Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  The fighting continues in Stalingrad. After Rador’s definite assurance on Thursday that the city had fallen, after it became common knowledge on Friday that the resistance was over (Alice had information from army headquarters), and after a communiqué announcing final victory was expected on Saturday evening—the fighting is still going on. Yesterday and today the German communiqué has reported Soviet counterattacks to the north of the city. The whole battle is a dramatic event.

  Yesterday was Yom Kippur. A day of fasting—and of trying to believe and hope.

  Friday, 25 September

  A sentence from this morning’s Rador dispatch from Berlin: “The German command . . . has been deliberately avoiding a full-scale assault. . . and preferred to advance methodically, even if this means the German people and the whole world still have to wait for the great news of success in Stalingrad.” I get the feeling that, however euphemistic this sentence may be (in not directly saying that the capture of the city is no longer absolutely imminent), it does express a reality. I think the Germans are really not throwing everything into their effort. Not only the battle of Stalingrad but the whole of this summer’s campaign has been conducted economically, as in a war marked by hesitancy rather than decisiveness. It may be that the Germans could have done more and done it sooner if they had been prepared to pay the full price to achieve it. I expected that their war effort would by this summer have reached a biological outer limit (which is precisely why I thought an exhaustion crisis likely this winter)—but I wonder whether I was not mistaken. I wonder, that is, whether the relatively small number of their achievements is not due precisely to the fact that they have been sparing in their use of reserves. But who really knows? No, absolutely nobody knows. This is why I am so irritated by the futile game of commentary and prediction. “Notts avons encore pour deux ans,”2 Jacques Truelle said to me when I had supper with him and the Bibescus at the Athénée. “It will all be over by December or January,” said Branişte, back on a short leave from Tiraspol. Both of them had their arguments. We all have our arguments.

  It would be amusing to note here many things about the Bibescus (whose circle I have reentered since Strehaia). Telegrams, letters, invitations, conversations, echoes crossing one another in the Corcova-Bucharest-Posada triangle: it is exactly as if I were a key figure in their life. But I know the habits of the clan (Proust helps me in this), the code to their slang, the inanity of a pompously declared liking for something that one day suddenly disappears without trace and makes way for some new craze. At the present moment, Antoine Bibescu and Elisabeth seem prepared for any sacrifice, any token of devotion. But this is the same A.B. whom I did not manage to see in Geneva for as much as five minutes; the same A.B. who, a couple of years ago, left me without saying a word one Sunday morning in the lobby at the Athénée Palace, even though he had invited me to lunch! There is a touch of madness in them, the same touch that makes them colorful and captivating. I am enough of an impressionable commoner for such a comedy to amuse me, though I am not really in the mood for it at the moment.

  A very nice letter from Martha Bibescu about Antoine: sober, severe, lucid—the first letter from her that has not been showy. But what I am to do with this world of luxury, I who have to pay the rent tomorrow, I who don’t know where to find the 100,000 lei for another three months’ rental agreement?

  At Tiraspol, according to Branişte, one of the most widely read books is Accidentul. The reason for this is quite simply that it can be bought there, and people read what they find. Cârâbas3 took thirty copies of Accidentul to put on sale there, and some of the officers read the book and liked it. Branişte let out to them that the author was Jewish.

  “Well, fancy that! You can’t even tell!”

  I paid a couple of visits to Mircea Stefânescu, who has agreed in principle to adopt my Ultima orâ. I left him the manuscript, and he’ll give me his final answer once he has read his way through it. For me it’s just a question of money. Poverty is closing in on me, as in the worst moments before.

  Yesterday I was in a group with Leni at the Jewish theatre, to see Stroe’s revue. Everything there—stage, actors, theatre, audience—seemed completely crazy. Death is breathing down our necks and we have a Jewish theatre, with girls in low-cut dresses, jazz, verse songs, gags, and knockabout sketches. Where is reality? The specter of the trains heading for Transnistria haunts me all the time.

