Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  The breach in the Nogaic steppe is moving ever deeper toward Perekop. At Krivoi Rog, however, the Germans report powerful counterattacks.

  I am still on Shakespeare. Finished Antony and Cleopatra. Yesterday and today I read Othello. This evening, the first act of Lear.

  Theatrically speaking, Antony and Cleopatra is disjointed, fragmented, lacking in dramatic coherence. Some beautiful scenes and passages, especially in Act Five.

  But Othello struck me as a work of unexpected beauty (perhaps heightened by the pleasure of being able to read it almost without a dictionary).

  Lear begins in a grand manner.

  I shall again be paid quite well for teaching at Onescu—and it is an opportunity to organize my material for a book on Shakespeare that I may write sometime. (Sometime!! When? In another life?)

  Wednesday, 3 November

  Since yesterday the Russians report having occupied and moved beyond Perekop. The German communiqué reports this evening “heavy fighting” at “the northern gateway to the Caucasus,” having yesterday reported a landing in the region of Kerch.

  Will the results of the Moscow Conference give the war a different direction? Should we expect another blow to be struck this autumn?

  Saturday, 6 November

  This evening’s German communiqué reports the evacuation of Kiev “to avoid a breakthrough that was threatening to occur.” The Russians have retaken the city two years after losing it. The Kerch landing seems to have established a “bridgehead.” Now that the Crimea is under attack from both Perekop and Kerch, how will the Germans be able to hold on there? For how long?

  The Nogaic steppe seems to be completely clear of Germans. The immediate point of attack for the Soviets is now Kherson.

  The Russian offensive is continuing right across the front, with changes in intensity and violence at one point or another.

  None of the propaganda formulas holds any more. No explanation stands up. The distances grow shorter each day; the obstacles fall one after the other.

  Marietta Sadova never stops play-acting, as I saw when I visited her yesterday. (I need some books in connection with Shakespeare, and I thought I could get some from her—but I gave up.) I found her with the same gestures, the tears and faintness and changes in her voice, which have always made her a sublime Marietta. It’s unbearable, but also funny.

  I spent a couple of hours in a tavern yesterday with Cicerone Theodorescu, who was pleasant and honest as always.

  We read and work, see people, listen to music, make plans, but beyond all that there is the shadow of the disasters that might yet come.

  Wednesday, 10 November

  I began my course on Shakespeare today at the college. An uninspired lecture—though I had good material.

  In the last few days I have read Lear and Macbeth.

  The war is continuing in all the areas of offensive action. The critical points are now west of Kiev and west of Nevel.

  Hitler’s speech of the day before yesterday “fait bonne mine à mauvais jeu. ”5 I think it restored morale a little, even among people here, for a few days or hours at least. Even the most recent military communiqués have been less somber.

  I am worried that my money is again running out.

  Sunday, 14 November

  The Russians have taken Zhitomir. Their breakthrough is becoming so deep that it threatens to drive a complete wedge between the northern and southern fronts.

  On the map it strikes you how short is the distance between Zhitomir and Cernâuti, between Kherson and the Dniester.

  Igiroseanu—I met him at lunch at the Bibescus’, who are back in Bucharest—is terrified by the approach of the Russians; he said that the Germans have not lost the war and will not lose it. They are in a period of crisis, but they will pull through it. With the new weapons they are developing (an invisible airplane, a self-propelled projectile, etc.), they will destroy London in the spring and force Britain out of the war; they will also annihilate the Russians. All this he said with a mournful air (“vous savez, moi fai toujours été pour les Anglais”6), but also with a show of knowledge and “objectivity.”

  I spent the evening with Titel Comarnescu, first at the Gieseking concert, then at the Bavaria. He is completely distraught: the Russians will be here in two months, he says, and we will all perish wholesale, Jews and Romanians alike.

  Wednesday, 17 November

  Yesterday was wonderful: warm, sunny, with a soft April light in which everything stood out. It was incredible. Today is also fine but more “normal,” less springlike.

  Yesterday afternoon I went to Dragos Protopescu’s opening lecture—furious with myself for going, but having no other choice. (I want him at all costs to authorize me to read some works about Shakespeare in the faculty library.)

  It was a “Nae Ionescu” type of lecture without Nae’s magnetism; a funny, couldn’t-care-less lecture in the Bucharest style. How easy that is!

  What I want to note here is something quite different. He spoke of the “English genius” and said things that seemed wildly courageous in today’s conditions: on “the British moral genius,” on the Englishman as “the highest form of human evolution,” on “the stupid prejudice about British perfidy or hypocrisy,” when in reality the British spirit is an alloy of realistic common sense. He even spoke of Britain’s military genius. And he went so far as to describe Churchill as a model of political courage. It was “subversive” from the first word to the last.

  I thought there was a basic lack of seriousness in the fact that such a lecture is possible today, in November 1943, when Romania is in the middle of a war alongside Germany. It might have been a grave incident, but it wasn’t. It had no significance, no consequence. A Legionary praises the spirit of England to an audience of students—who are themselves Legionaries, actually or potentially—but this means nothing to them. They feel no need to reexamine or abandon anything, or to stand up to anything that is said.

