I told him that I am thinking of leaving the country. He approved of the idea—as if it were obvious, as if there were nothing else to be done.
Thursday, 20 [January]
Cuvântul has come out.4 I can’t hold back a quiver of surprise, almost of emotion, when I see its calligraphic title that I used to hold before me every morning and every evening for so many years. It seems both very familiar and utterly strange. As in the old days, whenever I see someone in the street or on a streetcar carrying a copy of the paper that used to be so much my paper, I have the feeling that he is a friend, someone from the same family.
How ironic that sounds today: “from the same family”!
Yesterday evening, for the first time in four years, the windows were lighted up in the editorial offices. I passed by feeling a little sad, but not too much. A sense of irreparability attenuates a farewell. Here, as in love, it is hard if you keep feeling that all is not over, that things can be taken up and put back together again. But when the break is final, when the departure brooks no return, the forgetting is quicker and the consolation easier.
Aderca has been moved to Cernăuţi as a reprisal.5 I read a letter he sent to his wife: no laments, almost no bitterness. He lives in a room rented for a thousand lei a month, and has fifteen hundred lei for food. That’s at forty-five years of age, after two wars and twenty books.
It’s no longer possible to enter the law courts. There were terrible fights yesterday, and apparently more of the same today. I don’t upset myself, I don’t get worked up. I wait—without knowing exactly for what.
The day before yesterday, a long night’s drinking at Mrs. T.’s. I danced all the time, either with her or with her sister; they were equally indiscreet in offering themselves. It was a “louche” atmosphere, which I did not have the energy to reject with the brusqueness it deserved.
And when I think that B. introduced me only so that I would have the opportunity to meet “un être rare.”6
A dream from last night.
I am in Sinaia, in a carriage together with Marietta Sadova and Lilly Popovici. We climb a steep road, looking for a villa where none other than Jules Renard lives. We pass alongside the villa, in the front yard of which are three gentlemen: Virgil Madgearu, Mihail Popovici, and, between them, a thin man with greying fair hair. I stop the carriage and ask:
“Vous ne savez pas si M. Jules Renard habite par là?”
“C’est moi!” the unknown man replies.7
I go up to Renard and speak to him with great emotion (Lilly and Marietta remain in the carriage and drive on, or anyway disappear from the dream). He suggests that we go for a walk in the town. We set off together while a young woman—his daughter? his wife?—asks if he will be back soon, gives him a lot of anxious, affectionate advice not to catch cold, not to tire himself, and so on.
On the way I talk in detail about his Journal and quote from it. In particular I quote a phrase he uses about the theatre: “une conversation sans lustre. ”8 The discussion lasts a long time in the dream. (I remember that it is not at all incoherent—well structured, rather.)
We come to a kind of café-restaurant. On the right, in a kind of separate room, there are a number of familiar faces—including, I think, Izi. We avoid them and sit at a table on the left, in a cubicle like those at the Corso.
That is all I remember. This morning, before waking up properly, I mentally repeated the whole dream and there were, I think, more details. But in the course of the day I forgot the dream, and it was only a short while ago, at the Philharmonic, that I remembered it again.
Sunday, 23 [January]
Marietta’s play will not be performed after all; the dress rehearsal has been banned by ministerial order. Porunca Vremii denounced it on the grounds that Lucia Demetrius has a Jewish mother.
I am sorry for her but not unhappy about Marietta. She’ll have the chance to feel, in a way that directly affects her, the wild absurdity of her own “political ideas.”
An atmosphere of panic, of disorderly retreat. Always the same questions without an answer, always the same laments. It is tiring. The only way to forget is to get drunk. But I am too tranquil, too fond of staying at home, to do that every evening.
Apparently there are dozens, indeed hundreds, of groups in the city to promote all kinds of solutions: mass conversion, emigration, an association of pro-government “Mosaic Romanians,” etc., etc. They are desperate people, whose despair takes comical forms. I can’t take part in this agitation, this turmoil, except by shrugging my shoulders.
Sunday evening: alone at home. I have no one to see in this big wide city, nor anything to say to anyone, nor anything to hear from anyone. I read, without too much conviction. If my radio were not broken, I’d listen to some music. It’s a drug that agrees with me.
A few days ago I started work again on a French translation of De două mii de ani. Do I have some definite hope? No! But just as I buy a lottery ticket every month, which gives me a fraction of a thousandth of a chance of winning the “million” prize, I am preparing a text that one day, through some absurd fluke, might find a French publisher. Most important of all, it is mechanical work suitable for my free hours—so free and so disoriented, the poor things!
Tuesday, 1 February
A long lunch yesterday at Vişoianu’s. Later, over coffee, Ralea.9
They are more disoriented than I am, a “mere individual.” If that is Romanian democracy—and there is none other—then it is a dead loss. I no longer have any hope, any expectation. They’ve given up completely. In their view, the next elections will double the success of the Iron Guard; the National Peasants won’t win more than 10 to 12 percent, with roughly the same for the Liberals.
