Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  With regard to both Zoe and Leni, complete withdrawal. It’s more sensible, more simple—even if, God alone knows, it’s no fun at all.

  Tuesday, 11 [October]

  Saturday and Sunday were rather quiet (a little over thirty thousand lei), but yesterday and Monday were really very bad. By eight o’clock they’d sold around five thousand’s worth. I didn’t ask what the total receipts are up to now. I went into the auditorium for a moment during Act One; there were quite a lot of people in the stalls—probably many complimentary tickets—but the balconies were empty.

  How sad is a play that is nearing its end. A novel is less ostentatious, creates less of a stir, but it also drops out of circulation more slowly and insensibly, without a sudden wrench. For better or worse, the play will continue this week, because they don’t have anything else to put on until the tour begins. But its “career,” as they say in the theatre, has come to an end.

  Last night Sică seemed a little disheartened.

  “Please,” I said to him, “don’t start blaming me.”

  “I have nothing to blame you for. I’m very glad we put on your play, but I’m depressed about the audience. Again I conclude that we can’t fill the seats for anything subtle. Not only was your play good, not only was it well performed, not only did the premiere make a big impact, but the whole of the first week indicated general enthusiasm, a surefire success. Tell me! What can be made of all this?”

  Saturday, 15 [October]

  As if Leni and Zoe were not enough to complicate my life, now there is Alice Theodorian. She ’phones me ten times a day (even at night); she always asks me to eat with her, is insistent, allusive, provocative.

  It’s all getting too comical. What an irony of my fate: to be Jewish and to look an “homme à femmes”!2

  In this respect, yesterday was completely idiotic. There was Zoe at lunchtime (Tata was in Brăila). Leni came in the evening, and later I also went to Alice Th.’s. It is too difficult to know what’s what with each of them. And when I think that, in a more orderly life, I’d have been the most faithful and least frivolous man in the world. . . .

  I am being torn apart in so many ridiculous affairs, none of which is going anywhere.

  Monday, 17 [October]

  Mama arrived yesterday morning, after spending twenty-four hours in a kind of “quarantine” at Jimbolia. Through Ralea, I had to get a telegram sent from the Ministry of the Interior before she could continue her journey home. It seems that not only Jimbolia but all the other frontier crossings are filled with Jews who have come to a dead end, unable either to return to the country they have traveled from, or to enter Romania—even though all are Romanian passport holders. No explanation or justification is given for this barbarous behavior.

  “We are living in terrible times!” lamented Ralea, clearly feeling embarrassed.

  But that embarrassment does not prevent him from being an accomplice—a passive accomplice whose conscience is torn, but one who finds it quite easy to bear the conflict.

  I dread to think what awaits us from now on!

  Sunday evening’s was the last performance. They’ve played the dirty trick of putting Ionescu G. Maria back on for the last two days before the tour, yesterday and today. So now the impression is given that I’ve been taken down from the boards and replaced with an old play—as if it would have been such a disaster to keep me on for another couple of days! For a moment I was quite indignant. But then it passed. In the end, I don’t want to make a tragedy out of anything that’s happened to me at the theatre.

  It’s been an adventure—and now it’s over. I didn’t gain a lot from it, but nor did I lose much.

  On Saturday evening, at the last performance but one, I watched the whole play for the first time since the Sunday immediately after the premiere. I’ve seen bits of each act at various times, depending on when I dropped by the theatre on my way back from the cinema or to see Leni. But I have only twice seen the play from beginning to end. I’m used to it by now, and it is almost impossible for me to judge it. The image of this production has almost completely covered the image I originally had of it. At first the differences between my conception and the stage performance were quite glaring. Little by little, however, the actors’ gestures (even if they were wrong) and their tones of voice (even if they were false) substituted themselves for what I had imagined at the time of writing. Sometimes I’d have liked to protest, to get them back on the right track, to restore my original text, to force them to act the play I actually wrote—but it would have meant too great an effort, and I wasn’t even sure it was worth it.

  On Sunday evening I again watched the third act—for the last time! I was in the balcony, from where the stage appears far off and for that very reason somehow magical, and sometimes I shut my eyes to listen to the words. Maybe it was the thought that this really was the last time, that none of these words would be spoken again, that they would remain in a typewritten file or, at best, in a printed book—maybe all these thoughts, with their sense of leave-taking, made me listen with emotion for the first time. I said to myself that something was dying, departing forever, breaking loose from me. Never again will I see the audience’s heads turned toward the stage, in the silence of an occupied auditorium, in the darkness broken only by the footlights, listening, taking in, echoing, answering the words written by me. Never again will I hear that laughter rise in warm animation toward the stage.

  Next to me a girl was crying. She is the last girl who will cry for Jocul de-a vacanţa.

  Leni leaves tomorrow on tour. She came here today. I don’t know if she is beautiful; surely not. But she has gleaming white skin, soft young flesh.

  “Wait for me in your new home on the 17th of November,” she said as she left.

