A tooth extraction has kept me indoors since yesterday evening. I can see that I’ve lost the taste for reading and writing, and my staying at home—which would once have delighted me—now gets on my nerves.
I’m in a grey mood, neither expectant nor despondent, without either longings or loves.
At the Brailowsky recital on Monday evening, I was introduced to Cella Delavrancea, who happened to have the seat next to mine.
“I imagined you to be different. More lively and dark. I was looking at you just now and you seemed like a schoolboy. And you ought to have had a dark complexion. Your writing is so self-assured, so firm. . . .”
I smiled wearily. How many times have I been told the same things?
Tuesday, 1 December
When I bumped into Camil Baltazar9 at Alcalay on Saturday evening, he said to me:
“If you don’t write a study of my work in the Revista Fundaţiilor in the next three months, I’ll never speak to you again.”
Just like that.
Domnişoara Christina has been out for three days or so. Mircea is disgusted. He thinks that the bookshops are persecuting him, that the publishers are scheming against him, that Ocneanu is making fun of him, that Mişu at Cartea Românească is full of perfidy. Ciornei didn’t put his book in the window. Alcalay did, but it’s not visible. Cartea românească is sabotaging it.
Does it just seem so, or have I really never had such worries? I don’t say it with pride, but I have never asked anyone to write an article, never engaged in literary politics, cultivated anyone’s favor, or tried to evade anyone’s hostility. Maybe it all has to do with my old tendency to laziness, but to some extent it is also because I am aware that my destiny as a writer—if I have one—will be decided a long way from all these little “games.”
Whether from pride or from laziness, my indifference is the same— at least in the literary field.
Friday, 11 December
I have just come back from the Philharmonic, where I heard Franck’s Piano Concerto in G Major and his Symphonic Variations, with Arthur Rubinstein. Schumann’s Fourth Symphony (which I heard this evening with a pleasure it has never given me before) and Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel. Altogether a fine evening of music.
Yesterday, at the Ateneu, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.
On Monday evening, Casals: Beethoven’s Variations on a Theme by Handel, the Boccherini concerto, a Bach suite, and three chorales.
Apart from these, more Enescu: the third Brahms sonata, a Schumann sonata, one by Mozart, and one by Bach.
Nothing is happening to me except for music.
A lot of incidents—but nothing significant. I’m not desperate: I am numb and try not to feel anything. The days pass—that’s all.
Saturday, 12 [December]
Will I write the book I have been thinking about for some time, without really knowing what might come of it and where it might lead me?
“For some time”: to be precise, since the 18th of October, my birthday! When I left Mircea’s that day, to buy a couple of bottles of champagne, I suddenly had the picture of a road accident into which I should have liked to be drawn.1 I could see the first chapter with a wealth of detail so pressing that I thought that, when I got home, I would be unable to do anything other than write, as if under the command of an imperious voice. Let’s call that inspiration.
I did try to write—I don’t remember whether it was that evening or a few days later—but it didn’t work out.
Nevertheless, since then I have kept thinking of the possibility of such a book. There are a few little things, a few little ideas, that have started to come together around that first image—and to stick to it.
For example, my walk with Cella Seni—the evening she stole an apple on Strada Acadamiei (which made me feel younger as a reflex)—made me feel again like writing a short story. Disheartened as I am, it may be that I shall find some joy in that. It will be a short novel or a long short story, a récit. Maybe I’ll start on it over the Christmas holidays. But I’d need to get out of Bucharest—and I wonder whether I’ll find enough money for that.
Wednesday, 16 [December]
Yesterday evening at the Vişoianus,2 Marietta called for a legal ban on all foreign films.
“Let them speak Romanian!” she said with a certain violence. I thought she was joking. I pointed out how barbarous are films with a sound track in a language other than the one in which they were filmed.
Marietta grew pale and raised her voice, though it was a kind of “head voice,” somewhat dulled by choking as she seemed about to burst into tears.
“This scandal should be stopped once and for all. We are in Romania, and they should speak Romanian.”
It seemed tiresome to enter into such a discussion, so I merely said with an irony that she failed to grasp:
“Marietta, my dear, you are in the most disturbing phase of nationalism.”