  Saturday, 26 September

  Yesterday I was in town with Antoine Bibescu. He wanted at all costs to go to the theatre—not one but two. He said he couldn’t stand seeing the same show from beginning to end, so he got tickets for the National (where they are playing Noaptea furtunosă and Conu Leonida4) as well as for the Cocea sisters’ theatre, which is doing a play by Denys Amiel. This alone struck me as pretty eccentric. I also found it personally quite embarrassing to make a sudden appearance at two theatres on the same evening, after two years in which I have not set foot in a Romanian theatre. “Make an appearance” is the right expression: both entrances seemed highly successful, and I don’t think a single person there did not turn his eyes toward us. Antoine, dressed in a white drill suit, shuffled around in a pair of slippers. When we set off, I tried to persuade him to dress properly—but I failed.

  “Pourquoi voulez-vous que je change de costume? II fait chaud—et je m’ha-hille comme ga. Quant à mes pantoufles, c’est si commode. En Roumanie les gens ne savent pas s’habiller.”5

  At the National we saw Conu Leonida, after which we crossed the road, where Act One had already begun. The packed auditorium watched this gentleman’s entrance in a beach suit as he calmly walked to the front and propped himself up a meter from the stage. I followed him, amused and embarrassed in equal measure, fully savoring the fun of the situation but also worried about the consequences. I had told him before not to speak aloud during the performance, so at least from that point of view things went almost normally—except that occasionally, when he didn’t understand a line, he turned to me and said:

  “Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? Qui est-ce? Comment s’appelle la femme en vert, etc?”6

  We left after Act One and spent the rest of the evening much more agreeably, walking along Calea Victoriei and then sitting very comfortably on a stone wall in front of the lattice work on Piaţa Ateneului. “He’s crazy! He’s off his rocker!” people said (or felt they had to say) to me as they passed by. In fact, though a little battiness is part of this strange man’s character, he is not strictly speaking mad. Romania and Bucharest represent for him a kind of barbarian province, a weird and colorful colony from which he feels (and is) so far removed that he does not make the least effort to please the natives. He lives among them as among negroes, yellow men, or redskins, sometimes showing an interest in local customs but without feeling obliged to respect them. He told me that Asquith had been terribly bitter when he learned that Elisabeth was going to marry a Romanian. “Pour lui, c’était comme si elle avait épousé un chinois. ”7

  I think that Antoine Bibescu feels the same about the whole of Romanian society. He is like an Englishman suddenly landed among colored people.

  Yesterday evening I had an experience that was perhaps more revealing about the Romanian theatre than any other one might have been. Conu Leonida and Amiel seen in the space of twenty-five minutes. The performance of Conu Leonida was lively, genuine, and good fun—Amiel was, in Romanian, false, trivial, and absurd: Dina, Tantzi, and Critico engaged in psychology! C’était à hurler!8 Romanian theatre is lost as soon as it rises above the ordinary. Perhaps that is true of everything here, not just the theatre.

  Thursday, 1 October

  “Si Stalingrad tient jusqu’au premier octobre, les Allemands sont perdus,”9 Antoine Bibescu said to me a month ago in Corcova. And here we are at the first of October. Stalingrad is still holding out—but the Germans are not lost. All the predictions we make, all the dates we set, all our calculations are arbitrary. The war is a mystery that may not become clear until the last
moment. And no one knows when that last moment will be: in five weeks, five months, or five years.

  “The Jews will be exterminated,” Hitler said in his speech yesterday. He hardly said anything else. On the course of the war, on short-term perspectives, on the length of the struggle, on the key issues—nothing. The war is again at a standstill. With the exception of Stalingrad—where the fighting has been extremely intense the last two or three days—all the fronts are relatively quiet. It is as if this war were the normal state of things, which did not necessarily have to reach a resolution and might drag on indefinitely without any change. This may explain the sense of weariness that has gripped us the last few days.

