I said today, after I had done my first successful “slalom” exercise, that literature will never give me the same joy. And I wasn’t lying.
Nevertheless—to be quite honest—all these initiations into skiing also interest me from the point of view of the novel. I have more and more material for the scenes at Gunther’s cabin on the Schuller.
I reread the manuscript the evening before last. I suffer line by line when I see how pockmarked my poor manuscript has become—but on the whole the reading has not discouraged me. I’ll have to rewrite more carefully everything I have redone so far, but it can certainly be used, even in the deplorable state in which it is today. Everything may perhaps go well from now on, though not, of course, without difficulty.
I’d love to finish writing this book. The poor thing has had too much bad luck for me not to be fond of it. This is probably the kind of tender feeling one keeps for unhappy children.
Wednesday, 29 [December], Bucharest
The Goga government has been installed—and, contrary to what I thought before arriving in Bucharest, it is not a temporary maneuver but a stable formula. It will hold fresh elections, it will govern the country, and it will carry out the Cuzist program to which each minister referred in his speech. For the first time in an official speech one could hear the vocabulary of Porunca Vremii: “yid,” “the Jews,” Judah’s domination, and so on.
The first measures of state anti-Semitism are expected for tomorrow or the day after: a citizenship review, probably elimination from the Bar and in any case from the press.
Will I lose my position at the Foundation? It’s quite possible—especially if, as today’s papers suggest, the Foundations are brought under the Ministry of Propaganda, with Hodoş at its head. But even without that, it is hard to believe that a Cuzist regime will tolerate a Jew in a “cultural position”—even one as lowly as mine.
I don’t know what the atmosphere is like in town. Consternation, bewilderment, alarm, or fear? The papers are lifeless, inexpressive, without any note of protest. I think it is only now that we will start learning what censorship means.
In these conditions, is it not a childish stupidity to be writing literature?
I still haven’t been into town. My fall yesterday was more serious than I thought at first. My left thigh is swollen and bruised. I walk, or rather hobble, with difficulty, and treat myself with lead acetate. At one moment I was afraid I’d broken something. That’s all I need.
Late at night, when I got back from Brasov, I listened to a Mozart piano concerto from Stuttgart—one I don’t think I’ve ever heard before.
This evening from Paris, a sonata in B-flat by Mozart. And finally, as I write this note (eleven o’clock), something that sounds like Mozart— probably a symphony—also from a French station.
A lot of Mozart, really a lot. Perhaps it’s the only thing that can console me for everything that’s happened.
(It wasn’t a symphony but the Flute Concerto in G Major—by Mozart, though, so at least I got that right.)
Thursday, 30 [December]
Dimineaţa, Adevărul, and Lupta have been banned for the time being.
Petre Pandrea, the county prefect, somewhere in Moldavia.
Victor Eftimiu9 has resigned from the Peasant party and joined the Gogists.1 Apparently he’ll be given the Theatre Directorate.
Camil Petrescu ’phoned me and commented on Eftimiu’s conversion:
“You know, if he’s really appointed to the theatre, I’ll join the Iron Guard the next day and won’t even say ‘hello’ to you again.”
“All I ask, Camil old boy, is that you ring and tell me in advance, so that I don’t say ‘hello’ to you. That’ll make things easier for you.”
Train passes are being withdrawn from journalists. Jews have been forbidden the occupation of journalist.
“At the end of the day,” says Camil, “you have to admit there have been too many abuses.”
“I admit it—how couldn’t I? I admit everything.”
All day at home reading Charles Morgan’s Sparkenbroke. A book so remote from the present day! It seems a million miles away!
Footnotes
1. Adrianopole: the old name for the Turkish town of Edime, near Turkey’s frontier with Greece.
2. Hjalmar Schacht: economics minister in Nazi Germany 1934-1937.
3. Leaders of the Iron Guard who fought on Franco’s side in the Spanish civil war. Their death was used by the Iron Guard as a major propaganda device.
4. Anton Holban: novelist.
5. Scarred Hearts, a novel by M. Blecher.
6. L’Indépendence Roumaine, for which Sebastian wrote music reviews under the pen name Flamimus.
7. Lawyer.
8. Angela Lereanu: secretary at Roman’s office.
9. Constantin Noica and his wife. Noica was a journalist and a philosopher who became a strong supporter of the Iron Guard and later, under the Communist regime, the founder of an opposing school of thought.
1. Medieval rulers of Moldavia and Valachia.
2. Nicolae Bălcescu: historian, leader of the 1848 revolution.
3. Mihai Eminescu: nineteenth-century poet, considered the creator of the modern Romanian language, a profound anti-Semite.
