1. The philosopher Mircea Vulcanescu, the ballet dancer Gabriel Negri, Petru (Titei) Comarnescu, and Al. Cristian Tell, an Iron Guard journalist, had all been involved in the conflict with the editors of Credinţa.
2. Theatre magazine.
1936
Bucharest. Thursday, 6 February 1936
As I left Leni’s yesterday evening, I felt that if I committed suicide that very night I would do it contentedly, almost with good humor.
I shall never be able to explain to her how much she means, or could mean, to me. Nor am I myself sure whether I love her with a grand amour or with the last of my vital resistance.
Thursday, 20 February
Why does it trouble me to think that she is leaving Bucharest tomorrow? Or why does it make me so happy to have sent her two lilac branches without any message?
She may not even realize who sent them; she may not even look at them—and that would be all the better.
Sunday, 1 March
A wonderful day and an overwhelmingly beautiful evening. A blue sky “rustling profusely” with stars, as I said to Emil Gulian last summer on a night such as this.
But it was not like this. . . . I feel that spring has broken out. I can feel it in many things, but above all in my pressing need to be happy.
And I have to do an article for Fundaţii,1 just now when all I really want is to love a woman, whoever it may be—Leni, Maryse, Jeni, or none of them, a stranger, no matter who.
I came home alone and—why, I don’t know—our Doggy disturbed me for the first time. There was something human in the way he jumped at me, in his lively yet melancholic outburst. Without being literary—I would even feel ashamed to be asked about this—I felt that he wants to talk to me and suffers for not being able to.
Maybe I’ll go to Breaza for a few days.
Monday, 2 [March]
I do not want to write about any of the details of my quarrel with Vremea. Some are comical, others upsetting.
I am told that Mircea was “disgusted” when he read my Rampa article in the presence of Donescu. He could find no excuse for me and agreed on every point with my “opponent.”
I don’t want to believe it, nor do I want to ask any more questions. But if even that is possible! . . .
Thursday, 5 [March]
I visited Devechi, whom I had not seen since Christmas.
We left together, and since his car was being repaired I persuaded him to get on a No. 31 bus with me.
Inside the bus, which had too many people on board, he looked dejected and ill at ease. . . . I felt the need to apologize.
“After all,” I said, “for you it’s an experience of a lifetime to get on a bus.”
Yesterday there was a letter from Leni. Loving, cheerful, without any psychological complications. A lovely girl!
Evening at the Nenişors, with Maryse staging a hysterical scene. Crying, laughing and, when I left, forbidding me to say good night. This spring is making all of us a little dizzy.
Tuesday, at the Dalles Hall, Nae’s lecture on Calvin. Fine, sober, without any posturing—and with only a few highly vague political allusions. A Nae from the good old times.
Saturday, 14 [March]
Lunch at the Corso with Camil, who had rung for us to revise his Teze şi antiteze [Theses and Antitheses] together. Before publishing it, he has a host of doubts and misgivings.
An amusing introduction, in which he declared his admiration for me.
In Romanian literature, he said, there are only three books whose sentiments add up to something profound: De două mii de ani, Patul lui Procust, and Ultima noapte.2
I resolutely freed myself from the eulogy.
“No, Camil, let’s drop that. We can talk about Patul lui Procust, but leave my books out of it.”
That shallow and unchanging tactic of ever-ready admiration I cannot but find somewhat endearing.
But I remain firm in my old affection for him. His little “quirks” always amuse me, never make me indignant. And he is certainly a remarkable fellow. I have been rereading some of his articles from 1922 and 1924. Their precision, tone, and style simply take your breath away.
I didn’t go to Nae’s class yesterday. It has started to bore me. The last few lectures have been repeats of last year’s, rather irritating because of their facile politics.
Last Sunday at the Nenişors, Tudor Vianu took Nae apart for a quarter of hour with extreme violence (though not of vocabulary). In his view, Nae is not at all original: he is a representative of Spengler and some other present-day Germans, and uses them at opportune moments without indicating his sources.
Maybe. I don’t know. But there is something demonic in Nae—and I can’t believe that that man can be reduced to nothing by academic criticism.
I am vegetating, just vegetating.
Thursday, 19 [March]
Yesterday evening I dined at Lilly’s with the whole of our group. Camil, in conversation with Mircea and myself, said in one of those displays of courageous sincerity which suit him so well—as if he had to do violence to his modesty by making it bow to the facts:
“After all, old chap, let’s admit that there are only three novelists: yourself, Mircea, and I.”
Ineffable Camil. If someone else had been there with us—who shall we say, Sergiu Dan?—he would surely have said that “after all, old chap, there are only four novelists.”
I saw Leni at the theatre, where she had a matinee.
“I’ve decided not to flirt with you any more,” she said.
I objected. She doesn’t understand anything and—quite rightly—expects this overlong game to come to an end. But for me there can be only one ending.
