His remarks about the third act are quite accurate; he certainly has a keen eye. The scene in which Leni and Ştefan have it out with each other is too explanatory in style. Crudely explanatory. He suggests a simple solution: cut everything up to the scene with Jef and Ştefan (which he liked a lot, I’m glad to say), write the planned scene with Bogoiu and the Major’s fish, drop the first Leni-Ştefan scene, and then link it all up. A five-minute operation.
I don’t see things that simply, however. The last act needs to be gone over more thoroughly.
All the readings I have done up to now (Sunday’s was the third, not counting the earlier readings of Act One) have been enormously useful to me. They have fixed in my mind the things that work and those that don’t work. It seems to me that an audience of five hundred will react no differently from the audience of ten I have dared face up to now.
In Act Two I shall modify the Bogoiu-Leni scene (in the way that Camil and Gulian indicated, with an exciting identity of views). The proof that this change is necessary is that, after the first act, Iancovescu said to me that Bogoiu is a character from the family of Fulda’s Fool— which is quite wrong. Anyway, the change is simple and easy to make, more a problem of transcription than of actual transformation.
Act Two will remain almost untouched. The first scene splendidly indicates the change of atmosphere. Again my audience listened with great pleasure to the entrance of the two stowaways. (I shall only change something that Bogoiu says to the police—which doesn’t work at all.) Iancovescu gave me here a simple but excellent suggestion.
I think I shall write the third act again, apart from the last four scenes. I’d need three to four days for that, and would go off to work in somewhere like Sinaia, or maybe Braşov or Sibiu. We’ll see. I’m not in any hurry at the moment, though Iancovescu assures me that he’ll be performing it by Christmas—and has offered to sign a contract straightaway to that effect. But there will be major difficulties. I have a feeling that he won’t accept Marietta; that he would prefer Ţoţa. In that case I won’t let him have the play. However much I need Iancovescu—and now, especially, I feel he is irreplaceable—I can’t let him put on my play with Ţoţa, or with Ţăranu as Bogoiu and—just imagine—Mircea as Jef. I’d sooner wait a year.
Frankly speaking, a year’s wait is the solution that would suit me best, because my ideal cast (Leni-Iancovescu-Timică) might be possible by then, and because I am now pretty fed up with the way the whole thing has been dragging on. I am longing to do something else: to read, to write a novel, to put behind me a joke which, I now realize, demands more of my time than it is worth. I feel disgusted when I see the proportions taken by something which has no right to be more than a trifle. Am I so unserious that I imagine this frolic in three acts has a right to preoccupy me, when each year in Paris, Vienna, and London thirty people write thirty comedies that are at least as enjoyable? No, it is time to be serious again.
But 1) I have no money; 2) I don’t know if there will be a war or revolution by this time next year; 3) I don’t know whether by next year a Jewish writer will still be able to put on a play, even at a private theatre. These are three reasons that spur me on.
I don’t know what I shall do.
Friday, 25 [September]
Yesterday evening Mircea flared up in the middle of a fairly calm conversation about foreign policy and Titulescu,2 suddenly raising his voice with that terrible violence that sometimes surprises me:
“Titulescu? He should be executed. Put in front of a machine-gun firing squad. Riddled with bullets. Strung up by the tongue.”
“Why, Mircea?” I asked in surprise.
“Because he’s committed treason, high treason. He’s concluded a secret treaty with the Russians so that they can occupy Bukovina and Maramureş in the event of war.”
“How do you know that?”
“General Condiescu told me.”
“And is that enough? Don’t you think it’s a biased source? Don’t you think it’s based on fantasy?”
He stared at me with stupefaction, unable to grasp that anyone could doubt such a “truth.” Then I heard him whisper to Nina:
“I wish I hadn’t told him that.”
He’d have liked to add: “because he’s too blind to understand it.”
The whole incident depressed me. As I write it down, I notice that I no longer have the nervous tension that I felt yesterday, the sense of irreparable discord.
He’s a man of the right, with everything that implies. In Abyssinia he was on the side of Italy. In Spain on the side of Franco. Here he is for Codreanu. He just makes an effort—how awkwardly?—to cover this up, at least when he is with me. But sometimes he can’t stop himself, and then he starts shouting as he did yesterday.
He, Mircea Eliade, has a blind faith in what Universul writes. His informant is Stelian Popescu3—and he has a blind faith in him. The most absurd and trivially tendentious news items find in him a gullible listener. And he has a naive way of getting worked up and raising his voice, to spout—without so much as a smile—some baloney he has heard in town at the editorial offices of Vremea or Cuvântul. Titulescu has sold us to the Russians. Titulescu has given the Spanish Communists “twenty-five airplanes ordered in France.” If I shrug my shoulders in disbelief, he looks sorrowfully at me and gently shakes his head, as at someone completely lost to the truth.
I should like to eliminate any political reference from our discussions. But is that possible? Street life impinges on us whether we like it or not, and in the most trivial reflection I can feel the breach widening between us.
