Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  Where am I in all this? The hotel is in a state of disorder. Everyone is leaving, or talks of leaving. Longhin is in a panic and wants to catch the train this very day. The lady in Room 44 has received a telegram for her to hurry back to Bucharest. By tomorrow the hotel will be empty of people from the capital. I cut an absurd figure, of course, with my manuscript, but it is so hard for me to drop it and leave!

  Yesterday I wrote all day (a little over six pages). I keep at my desk, but I don’t rule out the possibility that I will decide to leave in five minutes’ time, if the news somehow grows worse.

  Just after I wrote the last note, I went downstairs to ring Rosetti and ask him for some political news. I didn’t get much (“easing of tension,” he says, but I’ve no idea what that means), but he did tell me to return to Bucharest. Comarnescu has been called up, and they have urgent need of me at the Revistă. I’ll leave tomorrow at one and be in Bucharest by Friday morning.

  I am quite simply desolated. I’m sick of this novel, which I now have to interrupt without knowing when I can return to it. I’ll try to finish Chapter Ten today, so that it won’t be left completely up in the air.

  Evening

  No, I didn’t manage to finish the chapter. I didn’t even write three pages (pretty awful ones at that), though I kept at work all morning and afternoon. I am too agitated, too anxious. This is not how I wanted to be leaving here. In Bucharest I’ll make a balance sheet of these seventeen days of writing. I’ll try not to lose hold of the novel, and do everything possible to start work again soon and see it through to a satisfactory conclusion.

  In the evening, a farewell walk to Muncei. I wish I could have been alone, but even so I return from there feeling a little emotional. Tomorrow I’ll spend a few hours in Cluj, then catch the evening train to Bucharest.

  Saturday, 26 [August]. Bucharest

  I realize that it will be hard for me to work regular hours here in Bucharest. The Foundation, Roman’s office, the restaurants, the telephone are stronger than my desire to be alone.

  Yesterday I had dinner at the Continental with Rosetti, Camil, and Lassaigne;7 and today lunch (also at the Continental) with Soare, Corin, Camil, and Carol. Black coffee with Vişoianu, Titubei, Mrs. Ralea, and Mrs. Bratescu-Voinesti. This evening I am invited—I don’t know why— to Alice Theodorian’s. Things can go on like this forever unless I stop in time.

  I’ll lose the novel if I let it slip away from me now—and I won’t have any excuses. No excuse other than war. . . I still have the feeling that it won’t break out, though in that case the Germans will have carried off another Munich-style victory—one that we will be the first to pay for.

  How great it was at Stîna de Vale! In fact I could have remained there, because there was nothing at all at the Foundation that needed to be done urgently. But when I think of it, maybe it was rather light-minded or even irresponsible to stay hidden in a mountain gorge in these terrible days.

  Wednesday, 30 [August]

  On Monday evening war seemed inevitable. Yesterday peace seemed possible. This morning things are again confused. Will Hitler give way? Or is a last-minute betrayal being prepared in London? Are we heading for another Munich? Personally, when I look calmly at what is happening, I think that Hitler has pushed his blackmail to the limit and that, if Britain resists, he will back down a split second later. Rationally speaking, I have thought continually over the last few days that there will be peace (through a rebuff to Berlin). “Rational!” The word doesn’t have much weight. There is a “margin” of the unknown, a limit beyond which things are more powerful than the will and initiative of human beings.

  If I had a radio, I’d listen to music. A lot of Bach, a lot of Mozart—only that can save me from anguish.

  “Mon roman cesse de m’interesser lorsque je cesse d’y travailler, ”8 Gide noted, at a time when he was working without much inclination on Uecole des femmes. Yesterday evening I came across this phrase by chance (I was cutting the pages of Volume 15 of his Oeuvres completes), and I felt it as a warning. If I don’t get straight back to my manuscript, I shall lose it.

  Friday, 1 September

  A gloomy letter from Poldy, who has enlisted as a volunteer and probably gone off already.

  Rosetti rang to tell me that Danzig was annexed this morning. War starts today. It may have begun already.

  I don’t know where I have found the terrible calm that I feel in this hour.

  Saturday, 2 [September]

  Strange days of war. The first moment was overwhelming: when the first dispatches appeared yesterday morning about the bombing of Warsaw, I felt that everything was crashing down. I quickly wrote a letter to Poldy, not even knowing whether it would reach him, but feeling a need to say something, to embrace him and offer my best wishes. But I didn’t have it in me to finish the letter; I couldn’t find a word that said everything. I had an intense and painful feeling of farewell—and broke into tears alone.

  Lunch at the Capşa (Rosetti, Ralea, Vişoianu, Camil, Lassaigne, Comamescu, Pastorel,9 Steriadi,1 Oprescu,2 Cantacuzino3) seemed lugubrious. People laughed, cracked jokes—and I couldn’t understand how such thoughtlessness was possible. All day and all evening (right up to three o’clock), I went about trying to find more news—but it was all vague and strangely lacking in precision, realism, and evidence. The bombing reported by both the Germans and the Poles seems to be an invention. At the present moment, though thirty-six hours of what seemed like “the beginning of war” have passed, the war may not yet have actually started. The French and British are still at the stage of diplomatic notes (though Chamberlain’s speech yesterday seemed to burn all the bridges).

