A conversation this morning in the park between two children aged ten to eleven, in the first classes of secondary school. One in the uniform of the military school, the other with socks, short trousers, jacket, and tie, dressed in the French style as if, with his fair hair and complexion, he was a little boy in the Jardin Luxembourg.
The Soldier: Do you wear the swastika at school?
The Other: What’s that?
S: That sign, you know. . .
O: No, I don’t.
S: We wear it.
They moved off and then, after a few minutes, returned. The conversation continued. I heard the fair-haired boy explaining to the soldier:
“Religion is separate from the state. The state and religion have nothing in common—it’s been like that for a few hundred years. You know, they don’t even teach religion in school.”
His exact words. Otherwise it would not even interest me to note it here. A society of policemen, like Romanian society, cannot create anything other than whole generations of policemen—that is, people with the mind of a policeman, when they cannot actually be one by trade. I’d like to know what family that fair-haired boy comes from, who doesn’t know what a swastika is. I’d like to meet that boy’s father and shake his hand.
It reminds me of what Corneliu Moldovanu said a couple of weeks ago when, after some premiere or other, some Gypsy kids were waiting outside with a special edition about the sentence passed on Constanti-nescu-Iasi.3
“They were right to do it. But it’s too little.”
And he is a writer!
A lot to record from the hotel, especially concerning Eugenia Zaharia, a whore of quite boundless vulgarity. Entertaining, though, for her vocabulary, her rather violent beauty, and the sincerity (no! let’s not spoil a fine word), the complete insensitivity with which she plys her trade. Carol fucked her on the first evening. I think that if five men were with her in the bar, she’d be capable of going “upstairs” with each of them in turn.
She told me that Lucien Fabre wrote Bassesse de Venise mainly to take revenge on her, at a time when they had quarreled and she had gone alone to Venice. The funny thing is that it may be true. And it occurs to me that my situation with Leni may not be so different.
“And you’re a Ladima,”4 Camil said to me the day before yesterday at table. Does he know something . . . ?
Thursday, 16 [April]
As I read it, Renard’s Journal becomes increasingly dear to me. How fond I am of that man, and how absurd his death seems to me—though twenty-four years have passed since then.
That is the only kind of eternity that matters: to be more alive than a living person, and for the memory of you to be just as real as a physical presence.
Reading today his entry of 24 July 1903, I said to myself that I should write a book about Jules Renard in which I explain—through him—my love of France. Renard’s radicalism has peasant roots. That reassures me about the fate of French democracy. It will never die.
Since I arrived here I have continued the major scene between Leni and Valeriu which I began in Sinaia. I’m at page 12. I feel it is working. But can I be sure?
To some extent, what gives me the courage to write for the theatre are Renard’s notes about his own plays.
I should not like to leave Breaza before finishing at least this scene.
I think that the man’s role will be extremely difficult. Only Iancovescu could play it without making it “raisonneur, ”5 pretentious and boring. As I write, I like it more, but it also worries me more. After I finish the play—whether I put it on or not—I shall write a general recommendation for each actor on how his role should be performed.
Friday, 17 [April]
Breaza has never been so beautiful before. It is a profusion of colors. Never in my life have I seen so many trees in blossom. I think they are apple trees. Some are so white they look a bit like a picture postcard.
A little while ago—9 a.m.—I stood for a few minutes at the end of the walk with walnut trees, looking up the Prahova Valley toward the mountains. It makes you giddy. The white of the snow on Bucegi, then the white of the apple trees in blossom, then a thousand shades of green— from the dark green of a solitary pine to the yellow, immature, moist, insecure green of the young leaves. In the middle of the landscape—right in the middle, as if placed there by some hidden laws of composition— a house with a dark, burnt roof illuminates by contrast the lively colors around it. Nor should I forget the patches of mauve, the patches of blue, the grey shadows, the water sparkling in the sun. (I went back after lunch. I was disappointed. There was no water. The Prahova has almost dried up.)
It honestly seemed unreal to me. And after moving away some twenty meters, I returned to make sure that it all really existed and was still in its place.
In the evening, though I tried to write until after midnight, it no longer worked. But now I am rereading everything I have written so far, and it seems good to me. Maybe I did well to start with the main scene. It sets the play’s atmosphere. It will be easier for me to write the preliminary scenes.
Sunday, 19 [April], Bucharest
I left Breaza feeling very content, even though I hadn’t finished the Leni-Valeriu scene. Two pages were still to be done. I wrote them today, and without flattering myself I think I have done a good job. There are some moments in the scene that I find delightful—exactly what I had envisaged by way of atmosphere and tone. And more important still, the general rhythm of the scene (which is after all a long one) moves forward well.
I counted up the units of dialogue (childishness: but in the same way I counted the lines on the page in my first printed book). There are 149. Isn’t that too many? Isn’t it too long?
I have confidence in my play. I’d be surprised if I messed it up— though I still have so much to do.
If I now had a whole month free, I’d return to Breaza and be able, I think, to stay in this week’s excellent frame of mind. On Friday I wrote ten pages there—an exceptional output for me, who write slowly and with difficulty. I shall try to clear a week for myself in early May.
