In today’s Timpul the new season at the Comoedia is announced as opening with Jocul de-a vacanţa. Rehearsals on the 20th of August.
I don’t say either yes or no. I have grown used to expecting nothing in relation to the theatre. We shall see.
Wednesday, 17 [August]
An intricate, absurd dream, from which all I remember is that Romania went to war to occupy “Pocutia.” I asked myself: war with whom? With Poland? With Czechoslovakia? And where might Pocutia be?
The streets were decked with flags. I seemed to be in Brăila, racing uphill with Poldy on Bulevardul Cuza, toward the center of town. I no longer remember if I was on a bicycle, but I do know that the faster I went, the more I felt in my mouth, between my teeth, a kind of contraption that turned with a deafening sound, like a dentist’s little wheel.
There were other marvels galore, which I have since forgotten.
No news anywhere about Mircea. Nor is there anyone I can ask. But as I don’t see his name under any articles in Vremea, I assume he is still under arrest. Rosetti, in a letter to me from the day before yesterday, spoke of “Mircea’s deportation.” Does that mean to Miercurea?
I have finished Chapter Six. It has thirty pages, though they are full of defacements. I wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is the least successful chapter so far. It has gone badly, and apart from a few moments of walking in the street there is nothing in it that satisfies me. But maybe it will get lost in the general effect.
From now on I don’t know what to do. I have only three days left in Bran—which gives things a provisional feel and may make it hard for me to work. Still, tomorrow morning I shall try to be at my desk as usual. Chapter Seven, which is also no more than a transition, shouldn’t cost me too much effort. Only when I’ve reached the top of the Schuller with my characters will I be on the other side of the book.
Sunday, 21 [August]
I leave for Bucharest this evening, in the car of the lawyer Virgil Sefanescu (last-minute relations, but very friendly . . .).
The last few days I haven’t done any work at all. In the same way that I began my month in Bran with three days of complete holiday, I decided to end it with three days of the same.
I lay on the chaise longue in the sun, I bathed in the stream, I started an English novel (Meredith, I see, goes down very well on holiday), I played all kinds of games: chess, backgammon, billiards, table tennis, and volleyball. Like the schoolboy I am.
And now I am returning. I’d like to start my life differently from how I left it a month ago in Bucharest.
Bucharest, Monday, 22 [August]
My first day in Bucharest, an exhausting day. I was awakened early by the buses, the street shouts, the suffocating heat. Where are my good nights in Bran? Where are the mornings with the smell of the forest? Where is that calm, intense silence, broken only by the rumbling of the stream?
How much resistance I would need not to succumb to the pressure of the horrible life I rediscover here! It makes me furious to think that I could have stayed another week there, because I could have handed in the continuation of my study of Proust (which I returned to write) in a month’s time. Cioculescu told me only today over the phone that he doesn’t need it right away. What a stupid business!
I dropped by Marietta’s to see if there was any news of Mircea. (He was not answering his telephone.) He has been at Miercurea-Ciuc since the first of August.
On this occasion I saw Marietta unrestrained: she is choking with anti-Semitism. Not even the fact that she was talking with me, nor the fact that I was in her house, could stop her from ranting and raging against potbellied Jews and their bloated, bejeweled women—though she did make exception for about a hundred thousand “decent” Jews, probably including myself since I have neither a potbelly nor a bloated wife.
Otherwise her language was just as in Porunca Vremii. I didn’t hesitate to tell her so. And I left there feeling poisoned.
Wednesday, 24 [August]
The rehearsals start tomorrow.3 I did a reading today with Leni and Sică, to check the text for any possible changes.
It frightens me how little Leni understands at certain points. The last scene in Act Two went completely over her head. She asked me to remove some things that had moved me a lot as I was writing them, and which—since I had loved her at that time—I had written for her.
“Do you really want to keep that?” she asked me today, about some lines that she literally had not understood. (“I haven’t met him, but I have been waiting for him. I have always expected to find him, in every man I’ve known . . .” etc.)
I don’t want to sound like an author peculiarly wedded to his text, whose “heart bleeds” for it. I think I am more skeptical, more sensitive to ridicule. I lost a novel that meant a lot to me, and I didn’t die—all the less will I die for a play that they’ll screw up in the theatre. But I’m amazed to see how difficult it is for her to grasp the simplest shades of meaning.
What upsets me more is that Sică has arranged things beforehand so that my play will not run for more than three weeks; the first night is scheduled for the 15 th of September, and on the 7th of October Leni leaves on tour with Ionescu R. Maria. Does it bother me that a hit has been ruled out in advance? Will the play be successful? I don’t know. Let’s suppose it won’t. But if there is even a small chance of a hit—even 5 percent, let us say—then I don’t see why it should be denied me. The chances are even slimmer in the lottery, but that doesn’t stop me playing it.
At the end of the day I tell myself that none of this matters. I shouldn’t work myself up about it. I should let them do what they like, as they like, and tell myself that the play is mine but the show is theirs. Once that distinction is made, I can consider myself free and unattached.