  Everything is confused and uncertain, still not started, still not decided. What I find completely implausible is this brightly lit Bucharest, animated and filled with people, with packed restaurants and lively streets, a Bucharest at best curious about what is happening but not panic-stricken and not aware that a tragedy has begun.

  I don’t know how to pass the time. If I had a radio, I’d listen to news and music.

  Yesterday morning I forced myself to read some manuscripts for the Foundation, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But I was suddenly seized by the thought that these might be my last hours of liberty, or even of life, and that it was absurd to waste them in this way. I went into town, feeling dazed and disoriented.

  In the afternoon I began writing out again the first part of Chapter Five—but then I dropped that too. One book more or less: what can it matter now?

  The whole of today I waited for something decisive to clarify the situation. But nothing is heard from anywhere. So here I’ll be this evening, alone at home reading André Gide’s journal and probably turning in early.

  All this on the 2nd of September 1939.

  Monday, 4 [September]

  Yesterday morning at eleven Britain declared war on Germany. At five in the afternoon came France’s declaration of war. So far, however, there does not seem to have been any military engagement. Are they still waiting for something? Is it possible (as some say) that Hitler will immediately fall and be replaced by a military government, which will then settle for peace? Could there be radical changes in Italy? Are they waiting for Italy’s neutrality to be made clear? Or will Italy be forced to follow behind Germany? What will Russia do? What’s happening to the Axis, about which there is suddenly silence in both Rome and Berlin?

  A thousand questions that leave you gasping for breath, and that you would like to have cleared up at once. I rush around, make telephone calls, ask questions, thrash about, keep turning things over in my mind. I should get a grip on myself and wait calmly for events to unfold, without hysterics, without despair.

  I’ll try to stay in, to work, read and write, to reflect alone, with clearheaded resignation, on all that is happening. Above all, I must not complain. Above all, I must not go mad with anxiety.

  Let’s take everything with sadness, but also with self-respect.


  Tuesday, 5 [September]

  For the moment all is quiet on the western front. In Poland the Germans are continuing their advance; no one seems to be resisting them. The Polish communiqués strike me as downhearted. No one knows what will happen in Romania. The most terrible stories and predictions are whispered around. Yesterday there was one devilish hour at the Foundation. Lassaigne, who had just been at the French embassy, told us that we were at the point of going to war alongside France. Germany is demanding all our grain and all our oil! France and Britain want to land troops in Constanta! But we won’t accept either one or the other! That’s war for you.

  I don’t know what to believe. I come home dazed and disoriented, filled with anxiety. What is certain is that I won’t be at my desk for much longer. I’m bound to be in the army soon. Big call-ups are taking place all the time, and people say this will lead to a general mobilization in all but name. For the moment I am not in one of the categories on today’s call-up list. But it can’t be ruled out that the general staff will issue another communiqué, from one day to the next.

  I wait. And while waiting I do all kinds of things without enthusiasm, without perseverance. I ought to make a decision: either to read a long book, or to settle down to a translation for the Foundation, or to continue work on Accidentul—so that I finally stick at something in an orderly way. Yesterday evening I tried to read a Dostoevsky novel, but then I gave it up to read some Thomas de Quincey in English, and ended by again writing out the beginning of Chapter One—most reluctantly, however, because the version I reconstituted two years ago seems to me extraordinarily stupid.

  Camil Petrescu asked me to suggest that Rosetti arrange an interview with Ralea and Armand, about a question of “capital” importance. He intends to leave the National Theatre and take charge of the technical side of our anti-aircraft defense. He is convinced that only he can save us from disaster. He refused to divulge his plans to me—but he is determined to lay them before the prime minister, or perhaps even the King. He also told me that he has close links to the general staff of the Second Corps, and that any military operations of ours in Dobrogea will follow his instructions.

  I listened to him and am unsure what attitude to take. Sometimes I’m afraid I will burst out laughing; sometimes I ask myself with sudden concern whether he has not gone off his head. And, beyond all that, there is the most amusing possibility of all: that he is right.

  Wednesday, 6 [September]

  The mornings are bearable, but the nights are difficult, full of apprehension, poisoned by foreboding. Yesterday I felt deep inside me that this life is over, that I’ll have to abandon everything beyond recall. I don’t know if I’ll die or not, but I do know that when I go off to war it will completely change my life, and that any return will not be a real “turning back.”

  I [don’t] think I am reconciled to it.

  I leave this evening for the recruitment center in Brăila, to put my military papers in order. Very many of those called up for service in May have received individual orders. It’s quite probable that I am among them.

  Friday, [8 September]

  It seems that I haven’t been called up yet. I am part of that mysteriously safe category “D.i”—which in March, too, left me as a civilian. Obviously my liberty is only provisional and revocable; obviously I can be called up from one day to the next, and in the event of a general mobilization (which I think likely), no letter on earth could save me (and I wouldn’t want it to). But for now, the fact is that I remain at liberty. Never has a “for now” been more precarious and more treasured.