This morning at the Ateneu a concert with Lola Bobescu (Lalo’s Sym-phonie Espagnole.) A girl of fifteen to sixteen, whose gestures are still those of a child, with a delightful blend of bravura and timidity. She plays splendidly, but while playing she smiles here and there to someone in the audience—probably a relative or a friend, just as Mile. Lambert’s pupils used to do at exam time in Brăila. Movingly youthful, sincere, and delicate. A girl from one of Francis James’s works.
In one of the front rows, Anton Holban applauded with a kind of lewd gusto. He is a delightful boy, with the air of an old maid. “You caught me red-handed with emotion,” he said to me.
I have been reading Album des vers anciens. Splendid. Very Mallarmé in places, but splendid. How could I have neglected him until now?
Camil—to whom I show some verses by Valéry on the way to Sinaia— said to me: “Yes, it’s beautiful. But not more beautiful than my poetry.”
Tuesday, 21 [April]
While the play continues to preoccupy me (though I haven’t written any more), I am thinking of a short novel that would clear up my chapter with Leni. What happened yesterday evening at the theatre (and out of disgust I prefer to say nothing of it here) has rekindled in me the need to write about it. Two hundred pages, I had in mind. This stupid story will have served some purpose, after all. But for now the play comes first!
Sunday, 26 [April]
I have finished Renard’s Journal.
Today I made a decision with which I am happy—even if it perhaps causes a little regret deep inside me. I am giving the role to Marietta.
Nothing can be done with Leni. Her indifference is careless, thoughtless, offensive to the point of being impolite or unfriendly. I think that anyone else would at least have feigned some interest. She couldn’t even make that effort. My visit to her dressing room on Saturday disgusted me; it was much more depressing than my visit on
Monday.
I am glad I spoke to Marietta. It was necessary to take the play away from Leni. I had to make a clear commitment to Marietta so that there could be no turning back.
And then, practically speaking, it is the best solution. Leni is playacting with Timică and Ţăranu—and she does it at the Alhambra. She is actually giving up theatre and going right over to operetta. She takes her distance from Tessa and becomes Miss Speed again. My play, and especially the role she should be playing, are at the opposite extreme. . . . And she wants too much to make money. She is too eager to “score” a great success with the public to risk experimenting with an original play, especially one of mine.
By contrast, Marietta is happy to play a major role, and the question of money doesn’t enter into it (or anyway, only secondarily). Today I read her everything I have written and explained what the scenario will look like. She was excited. I felt that every line was “getting through.” I felt that she understood, identified, saw it before her. And her warmth, her enthusiasm, her generosity! Moreover, since she is so keen to act the part, she will do all she can on stage (and she can do so much when she wants).
If (as rumor has it) Iancovescu moves to the Regina Maria, what an excellent cast I shall have with him, Marietta, and Maximilian. As to the production, in those parts where Haig’s touch is too heavy, I shall try myself to bring the text back to life.
I came away feeling over the moon. The reading made everything I had written seem fresher and opened up paths that had no longer been leading anywhere. Back in the street, I saw some new things for the third act (Bogoiu, the tie, “you are compromising me,” “I’ll see you outside,” etc.). As a matter of fact, he is the only one who worries me, because he is poor. I wouldn’t want the rhythm to falter suddenly after Act Two, which promises to keep rolling so well.
I shall try to leave on Saturday or Sunday. I have found new reasons to write—and isn’t it strange that I find them on the very day when I decide to give up Leni?
Sunday, 3 [May]
General meeting at the Writers’ Association. How can they take seriously such ridiculous farces? How can they think for a second that it bothers me whether Kiriţescu is elected or not, whether Toneghin is voted in or not?6
During the hour I spent there I got worked up, I formed a group, I propagandized—and only when I left did I realize what a pathetic game I had been playing.
What do I have in common with that whole business, with all that plotting and politicking? What an awful dump of a place, a dump filled with literary types. Horrible, really horrible!
More generally, I am in a period of feeling poisoned by literature. I am sick and tired of it. Why didn’t I become an ordinary professional— lawyer, civil servant—a plain dealer? Why wasn’t I destined to have a house of my own, a life of my own, a love of my own—without complications or anything “interesting,” without regrets?
Not even the Viennese show yesterday afternoon (Molnar’s Grosse liebe) managed to buck me up completely. Still, I had three enchanting hours and a few minutes of high emotion. Lilly Darvas is a great actress.
But the whole day has left behind a taste of pointlessness. I keep remembering my whole wasted life.
Friday, 8 [May]
An “artists’” lunch yesterday at Lilly’s. Myself, Marietta, Elvira Godeanu, Haig, “Kiki,”7 and someone called Brătăşanu from Ploieşti.
Two things happened, each as unpleasant as the other:
1) It was Lilly who wrote the stupid letter against Nora Peyov in La Zid. She told me so herself with more than a touch of pride, begging me not to tell anyone else because—of course—absolutely no one knows or has guessed it.
I shudder to think that although both of them are acting in the same play, and although they see each other, kiss, and visit each other, Lilly can still come up with this kind of plot. I wouldn’t have thought her capable of such vulgarity.
