I’ve finished Chapter Eighteen. It has fifteen pages, butchered as usual with deletions. I am profoundly dissatisfied. I wrote without seeing it before me, without feeling personally involved. But this whole business disgusts me. It has become a torture, a duty, a chore. I’ll finish Chapter Nineteen, the next one, in two, three, or four days—then I’ll try to forget this whole thankless task as quickly as I can.
Although so many days have passed since my call-up, I still don’t feel that I have “settled in” at the regiment. As there is no roll call and no one asks after me, I have begun to arrive at nine in the morning and not to go back at all after lunch. I don’t know how long that will work. When I am there, I stay in the company bunkhouse and wait for time to pass.
I have been taking along my red Montaigne, a fairly small and supple volume that fits into my overcoat pocket. I read all morning.
In Chapter Nine, Book Ha of the Essays, I found a note about a lost first draft of a passage, which Montaigne never tried to reconstitute: . . mais ce lopin de mes brouillars m’ayant esté désrobé avec plusieurs autres par un homme qui me servoit, je ne le priveray point du profit qu’il en espère faire: aussi me seroit-il bien malaisé de remascher deux fois une mesme viande. ”1
Friday, 5 January
From Breslau (Abendroth conducting), Reger’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart—then a Mozart piano concerto (K. 537) which I don’t think I knew before. I tried listening to it bar by bar. It all seemed to sing along—“singable” music, “like a bird.” I picked out one phrase from the andante that could have been a veritable romance.
This afternoon, quite unexpectedly, Franck’s Sonata was on shortwave from Berlin. I always listen to it not only with pleasure but with a sense that it is favorable to me, like a good omen or a promise.
Monday, 8 January
Two splendid days skiing in Sinaia—Saturday and yesterday. On Saturday I did slalom exercises on the bowling ground, and on Sunday morning I went with Comşa and Lereanu to Stîna Regală. The snow was thick, exaggeratedly so—which was a joy in itself (how nice it is to roll in it, to fall and pick yourself up again!), though it didn’t allow us to do much in terms of technique. We had to work hard for a couple of hours to stamp down a track for our slalom exercises—and it was still heavy going, maybe because we were by then very tired.
From Stina, the landscape is one of “haute montagne.”2 Mount Caraiman can be seen close up, Clabucet is across the way, and at the back lie Mount Postavar and Piatra Mare. There was a heavenly sun. I shut my eyes and stayed for minutes without thinking of anything.
The greatest delight, however, was our return to Sinaia. We had a long course: with excellent snow deep enough to glide over it, and with enough ice for our turning movements to be easy. It was the same course on which I fell so many times, especially at the bends, when I put on my skis three years ago for the first time. Now it went extremely easily. I realize that skiing is not a great feat—because it poses no problems or difficulties—but the pleasure is indescribable. I sang all the way down.
Back home I find the regiment and, above all, the novel—that still unfinished novel.
Tuesday, 9 January
I should write a note about military rapaciousness. Nothing seems too much to them; everything seems just right. When they take the trouble to thank you for something you have done for them, they wear a kind of condescending expression that creates a farther sense of obligation on your part.
I took the colonel some books from the Foundation worth several thousand lei. I thought he would be overwhelmed. But on the contrary, he was severe:
“Is that all?”
Then, almost contemptuously:
“Do you expect me to build a regimental library with that?”
And a brief last word:
“Bring me the books by Queen Maria!”
He didn’t ask if I could bring them, if I could get hold of them, if they would cost money or not.
If the company is missing a bridle, we buy one ourselves. If there is need of three hundred plates and three hundred sets of cutlery, we buy them ourselves.
Today at the adjutant’s office, Ghită Ionescu—who has been called up and is working there—told me that the next call-up on 15 January will be especially for Jews. There will be fifteen hundred Jews and not one Christian.
“I don’t understand why,” he said. “I suppose it’s okay in time of war. You can form special units of Jews and send them to be mowed down at the front. But what sense does it make now?”
I left there depressed. Everything is bearable until you start feeling acted on not as a soldier, not as a citizen, but as a Jew. Thousands, tens of thousands of Jews have been called up to lug stones and dig trenches in Bessarabia and Dobrogea. That too is a form of slavery.
Wednesday, 10 January
From Vienna, a Mozart piano quartet (K. 493).
Friday, 12 January
Yesterday evening from Breslau, a Mozart flute concerto.
The day before, on Deutschlandsender, Mozart’s Symphony for Two Orchestras (which I first heard two or three years ago, conducted by Scherchen), and then something I didn’t know existed: Les Djins by César Franck, a tone poem for piano and orchestra.
I listen with displeasure, even with pangs of conscience, to the German stations, even when they put on music. What is happening to the Jews now in Hitler-occupied Poland is beyond all known horrors.
I thought I would finish this evening and, if I had made a greater effort, I would certainly have succeeded. But after eight hours’ work (from three in the afternoon until now, 11:30) I feel a little dizzy, though I have written only five pages or so.
I’ll have to go back over the final evening in the chalet. The parting from Gunther is too brief, too lacking in emotion.