4. Bogdan Petriceicu Hajdeu: nineteenth-century writer, anti-Semitic.
5. President of the Iasi University who was stabbed by a group of Iron Guard students.
6. Gogu Rădulescu was in fact a Communist sympathizer.
7. I know very well what I should stick to.
8. Involving arson to extract insurance payments.
9. Sebastian's grandmother.
1. I would keep watch by my Jesus.
2. Geo Bogza had been charged with disseminating pornography because of the content of one of his books.
3. In Paris a month earlier, Sebastian had lost the draft manuscript of his novel Accidentul.
4. Charming little slut.
5. In this case expressing a slight sense of social superiority rather than personal warmth.
6. The local German name for Mount Postavaru.
7. I don't know how to defend myself.
8. Puiu Dumitrescu: powerful personal secretary to King Carol II.
9. A forthcoming election was to decide the fate of Prime Minister Tătărescu, who was supported by the king but had run afoul of public opinion.
1. Mariana and Petra Viforeanu: members of the Criterion literary group.
2. The Opening of the Season, Sebastian’s sketch about theatrical life.
3. Prince Antoine Bibescu: close friend of Sebastian's.
4. The newspaper where Sebastian had worked.
5. Alice Theodorian: friend of Sebastian’s.
6. Miron Grindea: journalist.
7. Octavian Goga, prime minister December 1937-Febraary 1938, leader with A. C. Cuza of the heavily anti-Semitic Goga-Cuza government.
8. Gh. Cuza, son of A. C. Cuza and a member of the Goga-Cuza government.
9. Playwright.
1. Members of the Goga-Cuza National Christian party.
1938
Sunday, 2 January 1938
Still at home because of my leg, which has not yet healed. It is worrying me.
They have revoked my permit. Our names in every paper, as if we were a bunch of delinquents.1
New Year’s Eve at Leni’s. Observed a host of things about her—but what’s the point of noting them down?
Finishing with her is a serious business. At thirty I’m no longer allowed to behave so childishly.
I ought to write the article for Revista Fundaţiilor. But will it be published? I don’t think I can possibly stay on at the Foundation. What will this new year bring me, having started on such a gloomy note?
Not a single phone call from anyone. Mircea, Nina, Marietta, Haig, Lilly, Camil—they’re all dead. And I understand them so well!
Monday, 3 [January]
I had a moment of terror during the night. I woke up with the clo
ck striking three in the next room: I think I had a fever, and my left leg was hurting; it felt more swollen than before. I checked the swelling with my hand, and I was suddenly frightened at the thought that it was “like a bag of pus.”
An abscess, I said to myself, and everything seemed clear and inevitable. I saw again the whole first chapter of Inimi cicatrizate. “Cold abscess,” “hot abscess,” “fistula,” “fistular abscess,” “at death’s door”—all of Blecher’s vocabulary. At last I understood how a fistula digs in, how it makes room for itself, how it can sink through flesh “right into the buttock,” as Blecher put it, and how I was never able to understand. . . .
Everything seemed clear. I wondered where I would find the money for the initial cost of my treatment: puncture, sanatorium, dressings. And I wondered who might give me a revolver to end it more quickly. Mircea, perhaps. But would he understand? Would he consent to do it, he who thinks of suicide as the ultimate sin?
These thoughts went on all night and all morning, and I took them with me into Dr. Cuper’s waiting room, into his surgery, until the moment when he finally explained that it was a local subcutaneous hemorrhage, a burst blood vessel, some clotted blood, circulation problems over quite a wide area—but nothing serious. The pain will persist for six or seven days, and the bruising for three weeks or so. Rest and treatment with x-rays. I actually had the first session there with Dr. Ghirnus.
Maybe the whole incident came at the right time to remind me that there are, or can be, worse misfortunes than an anti-Semitic regime.
I already knew it perfectly well—only I had forgotten.
Tuesday, 4 [January]
In Charles Morgan’s Sparkenbroke there is an observation about a Jewish character: “Mais dans ses yeux noirs luisait une ardente imagination, refrodie par cette tristesse ironique qu'ont des civilisés parmi les barbares, et qui est particulière à sa race.’”2
Wednesday, 5 [January]
I’ve finished with her. . . . But if the act itself was quite easy, done without harsh words and with almost a smile, I shouldn’t imagine that it will stay so simple.
Now come the hours of absurd disquiet, the choking need to see her, the obsession with the telephone that never rings, the temptation to pick up the receiver and call her, the hope of meeting her “by chance” in the street, the slight alarm on passing the theatre, the urge to look up to her window when I walk down her street (to see whether the lights are on and, if so, who is visiting her, or, if not, where she might be at that hour, etc. etc. etc.).
But all this—which I know so well—will have to be borne with resignation. I shall have to hold out until I regain that composure, that restful oblivion, which I have achieved a few times before but carelessly thrown away. For you must admit, old boy, you are too old and you have too many sorrows in life to remain caught up in this sad, banal, and trifling affair.
I won’t allow any excuses. It’ll be difficult, of course—the proof is that I’m telling you now, just an hour after the “farewell call,” when the anesthetizing effect has not yet worn off. It doesn’t hurt, but it soon will. No doubt at all about that!
Friday, 7 [January]
I have avoided writing about my visit to Nae the day before yesterday. I came away with mixed feelings: fondness, irritation, doubts, repugnance.