I don’t know whether she understood my allusion to her adventure last Friday, when she recited some verse at an Iron Guard festival (“under the spiritual patronage of the legionaries fighting Marxism in Spain”) held to raise funds for their “Green House.”3 Nor do I know whether, if she did understand my allusion, she would have been bothered by it. The poor girl feels that she can’t hope for anything better under the present regime. Maybe there would be room for a Leni Riefenstahl in a state run by Zelea Codreanu. Anyway, Marietta has put herself forward.
Literature. Anişoara Odeanu has sent me her novel: “A book that ought to have at least ten epigraphs from De două mii de ani.” In fact, her manuscript contained not ten but two epigraphs. But Camil insisted that she get rid of them. “It’s not good for there to be too many epigraphs,” he said. Indeed, one is enough—especially as it is from Ultima noapte,4. . . What a delightful man Camil is!
Saturday, 19 [December]
Two branches of lilies . . . from Celia.
I think it’s a year today—that is, precisely fifty-two weeks—since I sent two branches of lilies to someone else—to her.
Sunday, 20 [December]
Projects: 1) Leave for Breaza on the 2nd of January, stay there until the 20th, and start writing a novel for publication in March or April; 2) Immediately start the necessary reading for the first volume of “The Romanian Novel,” start drafting it in February-March for publication on the Day of the Book; 3) Discuss with Ocneanu the publication of a volume of chronicles and essays, perhaps to come out in February or at Easter.
This morning at the Philharmonic, Wilhelm Kempff: Mozart, Beethoven (Concerto in E-flat). Thursday evening the Brahms concerto. This evening at nine I’ll try to pick up Breslau: the Christmas Oratorio.
Wednesday, 30 [December]
Came back yesterday evening from Roman, where I had been for the second time to see Blecher.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting used to it, but he seemed better than last time. If I lived close by him, I’d probably end up thinking that his tragedy was normal. There are no tragedies lived on a daily basis. I know a little about that from my own life. After twenty-four hours you start getting used to it—that is, accepting it.
As for Blecher, he is much more downcast. He spoke to me of his death, which he thinks is close at hand.
“I tell myself that Jules Renard died in 1911,” he said. “At a distance, death becomes so inconsequential. I just have to imagine that I too died a long time ago, in 1911. I’m not scared of death. Then I’ll rest and sleep. Ah, how well I’ll stretch out, how well I’ll sleep! Listen, I’ve begun to write a novel. But I don’t feel that I absolutely must complete it. If I die first, I don’t think I’ll even regret not having finished it. What a minor thing literature is for me, and how little of my time it takes up! Recently I’ve thought of taking my own life. But it’s difficult: I don’t have the means. The simplest would be to hang myself—but I’d still have to bang a nail into the wall, and then Olimpia would come and I wouldn’t be able to take it any further. I asked her to buy
me some caustic soda on some pretext or other—but my parents didn’t allow her to. How stupid I was not to buy a revolver when I could still walk and buy myself one.”
The next day-—that is, yesterday morning—he apologized to me for what he had said.
“Please forgive me. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t like to complain. I have a horror of sentimentality.”
What move and gladden me most are his undepleted reserves of innocence, humor, and exuberance. With what goodwill and application did he play a number of tangos and foxtrots for me on his accordion! Was he striving to find a joy lost beyond recovery?
He told me of various games last summer, when Geo Bogza5 came to visit him. They played boats, for example, Blecher giving the signal for departure while Bogza hauled his bed along. They slapped a notice up on the wall: “It is forbidden to climb up to the mast and spit into the machine room.”
He showed me a photograph album (Solange, Ernest, Creaţa, scenes from Berk, from Leysin, from Tekirghiol6). I had to stop myself from crying at a picture of him as a splendid young man of seventeen. “J’étais beau gosse, hein?”7
I left at four o’clock. But why did I not have the courage to embrace him, to say more things, to make a brotherly gesture—something to show that he isn’t alone, that he isn’t absolutely and irredeemably alone?
Alone is what he is, though.