  Yesterday evening I went with the Bibescus to The Marriage of Figaro. It was miserably performed, but I still listened to it with boundless pleasure. What riches, what youthfulness, what wonderful facility. Dozens of musical themes and ideas liberally tossed off, each of which could have been the starting point for a concerto, symphony, or quartet.

  The front-page headline in this morning’s Universul: “The German Military Command Again Controls the Initiative in the East.”

  Saturday, 20 November

  The Germans have retaken Zhitomir. The Russians have been in Korosten for a couple of days, but it is too advanced after the fall of Zhitomir.

  Friday, 26 November

  I have been ill for several days, without knowing what is wrong. I am not ill in the true sense: I don’t have a fever or any aches and pains, but I feel completely drained of energy. Yesterday evening I wanted to write a few lines here, but I couldn’t hold the pen in my hand. I am just about all right in the morning (now, for example, as I prepare to leave for school at nine o’clock, I still have the strength to scribble these few words), but by evening I am dropping from fatigue. It is a real “crisis,” all the more unwelcome as it finds me penniless. I haven’t been so hard up since June, and I don’t know what to do about it.

  In Russia (judging by the German communiqué) the fighting remains intense but stationary.

  However strange it may be, with its various bulges that do not look tenable, the southern front continues to hold. Things have been at a visible standstill for the last ten to fifteen days.

  The German riposte at Zhitomir seems to have larger objectives. The papers are starting to talk of Kiev—an operation that would be similar to the retaking of Kharkov this spring.

  Anyway, the war goes on. Nothing new has happened that might speed things up. On the contrary, a general slowing of the momentum is returning us to our old moral inertia.

  To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow.7

  Sunday, 28 November

  Gomel was captured by the Russians on Thursday
.

  In the Zhitomir sector, the German communiqué has not mentioned for a couple of days the great counterattack that was supposed to retake Kiev.

  Berlin has been heavily bombed in a series of air raids.

  But the war is still the same: long, drab, oppressive. And our question is still the same: When will it end?

  Sunday, 5 December

  An exhausting week, with all manner of lunches and dinners. But with the Bibescus gone this morning, I can return to my customary life outside the social round.

  Nothing new at the fronts. The Germans have retaken Korosten, the Russians continue their attacks almost everywhere; in Italy, Montgomery has reopened the offensive. But despite all these developments, we are in a period of relative quiet, perhaps because of the weather (implausibly clear and sunny), perhaps also for certain political reasons that we cannot know.

  The British-American-Russian-Chinese-Turkish conferences, in Egypt and Iran, may lead to something.

  Monday, 6 December

  Today I passed the final proofs of Pride and Prejudice. I’d be surprised if it had a big success in Romanian. It is too delicate, refined, subtle; no crudeness, no stabs of pathos, no wrenching. I am not at all happy with my translation, which lacks fluency. But will it bring me in some money?

  I have recently listened a number of times to Mozart’s concerto in E-flat major, which I gave as a present to Leni some four or five years ago. I asked her to let me have it for a few days, and I have been listening to it with real enchantment. I force myself to follow it phrase by phrase, sound by sound. I try to identify and hold on to each instrument. It is an infinite joy in the fast movements—but what sadness, what melancholy, what heartbreak in the andantino!

  Wednesday, 8 December

  A grave letter from Poldy, who is very ill and needs to have two operations. He was in a concentration camp for three months in 1941 and came out with his health ruined.

  “J’ai eufaim, horriblement faim, ”8 he tells me. And I knew nothing of it. I still know nothing. Suddenly the war has again become the appalling nightmare that I have recently been so thoughtless as to forget.

  Saturday, 11 December

  The headline in an evening paper: “Twelve Thousand Arrests in France.”9

  My thoughts went straight to Poldy. I talk, laugh, walk in the street, read, and write—but I never stop thinking of him.

  This journal is becoming absurd—a bad habit, nothing more.

  The war pierces me through, pierces my whole life, everything I love, believe, and try to hope. And of this whole grinding torment, what should I record here?

  Tuesday, 14 December

  Yesterday evening I unexpectedly found myself reading “Ursa Major” for Nora Piacentini and Septilici. (I went to see them at the theatre, and they took me to their place upstairs.)

  They were immediately very enthusiastic about it and decided to put it on straightaway, even though they had already started rehearsals of Michel Duran’s Barbara.

  Today things happened with a speed that has swept away all my doubts and hesitations. From eleven this morning until four this afternoon, Mircea and I dictated simultaneously to three typists. At 4:30 the manuscript was delivered to the theatre. A quarter of an hour later, Soare (already introduced to the plot) presented the play on behalf of a teacher who wants to remain anonymous—and signed it Victor Mincu. The title: Steaua fără nume [The Star Without a Name]. (Personally, I regret the loss of “Ursa Major”—but in their view it sounded too literary.)

  I waited for Nora and Mircea in a café, and at 6:45 they arrived aglow from the “rapturous excitement” it had aroused at the reading before the board.

  Everyone is intrigued and happy about it. The first rehearsal will take place tomorrow. Soare told me over the phone:

  “It’s a masterpiece.”