Thursday, 25 [August]
It’s not out of the question that they’ll take the play off the schedule. I am grateful to Zoe, who helped me understand how unacceptable is the deal proposed by Sică. I have absolutely nothing to gain from a shoddy premiere followed by a three-week run and disappearance from the publicity boards. If this play doesn’t bring me some money, it brings me nothing. I’m not such a child as to turn the theatre business into a question of “literary prestige.”
Monday, 29 [August]
I got home around eight, rather fed up at having promised to go out later with Zoe. How good it would be—I thought—if I could stay home, read a little, and have an early night. I had decided to pluck up my courage and tell Zoe, when she rang a quarter of an hour later as arranged, that I would stay home and beg her to forgive me.
The telephone rang, and before I said a word she told me that she was not at home:
“I’ve been kidnapped. I’ll explain to you.”
So I am free. So I can stay quietly at home. So I can read a bit and have an early night. Exactly as I wanted.
Yes . . . but I am a jealous person. And now I feel uneasy. Now I am troubled by the thought that she has gone out with someone else. “I’ve been kidnapped” says a great deal. Tonight she’ll return home with her kidnapper. She’ll doubtless sleep with him. All that should be a matter of complete indifference to me. In the end, separation is the only possible outcome of our affair. And I can’t refuse her the right to find a man to sleep with.
What’s the point, I ask myself, of complicating your wretched life with such regrets, with such impossible hopes, with such insane hopes, which all eventually leave the same taste of ashes?
Tuesday, 30 [August]
I keep dreaming of Nae Ionescu. Last night I saw him after his return from Miercurea-Ciuc. We seemed to be in the schoolyard in Brăila. We were talking heatedly—he with great violence, because I was denigrating the Iron Guard. Then a lot of things happened—it was a long dream— but I don’t remember any more.
The rehearsals have started. I still haven’t been there—nor shall I go unless I cannot avoid it. I have no feeling of enthusiasm. I’m not at all happy with the business deal we have agreed to. I
have to make an average of 24,000 lei an evening for them to keep the play on after the 7th of October. Only if I make that average will the tour be postponed. I have a sense that I am being quite simply hoodwinked. All Sică’s big successes—plays that stayed up on the boards for two months—made no more than an average of 15,000 to 17,000 lei. But I can’t put up a fight with these theatre people. They’ve licked me before we start.
I went to see Aristide Blank this morning, and I gave him ten thousand of the twenty thousand lei he lent me before I left for Bran. That leaves me with empty pockets, but I’m glad that my account with him is clear. Apart from that, I have to admit that he behaved perfectly in the circumstances. He gave me the money and took it back as discreetly as he might have offered or accepted a cigarette. If he hadn’t, I would have died of shame.
I went to see Nina the other day. Only Joyce, who shouted with joy when she saw me, reminded me of the time when I felt somehow at home in that house. Nina and I were ill at ease.
Naturally I deplore all that has happened, I feel sorry for Nae and sorry for Mircea, I’d like to know they were at liberty. But I can’t believe that their “action” was anything other than a miscalculation on Nae’s part and childish nonsense on Mircea’s. Half farce, half ambition. I don’t see any more in it.
Saturday, 3 September
Autumn. It’s only seven o’clock but already quite dark. For the last hour I’ve been reading with the light on.
Sunday, 4 [September]
In today’s Timpul there was the first advertisement for the premiere. “Co-moedia theatre. Wednesday, 14 September 1938. Opening of the winter season. Jocul de-a vacanţa, by Mihail Sebastian. With Leni Caler, George Vraca, Mişu Fotino, and V. Maximilian.”
All day I read in Renard’s Journal and the Goncourts’ Journal their notes about rehearsals and premieres. I especially enjoyed what the poor Goncourt brothers had to say about the disastrous flop of their first play, Henriette Maréchal. It was a prophylactic reading.
Thursday, 8 [September]
This afternoon I go to a rehearsal for the first time. I promise to stay calm, to take things as they come, not to make a tragedy of anything. It would be ridiculous to blow this theatrical business out of proportion; it has a point only if I can look at it with relative indifference.
Again they tell me that at least twenty-five plays like mine are written each year in Europe—so the whole thing can have the significance of only a minor incident.
Although it was originally announced for the 14th, the premiere is now scheduled for the 16th of September. But from what Leni says, I don’t think it will happen before the 20th.
Marga the day before yesterday, Carol Pascal yesterday—because they had seen De ce nu mă săruţi? and enjoyed it—asked me:
“Does your play also have music?”
Plopeanu’s wife asked Leni the other evening:
“Jocul de-a vacanţa? Another play with schoolgirls?”
What a difficult legacy I have: recollections of Absente nemotivate and Elly Roman’s music from De ce nu mă săruţi?
My play doesn’t even have any schoolgirls or any music. . . . What a letdown for the audience.
Theatrical mentality: Froda, who is no fool and actually likes the play, suggested to me a few days ago:
“How about changing the scenery in the third act? The audience gets bored with plays where there is only one stage setting.”
He doesn’t understand that this “one stage setting” is actually part of the play’s poetry—however much of that it may contain.