2) The second incident concerns Marietta, my good old Marietta Sadova. . . . The talk had turned to the attack on Hefter,8 who was beaten by a student a few days ago right there in the street. Someone asked what had happened, but Marietta answered in an offhand way: “It’s nothing. He’ll get over it.”
Shall I write how I nevertheless came to read the play to Leni? Not now—I don’t feel like writing. Another time.
Thursday, 14 [May]
Tonight from Stuttgart, a sinfonia concertante by Mozart and then—a big surprise!—the Kleine nachtmusik.
I was glad to hear it again, because it is so closely bound up with my play. Unfortunately, my radio is on its last legs. I could pick up enough passages, though, and this has brought me back to the play after a few days in which I dropped it. I really ought to go away for at least three days, to pick up the thread that has been momentarily lost. I am reading Oswald Spengler’s Années décisives: I don’t know why it is only now that I do it, because it has been on my bookshelf for ages. A surprise to find whole sentences, formulations, ideas, and paradoxes from Nae’s course. The whole of last year’s course (domestic and foreign policy, peace, war, the definition of the nation), all his “bold strokes” (Singapore, France in its death throes, Russia as an Asiatic power, Britain in liquidation): it is all there in Spengler, with an astounding similarity of vocabulary. And I haven’t yet finished it. . . .
The day before yesterday I was in Brasov, at the trial of some Iron Guard students. Nae made a statement (which I read in the papers) that religion does not forbid all murder, and that students therefore naturally feel solidarity with Duca’s killers. I don’t think I shall attend his course any more—not to “punish” him, but because, quite frankly, Nae Ionescu is beginning not to interest me any longer. The way he sees things is too simple.
Sunday, 17 [May]
I left Breaza a month ago today. Since then my play has been marking time. Isn’t it a pity to let it get bogged down like this? Will I ever regain that happy rhythm I found during those five days in Breaza?
I absolutely must go away. Maybe it is a mere prejudice, but it is too deeply rooted by now: I cannot write here. I tried again this evening, but it’s no good. The silliest thing about it is that the whole of Act One— each sentence—is clear in my head. But it still doesn’t work.
I have looked at my diary and I think that, with a little will, I could leave Wednesday evening and stay until Monday morning. That would be four days of work. I.shouldn’t let them slip. But I have no money, Mama needs to go away, and on Saturday I have the court case with Aderca’s sister. Nevertheless . . .
Tuesday, 26 [May]
Mama left on Friday. She has been in Paris since the day before yesterday.
Nae finished his course on Friday afternoon. I was there. A sober lecture (with just a moment of play-acting, and even that wasn’t too exaggerated). A very fine lecture, taut, clever, and with a whole series of happy formulations.
If I had written about it here on Friday, perhaps I’d have summarized it in its entirety. But I didn’t feel like anything over the next few days.
On the way out of the hall, Nae said to me: “I gave that lecture for you. For two years you have been giving me funny looks. Well, what do you say now?”
For the moment I said nothing. The lecture really was remarkable— and its solution to the problem of the individual and the collective was certainly interesting (though I can feel the sophistry without being able to put my finger on it). None of that, however, prevents Nae from being an Iron Guardist. At least if he were genuinely that—honestly and without ulterior motives.
I should also have liked to write about the concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic, but I cannot write now. (Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto, a Haydn symphony in D, Beethoven’s Seventh, Weber’s Oberon overture, Schumann’s Fourth Symphony, Brahms’s First, and the overture to the Meistersinger.)
I still see Leni from time to time—less and less often, and with less and less emotion. It was all a stupidly childish business on my part.
I have written
two more scenes or so for Act One. I have simplified a situation in which I had badly lost my way. Nearly all the characters were in the scene—I should have left Leni and Bogoiu alone—and I didn’t know how to get the others out. The solution came to me unexpectedly, and easily enough. The soundest method is always to sit resolutely at your desk and to wait. . . .
I look at my diary and tell myself that I could still leave next Thursday (5 June) for Breaza, and remain there until Wednesday morning (10 June). That would be five full days of work. But if I manage to finish Act One before then—by filching an evening or afternoon here and there—Breaza could be kept for the second act. What cannot be done in five completely free days! I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
A moving letter from Blecher. He wants me to visit him at Roman.9 I wrote back promising that I would, and I shall certainly do it.
Wednesday, 27 [May], morning
I happen to have been rereading some chapters from De două mii de ani (my old habit of taking a book at random from a shelf and leafing through it for an hour). There were a number of things I had completely forgotten. I had a real surprise. Apart from a few passages that are too markedly Jewish, the rest strikes me as exceptional. I didn’t know. I wasn’t expecting it.
I should be very happy to have that book published again some day, without Nae’s preface and without any explanation on my part.
There is no doubt that, of everything I have written, that is the book that will live on.
Yesterday from Rome, a delightful piano sonata in C by Mozart. Later, from Budapest, a violin sonata in E major by Handel.
Sunday, 31 [May]
Yesterday evening, a long visit to Leni’s. It is a long time since I have had such a calm and restful conversation with her. . . .
Journal 1935–1944 Page 8