Monday, 15 January
I didn’t want to finish on Saturday because it was the 13 th. Yesterday, on the other hand, I was sure I would finish. But late at night, after struggling for several hours, I gave up the attempt. I still have two or three pages to write—and it’s best if I wait for a favorable moment. Even so, the final chapters have been written most reluctantly, without continuity, without a close relationship between them. They feel patched together from various fragments.
This evening I’ll take Chapters Fourteen to Twenty to Rosetti. I still have to add a few things to Chapters Nineteen and Twenty. Maybe I’ll have more luck with the proofs. Anyway, this time I’m at the end.
Monday, 22 January
A day’s skiing yesterday in Sinaia. I arrived there at ten in the morning (with Comşa and Lereanu) and immediately set off in the sledge for Stîna Regală, but it was impossible to pass beyond the point where the ways to Stîna and Altitude 1400 separate. The snow was colossal, and the sledge could not get through. We set off on skis for Altitude 1400, forgetting about Stina.
The snow poured down like white rain: “thousands of tons” of it. So much snow that our skis barely slid forward. All the way back (the same route on which I usually descend at dizzying speed), I had to advance like a skater and make constant use of the sticks. Even at the bowling ground, where there is quite a sharp slope (“precipitous” it once seemed to me), it was possible only to slide slowly forward. The fine sticky snow was too soft. After a few hundred meters I had to stop and wipe the skis, which had a few centimeters of snow stuck to them like cork or rubber heels.
I enjoyed the stop at the 1400 refuge. I generally like these mountain refuges: girls and boys who arrive white with snow, as on a long journey; a mixture of vivacity and indifference, idleness and vigor, closeness and solitude.
It wasn’t really a day of skiing. The snow didn’t allow us to do much. But it was a happy day. The forest, literally overwhelmed by snow, is a landscape from a fairy tale or fable.
I don’t know why I haven’t written here about last Sunday’s escapade at Câlugàreni. I’ve talked about it several times, but I was too lazy to write as well. It would be worth it, though
. It was funny how we scared a village in Vlasca as we entered it in our skiing costumes.
A lot of music all week, of all kinds. As usual, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. One evening there was Psyché, a very beautiful tone poem by Franck.
Zoe, whom I hadn’t seen for such a long time and with whom I thought I no longer had anything in common, came to see me on Saturday evening before leaving for Brasov. She was puzzling, affectionate, beautiful, good to hold close, warm and velvety. Were I a little less of a skeptic, I’d find nothing with which to fault her in the whole evening—an evening I hadn’t looked for and hadn’t expected.
Zoe is a striking girl, even in her colorful defects and her disarmingly ingenuous way of doing some despicable things (objectively “despicable,” as is her acceptance of money from her lover, Tantzi Cocea).
Sunday, 28 January
Dorina Blank, still beautiful, still youthful (though with light wrinkles that she didn’t have three years ago), came here yesterday after numerous insistent phone calls that I met with sincere indifference. A woman cannot say more clearly that she wants to go to bed with you.
Voichită Aurel, my comrade in the Twenty-first Infantry, said something yesterday about Captain Câpsuneanu, something that sums up a whole Romanian style of politics:
“He’s a real mean bastard who’ll beat you and swear at you. But there’s one good thing about him: he can’t stand yids and lets us have a go at them too.”
That is precisely the consolation that the Germans offer the Czechs and the Poles, and which they are prepared to offer the Romanians.
Last night I dreamed of Stalin. He had the look of an amiable Russian peasant, and I was surprised at his great simplicity.
Yesterday from Paris there was again Ravel’s quartet, which I like more and more.
This morning a Mozart sonata from Paris (which struck me as very Beethovenesque), and then a delightful Mozart trio from Berlin. Finally, from Bucharest, Beethoven’s fourth symphony.
Zoe rings me every evening from Brasov. Will even this parting not be the break on which I decided?
The proofs of the final chapters have arrived. I didn’t do anything special to hurry them up. It’s very nearly February and the book’s publication is still quite a long way off. It has become a thing of such indifference to me! And I still have to write a few pages at the end of Chapters Nineteen and Twenty—pages that I can no longer see or feel inside me.
It is snowing beautifully after several days of thaw. I promise myself a few days’ skiing at the end of next week, especially if I am called up on the first, as people are saying.
Monday, 29 January
My inability to go back over a text I have written is playing another nasty trick on me. Not only am I unable to write the few pages I planned to add to the last two chapters, but I am beginning to convince myself that I do not need to write them, that they are not necessary. I am well aware that this is a clever subterfuge on my part, an obstacle course that my incurable laziness has set up for me. A check needs to be kept on such tendencies. Whenever I am tempted to do away with an incident, I should first compel myself to write it and only then eliminate it. That is the only way of being sure that you have genuinely discarded something, and not just run away from difficulties.
If I leave Chapter Nineteen as is, the departure from the chalet loses its weight. Gunther, who seems such a powerful presence in the early pages, completely eludes me toward the end.
