Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  Monday, 9 February

  Yesterday evening I finished the scene with the director. That leaves three more, including the only important scene, the one with Bucşan. I hope it won’t cause me too much difficulty—though you never know where difficulties will arise. Then there will remain Act Three, which still has no real shape.

  Yesterday at Nicuşor’s I read what I have written of the play, with an audience of Leni, Froda, and Nelu. Disappointing. Not a success with anyone. No smiles. A brick wall of attentive but bored well-wishers. Act One, which I considered a “hit,” raised a vague appreciation from Nicuşor—“interesting”—a smile from Nelu, and not even that from Leni. Froda, who was bored, praised me for reading well. Act Two went down even worse. At the end, everyone told me that it was too literary and too long; that it needed to be cut and changed—in short, a failure. Tomorrow I’ll try to give it more thought. I’m too tired now. (How exhausting it is to read or “act” a play!) Maybe this reading was, after all, necessary for me. Maybe it will help me see things more accurately.

  The Japanese landed last night on the actual island of Singapore. It can’t hold out much longer.

  Tuesday, 10 February

  I have thought a lot about the play and the lessons to be drawn from yesterday’s reading. Whether people agree or not, I’ll leave Act One unchanged. I at least—and why shouldn’t I say it to myself?—consider it a perfect act of comedy and, technically speaking, a real “hit.” As for Act Two, the conclusions are simple.

  1) Magda is too screwy and too arbitrary a character. She must be given a civil status, a reality. Otherwise—especially given the realism of the play as a whole—she will appear much too artificial.

  2) Her exultation needs to come down a shade.

  3) The scene between Magda and Andronic is too long and cumbersome. It will have to be simplified.

  In general, yesterday’s disappointment has put me out of sorts, but it has also concentrated my mind. I am less excited, but at a higher level. I think that Nicuşor’s plan is unworkable. Act One has frightened them; they think the whole press will be up in arms. There may be something in that. Anyway, the name that is put to the play will have to be completely untouchable. Someone new to the scene, whose personal effacement will take some of the sting out of any attacks. Georgică Fotescu would be a good choice. But whatever happens, I shall have to give up the idea of staging it during the present season. It would be quite good if I could present it to the National in March-April-May, so that I could pick up an advance and have it performed next autumn or winter.

  Yesterday I had a bite to eat with Şerban Cioculescu. He doesn’t know what he should want. A German victory? That would mean a protectorate. A British-Russian victory? That would mean sanctions. I could do nothing to ease his conscience.

  Tomorrow morning Benu and I begin five days of snow work.

  Thursday, 12 February

  The Japanese have occupied Singapore. Impossible to calculate the consequences. The whole face of the war has changed. The moment is as grave as that of the fall of France in 1940. It hurts us less (then it was a personal, physical pain, a cardiac pain, a blow straight to the heart), but it is just as grave. Perhaps it does not spell the end. Perhaps the British will not succumb and the war will not be over. We now have a new war ahead of us, which could last for five, ten, or fifteen years. What will become of us? What will happen to our lives?

  The other day I read Fox’s speech in 1800—the Fox who, alone in the House of Commons, argued that it was impossible to defeat Napoleon and that a compromise peace was the only option. He was wrong, of course, but it took fourteen years for this to become apparent. Wdl we have to wait so long? Will we be able to? Will we be allowed to?

  At the last moment, an order issued by someone or other has excused academics from snow work. So I have remained at home.

  Sunday, 15 February

  On Friday evening the Gneisenau, Scharborst, and Prinz Eugen happily passed from Brest through the Straits of Dover, right under the noses of the British. “The most mortifying blow to the prestige of the Royal Navy since the seventeenth century,” commented the Times.

  The British are having a run of ill luck; they have seldom looked so uncomfortable. Nor is it just a matter of their feeling “uncomfortable”; some serious questions are inevitably raised about the whole future of the war. Beyond all this bitterness, our old hope flutters stubbornly on— but it is tinged with a certain melancholy.

  For three days I haven’t gone anywhere near the manuscript of my play. I am completely exhausted. Je m’épuise à ne rien faire.3 I lose myself in all kinds of wretched little things, at school, at the college.

  How old I am! What a grub’s life I lead! How gloomy and stale! I find it hard to take my physical decline. I am disgusted when I look in the mirror.

  Sunday, 22 February

  A mindless, tiring week. I did nothing, wrote and read nothing, yet had the constant feeling that I was overwhelmed with things to do, exhausted by work. The college course—though not serious—takes up too much of my time and attention. Moreover, I received a number of invitations, which I accepted out of inertia and later endured with repugnance. Thursday at Gruber’s,4 Friday at Leni’s, yesterday at our place: three “society” evenings. And on top of those, lunch yesterday at Zissu’s. I’ll probably never get out of his clutches, unless I tell him plainly one day that he disgusts me.

  The war is at a standstill. Nothing new at the fronts—or anyway, nothing important. The Japanese keep scoring successes. Nothing in Libya or in Russia. Today it will be eight months since the start of the Russian-German war, but the situation remains undecided. The front has scarcely changed. The Russians report advances, the Germans report encirclements, but neither appears to be serious. We shall have to wait for spring and summer. I wait with anxious unease.