This morning Mrs. Ghiolu burst out crying on the phone as I told her about Blecher. I still don’t really know what there was between them. I think she is ruled by her memory of him: it haunts and frightens her at the same time that it is a source of consolation. For his part, he loved her and still does love her, and he suffers because of her absence. But he is too proud to say anything.
“One day I ran off to Bucharest even though I was ill with a temperature of 40 degrees [104 F.], using all kinds of ruses just in order to see her. And she hasn’t made it to Roman once in two years. Would married life be a worse illness than mine?”
While I was on the phone today conveying Blecher’s greetings to Ocneanu, Petru Manoliu simply took the receiver out of my hand and said to me:
“A happy new year, Mr. Mihail Sebastian!”
I didn’t have the presence of mind to hang up. That kid’s mad—or is he just a character?
Dined on Sunday evening at the Cina with Soare Z. Soare.8 How many illuminating, amusing, and spontaneous things he told me about Leni! I listened and was secretly surprised at my forbearance. I think I can honestly say that it diverted me more than it saddened me.
She makes eighty thousand lei a month at Sică’s9—for which she sleeps with him, on Froda’s advice and with his complicity. Soare and Muşatescu1 have nicknamed Sică: Alexandrescu-Farado, because each day he buys her a flower from the Farado shop.
She has slept with someone called Walter from Via [?]. She has slept with Izu Brănişteanu—and sleeps with him whenever Rampa needs some publicity. She slept with Elly Roman in Vienna while Froda discreetly walked up and down the street outside the hotel. She used to have orgies with Froda and Blank. Then with Froda and Wieder.
In general, Froda has acted docilely through all her love affairs—and has encouraged or even incited them when some profit was to be had. He has been less patient when her caprices have not involved money. He threw Coco Danielescu out of the theatre (the actor who committed suicide a year ago) because he had also slept with Leni.
So who hasn’t the dear girl slept with?
I never realized before how much she resembles Odette and Rachel. But I think I am ceasing to resemble Swann. In June 1935 I’d have screamed with pain if someone had told me all this. In those days I screamed for much less. But now I don’t think I’m doing too badly—in this respect, at least.
I keep delaying a note here about the various things that have happened recently between Celia2 and Camil. They seem to me sensational for an understanding of him. I won’t note them down this evening, either. Tomorrow or another time—especially as in the meantime there may be fresh details, priceless incidents.
Footnotes
1. The journal of the Royal Foundations.
2. The last two are novels by Camil Petrescu: Patul lui Procust (The Procustean Bed) and Ultima noapte de dragoste, prima noapte de război (Last Night of Love, First Night of War).
3. Eventually Jocul de-a vacanţa (The Game of Holidaymaking).
4. Chapter of Sebastian’s novel Femei [Women].
5. Chapter of Sebastian’s novel The Town with Acacias.
6. Characters from Sebastian’s novel For Two Thousand Years.
7. Saşa (Sacha) Roman: lawyer, in whose office Sebastian worked as a clerk.
8. Marietta Sadova.
9. The main concert hall in Bucharest.
1. For comparison, at the time five thousand lei was the monthly income of a middle-class businessman; a luxurious three-bedroom apartment rented for eight thousand lei per year.
2. Carol Grünberg.
3. Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi: a university professor who was condemned for pro-Communist activities.
