Sunday, 6 December
Days of lethargy and disintegration. It’s not even despair. Everything is bitter. Profound disgust with yourself, with other people, with “events,” with life. You don’t even have the energy to commit suicide, but if you had a loaded revolver in your hand, you might pull the trigger. What do I need to come back to life? Money? A woman? Work? A book? A house? I don’t know. Everything is joyless, tasteless, colorless, meaningless. The only thing I could do now would be to play cards, for hours or days on end—until my mind is completely numb.
Wednesday, 9 December
I don’t think I have ever felt so acutely, and at the same time both a sense that my life is over and a desperate wish to come back to life. I did have, and still do have, some dispositions to happiness: a certain élan, an indefinable lyricism, a great belief in light, serenity, and life, a certain warmth, an endless capacity to love—but all have been ruined and lost. There is a curse that pursues me from afar. The war is a catastrophe that sometimes overwhelms (and makes me forget) my old unhappiness, but at other times deepens and accentuates it, keeps it alive like still bleeding wounds. I feel annoyed with myself for writing so badly (maybe I shouldn’t write at all when I can’t keep myself under control), but I feel a need to speak, to shout, to release—if only by screaming— something of my horrible nightmare.
Thursday, 10 December
In Clermont-Ferrand the Jews were arrested yesterday and sent to labor camps. According to the dispatch, this measure will be extended to other départements. What will Poldy do? This is always my only thought.
Yesterday and the day before, I went out in the evening to get some air. Clear starry nights, not too cold. But, I don’t know why, the darkened city seems to me gloomier than ever. I feel the prison, the walls, the barbed wire—and ourselves struggling amid them. Here, or in France, the circle keeps tightening around us. Is there an escape? I am beginning to think not. There are only brief postponements: a day, a week, a month—another day, another week, another month—but our fate will be the same.
A calm appraisal of the war (one conducted without either excitement or depression) forces me to see it as a long, hard, and slow business. Peace cannot be reasonably expected in the near future. The end may be certain, but it is a long way off. The war has reached a phase in which the Germans cannot do much more than they have done up to now— but the Allies still cannot bring their resources to bear. The Germans have great staying power, and the British and Americans are not strong enough to deliver knockout blows. We are entering a long process of attrition, which will last until there is a decisive change in the balance of forces. Meanwhile the Russians continue to attack, but (though the situation is still confused) they do not seem capable of fundamentally altering the front. In all likelihood, the winter will be extremely difficult for the armies in the east, but not completely intolerable. So then spring will come, and the cycle will start again. Until when? God knows.
But there is still room for miracles.
Sunday, 20 December
I really am living from day to day. I have a thousand lei in my pocket— and I don’t know where I’ll find another thousand the day after tomorrow. I haven’t smoked for ten days. And I have meanwhile drawn little sums from school: 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 lei, in back pay from previous months. It looks as if tomorrow they’ll give me my January pay (about 6,000, I think). After that, I don’t know at all. I won’t pay the rent on the 26th, but it will have to be paid one day or another, in a week or two. With what? From where? I have asked Sică for some work. For the moment I am translating Topaze. I’d happily do work on the side, without feeling gloomy or resentful about it, if it would bring in what’s needed at home. (By chance I found out that Sică has been getting the author’s royalties for Bichou; some 10,000 lei an evening. I got 22,000 total, and I’d start the same work any time at the same rate. Maybe some people would do it for even less.) Without feeling desperate, I think to myself that this is what is called a failure: I, at thirty-five years of age, with no job, no money, no real friendship, no escape. Everything I have done has failed miserably. My clothes are tattered; my boots look worse and worse. I have grown lean. I am tired, finished, useless. How far is there to go before I put out my hand and beg?