  And I do have the feeling that I will wait for her, though I realize it is not possible. The last deadline in this old love affair is approaching.

  19 November. Saturday

  I have been in my studio flat for two days now. I ought to keep in mind that this is one of my old dreams—and to be contented. But for the last few days I have been feeling gloomy. No hope, no expectation, no decision.

  It’s a large white room with a lot of light, on the eighth floor. It is right on Calea Victoriei—which I don’t like in principle—but from this height it cannot be said that I live on any street in particular. The terrace is quite spacious—easily enough for three open chaises longues— and from there I have a semicircular view of half of Bucharest. It is reminiscent of the entrance to New York harbor. I float among buildings.

  I don’t want for the mom3

  Sunday, 20 [November]

  Last night Zoe interrupted me while I was writing. I can no longer continue the note I began yesterday. Nor do I remember exactly what I meant to write.

  She was the first woman to enter this apartment. I couldn’t help feeling a surge of tenderness. I undressed her and lay her on the bed, let her purr beneath the blanket like a cat in the warmth, and went down to buy some cakes at Nestor. How good it is to know that a young woman is waiting for you upstairs in your room!

  But, of course, none of that has any meaning.

  This morning there was a stupid matinee performance of Jocul de-a vacanta at ten o’clock. (The tour did end on Thursday, and Leni came back then.) I have so little confidence in my play that I don’t think it is good even for a six o’clock matinee.

  I didn’t go to the theatre—not as a sign of protest, but out of honest indifference.

  But Mama, Benu, and Tata went instead and passed by here on their way from the theatre. Mama brought me two chrysanthemums: it is good that the first flowers to enter this flat came from her.

  Wednesday, 30 [November]

  Corneliu Codreanu was shot and buried during the night, together with Duca’s assassins and Stelescu’s assassins.4 Attempting to escape. It has all been too sudden and unexpected for me to have a clear idea of what might happen next.

  Once again I have to say
that the situation inside the country is unexpectedly stable and may point toward a return to normality. The external situation is so adverse and confused that it stands in the way of even a timid attempt at optimism.

  Friday, 2 [December]

  Stupor and silence. A kind of dumbfounded silence. I get the feeling that no one has yet recovered from the consternation of the first minute.

  It would be in the logic of things if all this hushed fright burst out in an anti-Semitic explosion. It’s a safety valve whose use cannot be excluded, even on the part of the government. And again we may be the ones who pay.

  Tuesday, 6 [December]

  Celia was here and—without my realizing how we came to speak of it— she told me a lot of things about Zoe, about Zoe’s “past.”

  In particular, she gave me numerous details about a love affair in which I did not find it hard to recognize the grand amour of which Zoe herself told me last summer. He is one Bisco Iscovici—and Celia, who knows him very well, helped me not only to “see” him clearly but to reconstitute the whole story of their love. Suddenly I had the feeling that Zoe, this admirable girl whom I see so often, who slept in my bed on Saturday afternoon and rolled head over heels naked on the floor, just like a child, this girl with whom I went to the cinema last night, is a stranger to me.

  This feeling scares me a little. It’s as if familiar things around me on which I depend had suddenly lost some of their solidity, had changed their color, their dimensions, their reality. . . .

  Saturday, 10 [December]

  On Tuesday, on St. Nicholas’s Day, I sent Nina a flower for her birthday, together with a few lines in which I said that I hesitated to visit them because Mircea, though back in Bucharest for some time, had not given me any sign of life.

  Yesterday at the Foundation I found a letter of thanks from her, a letter of simple politeness, neither cold nor friendly but precisely indifferent: “The difficult trials through which we have passed, Mircea and I, have made us cut ourselves off from the world.”

  I understand them very well. They must consider themselves in mourning since the death of Codreanu. If they were to have me round, they might feel they were betraying a cause. Certain things are beyond repair and leave no room for memories.

  Nae has signed a declaration of solidarity with the 318 “comrades from Vaslui.” A facsimile of the text appeared in all the morning papers. When I saw Nae’s handwriting in the picture—clear, decisive, almost print-quality writing that I know so well—I had a vague sense that these matters also personally concern me a little.

  Friday, 16 [December]

  This morning at the Foundation, Mircea was in a group with Cioculescu, Biberi, and Benador. I went up to say hello and, to my surprise, Mircea stood up and embraced me.

  A reflex gesture? Old memories stronger than recent events?

  Saturday, 17 [December]

  Dinu Noica sent Comarnescu a letter from Paris, in which he announced that, after the killing of Codreanu, he has decided to join the Legion. He therefore considers null and void all the contracts he has with the Royal Foundation, and is prepared to return in the shortest possible time all the sums he has received as advances.

  I can clearly recognize Dinu Noica in this.

  On the other hand, Mircea called on Rosetti to tell him that he remains a writer and man of science, that he wants to publish books, and that he wants—more than ever before—to occupy himself with the oriental institute that is to be created within the framework of the Foundations.

  That’s not a bad thing either.