Pascal Alexandra’s suicide has been haunting me ever since I heard of it. I remember that they used to call him “girlie” at school. It is true that his whole being had something feminine, pallid, delicate. I think that all the way through school—and that means especially in the upper grades— I didn’t exchange so much as three words with him. He was anti-Semitic, like all of them. But then I had a kind of sympathy for the tenderness that I felt to be within him, and for the melancholy that made him end up beneath the wheels of a train.
Marioara Ventura, whom I met last week at a lunch at the French Institute, said to me:
“I’ve been reading you and found you interesting. But I didn’t know you were twenty-five years old.”
“Twenty-six, madam,” I corrected her.
Unfortunately, despite an appearance that is still sometimes youthful, I am growing older all the time.
Friday, 20 [March]
I went to the theatre, because Leni—who had not seen her company’s new production—rang and asked me to go with her.
She arrived five minutes after the curtain, and during each interval slipped away to make a phone call.
I would be a complete blockhead if I imagined she does not have a thousand lovers. But I have no doubt that, had I helped her to love me, she would have loved me in her way. I must admit that, given how confusing and cryptic is the game I have been playing, she has always shown an astonishing tact and assurance. I have only to recall how deplorably Lilly behaved in similar situations.
I should not be angry about this evening. It justifies me in lying low for ten days—which is a perfect step toward breaking up—though after the performance we went out to a tavern with Jenica Cruţescu, where Leni told us a lot of distressing things about her setup with Froda. I have the feeling she would gladly be out of it—and I shudder to think how happy something like that would make me.
But there is no point, and I should get used to drawing a line under my life’s calculations.
I shall try to write the play about which I have been thinking for some time.3 I saw the first act (even lines of dialogue) with amazing precision while I was at this evening’s performance at the Regina Maria. With my memories of the Wagner villa plus some themes taken over from Renée, Marthe, Odette,4 I could develop something really quite refin
ed. I shall give it a try—and if I weren’t tired, if I didn’t have so many things to do tomorrow, I think I’d start on the first act right now, even though it is past one in the morning.
Nae’s class yesterday was hard to take. Leftovers from last year’s course, leftovers of articles, leftovers of chitchat—plus a few crude jokes to arouse the sympathy of an audience that was becoming inattentive. How is it possible?
Half an hour later
I didn’t go to sleep after that. I wanted to put on paper a few thoughts I have had about the play, so that I don’t forget them. In fact, I woke up writing the scenario for the whole play. I am quite simply delighted with it. The idea seems excellent to me, and whereas half an hour ago I could see only the first act, now I have all three in outline. Perhaps it is a passing exultation, but right now I feel I have come up with something really first class. Let’s hope it works out.
Saturday, 21 [March]
It was hard getting to sleep last night. I was in a state of excitement such as I have not known for a long time. (Maybe the last time was in Paris in September 1930, when I was writing the “Buţă” chapter5 that evening in the hotel on the Rue de Rennes. Or maybe that Sunday morning in Brăila in the spring of 1934, when I was writing the Drontu-Marjorie episode.6
Last night I saw the premiere, the theatre, the performance—I was giving out the tickets. (A box for Roman,7 a box for Nae. I was wondering whether to give Jeni tickets for the premiere, and how, what kind of tickets, etc., etc. Good Lord, how childish I can be!)
If I had had a phone, I might have called Leni there and then— though it was three in the morning—to tell her about it and ask her advice.
This morning I woke up in a more reasonable frame of mind. I do think the outline for the play is good. Today I found a mass of fresh details for Act Two. The main thing now is to work out the scenario in as much detail as possible. Then we shall see. But I have confidence in myself— which doesn’t happen too often.
I can see Iancovescu being very good in the man’s role. Leni ought to act the woman. In fact she is Leni, everything I expected of her, everything she could be, everything she in a sense is.
If worse comes to worst, and only if she turns it down, the only one to whom I could give the part would be Marietta.8 She would give it less intensity but perhaps more poetry and an edge of melancholy.
Again, let’s hope it works out. I’d be happy if I could draw out all the reserves of emotion, poetry, and grace concealed in my theme.
Monday, 23 [March]
I am not feeling deflated, but the initial fever has passed. On Saturday, and even yesterday, I felt it was something I could finish in a couple of weeks. I think I was mistaken. I may need as much as a few months. I’d be happy to have it ready by September so that I can have it performed then.
I have started writing. Yesterday I sketched out the stage setting, and today I even composed the first scene. I am happy with it. True, it is rather short. I shall probably find it difficult to group several characters and to make them move together on stage at the same time.
I don’t know what will come of it, but I have to give it a try. It interests me especially from the point of view of literary technique. I realize that I have come up with a theatrical subject, which would not lend itself to a novel, short story, or anything else. Before now I didn’t know what it meant to see a story theatrically. The process of gestation is completely different from that of a novel.
The lure of life behind the scenes, of the auditorium, the publicity posters—all this I find dizzying. There’s a bit of the play-actor in me.
And then there is the emotion of writing for Leni! The idea that she will live things thought up by me, speak words written by me! How many times I shall have my revenge on her!