There, in the fading evening light, he sat in his huge office at that long black table, with his head of hair now turning grey, his eye sockets seemingly deeper than before, his eyebrows also beginning to pale, and his face severe and glum. Indeed, he had just said something to me that could have come straight out of Charles Morgan’s novel: “Nothing is more vacuous, more threadbare, than irony—for life is too serious to be ironical with it.” For a moment I suddenly had the feeling that I had Sparkenbroke in person before me. I couldn’t help telling him this, with a certain show of emotion.
But later I found again my old Nae Ionescu: garrulous, quick-witted, childlike, now and then crafty.
“I was just telling them in Berlin . . . I was talking to one of their ministers, and I explained in detail the characteristics of the Hitler regime. The man listened in silence, then stood up and said: ‘Professor, I’ll go this very day to the Fiihrer and tell him I have spoken with the only man who has understood the National Socialist revolution.’”
Later Nae told me a host of “secrets” about the government, about the temporary ban on Adevărul, about various ministers, about the external situation (all “just between the two of us,” of course), and finally about perspectives for the future.
Goga’s anti-Semitic measures disgust him. He thinks they are a hollow mockery, issued in a barbarous spirit of raillery.
“How on earth can they say that a whole group of Romanian citizens are engaged in the white slave trade? That’s a calumny, and any Romanian citizen has a right to prosecute the minister for spreading it around. How can you drive a million people to suicide and social degradation without endangering the very foundations of the Romanian state?”
I tried to reassure him that the slow, or even the impetuous, killing of Jews would not have quite such grave implications of that kind, and that anyway the Iron Guard would surely not operate differently.
“Not in deeds, but in their mind,” was Nae’s reply. “You see, laugh as you will, there is a big difference between a man who kills you in a mocking spirit and one who does the same with pain in his heart.”
Etcetera, etcetera. Can I summarize a conversation with Nae? A million different things—a million judgments, naive assertions, clarifications, threats, solutions, explanations.
From all that, I did not take away any indication regarding myself.
Yesterday morning, a brief visit to Blank. I am so disoriented that I look everywhere for information and opinions.
“All we Jews can wish for,” he argued, “is the continuation of the Goga government. What would come after it would be infinitely worse.”
I realize that I am becoming a little apprehensive about what I write in this journal. It’s not impossible that I’ll be awakened one day by a house search, and there can be no more “scandalous” evidence than a personal diary.
Saturday, 8 [January]
Yesterday evening I wasted three hours, today four, with the manuscript in front of me. I force myself to take it up again, but it doesn’t work. I don’t know whether it is because I am dispirited, or disgusted with literature, or quite simply lazy.
In the end I gave myself up to reading instead: Malraux’s L'espoir. I’ll work some other time. . . .
Tuesday, 11 [January]
I was determined enough to resist any “resumption” gesture on my part, but not sufficiently firm, nor sufficiently prepared, to resist a call from her. She ’phoned twice yesterday—and so I met her.
What now?
A big disaster in the theatrical world. At the S.C.I.A. an evening’s receipts are two to three thousand lei. It’s possible that the Regina Maria will shut by next Sunday.
And in such times I become a dramatist!
The Comoedia has announced a play by Sân-Giorgiu for one of its future premieres. Well, that’s another matter!
Thursday, 13 [January]
Massoff has been dismissed from the National Theatre, at the minister’s express request.3 It’s one of those wretched details that depress me more than a “general measure.” It is oppression on the quiet—cowardly and petty. And I cannot help thinking that I’ll be sacked from the Foundation in the same way, today, tomorrow, or the day after. . . . I await this calmly—after all, I’m not going to tie my whole life (or perhaps my death) to 5,935 lei a month.
If, amid all this filth, I didn’t have to bear my old personal unhappiness, how readily—or so I think—would I tear everything up and start life again from the beginning! Where? No matter where. In the Foreign Legion, for example. But thirty is not the age for adventure seeking, especially with my terrible weariness of life—weariness because I have not lived at all up to now.
I still indulge myself by listening to music in the evening. Yesterday, from Strasbourg, Mozart’s German Dances and a Schumann concerto for four cellos, which I did not know existed.
It’s a kind of narcotic, or a kind of bravado—as if I am saying that absolutely everything is not lost.
Sunday, 16 [January]
She was here yesterday evening. I kept expecting her to ring and say that she was not coming, that she couldn’t come. That seemed to me simpler. But she did come—with some violets that she took from the flap of her cloak, and which I still have here in a glass, on my bedside table. We listened to the Kleine nachtmusik and smoked a cigarette, then I took her in my arms. She did not resist or waver, but awaited everything with consent. As she closed her eyes in “abandon,” I looked at her before kissing her, as if I wanted to be sure it was really her.
But there is still something murky in all this, something awkward between us. I don’t have the strength to refuse, point-blank, things that life has taken away from me, things that it has forbidden me to have.
I went to Mircea’s today. I thought we would have it out, but as we spoke I realized that there is no point—that it may even be impossible. It’s all over between us, and we are both perfectly aware of the fact. The rest— explanations, excuses, reproaches—does not lead anywhere.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 19