished rewriting Chapter Five. It had thirty-two pages in the lost version; now it has only twenty-four. As I haven’t left out any of the action, the eight-page difference can be explained only by my sacrificing details that I could not and will not be able to recall.

  I feel as if I’ve pulled some half-burnt sheets of paper from a fire. It is shaming and embarrassing to read them again. Everything seems dry, inexpressive, and hurried. I’ll put these twenty-four pages aside. They’ll serve as a rough outline if I one day decide—and have the time—to go on writing this ill-starred book.

  Tomorrow I’ll try with the same haste, the same resignation, the same lack of illusions, the same indifference, to reconstitute the rest of the chapters—in the order in which they come.

  I’ve forbidden myself to make any plans or promises until I’ve completed this first task.

  Sunday, 31 [October]

  Yesterday evening at the Ateneu, while Enescu was preparing to play again La fontaine d'aretuse (which he played admirably and had been asked by the audience to repeat), Mrs. Ciomac
leaned across to me and asked:

  “Would you be capable of repeating something you had put all your soul into the first time?”

  I was on the point of saying a categorical “No!” when I remembered that for several days I had been trying without success to do precisely that—dear, oh dear!

  Monday, 1 November

  Sometimes I think it is working nevertheless—that the book will be saved in the end. Some passages I have recalled almost intact; others I am writing again, perhaps no worse than the first time. In general, the pages I manage to rewrite without great loss are the neutral ones that I did not like in the old version either. (Oh dear, how resigned I am! I’m beginning to speak of an old version!)

  But my despair comes back whenever I approach something that I achieved with great difficulty, and which was so much to my liking before. Anne’s entrance into the bar, the atmosphere of the bar, the decor, the moments of waiting—no, I’ll never relive them with the emotion, the surprise, the melancholy that I felt the first time up there on Mount Schuller.6 Some sentences took me whole hours before. Now I feel they are lost, drowned. And again I feel like giving it all up and forgetting about it.

  Monday, 8 [November]

  I’ve finished it all. Of the eighty-six pages I had to reconstitute (because twenty-five made up the fragment published in R.F.R. and were therefore saved intact), I have lost twenty-eight for good.

  The material loss is considerable for a short novel (which is what my book is meant to be), and quite dreadful if I consider not only the number of pages but also their content. The reconstituted pages are insipid, with neither color nor tone. I have not recovered anything of what seemed to me intense, at times passionate, in the lost manuscript. Some passages in it moved me in a childlike way whenever I read them. Now I feel cold and indifferent.