After a five-hour session there, I left with my head in a whirl. The same grieved shrugging of shoulders, the same stupid consolations “of an external order,” the same more or less confidential tidbits of news: Ostrovski spoke, Nae Ionescu squinted, Micescu got into a tangle in Geneva, Eden won’t accept, etc., etc. That must be how people discussed the rise of Hitler in Germany, over black coffee after a good lunch. The last comforts on the eve of the final collapse.
I saw Belu Zilber1 for the first time in four years (he had coffee at Vişoianu’s); he is unchanged.
Sunday, a night of heavy drinking with Leni and Jenica Crutescu. I could drink all the time; I’d do nothing else.
Wednesday, 2 [February]
Another drunken night. But it’ll be the last in the series—otherwise there will be no end. It’s a promise.
Wednesday, 9 [February]
The days are getting longer. It’s still light at six in the evening. It frightens me to think that spring is coming, that a year has passed and I have done nothing at all. No book, no love.
Friday, 11 [February]
The Goga government fell last night! A sudden reflex of satisfaction spreads over me, an irresistible easing of nervous tension. I said to myself—and I say it all the more after a night of troubled sleep—that things are very unclear and may remain just as grave (for us at least), that the anti-Semitic repression may continue. Nevertheless, I cannot stop myself rejoicing; it is such a consolation to see a great imposture suddenly go flat.
But what gave last night its dramatic tone—its nervous joy, its excitement, its cheerful restlessness, its optimistic agitation—was the news, or rather the rumors, about Germany.
Revolt, street-fighting in Berlin, three army corps in open battle with assault troops, etc. etc. etc. Incredible, but enough to make one dizzy. My old despondency tried to dismiss the reports, but my thirst for happiness—even momentary, even illusory—wanted to believe and began to believe.
Until two in the morning I was lost in the crowd near the Palace, latching onto now one, now another—Carandino,2 Camil, Ghiţă Ionescu—asking questions, passing on things I heard, convinced when they came from a skeptic, incredulous when they came from someone convinced. I couldn’t go home—I’d have wasted the whole night. For i
ndeed, the atmosphere in the streets was feverish, stimulating, charged with expectation, doubts, and supposition.
Now, after some hours have passed and I have read the papers (unclear about Germany, where the situation is confused but not acute in any immediate sense), I am calmer and a little distrustful. I feel as I would after a night of boozing.
Saturday, 12 [February]
The night before last (the night of the crisis), Camil came across me in the Palace Square, where I was waiting to hear some news. He seemed taken aback by what was happening, and I liked having things to say with Camil “reduced to silence.”
“You ought to see how the Jews have overrun the Corso. The whole café is full of them. They’ve really ‘taken possession.’”
“What an anti-Semite you are, Camil! Come with me and I’ll show you how wrong you are, or how much you like getting things wrong.”
I took him by the arm. We went into the Corso, did a tour of the café, stopped at each table, and counted up the suspect faces. In all, there were fifteen Jews in a lively and jam-packed café full of groups heatedly arguing.
With a smile, Camil took everything back in the face of the evidence.
This morning Perpessicius—whom I met at the Foundation—told me about Cuvântul and how its editorial life is not much different from what it used to be. There are the same administrative squabbles, the same ironic hostility to Devechi, the same old pathetic stuff (which nevertheless constituted a family life).
But, in addition, there has been an influx of Legionary types. The relaunch dinner took place at the Legionaries’ restaurant.
Monday, 21 [February]
Three days in Predeal at the Robinson villa, from Saturday morning until this evening.
I left Bucharest to escape the tiredness and exasperation and repugnance. So many wretched things, both little and big, which I felt were becoming unbearable. . . .
I return feeling restored to health and strength—or at least partly restored, despite the terrible night of insomnia and nightmares that I had on Saturday. (I find it so hard to get used to an unfamiliar house!)
The snow relaxes me, makes me younger, helps me forget. The Veştea course is the most exacting I have yet encountered in my brief skiing career. I fell innumerable times. But I think I also learned a few things. This morning I finally managed to ski from top to bottom of the highly uneven slopes, and, without falling once, to reach that little island of ice that marks the end of the course, just at the beginning of the forest.
Three days of skiing—and I return with calmer nerves, back where they belong. It’s just that this Bucharest, this life I lead . . .
Monday, 28 [February]
Again a couple of days, Saturday and Sunday, in Predeal. Impressions of sun, much light, endless childhood—something resembling happiness. Nothing remains of my usual bitterness, of my stupid questions and futile regrets; nothing remains of that life made up of scraps, of broken promises, endless waiting, confused discontent, weary little hopes.
Here everything becomes simple again. Only a day at Balcic—naked, basking in the sun—has the same intensity.
Yesterday morning, with the snow bathed in sunlight, I no longer had any thoughts, any melancholy, any expectations. I was quite simply happy.
I wore only a shirt, and I would gladly have removed that too: it was a day for the chaise longue and bathing costume. I am returning with sunburnt cheeks, as in my best days of old.
As to the skiing, I am making visible progress. I descended—this time without falling once—the slopes that only last week intimidated me. I learned a kind of “christie,” which I find easy enough and which gives me an unexpected feeling of “maitrise” on the ground. It is true that, as soon as I leave the practice area and “venture” onto an unknown track, all my experience ceases to be of any help. Yesterday afternoon I kept falling on the way from Veştea to Timiş, where I went with Devechi, Lupu, and two people from their circle. But it was a useful outing, at least as a stamina-building exercise.