Will I lose Mircea for no more reason than that? Can I forget everything about him that is exceptional, his generosity, his vital strength, his humanity, his affectionate disposition, all that is youthful, childlike, and sincere in him? I don’t know. I feel awkward silences between us, which only half shroud the explanations we avoid, because we each probably feel them. And I keep having more and more disillusions, not least because he is able to work comfortably with the anti-Semitic Vremea, as if there were nothing untoward about it.
Nevertheless I shall do everything possible to keep him.
Wednesday, 30 [September]
Was at Roman on Sunday and Monday. I left overwhelmed, exhausted, feeling that I wouldn’t be able to come back to life. Everything seemed pointless and absurd. It was humiliating to think that it could be such a problem for me to ring Leni or to take a call from her. The idea of putting on my play struck me as trifling.
Now it has all passed. In a way, I have forgotten. This afternoon I shall go to the law courts, this evening I shall go to the theatre, right now I am writing in this notebook—and meanwhile B lecher’s life at Roman continues as I have seen it. Will I ever again have the nerve to complain about anything? Will I ever again be so brazen as to have caprices, bad moods, or feelings of irritation? He is living in the intimate company of death. It is not a vague, abstract death in the long term, but his own death, precise, definite, known in detail like an object.
What gives him the courage to live? What keeps him going? He is not even in despair. I swear I don’t understand. How many times have I been on the verge of tears when I looked at him. At night I could hear him groaning and crying out in his room—and I felt there was someone else in the house apart from us, a someone who was death, fate, or whatever. I came away feeling shattered, bewildered.
If things had a penalty attached to them, I would not go on with my life as I have lived it up to now. I wouldn’t be able to. But I forget— and return to the unconscious existence of someone in reasonably good health.
Wednesday, 7 October
I am beginning to miss Leni again. I held out for a couple of weeks, but each day I feel that I am giving way to my longing to see her. I hover around the telephone, fall asleep thinking of her, dream about her, wake up thinking of her. I know it’s stupid—I have only to read through this journal to see how stupid it is.
I met her Monday night aroun
d half past one, as she was getting out of a car with Froda outside their house. I didn’t even see her properly. I spoke indifferently enough; I didn’t feel in the grip of emotion. Later, after we had parted, all the memories and expectations opened up again.
I have to be rational and firm. But will I be?
I don’t know what the Iancovescu solution will do for the play. It is not at all serious. And this whole business has tired me. I’m a little weary of my manuscript. When I think of it, it seems conceited, cheap, frivolous, irritatingly hearty, compromisingly facile.
In the last few days I have reread some pages of De două mii de ani. Will I ever again write anything that serious?
There’s a Milstein concert this evening. Maybe I’ll come away feeling clearer in the head, more in control of myself.
11 October. Sunday
Celebrations in honor of Stelian Popescu at the Roman Arena. Perpes-sicius4 said to me yesterday evening: “A day of mourning.” And he added: “It’s the most shameful day in Romania since the war.”
Maybe I shouldn’t be downcast. Maybe, on the contrary, I should be glad that the whole Romanian right, the whole of “nationalism,” is regrouping around Stelian Popescu. It defines it as something disreputable, and in a sense is even consoling (from a very lofty vantage point).
Nae Ionescu sent him a congratulatory telegram yesterday, on behalf of Cuvântul. Should I feel depressed? Not really. I ought to go and tell him: “Now, professor, there’s no longer any doubt that your politics are wrong. Only a terrible mistake could put you side by side with Stelian Popescu.”
I wonder whether Nae Ionescu at least does not feel rotten deep down inside.
The Romanian Writers’ Association also sent a message of support. Neither Tudor Vianu nor Mircea signed it. But Mircea, in his naive way, thought that he was thereby showing solidarity with Nae—which earned him a serious rebuke when Nae found out. For a moment I considered resigning from the Writers’ Association, on the grounds that I can’t associate myself with celebrations in honor of a paper that insults Arghezi.5 But if Arghezi himself does not resign . . .
Sad, sad times. What a wave of triviality in which everyone is drowning—out of hypocrisy, cowardice, and self-interest!
Will the day come when it is possible to speak openly about these dark days? I’m sure it will, absolutely sure. I should like still to be here when it does.
Radu Cioculescu6 told me yesterday evening that he has broken off relations with a family of friends, because the wife—a schoolteacher—signed a manifesto for Universul.
This reminded me that he, Radu Cioculescu, also refused to accept tickets for and attend the concerts of the Berlin orchestra this summer, because he couldn’t agree to any contact with a Hitlerite institution.
A strange man. Probably the only radical Romanian there is.
Dined yesterday evening at the Continental, with Perpessicius, Şerban Cioculescu,7 Vladimir Streinu, Pompiliu Constantinescu, and Octav Şuluţiu. Together we constituted an association of literary critics. Perhaps we shall bring out a magazine. I’m not really sure what will come of it.
I’m so remote from all that.
Wednesday, 14 [October]
Yesterday evening, at the Foundation, Davidescu8 explained to Perpessicius and Cicerone Theodorescu that Jews don’t know Romanian. One of his arguments was to quote the metaphor of a “crammed goose” from a book of mine.