The war goes on: nothing dramatic, no major changes. For the past eight days Montgomery has been back on the offensive at El Agheila; Rommel hastily retreated, but it is not very clear to where. Will he stop before Tripoli? Will he defend Tripoli? Will he retreat to Tunisia? In Russia the Soviet offensive is continuing in more or less the same zone, without major advances but also without slowing down. Each day the German communiqué reports that attacks have been “driven off,” “destroyed,” or “crushed.” The daily repetition of these three expressions greatly weakens their meaning. The Germans have gradually created a kind of slang, a kind of communiqué code, which we manage to understand but which draws a curtain of mist over the reality of the war.
Tuesday, 22 December
The Soviet offensive persists all along the front (Terek, the Volga-Don region, Kalinin-Toropets, Velikiye Luki, Lake Ilmen). On Sunday, moreover, a new offensive was started at a point that the newspaper reports imprecisely call “the middle Don.” The official German communiqué issued yesterday evening contains an unusual passage: “On the middle Don, the enemy has been attacking for several days with a very powerful concentration of armor, and has managed to penetrate the local defensive front. This breakthrough cost huge Bolshevik casualties. To avert a threat to their flank, the German combat divisions took up prepared positions to their rear and thereby foiled an extension of the initial enemy success. The fighting is continuing with undiminished intensity.”
One day, soon after peace comes, I may write a chronicle of the war years: “Events, Texts, People”—in the genre of Cum am devenit huligan. A kind of personal memorial to this terrible journey. But will we reach the end of it?
For money I’d be prepared to do anything in the theatre (of course, without signing it or taking literary responsibility). Translations, adaptations, falsifications, vile tricks. I’d happily cobble together any kind of play (farce, melodrama). A few days ago I greatly enjoyed reading Soare’s and Vlàdoianu’s rubbish (Pâmînt [Earth]), with its sublime, methodical, formulaic triviality. If I wrote like that, I would have the dual satisfaction of earning money and poking fun at myself. I suddenly thought that an adaptation of one of Ionel Teodoreanu’s novels (Lorelei, for instance) could be a real hit on the stage. In fact, its success would be guaranteed. False nobility, false intellectuality, falsely blasé attitudes. With Vraca as Catul Bogdan and Mimi Botta as Lorelei, it would easily run for 150 shows. This afternoon I actually went to Madeleine’s to suggest that we work on it together, with the idea that she would sign it alone and present it to a theatre. But while she was busy making some tea, I happened to leaf through Teodoreanu’s latest (or next-to-latest) novel and found a passage of such abject anti-Semitism that disgust proved stronger than my theoretical cynicism. I no longer said anything to Madeleine—and I dropped the project. After all, some things are just too dirty to touch even in the theatre.
Wednesday, 23 December
“The defensive battle on the middle Don is continuing with undiminished ferocity,” said yesterday evening’s German communiqué. There are no details that would allow you to locate the action on the map.
No news of Emil Gulian.7 I rang Ortansa and found her at her wit’s end. “Just so long as he’s alive,” she said. His last letter is dated the 15th of November. On the 18th there was the attack between the Volga and the Don—and since then, not a sign. It would be too terrible to lose him. Why he of all people? Mircea Eliade wanted this war. He waited for it, wished for it, believed in it, still believes in it—but he is in Lisbon. And Emil Gulian dead? At a front where he didn’t know what he was doing?
Friday, 25 December
The first day of Christmas. At home all day. No one rings me and I don’t try to co
ntact anyone. My solitude is ever greater.
Of the 3,500 lei I still had yesterday, 2,000 have gone on a Bach concerto. Recklessness? No. I too felt the need to buy something in a town that yesterday seemed invaded with happy people doing their last-minute shopping—a sight that has always humiliated me, because I have always been, and above all felt, so poor. The concerto (in D minor for piano and orchestra) is of a wonderful gravity and, at the same time, a wonderful brilliance. I listened to it twice yesterday and three times today. The andante begins and ends with a phrase of Wagnerian intensity.
It is almost certain that Emil is a prisoner. An orderly on leave from the front told Vivi that his officer—who escaped by a miracle—saw Gulian at the moment of his capture. Colonel Stancov, phoning from Rostov, confirmed the news. Now begins the uncertainty. Will he remain alive? Will he return?