Things are even more serious with regard to the end of Chapter Twenty, because the denouement of the whole book depends upon it. Is it a good idea for me to abandon the marriage of Paul and Nora? I would be inclined to say “yes”—not only because it is simpler that way, not only because it spares me a final hurdle, but above all because, as things have worked out, the close relationship between Nora and Paul does not imperiously require, and may not even justify, their marriage to each other. It is certainly my fault, for although the whole of the last part beginning with Chapter Fourteen was written in accordance with a fixed plan, it has departed from the underlying facts of the book. What is lacking here is the necessary intensity of emotion, the necessary power of life and suggestion, so that the final scene (which I already saw very well when I began to write the first lines of the first chapter) becomes a kind of “pleasant” denouement. On the other hand, if I give it up I fear that the whole book will remain suspended in air, with no paths leading anywhere.
Wednesday, 31 [January]
From morning to evening I spent yesterday’s leave from the regiment reading through the whole book. Why should I not say that I enjoyed reading it and was caught up in the unfolding action, as if it were surprising me for the first time? It is true that I’m not sure whether it works as a novel, whether it all hangs together as a whole. Above all, I ask myself whether it will not appear to a reader as made up of three distinct parts, without a necessary connection among them. There is a Nora episode, an Ann episode, and a Gunther episode. Do they all fuse together? Is there a balance among them? I don’t know. I’m too close to the book to tell.
I also wonder whether to write the final scene with the marriage proposal or to leave things hanging. Yesterday I thought about it a lot and decided that the finale really must be written—well or badly, as it please the Lord. Otherwise the book lacks a denouement, and the “accident” remains without consequence. Nevertheless I have sent the galleys back to the printer’s to be made up into pages, with the idea that I may be able to have another go on the page proofs.
Friday, 9 February
I still have time to change the ending of the book. I can still revert to the initial denouement by making Paul ask for Nora’s hand in marriage. But again, such an ending is beginning to seem too obvious a resolution, too neat a conclusion. On the other hand, if I leave things as they are, everything will end without sense.
In any event, I shall keep the proofs tomorrow and Sunday—the printer doesn’t work then anyway. Come what may, I’ll give the go-ahead for printing on Monday morning.
I have read it all through once more, yesterday and today. It’s not a bad book. Up to a point, it’s not even badly done.
Saturday, 10 February
Yesterday evening I didn’t finish the preceding note. Ghita Ionescu rang— and then I no longer had the time to continue.
I constandy think of the book—in the street, on the streetcar, at meals. I know now that I’ll leave it as it is and give the go-ahead on Monday, because I can’t delay it any longer. I can’t stand the thought that this business might drag on for God knows how much longer. I am full of doubts and misgivings.
It occurred to me to seek someone’s advice: Camil, Mircea, maybe Cioculescu. I’d have liked to ask one of them to read the book and tell me what he thought about the ending. But what’s the point? No one will know better than I that it is an evasion. No one will know better than I what should be done.
I think that between Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen there should be a chapter of passionate love and intimacy between Nora and Paul. There should be something so intense that it restores the book’s center of gravity, which broke up with the intervention of Gunther. Such a chapter would then modify the finale, because Paul’s marriage to Nora would become natural, indeed obligatory. In the end, the departure from the chalet—which I have left completely unfinished—should be written properly. It would all be a matter of three or four days, not only of intensive work but above all of total and sincere absorption in the world of the book (which I have now left behind). I move around it as a “novelist,” but I can’t manage to identify with it. I face it as a writer, a critic, a reader, whatever you like; but I am not, as I was so often before, an astounded witness to things happening beyond me and without my consent.
Since yesterday I have been a civilian again, though I can’t say I have been demobilized. I handed back my things, but the discharge papers still have not come through.
Monday, 12 February
I have delivered the f
inal corrected proofs.
So there are novels that can be finished3
A depressing visit to the regiment this morning. The discharge papers still haven’t been issued. Captain Căpşuneanu had heard from the call-up office “what’s what”; my corrected name does not sufficiently prove my identity for him. So who knows how much longer I shall have to wait. A yid can wait. Not even the simplest thing can be done for us. We are lepers. The orders are officially anti-Semitic, but even stronger than the orders are people’s minds. Captain Căpşuneanu’s hatred is a fact that nothing can escape.
A few hundred new recruits were in the barracks. Civilians without weapons were marching three abreast and receiving “individual instruction.” (How indescribably sad are those no longer young enough for that game!) The majority of them—90 percent, I would say—are Jews. Collected as they are in special units, how easy it will be some day to have done with them!
I left feeling sick at heart.
I don’t know how long I’ll remain in civilian life. Assuming they let me go in one, two, or seven days’ time, how long will I be free? It’s said that we’ll be called up again on the first of April, maybe even sooner.
I wonder what to do in the meantime. For better or worse, the novel is now finished. I shouldn’t allow myself to be ground down between the Foundation and the courts. I must work with some degree of application. I could get down to the “Romanian Novel” project—which would give my schedule some discipline, though I’d then have to go every day to the Academy. But a book of criticism holds no attraction for me now that my days of liberty—perhaps of life itself—are numbered. What would be the point of such a book if I’m dragged off to war in the spring and everything comes to a complete end?
Journal 1935–1944 Page 34