Saturday, 10 [September]
To my amazement, Thursday’s rehearsal was not a catastrophe. I left there feeling rather buoyed. In general, I get the feeling that things hold together; but there are still a million details that need to be adjusted and put right.
Leni’s performance is moving. I say this after two days of calm reflection since the rehearsal, and at a time when I finally feel no love of any kind for her. As regards her acting, I think I am more inclined to be severe. Nevertheless (unless the surprise that things don’t look catastrophic has made me err in the opposite, optimistic direction), I do believe that she was moving. It was a very simple performance, but also very nuanced, with something loyal in the quarrelsome scenes, something faintly ironic in the moments of reverie. Nearly all the time she acted within the limits of the role; only very occasionally did I feel a need to call her back “to order,” “to earth.”
Maximilian is Maximilian. Not for a moment was he Bogoiu. All the time outside, all the time ham-acting.
Vraca was very good at some moments—those of idleness—and very bad at others which required some frivolity, a little fantasy. If I don’t manage to get him changed, the long final scene in Act One will be completely ruined—and with it the whole play.
Some of the others were amusing, others inexpressive, but none unacceptable.
To return to Leni, I must point out that she spoke most beautifully and sincerely those very passages that she had asked me to delete.
“I haven’t met him, but I have been waiting for him . . . etc.”
It had something muffled and melancholic, a kind of resignation that opened out—without too much fire—toward an unexpected hope.
How strange and subordinate is the profession of actor, in which you can do something very well without even understanding it. Maybe that is precisely the mark of a true actor. Maybe that is what people call “instinct.”
(Yesterday I went to Leni’s to read the role with her one more time.
“Why does Corina feel her pulse in Act Three,” she asked me. “Is it because it beats harder since she has been in love with Ştefan?”
“No, Leni dear. It’s because, being alone for the first time, she has the time, the curiosity, and the need to turn inward and observe herself, know herself. She puts her hand on her pulse as she might put her hand on her heart—a heart that she did not know she had.”
“Do you think so?” Leni wonders, remaining thoughtful and a little incredulous.
Yet that moment—whose meaning clearly escapes her—she acted to perfection.)
Sandina Stan, beautiful, vulgar, good to fuck, says to me:
“I’m delighted finally to be acting in a play of ideas.”
And I don’t even dare laugh.
Agnia Bogoslav (who plays Agnes, and says her few words very funnily) came timidly into the box from which Sică and I were following the rehearsal.
“Excuse me,” she said to Sică, “would you please urge Mr. Sebastian to write a few more lines for me. I have so few. . .”
“Okay, okay,” he replied jokingly. “I’ll ask him to write you a couplet.”
I laughed at that girl for being so keen to have me lengthen her role—but when I thought about it, her childlike behavior seemed touching. It was an actor’s childishness, made up of posturing but also of passion. The theatre is perhaps the only place where people do not flee from work but actually seek it out.
Leni had reached the moment of the lines:
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes
Et jamais je ne pleure, et jamais je ne ris.4
when Sică leaned toward me and asked very softly:
“Who are those lines by?”
Yesterday afternoon I had tea in private with Marie Ghiolu, Miss Lupa,5 and, later on, Mrs. Cantacuzino. Loads of things to note down, but I don’t have the time now.
Marie is very beautiful (maybe really beautiful for the first time since I’ve known her) but a little hotheaded, if not altogether hysterical.
“Don’t I have beautiful legs?”
And she lifted her dress to show me her calves.
It’s true that there were just the two of us.
Sunday, 11 [September]
Victor Ion Popa’s play flopped disastrously at the Regina Maria last night.
The terrible thing about the theatre is that people don’t realize what they are doing; the merciless lights of the premie
re are needed for the truth suddenly to leap to their eyes.
I went away feeling annoyed that I had wasted the evening, and a little worried about what is in store for me. Is it possible that I too went so badly wrong in writing my play?
Mitică Theodorescu said to Froda the other day:
“How on earth can you be putting on Sebastian’s play? It’s inadmissible.”
“It’s a good play,” said Froda.
“It can’t be good,” Mitica stubbornly retorted. “How can it be? Listen to me: it’s bad, very bad.”
“Well, but you don’t know it; you haven’t even read it.”
“I don’t need to read it. I tell you: it’s really bad.”
The smart jackal!
Monday, 12 [September]
The first posters went up on Saturday. Now they’re all over town, wherever you go. I took a couple myself: one to send to Mama in Paris, the other for me to keep. I stuck it to the wall with drawing pins and stared at it in a childish way. I liked looking at it. . . . Then—with the same good humor—I did something equally stupid: I went to the photographer’s to have my picture taken for the program.
But now the mood has passed. I feel bored and indifferent: I no longer look forward to the premiere, nor do I have any unease or the slightest curiosity about it.
This afternoon I went to the rehearsal—and everything seemed stupid to me. What a meal they are making of it! They put a thousand intentions and gestures into each piece of dialogue. I get the feeling that their eyes are on me, on the empty auditorium, on the prompter—calling us as witnesses to what is happening. No naturalness, no conviction, not an ounce of truth.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 23