Why do I not write? Why do I not work? A half-written play (Insula) is waiting to be completed. Two complete scenarios for a play are on file. I have a novel planned to the last detail. I won’t even speak of Shakespeare’s sonnets, to which I have not returned for so long, or of the “chronicle” that occurred to me a short while ago but is so tempting. I put everything off—until when? And meanwhile, time passes to no avail. I know only too well why I can’t write. Bad health. Frayed nerves. Lack of a comfortable house. Inability to remain alone with myself, in hours filled with meditation. Worries about money—and about so much else besides. Yet Jane Austen wrote on her knees in her father’s dining room, surrounded by a family who did not know what she was doing. Maybe. I am not Jane Austen.
Tuesday, 29 December
I don’t think that Darlan’s8 assassination (on Christmas Eve, in circumstances not yet made public) will have any influence on the course of the war, even in the limited sector of Tunisia. There are probably moves toward a deal between De Gaulle and Giraud,9 which will solve the problem of North Africa at a political level. The war in Tunisia is still at the stage of waiting and preparing. In Tripolitania, Montgomery has occupied Sirta. Will he meet resistance at Misurata?
The fighting continues in Russia, especially in the southern sector, but we are not able to follow it. The communiqués are vague and totally lack geographical precision. The tone of the propaganda deliberately matches the confusion. The Russians are always attacking, but always advancing slowly The whole operation is of a scale and complexity that we can grasp in theory, but its evolution on the ground escapes us. My own view is that the Germans will eventually reestablish a front line and will not give up Millerovo or Kamenskaya or, above all, Rostov. They will hold them, as they have held Rzhev and Velikiye Luki for the past year. At some point, however, the collapse will become due. But when? Next summer? Next autumn?
Footnotes
1. Nicuşor Constantinescu: theatre director, playwright.
2. Andrei Otetea, a historian, was referring to the Iagi pogrom.
3. The French playwrights Alfred Savoir and Henri Duvernois.
4. Now it is a question of working.
5. The Wurm Brothers company was in dispute with the Finance Ministry. A resolution would bring Sebastian a sizable fee.
6. You can’t be a prince without paying for it.
7. A legal expert and translator.
8. It's vile work, but it has to be done.
9. Sebastian was teaching at the Onescu school, established in 1941 for Jewish students who were expelled from Romanian schools.
1. But that doesn’t change much.
2. The Iron Guard rebellion against General Antonescu.
3. I exhaust myself doing nothing.
4. Solomon (Charles) Gruber: lawyer and personal secretary to Wilhelm Filder-man.
5. In fact only one passenger survived. A heated parliamentary debate in Great Britain followed this tragedy.
6. Baraşeum was a Jewish theatre founded in 1940, after Jews had been excluded from Romanian theatres. It functioned during the duration of the war.
7. He always knows what is to be believed.
8. Demostene Russo: historian.
9. A Jewish ritual meal conducted on the first and second nights of Passover.
1. The Riom trial was staged by the Vichy regime against Léon Blum and other French politicians accused of being responsible for the 1940 defeat.
2. Infamy is not open to anyone who wants it.
3. At one go.
4. Not clear in the original text. Sebastian was questioning if the ghetto was indeed in Bersad.
5. “You are awaited with joy and impatience.”
6. Graphic artist.
7. Graphic artist.
8. The novelist Paul Sterian was a high-ranking official in the Antonescu administration.
9. But let’s try to go on living.
1. Concentration camp used for the internment of those thought to be hostile to the Antonescu regime.
2. "We have another two years to go."
3. Ion Carabas: bookseller.
4. Onoaptea furtunosă [A Stormy Night] and Conu Leonida faţă cu Reacţiunea [Squire Leonida Facing Reaction], two plays by Ion Luca Caragiale.
5. “Why do you want me to change what I’m wearing? It’s hot—and this is how I dress. As for my slippers, they are so comfortable. People in Romania don’t know how to dress.”