Cicerone told me this little story, and when Davidescu approached me a little later to wish me good evening, I said to him:
“I’m sorry, Mr. Davidescu, but you know I never wrote anything like that—at least I don’t remember it.”
The discussion then continued quite amusingly for half an hour or so. I am too lazy to reproduce it in full. I get the impression that Davidescu suffers from a case of syphilis with anti-Semitic symptoms. He has a disturbing look in his eyes.
Back home later in the evening, I realized that I had been mistaken about the “goose.” So today I am sending the following note to Davidescu:
“Dear Mr. Davidescu, After I left you yesterday evening, I went home and searched for some two hours through my books to be sure whether I had or had not ever used that compromising image which you recalled with such fierce criticism. I hasten to inform you that you were right. The comparison in question can indeed be found in a book of mine. I had forgotten. You will easily find it in Femei, second edition, page 27, line 17.
“As a colleague, I am pleased to do you the favor of communicating the exact sentence. Here it is: ‘She breathed with difficulty and rolled her eyes a few times, as crammed geese are wont to do.’
“May I also draw to your attention the fact that this is the method by which an excellent foie gras may be obtained.
“I should have no rest if I did not hasten to correct my regrettably poor memory. I am delighted that, in so doing, I am able to restore one of the fundamental arguments in your political and critical system.
“I remain as always your admiring . . .”
Nae Ionescu’s telegram appeared in Universul—printed between others from Trandafirescu-Nămăeşti9 and Muche.1 that is no mere coincidence. It is a punishment.
Dem. Theodorescu,2 whom I met on Monday evening at the National, said to me:
“Yes, Sunday was the most wretched day in the political life of Romania. But you don’t know, Mr. Sebastian, what a profound disgust has come over me; you would have to be more familiar with Stelian Popescu.”
“All right. But then why did you also sign the congratulatory telegram?”
“What can I do? That’s life!”
Friday, 16 [October]
I am at a dangerous point with regard to my play: I am beginning to like the third act. After violently disliking it for quite a while, after thinking at readings (once at Marietta’s, another time at Maryse’s) that it would be a certain disaster, after blindly agreeing to every suggested alteration— from Gulian or Haig or Iancovescu—now I am beginning to like it!
I would prefer to change only a few details. I’d simplify a few scenes and eliminate some dialogue—but leave intact the scenario, the unfolding of the plot, the general tone of the act. Only the first and the last scene should be revised more thoroughly: the first, to introduce Bogoiu and to justify the absence of the Major and Madame Vintila; the last, because it is really too hurried, as I knew from the first moment. Otherwise I am inclined to leave the third act as it is—even if in that case Iancovescu refuses to go on with it.
I prefer to make a mistake myself than to have others make one. As I have written it—and not they—I think I have more chance of seeing the truth. I should also mention my inability to redo my own manuscripts. Didn’t it happen like that with Oraşul cu salcîmi?
In today’s Credinţa, Manoliu denounces me for working at the Foundation and naturally calls for my dismissal. The only thing that surprises me is that the attack has come so late.
A musical evening. From Radio Bucharest, on discs, Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D Minor. Later, from Warsaw, a symphony in G minor by Mozart, and Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. I thought József Szigeti was exceptional on the violin. And my radio sounded clearer and warmer than ever before! Now I am waiting for a Beethoven cello sonata from Vienna, which should start any minute now. Then to bed.
Sunday, 18 [October]
Twenty-nine years old. I feel neither happy nor sad—conscious that I still have some things to do, for which I have to go on living. Otherwise nothing. But I made a serious effort to greet this day with some solemnity, as a lucky day. I have such a need to create for myself little superstitions that augur well. I drank champagne at Mircea’s. Everything was fairly awkward.
It was a very nice morning—a marvelous day in a glorious October. That too I put down to my birthday. I also took the Enescu3 concert at the Ateneu as a good sign. I am most willing to be convinced that I am not a complete and utter goner.
This afternoon, a bungled visit to Leni backstage.
> Then a visit to Nae (also half bungled).
Finally the cinema and a group dinner—ending in a painful political argument with Mircea.
But more about all this tomorrow.
I am starting a new year of life—but am I destined really to take on anything else?
Tuesday, 20 [October]
The first two acts came back from the typist this evening. I read them for typing errors, and this has tired me. Everything seems lacking in fun, though it’s true that I’m not in the best of “humors.”
Thursday, 22 [October]
Yesterday evening I took the first two acts, typed, to Iancovescu. He told me today that he had read the first.
“I’m convinced,” he said, “that you are in love with Marietta. A role like that can be written only for a woman you love very much. It’s the nicest possible female role—the nicest but also the hardest. Not even Ventura could act it. When I told Ţoţa that I thought you were crazy about Marietta, he told me that he didn’t think so, but that you might be in love with Leni.”
This evening I ate at Mircea’s, and he told me some amusing details about yesterday’s party at Polihroniade’s house.4 Zelea Codreanu,5 whom everyone calls “Captain,” was also there. Marietta Sadova had come with Codreanu’s book and she asked him to sign it.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 12