Sunday, 29 [March]
On Friday evening I heard the St. John Passion at the Ateneu,9 and this morning the Matthew Passion. I found in it a lot that had remained in my memory since last year, but I also discovered many new things. I felt overwhelmed. I really had the physical sense of being beneath a canopy of sounds. It was a feeling of monumentality, which for perhaps the first time made the term “sonorous architecture” seem more than an empty expression. And how many sweet passages, how many graceful moments!
At the exit, Nae—who had also been to both concerts (what a pensive lion’s head he had during the performance!)—called out to me from his new car, a million-lei1 Mercedes-Benz, and invited me to eat at his place. I had lunch with him and his son, Răzvan, and we went on talking for a couple of hours.
I don’t feel like it now, but I ought to write down everything he said in answer to my questions about his course. His logical armor has a thousand chinks. And it is too easy to shrug your shoulders when the questioning becomes more focused and requires you to say yes or no.
“You don’t understand,” he told me. “My theory of collectives is an escape from solitude, a tragic attempt to break out of loneliness.”
Yes, I do understand. But then let him stop speaking of the absolute rights of the collective and insist on the absolute importance of the individual.
I also wonder whether this sense of tragedy is not a little suspect, since it comes down to various theories in justification of the metaphysical value of the term “Captain” and its superiority to the terms “Duce” or “Führer.”
Doesn’t Nae Ionescu have a sense of humor? How can he take jokes like that seriously?
Saturday, 11 April
Yesterday evening, nearly six hours of music. I started at a quarter to nine with the St. John Passion from Budapest—but it was hard listening to it, because my radio suddenly went crazy. Then I continued at 11:30 with Radio Stuttgart, listening to a Handel overture (the Theodora,) a Locatelli symphony, Bach’s First Brandenburg Concerto and his Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, a Hebbel song with music by Schumann for choir and orchestra (very beautiful!), and the first part of Schubert’s Third Symphony. Next, at one o’clock also from Stuttgart, and continuing until 2:30, the St. Matthew Passion. I didn’t hear it through to the end because I switched it off after “Barabam” Ever greater joy listening to it, with ever more nuances.
Today I am off to Sinaia with Carol2 and Camil—hoping to stop at Breaza on the way back and remain there until Low Sunday. I should like to be able to work. If I returned with Act One at least! See how modest I am?
Sinaia, [Sunday], 12 [April]
I have been here since yesterday evening. The car journey was nice. Patches of mauve, green, and grey. Restful.
Everything snobbish in me—a liking for comfort and a little posturing—was flattered by the hotel’s almost sumptuous decor. But depressing society: whores (Lulu Nicolau, Eugenia Zaharia), journalists (Horia, Ring), gigolos (Polizu), old hags, club gamblers. Yesterday I lost two hundred lei at roulette as soon as I entered the casino. I promise to give it a wide berth—out of disgust more than prudence.
Will I be able to write? I don’t know. Maybe at Breaza, where I shall stop from tomorrow evening onward.
Yesterday in Bucharest I saw something that shook me, because I should never have been able to imagine all its thorny complexities. I had stopped with Camil on the Şosea, where work was under way for the Month of Bucharest festivities. Some trees were being transplanted there, and at that very moment they were trying to plant a pine that had been brought from somewhere or other. Two things struck me. The first was the huge piece of earth that had been torn up together with the tree. Not torn up, strictly speaking. A cylinder had been dug around it, a kind of bowl measuring, say, two cubic meters, which encircled it like a barrel. This bowl had to fit into a dug-out area of the same size as itself. But what surprised me even more were the people exerting themselves to hoist the tree. I counted more than fifty of them. What a will to live—indifferent, powerful, wordless, motionless—there was in that tree, which appeared huge among the people bustling around it.
Tuesday, 14 April
I’d have been happy with my b
irthday yesterday if it hadn’t ended so badly at the casino. I had to stay there until 2:30 in the morning because Carol was losing too much and I couldn’t leave him.
Otherwise a nice day. I managed to regain my vision of the play (I mean, I could see it again) and to get myself back into the action. I also started to write the last scene of the first act—Valeriu and Leni. I fear that I’ve lost touch with it again. I’ll try to write it in Breaza; I leave for there at one o’clock.
Later (walking in the park at eight on a splendid evening, beneath a translucent blue sky and stars with a youthful twinkle), I saw quite clearly the shape of a long piece on Jules Renard to be written after I finish his Journal. The chapter titles: Jules Renard “anecdotier,” J.R. average Frenchman, J.R. en famille with parents, children, wife, J.R. the radical, etc.
In another connection, I have decided—once and for all, I think— on the material for the first volume of “The Romanian Novel.” There will be six chapters: Rebreanu, Sadoveanu, H. P. Bengescu, Camil, Cezar Petrescu, Ionel Teodoreanu. I have some doubts about Aderca: I think I’ll keep him for the second volume, but I won’t make a final decision until I reread him. I can see quite well the preface to the first volume, where I shall explain the plan of the whole series and justify the absence of prewar literature. I want to write the book over the summer so that it comes out by Christmas.
But my present concern is still with the play. There is no doubt that I shall write it. The experiment has to be made. More than that, I don’t know—either how it will turn out, or what its fate will be.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 7