  This morning saw the departure of our maid Octavia, an eighteen-year-old peasant girl who felt so good in our home. She cried like a child. Our life will be even more difficult. All kinds of daily troubles—small ones, to be sure, but insoluble—will now appear: sweeping the floor, washing the dishes, laundry, shopping. Poor Mama is too ill and tired, and we are too awkward. We’ll sweep, make the beds, and wash the dishes, but who will do the laundry? Still, you have only to think of deportation and all this becomes bearable. It’s not tragic; it’s only grotesque.

  Today it occurred to me that a play could be written on the basis of Balzac’s Beatrix. Two splendid female roles, and great scenic development.

  Thursday, 8 October

  Nothing new at the fronts, or anyway nothing really important. The fighting goes on at Stalingrad. It is hard to follow events just by reading the papers. There is talk of Soviet attempts to relieve the city, but I can’t locate them on the map. As things stand now, you would say that neither side expects anything other than the onset of winter.

  The first days at school have tired me beyond all measure. After four hours of teaching I feel exhausted. What bad health!

  Friday, 9 October

  Strada Sfintu Ion Nou again has the tragic air of early September. Two schools are full of families picked up last night for deportation to Transnistria. In the windows you see pale countenances, dazed looks, but also sometimes a smiling young face or a laughing child, and you don’t know which is more painful: the despair of some or the indifference of others to their fate. Long lines of people wait in the street and on the pavement to see once more their relatives inside. It is a harrowing sight. And you cannot shake off the thought that the same fate may be reserved for us all.

  I kept thinking that I would manage to get enough money for a few months of peace. But now my hopes have gone. Having dreamed of half a million, I have now returned to my petty calculations. I still have seven thousand to eight thousand lei at home—but then what will I do?

  Lack of friendship on the part of Mircea Ştefănescu, who has still not found the time to read my play. It would be absurd to think that he will help me put it on. That’s another door closed.

  Saturday, 10 October

  Yesterday evening’s German communiqué does not mention the Stalingrad front. Clearly, all the dispatches and commentaries are trying to shift attention to other sectors: Terek, Ilmen, Leningrad. Does this mean they have given up the idea of capturing the city? Or, because it will take more time, are they going to keep quiet about it until they are finally able to announce victory? In any event, the hour of victory has unquestionably been overtaken by the change of season. Autumn is well and truly here. We have had the first day of rain and cold.

  Aristide showed me some lines attacking me in a book of Efimiu’s that came out a few days ago.1 I am a “russet contributor to an Orthodox newspaper,” an “unbaptized Jew in the service of the Orthodox Nae Ionescu,” and so on. One day Eftimiu will be a champion of extreme democracy and I still a hooligan. As I grow older, I realize that misunderstandings are irrevocable. Cuvântul is a part of my life that remains perpetually open. Nothing, neither my writing nor my life, will ever close it.

  Monday, 12 October

  The other day I finished Act One of Insula. Today I began Act Two. I work without conviction, because I know it is pointless. Leni will act in a play by Froda and Nicuşor—and Insula, a circumstantial piece that could be acted only by Leni, only today and only at the Baraşeum, will have no use or purpose. If I do nevertheless write it, it will be so that I do not drop yet another project halfway through. All my abandoned literary projects depress me. But if I am frank about it, is Insula a literary project? It seems to me more like a pretext for a show. There was also the hope of earning some money from it, at a time when I need money so much and don’t know where to turn.

  The war continues as a state of mind. It is a great calamity that we always have on our backs. From a military point of view, however, this is a moment of general standstill. For three days the communiqués have been completely trivial.

  Wednesday, 14 October

  Yesterday evening, everyone awaiting deportation at Sfîntu Ion Nou was set free. People returned from the dead. I have heard that there were wild scenes at the moment of their release; people were howling and fainting. Someone shouted: “Long live Greater Romania!” “Long live the Marshal!” What these releases mean, I don’t know. Second thoughts? A mere postponement? Wdl they give up the deportations for good? An article in Sunday’s Bukarester Tageblatt repeated the assurance that by autumn 1943 there will no longer be any Jews in Romania.