6. “What’s he saying? Who is that? What’s the name of that woman in green, etc.?”
7. “For him, it was as if she had been marrying a Chinese.”
8. You felt like screaming!
9. “If Stalingrad holds out until the first of October, the Germans are lost.”
1. See Victor Eftimiu, Frăţia de arme (Bucharest, 1942), p. 340. The phrases cited by Sebastian are in fact condensations of passages from the book.
2. Frances Dickinson was an employee of the British Council.
3. And now I have to extricate myself from it.
4. In English in the original.
5. In English in the original.
6. All is not yet over.
7. Sebastian's friend Emil Gulian died on the eastern front.
8. François Darlan: French admiral, high-ranking official of the Vichy regime.
9. General Henri Giraud assumed governing powers in North Africa after Darlan’s assassination.
1943
1 January 1943, Friday
I am beginning to get used to the years of war. We seem to struggle through the same journey from first of January to first of January, in a nightmare that is itself beginning to have a certain monotony. The seasons always bring the same phases. Winters of German semislumber, when you feel the armies are tired: low reserves, no stamina left. Then spring comes and you live in expectation of a new offensive—in April? in May? in June? And when the fighting suddenly becomes fierce with the arrival of summer, the offensive and the propaganda reach dizzying new heights, and you live a few days of fear, doubt, and mortification. Could it just possibly be that. . . ? Later, in September or October, you realize that nothing decisive has happened. The pace of events slackens again in the weeks before the first snow, and the cycle begins all over again. How much longer will this continue? Will 1943 bring us peace? I don’t think so. Not unless a miracle happens. I tend to think, rather, that 1943 will repeat without major differences the trajectory of 1942, certainly accentuating the German decline and the Allied rise, but not by so much as to bring the denouement rapidly closer. Perhaps in 1944. Anyway, I find it easier to say 1944, precisely because it is still far away.
What is becoming of me, of us, in all this madness? I don’t know. For the moment we are still alive. We have got this far, and it’s possible that we will get further. Nothing depends on me, on us. Everything takes place over our heads. All we can do is wait. But God knows, it is not easy.
Saturday, 2 January
Place names that used to be totally unknown to us now concentrate for a moment all our attention, as if everything were being decided there: Velikiye Luki, Elista, and so on. What they mean in themselves, what they repr
esent in the general course of the war, we do not know and hardly even ask ourselves. But for one day, one hour, or one minute, our whole being is there.
Hitler’s order of the day is grim but not desperate. His speech in May was much graver.
“Look, this war will go on till 1947 or 1948,” Sică said yesterday. It was the first time I had heard those numbers (my thoughts have never gone beyond ’44), but now I am beginning to get used to them. Yes, in the end, why not?
In translating Topaze, I see close at hand what is called a great play, a surefire success, a faultless construction. Topaze is a machine that will always work and bring people to the theatre anytime and anywhere. It is rich in material and full of drama, its characters are precisely drawn, and, above all, it has a satirical vigor that hits right on target. No wavering, nothing fuzzy or vague. In my own plays there is an inclination to “delicacy,” which means that they have no chance at all of being a great success. As long as I play the key of “subtlety,” I’ll never win a large audience. Pagnol has shown me that you don’t have to be crude, but you must without fail be vigorously dramatic. Can I stop being what I am? Can I deliberately achieve what I lack? The material for “Alexander the Great” was excellent, but after Act One (so rich, so lively, so energetic) I became “subtle” again. I keep committing the sins of a litterateur. I wish I could treat theatre as an industry and write a play with a perfect mechanism.
Monday, 4 January
Beginning today, Jews will get not fifty but one hundred grams less bread than Christians. Four of ten daily rations have been withdrawn from us.
Rebreanu is preparing Shylock for the National. Camil Petrescu, who reported the incident to me this evening, asked him whether the passage in which Shylock rebels against anti-Semitic hatred (Are we too not human? “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”) would not be difficult to act in today’s conditions.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 65