  Nicuşor has offered to work with me on my play. He suggests various solutions for Act Two and Act Three. He assures me that we will have a hit on our hands, and has even offered an advance of fifty thousand lei. I don’t think I’ll accept. I am sorry to say that I still have some literary prejudices, and an absurd, ridiculous “artistic conscience.”

  Thursday, 26 February

  Yesterday evening a Rador dispatch reported that the Struma had sunk with all on board in the Black Sea. This morning brought a correction, in the sense that most of the passengers—perhaps all of them—have been saved and are now ashore.5 But before I heard what had really happened, I went through several hours of depression. It seemed that the whole of our fate was in that shipwreck.

  The other day, George Brătianu told Rosetti that unless Germany defeated the Russians by summer, and unless it organized the economy of the occupied territory, it would collapse by next winter—because it wouldn’t be able to take another winter. Such views and forecasts lack foundation. This war keeps creating new conditions that no one can foresee even one day ahead, let alone three months.

  Stefan Zweig has committed suicide. He shouldn’t have done it; he didn’t have the right. I reread the following sentence from an interview he gave in 1940: “I would be suspicious against any European author who would now be capable to concentrate on his own, his private work.” All the less do we have the right to make individual gestures—even if we consider them liberatory. That’s how it seems to me, though who knows?

  For a month now at the Baraşeum,6 Jewish actors have been performing a revue with great public success. All the seats are sold ten days ahead. I went yesterday with Benu (at the insistence of Sandu Eliad, Ronea, and Beresteanu), and I was amazed at the text and the audience. Is it possible that Jews who have experienced all these appalling tragedies still write, act, listen, and applaud such miseries? They asked me to write a play too (and of course I would for money—because I have to find the rent in March), but I don’t feel capable of writing in response to such exacting demands.

  In the last few days I have been thinking that there is a solution for “Alexander th
e Great” that would address both my own doubts and Nicuşor’s suggestions. I write the play as I want to write it, then I give it to Nicuşor and give him complete freedom to change and perform it as he wishes. We split the author’s share fifty-fifty. This strikes me as an acceptable solution, especially if he keeps to the fifty-thousand-lei advance. We’ll sort things out again after the war.

  I finished Act Two this evening—satisfactorily, I think. But I really must change, in fact completely rewrite, the scene between Magda and Andronic, which I realize is a nonstarter. With some changes, Act Two will unfold at the same dramatic, nervous pace as Act One. The real difficulties begin with the final act, which threatens to lose the rhythm of the play. We shall see.

  The Germans have contradicted the Russian report of a major victory in the north, where it is said that the German 16th Army has been encircled and almost completely destroyed.

  Sunday, 1 March

  March! Perhaps it will not yet bring major changes in the shape of the war, for spring comes with difficulty after such a hard winter. The dangerous season will begin in April to May. For the moment the Russian attacks seem to have become intense again. Yesterday evening’s German communiqué noted heavy fighting all along the front: in the Crimea, “Russian attacks supported by tanks and aircraft”; in the Donets, “an attack with sizable forces.” Still, I don’t think that major turnarounds can be expected from now on.

  N. Davidescu (!!!), back from Germany, met Rosetti and said that the Germans are losing the war, that only the British can emerge victorious, that the situation in Germany is desperate, and so on. Davidescu the Anglophile!

  The five days of snow work have been increased to ten. Intellectuals may be exempted for a thousand lei a day. Where can I get twenty thousand lei for Benu and myself? I can’t even think of it. We’ll go out in the snow, and that’s that!

  Monday, 2 March

  So, the six to seven hundred people on the Struma did go down with the ship. It seems that only one passenger—or, according to another report, four passengers—escaped. There has been no official statement. We didn’t really know any of those who set sail. Two or three vague, distant acquaintances. Not one I can recall and hold in my mind’s eye. (Possibly Schreiber, my former pupil in the 7th Year.) But the death of them all pains me.

  We had decided to report tomorrow morning for snow work. We have been put off until the day after tomorrow.

  Spring is in the air. It is still cold and overcast—but clearer and less misty. I have a sense of coming back to life, and at the same time a vague but profound sense of danger and fear.

  Tuesday, 3 March

  “In the Crimea, on the Donets front, and to the south of Lake Ilmen, heavy defensive fighting continues”—said yesterday evening’s German communiqué. This evening’s communiqué repeats the same formula: heavy defensive fighting. Is something serious happening on the Soviet front? It would seem so from the tone of the German dispatches and communiqués. But the Russians are maintaining an impenetrable silence.

  We leave for the snow work tomorrow morning at six. We have prepared our things. I feel rather weary (I’ve been in bad physical shape for some time), but I hope I’ll bear up to everything. I’m more worried about Benu, with his sciatica.

  Wednesday, 4 March

  The first day of snow work. Dropping from tiredness. We left home at five-thirty this morning and returned at eight in the evening. The work itself is a joke (it is at a marshaling yard outside Grivita station). What wears you out is the standing around, the journey there, the waiting, the formalities. On the way home we couldn’t even cling to the outside of the packed streetcars as they went by. Never has Strada Antim seemed so far away.