  That’s all very well, but Act Three hasn’t been written. When will I do it? It is urgent—but I don’t have an hour to spare between school and college. Nevertheless I must try at all costs to finish it off, working day and night.

  If this venture makes me some money, the rest is unimportant.

  Tuesday, 21 December

  Today I finished Act Three of “Ursa Major.” I wrote it quickly, from Friday night until midday today, hurriedly, a little mechanically, almost without pausing to read back over it. Last night, “doped” on black coffee, I worked until four in the morning. It’s not my favorite way of working. I can’t produce anything good “under the whip.” I need more freedom to move, more time for reflection. I think there are some excellent things in the act, but I know that I haven’t given my all. Maybe I’ll come back to it later. The ending does not satisfy me.

  But I don’t take this whole business too seriously. For a few moments—a few hours, perhaps—I was in a state of some tension. The casting annoyed me. I was depressed that Maria Mohor had the female lead (for whom I felt a kind of tenderness). The various echoes it has produced both amuse and irritate me. Victor Ion Papa calls it the best Romanian comedy, and Soare a masterpiece; Marcel Anghelescu is angry that he is not in Act Two and so does not want to appear in Act Three either; Nora wants an ending for herself, etc., etc.1 It’s time I said to all this nonsense: merde!2 Badly acted or well acted, praised or abused—the only thing I ask of this play is that it should bring me in 500,000 lei.

  I think and hope that I’m serious enough for all the rest to be completely and utterly indifferent.

  Wednesday, 29 December

  A dream on Monday night.

  I’m at the University. I meet Onicescu in a corridor. He is leaving for Berlin—and tells me to leave with him. A moment later I am in a small room, at Nae Ionescu’s seminar. Here he comes. He asks me the time and notes my answer on a piece of paper. Then he asks the same question to the other students in turn, noting each reply under a special heading. The times given are not the same. Then Nae asks each of us to determine the right time—and gets us to sign our names. He turns to me and tells me that I speak with a Jewish accent. But immediately after that, he puts his hand on mine and adds that he is leaving on Saturday evening for Berlin.

  Thursday, 30 December

  “The town of Korosten has been abandoned after heavy fighting”—says this evening’s German communiqué.

  Recently I haven’t noted anything in connection with the war. But some ten days ago, after a period when things had remained fairly stationary, the Russian offensive resumed with maximum intensity, at least in the Vitebsk and Zhitomir sectors.

  Since the Cairo and Tehran conferences, things seem to have again entered an acute phase. Berlin has suffered a series of devastating air raids. In the North Atlantic a German ship of the line, the Schamhorst, was sunk three days ago. Everywhere, in both the Allied and the German camps, it is thought that a landing in the west is now imminent.

  Just by reading the papers—because I have no opportunity and make no effort to listen to the radio—I gain the impression of a final stiffening of positions.

  I can’t believe, however, that an offensive will begin in the west in the middle of winter. The Allies are exerting great psychological pressure on Germany, which is probably needed to prepare the blow at a later date.

  Friday, 31 December

  Certain gestures and habits, by force of repetition, have become almost like superstitions: a letter to Poldy, a book for Aristide, some records for Leni. I went to Socec to buy a calendar refill. This evening I shall go for a meal at Alice’s. I have hastily reread this notebook.

  The 31st of December. Like a year ago, or two years, or three years. When did this year pass? It seemed so heavy, so foggy, so uncertain. And yet it went. It has passed and we are still alive.

  But the war is still here beside us, with us, in us. Closer to the end, but for that very reason more dramatic.

  Any personal balance sheet gets lost in the shadow of war. Its terrible presence is the first reality. Then somewhere far away, forgotten by us, are we ourselves, with our faded, di
minished, lethargic life, as we wait to emerge from sleep and start living again.

  Footnotes

  1. This World War I novel, Itzhik Strul, Deserter, described the persecution of Jewish soldiers in the Romanian army.

  2. Radu Beligan: actor.

  3. Mircea Çeptilici: actor.

  4. All the better—all the worse.

  5. In English in the original.

  6. British Council employee.

  7. I am on the right track.

  8. "Write it straightaway. You must. Straightaway. There's not a moment to lose."

  9. "Prince, do you like the Jews?"—"Mind your manners! Our friend is a Jew."

  1. "She could hardly open her legs."

  2. Knights of idleness.

  3. Wilhelm Filderman continued to be the de facto leader of the Romanian Jewish Community. He was deported to Transnistria because he constandy petitioned Antonescu, asking the Marshal not to deport his fellow Jews and opposed various anti-Semitic decrees and decisions.

  4. Petre Tutea: philosopher, ardent follower of the Iron Guard.

  5. In English in the original.

  6. “Money troubles are no disgrace.”

  7. Anatole de Monzie: French politician, a Vichy supporter, and a former socialist.

  8. Everything hangs together.

  9. Jean Mouton: director of the French Institute in Bucharest.

  1. “I pretend to be living—but I am not alive. I drag myself along.”

  2. “Are you Italian?”—“Yes, I am Italian.”—“Sir, you are no longer at war. Your country has made peace.”