On Saturday I went skiing with Virgil Madgearu. Skiing turns everyone into a child again, even former ministers.
But, of course, we must become serious again when we return home. I have a mass of things awaiting me. I’m thinking of going back to my “Romanian Novel” essay. Since Roman is leaving for London, and since we still can’t get into the courts, I shall try now to spend my mornings working at the Academy
Monday, 14 March
Emil Gulian, whom I met after a long time, is still the same disoriented boy full of personal questioning (loves, lassitudes, scruples, expectations), indifferent to political events, corrupted by poetry. . . . The Goga-Cuza “period” depressed him. He tells me he felt ashamed—and I believe him.
I saw Sân-Giorgiu the other day at the Foundation. He is unrecognizable. He no longer wears a swastika. He speaks of the mistakes made by their government.
“In short, old man, that’s not the way to do things either. . . .”
He is friendly and communicative. He tells me of his theatrical successes in Germany.
“Not even Ibsen had such a triumph: not one unfavorable review!”
The skiing was a splendid distraction. The last two Sundays I haven’t been to Predeal—where I don’t think there is any more snow—and I am beginning to feel the effects. I am not at all content with the life I am leading. I read a book by fits and starts, I write nothing, I don’t work, I waste my time at Roman’s or at the Foundation, and I come away restless and a nervous wreck. I’d like to work—but I don’t have the mettle to begin. It would require an effort of organization and discipline.
Will I go to Paris for Easter? Or to Balcic? Will I ever get back to writing Accidentul? Will I ever write that book about the Romanian novel?
I live by fits and starts, from day to day. I have no money, my clothes are wearing out, and I just wait for evening to come, for morning to come, for it to be Thursday, for it to be Sunday. What’s the point of it all? For how much longer?
Wednesday, 16 [March]
I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m tired all the time, incapable of keeping at anything for a few hours. I spent a couple of days on my last review for the Foundation, deleting, reading aloud, losing the thread, overemphasizing the incidental, cutting short the main ideas. I read by fits and starts—no more than a quarter of an hour at a time. A few pages of Saint-Simon last night; today a bit of Carlo Gamba’s Botticelli, which I never manage to finish. Even these lines are hard for me to write. The letters dance before my eyes.
I wasted the whole of today tinkering around with a little drama review for Viaţa românească. The article I promised about Camil’s book gives me the frights.
All this is quite serious. I think of my novel, I think of my critical work—and I wonder how I’ll ever complete them, or even start them, with these tired eyes and this broken concentration.
If I had the money, I’d see an eye specialist again.
Thursday, 17 [March]
Headline in today’s Cuvântul:
“Pseudo-scientist Freud arrested in Vienna by National Socialists.”
Friday, 25 [March]
Spring, oh unbearable spring—all week I lived in the hope of leaving for Balcic today. It’s a holiday, Annunciation Day. And if I’d made a long weekend of it and come back to Bucharest on Tuesday, I could quite easily have had a five-day break, with four whole days in Balcic.
I see myself in the courtyard at Paruseff, alone on a chaise longue facing the sea. I see myself in a track suit in a deserted Balcic, idling away the time at Mamut, on the pier or in a boat. . . . Everything would have been forgotten, everything healed. I have so much to forget, so much to heal.
But out of laziness, indecision, or stupidity, I stayed to drag myself around this springtime Bucharest, where I have no one except at home, where I am neither alone nor not-alone, where the days and the hours pass in lifeless exhaustion.
Waiting for what? Wishing for what? Maybe an
effort of will, maybe a cold determination to work—not for the pleasure of it, but to escape this sense of futility.
Tuesday, 29 [March]
Celia’s book has appeared,3 with the following words on the cover band: “The writers Liviu Rebreanu, Camil Petrescu, and Mihail Sebastian recommended this novel to the publisher.”
Epilogue: this morning Mrs. Rebreanu rang Camil Petrescu in alarm and asked how they could permit such effrontery; the names of Rebreanu and Sebastian alongside each other.
One day I’ll tell Rebreanu of this little incident—with a laugh, of course.
Saturday, 9 April
Last night I casually switched on the radio, not having gone near it since it broke down a couple of months ago. Its latest whim is that it picks up only Budapest on all wavelengths. But chance had it that last night I was able to hear a beautiful Mozart concert: the Double Piano Concerto, and the Symphony in A Major. A good hour of music—and the pleasure of again being alone. I have gone out so much recently—evening after evening!
Since I stopped being able to use the radio, I have no longer made a note of my musical itineraries. Actually, “itinerary” is too big a word— listening sessions, rather. The repertoire at the Philharmonic (where I still go regularly) is by now completely known to me. After three years that is hardly surprising. This year seems the poorest in musical terms: only the Goldberg Variations, played a fortnight ago by Kempff, has been a real event for me. This evening I’ll hear Backhaus: the Italian Concerto by Bach, and two Beethoven sonatas.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 20