  Thursday, 5 March

  Very tired, but not like yesterday. Things are starting to get more organized—which greatly reduces the time spent on various formalities (roll call, certificates, rubber stamps, etc.). We left at six-thirty this morning and were back home by six. If we were fitter, we might not be so tired. I have lost the habit of physical effort. The work detachment itself is a farce, perfectly resembling the Poligon detachment in October 1940, except that the work is even more absurdly poindess than it was there. We shift snow from one place to another—a completely senseless operation. If I hadn’t seen so many others in the last few years, I would have died with laughter.

  Friday, 6 March

  As I handed over my shovel this evening, it occurred to me that millions of people around the world had been doing the same things that I had. I go home to sleep, eat, and forget. But what about those in the prison camps, in the internment camps? Where do they go? There is an inexplicable good humor in my work detachment. Each of us lives in the midst of danger and is aware of it. Each knows that tomorrow may bring greater miseries than the ones endured up to now. Each has left at home worries, bitterness, fears, and terrors. And yet, all are bound together by a kind of ironic youthfulness and martyrlike courage, which may be the expression of great vitality. I must say, we are an astonishing people.

  Batavia has fallen. Not much of Java is left. The Japanese are still victorious more or less everywhere. On the Russian front the Soviet attacks seem to have weakened in the south. No major change anywhere.

  Sunday, 8 March

  Aunt Caroline has died: the last connection to our old Brăila, the last link to a whole past that is now lost forever. I am old. Tata left for there tonight.

  There is a snowstorm. Winter has returned. Today in the open (even though we returned at two, as it was Sunday), I felt more exhausted and frozen than ever. The first five days of work are over. That leaves another five, which seems an enormous length of time. The farce of the work detachment no longer has anything new to say to me.

  Monday, 9 March

  In the morning I worked at Grivita station, clearing fresh snow from the platforms. In the afternoon we went back to “Sector 6,” where it is less exposed and we can do what we like. The main operation was to move snow from one line to another. Spring returned around noon, when the sun came out. With a little imagination you could think you were at a hut somewhere in the mountains.

  Rangoon has fallen. Java is now totally lost, and it seems that the Dutch there have capitulated. Nothing new on the Russian front.

  Tuesday, 10 March

  I worked on the “snow train”—an operation that looked terribly difficult when we saw others doing it in the first few days. In fact it is not only simpler but even more stimulating than I expected. We played around filling some wagons, treating it all as fun and games. I also think I am getting fitter as a result. Last week I would not have been able to do as much as I did today. Imperceptibly I am becoming a railway worker— worse, a platform sweeper and track clearer. I am hardly even sensitive any more to the grotesque side of the situation. Only once, when I saw the Constanta train passing a few hundred meters away, did I catch myself thinking that two years back I could have been one of its passengers, one of those looking from a carriage window at men on the line with pick and shovel, at men without a name or an identity.

  How terrible it is that, after these ten days that will pass—that have already nearly passed—the old miseries and fears await us. In the evening, as I came home on the streetcar, I saw it announced in the paper that Jews will have to pay the special reunification tax at four times the regular rate.

  Friday, 13 March

  The tenth day of snow work. It was more of a struggle than the others. On Wednesday and Thursday we had sunshine, but today was cold and overcast, with bluish-grey skies. I can still feel the cold in my bones. I am very very tired. But I have in my pocket a “Romanian Railways certificate” with ten blue stamps and one pink, which shows that I “worked on snow-clearing at Bucharest-Grivita Station from 4 to 13 March 1942.”

  Monday, 16 March

  In three days I have seen all the regulars: Rosetti, Camil, Aristide, the Roman office, the school, Zissu, Leni, Nicuşor, and so on. Nothing has changed; everything is the same as ever
. I am the only one who is changed in any way: changed by sun and open air. Tanned and a little thinner, I have something of how I used to look after a ten-day holiday in Balcic or Predeal. I really do feel physically restored. But the tan will go, and I’ll soon return to my grubbish form. One might almost say it was better in the snow!

  All kinds of troubles and woes. I find it hard to wade through them; I feel listless and disgusted, with no wish to carry on.

  In Russia the German communiqués keep reporting “heavy defensive fighting” and “massive Soviet attacks.” The Ides of March find the winter counteroffensive in full swing—but the German front is holding almost intact. I don’t think anything essential can happen in this regard. We must wait until late spring or early summer (May-June, because April may still be too soon). Will a new German offensive be launched then? In his speech yesterday, Hitler said that he would finally crush the Russians “in the coming months.”

  Friday, 20 March

  Beate Fredanov suggested that I write a play about the Struma—a suggestion that has set me thinking, especially as it links up with my old idea of a play about some shipwrecked people trying to start a new life on an island somewhere.

  Nothing new at the fronts. “Heavy defensive fighting” is what the German communiqué invariably says.

  Vişoianu, whom I saw today, thinks that yesterday’s speech about Transylvania is a local initiative and does not reflect German pressure on the Hungarians. He also told me some funny things about what Mircea Eliade is up to in Lisbon.