  Yesterday the National premiered Wilde’s Bunbury, in a translation done by myself. (No one knew this, because Sadoveanu, of course, did not want to risk putting my name on the poster. Nor am I too proud myself of an English play translated from a French translation.) All the same, it is amusing to hear on stage sentences that you have written yourself. I felt a certain author’s curiosity (as if the text belonged to me), but also a complete detachment from what was happening on stage.

  Footnotes

  1. Immediately after taking power, the Goga-Cuza government initiated a series of anti-Semitic measures, including the revocation of Romanian citizenship for Jews and the elimination of Jewish lawyers from the bar association. Sebastian here refers to the withdrawal of his train pass, which he had received as a journalist.

  2. “But in his black eyes was an ardor of imagination, cooled by that ironic sadness of the civilized among the barbarians which is peculiar to his race.” Charles Morgan, Sparkenbroke (London and New York: Macmillan, 1936), p. 244.

  3. loan Massoff, the National Theatre's literary secretary, was Jewish.

  4. Cuvântul was banned on several occasions for its pro-iron Guard articles.

  5. Felix Aderca, a Jewish novelist, was also a civil servant whom the Goga-Cuza government was unable to dismiss because he was a decorated veteran of World War I. He was forced to move with his job to the provinces.

  6. A rare creature.

  7. “You don’t know if M. Jules Renard lives nearby?”—“I am he.”

  8. “A conversation without sparkle.”

  9. Mihai Ralea: minister of labor, March 1938-July 1940.

  1. Herbert (Belu) Zilber: a friend of Sebastian’s, Communist economist and journalist who later was imprisoned as the victim of an East European Communist show trial.

  2. N. Carandino: journalist.

  3. Cella Serghi: novelist.

  4. I give you a thousand guesses.

  5. Both Nae Ionescu and Mircea Eliade were interned in the Miercurea-Ciuc camp for their Iron Guard activities.

  6. D. I. Suchianu: movie critic and journalist.

  7. Nora is a character in the novel Accidentul.

  8. I extricate myself.

  9. A visiting room in an institution.

  1. One should never swear anything.

  2. With the pen held firmly above the paper.

  3. The state’s anti-Semitic measures went through phases of severity. Sebastian’s play was produced during a time of lessened strictures.

  4. I hate the motion that moves the lines/And never do I cry, never do I laugh.

  5. Luli Popovici-Lupa: a friend of Nae Ionescu's.

  6. Administrator of the Comoedia Theatre.

  7. In theatrical matters, all these highs and lows without a transition are abominable.

  8. Actress.

  9. I didn't ask for that much.

  1. Accidental.

  2. A ladies' man.

  3. Sentence incomplete.

  4. Mihai Stelescu, a former leader of the Iron Guard, split with Codreanu and created another fascist organization, Cruciada Romanismului. Condemned as a traitor by his former comrades, Stelescu was set upon in his hospital bed, shot many times, and axed to pieces.

  1939

  Thursday, 5 January 1939

  I had lunch at Hurtig’s house,1 where he described for me yesterday’s scene at Titeanu’s office.2

  The principal secretary enters:

  “Minister, the Writers’ Association has applied to join the National Front3—but there are a few awkward names.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Mihail Sebastian, Sergiu Dan . . . What is to be done?”

  “You know the orders. We can’t compromise the movement. Delete them.”

  So we were deleted. In today’s papers our names are missing from the Writers’ Association list. And to think that yesterday at the Foundation they got me to sign a membership application.

  Monday, 9 [January]

  I don’t know why I wasted my Christmas holiday staying in Bucharest. I could have finished my novel, or gone skiing, but instead I frittered away days and nights doing nothing. So here I am at the end of the holiday, tired, listless, with no desire to work, idle, disoriented, full of regrets. Again I have no money—which reminds me that I am thirty-one, that life is passing me by, that I am wasting it, have already nearly wasted it.

  Outside it is an unlikely spring day, warm an
d sunny, which makes me twice as sad.

  Tuesday, 17 [January]

  The comical, absurd, and in fact terrible situation that I have been enduring for eight months with Zoe will now have to be acted out again with Leni.

  She came here yesterday, took her clothes off, and then, when I caved in, behaved with a grace and simplicity that got us through a moment that seemed to offer no way out, no salvation.

  She is very beautiful, much more beautiful than I could have thought in my most credulous moments of expectation.

  What a pair are these lovers of mine, Z. and L., who differ and complement each other precisely through the ways in which they agree. What a life—complicated, to be sure, but also full—I could lead between the two of them!

  A complicated life! Is there a life more complicated, more stupidly, more senselessly complicated, than mine is?

  I look at it with a kind of resigned stupor, which is probably the only thing that stops me from putting an end to it all.

  There is no more room in my life for anything but suicide, or perhaps a departure for good into a solitary existence somewhere.

  Friday, 20 [January]

  Horror, disgust, something dirty, obscene, immeasurably somber.

  How powerful my inertia must be to go on living after such a day!