4. A character from Camil Petrescu’s novel Patul lui Procust.
5. Argumentative.
6. Menny Toneghin: editor and writer.
7. An acquaintance of Sebastian’s from Brăila.
8. Alfred Hefter: journalist from Iaşi.
9. M. Blecher, the writer, was crippled by illness.
1. A trial involving the wife of Sever Pleniceanu.
2. Toni and Lucia Sturza Bulandra: actors.
3. George Vraca: actor.
4. Eugen Lovinescu: literary critic.
5. And I’m really fine, sir.
6. Novel by André Gide.
7. Right-wing journalist sympathetic to the Iron Guard.
8. Ion I. Mota: a leader of the Iron Guard.
9. Ion Sân-Giorgiu: extreme right-wing journalist and playwright.
1. Pamfil Şeicaru: journalist, owner of the Curentul newspaper.
2. Novelist, literary critic.
3. In English in the original.
4. The most difficult thing is to pick up your pen, dip it into ink, and hold it firmly above the paper.
5. Writer and poet.
6. Sentence incomplete.
7. Emil Gulian: poet and Sebastian’s friend.
8. Referring to a rash of attacks, thefts, and kidnappings in that year in the area near the Danube.
9. Iacob Niemirower: chief rabbi of the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities until 1939.
1. Political scientist.
2. Nicolae Titulescu: pro-Western minister of foreign affairs, target of an intense Iron Guard press campaign.
3. Lawyer and politician, director and owner of the newspaper Universul.
4. Literary critic.
5. Tudor Arghezi: major Romanian poet. .
6. Literary critic, translator of Proust, and brother of Şerban Cioculescu.
7. Literary critic, brother of Radu Cioculescu.
8. Nicolae Davidescu: journalist and poet.
9. Journalist at Universul.
1. Ion Muche: anti-Semitic journalist at Porunca Vremii.
2. Writer and journalist.
3. George Enescu: well-known Romanian composer.
4. Mihai Polihroniade: Iron Guard journalist and theorist.
5. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the principal leader of the Iron Guard.
6. A Romanian princess.
7. Friend of Sebastian’s and wife of Stavri Ghiolu.
8. Famous hotel in downtown Bucharest.
9. The writer Cella Serghi, wife of Alfio Seni.
1. Ionel Lăzăroneanu: lawyer with literary inclinations.
2. Pub in downtown Bucharest, famous for its beer.
3. You probably have a coldness of heart. . .
4. Ion Marin Sadoveanu: writer.
5. You don't sleep with a comrade; you do with a friend.
6. Alexandra Rosetti: director of the Royal Foundations, Sebastian’s close friend and ben
efactor.
7. Eugen Zwiedenek: general, head of the military staff of Queen Maria, and under Ion Antonescu head of the government agency in charge of the Aryanization of Jewish properties.
8. Paul Prodan: director of the Romanian National Theatre.
9. Novelist.
1. The first reference to what would become Sebastian's novel Accidental.
2. Constantin Vişoianu: diplomat and politician, close friend of Sebastian’s, after World War II one of the leaders of the Romanian emigration to the United States.
3. Iron Guard headquarters.
4. Camil Petrescu’s novel Ultima noapte de dragoste, prima noapte de război (Last Night of Love, First Night of War).
5. Writer and journalist.
6. Lake near the Black Sea.
7. I was a handsome kid, no?
8. Theatre producer.
9. Sică Alexandrescu, theatre producer.
1. Teodor Muşatescu, playwright.
2. Cella Serghi.
1937
Saturday, 2 January 1937
For the first time I am writing the figures for the new year: 1937. I spent New Year’s Eve without emotion, without despair and, it would seem, without any hopes.
I drank a lot, but with no real gusto. The party at Mircea’s was quite drab. We used to pass from one year to the next with greater ceremony. Is this another sign of aging?
On Thursday evening—the last day of the year—I visited Nae for the first time in a long while. There was nothing symbolic in this, though.
I wonder whether Nae is not losing control of himself completely. Is it an attack of megalomania, a case of pride accentuated by defeats, or quite simply a phase of acute mysticism? On such occasions in the past I used to find him quite colorful. Now he’s beginning to worry me. For the whole of the hour I spent there, he spoke of nothing but foreign policy.
“So, do you like the way the Serbs have been plotting against us?” Those were his opening words. “When I shouted for three years that we should come to a direct understanding with the Bulgarians, no one wanted to listen. Now we have the Serbs reaching an agreement with them— and we’re left high and dry. I told the King so many times, but he wouldn’t take the point. If we had a revolutionary court, he would be put straight up against a wall. How many wasted opportunities! A year ago the Germans made some extraordinary suggestions to me that we should do a deal with the Bulgarians; we’d have been off to Adrianopole and making an empire for ourselves.1 Two years ago I brought the King the Polish crown on a plate, but he wouldn’t listen. Now we’ll be forced to give ourselves to the Germans for nothing. I used to talk to them one way, and now they talk to us quite differently. We’ll fall into their hands for nothing.”
Journal 1935–1944 Page 14