  The military pause continues. Nothing new at the fronts. Stalingrad has completely dropped out of the news.

  Antoine Bibescu, in a letter I received yesterday, asked me whether I needed ten thousand lei and said that he could send it to me. I wrote back at once, saying that I didn’t need anything.

  Thursday, 15 October

  In today’s Universul, the Berlin correspondent spoke of adjustments at the front in view of the approaching winter; the offensive will be resumed next spring, when the Bolsheviks will be annihilated. But if the German army is already entering its winter break, the hibernation will begin nearly two months earlier than in 1941.

  For the first time something was published today about the deportation of Jews (“expatriation of certain elements”—as the official statement puts it). The Council of Ministers has decided that, from now on, the “expatriation” operations will be carried out by a special body, and that all such measures have been suspended until this comes into being. Can we feel reassured? If so, for how long?

  Saturday, 17 October

  The Germans have been on the offensive at Stalingrad for the past two days. It seems to be a final effort to capture the city. Titel Mânciulescu (whom I met just now on a streetcar) said that it will all be over in two or three days.

  I have taken back my play manuscript from Mircea Ştefânescu, who hasn’t read it. I preferred to put an end to an embarrassing situation.

  I keep trying to write Act Two of Insula. After a few days of complete inertia, I seem finally to have got things moving. But what’s the point? I don’t think I’ll do a play suitable for Leni and the Baraşeum.

  Thursday, 22 October

  Act Two of Insula is making progress, and I may finish the first tableau by Sunday. It is even possible that this first tableau will acquire the dimensions of an act—which would, to some extent, force me to rearrange the play. I am happy enough with what I have written recently (in particular, today, because I am simply too exhausted to write anything on days when I am at school). Maybe the tone is at times too serious for Leni and for what a Baraşeum audience can take. But the way I have started it means that it will not be cut to their size but will be a play pure and simple. Quite likely it will remain in my drawer, and in the end that would not displease me. But I do need money so badly: if it were not for this, I wouldn’t even think of putting it on. A stage performance, a published book, an article—any sign of myself in public is an act of presence and acceptance. Well, I don’t consider myself present—and I don’t accept.

  “Fighting continues in Stalingrad” was the laconic report in yesterday evening’s German communiqué. Again the rhythm of the offensive has slackene
d. Again the imminence of the city’s fall has been toned down.

  Saturday, 24 October

  “An enemy counterattack has been repelled in Stalingrad,” said yesterday evening’s German communiqué. In Egypt, according to what Rosetti said yesterday, the British have taken the offensive.

  I feel that Act Two of Insula is coming along much better than I expected. The attic tableau is acquiring the dimensions and dramatic coherence of a full act.

  It occurs to me that if Act One is speeded up at performance, it could be presented as a prologue, followed by three acts.

  Sunday, 25 October

  The headline in today’s Universul: “The Fate of Stalingrad Sealed.”

  Tuesday, 27 October

  Yesterday morning I finished Act Two of Insula. I read it in the evening to Leni, Scarlat, and Jenica—an illuminating experience. For I became aware that it is well constructed theatrically and, despite the comic rhythm, finely written. I think I may like it more than Jocul de-a vacanţa. There are longueurs in Act Two—even a certain monotony and times when it drags—but in general I feel that I have a rich situation, three well-planted characters, and a few roads open to Act Three (if there is not to be a fourth act). Their reaction was, of course, less favorable. They liked Act One a lot—which was to be expected, because it is a sketch. Act Two, where the tone becomes rather more serious and the situations acquire a certain psychological depth, pleased them at first but then started to weary them. There can be no question of a performance in the near future. Scarlat does not want one, and Leni doesn’t dare to want one. He is keeping room for his play and Nicuşor’s, whereas she, the poor girl, has lost her bearings. Instinctively she feels that Insula is a lively play and that her role has a certain warmth and intensity. But it all strikes her as too refined, too subtle, too “intellectual.”