  Things have been continuing in the same way. The Germans advance in Poland while the French and the British stay where they are. Krakow fell the day before yesterday. Warsaw is said to have fallen this evening.

  Bucharest, which went through a couple of days of panic, has calmed down. The restaurants, cinemas, and streets are full. Who would say that we are in a city of Europe at war?

  Some people—Camil for one—think that peace is a possibility and may even be imminent. The Germans will propose it through the Italians—and the others will have no alternative but to accept. Although I am beginning to think anything is possible, that seems to me an absurd solution. I can’t see France and Britain losing a moral-political battle without firing a shot; it could simply wipe them out of history.

  No, no. I shouldn’t start planning for peace or thinking of the books I shall write. I shouldn’t look ahead to a winter of skiing, reading, or traveling. It will be a winter of war, a year of war, years of war, and I’ll live them to the bitter end.

  On Wednesday evening I went down alone to the port in Brăila—and saw a picture-postcard Danube beneath the moon. Even the empty white ships in the deserted port looked as if they were made of cardboard.

  There was absolutely no one in the whole port—except myself and a watchman, who kept such a worried eye on me (a spy? a saboteur?) that I was forced to return to town, though I would gladly have stayed there a while longer.

  “You’re getting old,” said Moni Liebsiech, who had stopped me in the doorway of a shop on Strada Regală. Yes, I’m getting old. Everything tells me this in Brăila—the houses, the streets, the people, the photographs from my youth that make me feel bad when I linger over them at Aunt Caroline’s.

  Zoe called round this afternoon. I read her the Gunther chapter, not too seriously, more as a joke, but not totally excluding the possibility—which I mentioned to her ten days ago when I returned from Stina—that I’d like her to play the part of the girl that I am thinking of writing.

  So I read her the chapter, and not only did she understand it very well, but her vision of it was so accurate that she offered me some most valuable suggestions for the play. Until today I had not been able to envisage this girl, who enters Gunther’s chalet in Act One, and I had not known what would happen to her. Zoe helped me to see her—more, she outlined her role in the play.

  Gunther has to die—says Zoe—but his death will be a victory both for himself and for Nora; for him, because the Grodeck clan will have been conquered; for her, because she will have broken with her oppressive past and (by entering Gunther’s chalet) moved toward a new life.

  We talked for whole hours about the play—and again I felt how the need to write oppresses me, weighs me down, robs me of my peace of mind.

  Saturday, 9 [September]

  I think of the Jews in Poland who have fallen under Hitlerite occupation. Anyone who has a revolver or a rifle will shoot as much as he can— and keep the last bullet for himself. But what about the others?

  Camil Petrescu tells me that he refuses to write the military chronicle that Vinea has asked him to do for Facia.

  “No, old man, I’ve had enough of dishing out my ideas for nothing. I won’t speak up unless I’m offered a place in the government.”

  He has no respect at all for Gamelin, and now he commiserates with the French and the British because they don’t have a Camil Petrescu.

  When I hear all this, I don’t know how to keep a straight face—but nor can I stop myself from agreeing.

  Sunday, 17 [September]

  Today the Russians signed an accord with Japan. At 4 a.m. they entered Poland to occupy what had been left by the Germans.

  How happy are people with an idée fixel They, at least, can keep calm and still think they understand. For Communists, even for our own, things are in order and “the revolution is marching on.” Whatever the Soviets do is the right thing.

  For the Legionaries (a term that is being resurrected), a German victory is assured and a perfect life will arrive in its wake.

  And I? I who believe in neither the one nor the other, and who try to make up my mind not with prejudices but with facts? Isn’t it enough to drive you out of your mind, to make you give up in despair? Don’t you have to tell yourself that from now on absolutely everything is lost?

  What is there left to do in these days, which may be my last? I’d like to listen to music all the
time—it’s my only drug. We’ll die one day like chickens, with our throats slit. I ought to await the looming disaster more sturdily, more alertly.

  Wednesday, 20 [September]

  Titel Comarnescu tells me of a political conversation he had recently with Mircea, who is more pro-German than ever, more anti-French and anti-Semitic.

  “The Poles’ resistance in Warsaw,” says Mircea, “is a Jewish resistance. Only yids are capable of the blackmail of putting women and children in the front line, to take advantage of the Germans’ sense of scruple. The Germans have no interest in the destruction of Romania. Only a pro-German government can save us. A George Brătianu/Nae Ionescu government is the only solution. The Soviets are no longer a danger, both because they have abandoned communism—and we shouldn’t forget that communism is not identical with Marxism, nor necessarily Judaic—and because they (the Soviets) have given up on Europe and turned their eyes exclusively to Asia. What is happening on the frontier with Bukovina is a scandal, because new waves of Jews are flooding into the country. Rather than a Romania again invaded by kikes, it would be better to have a German protectorate.”

  Comarnescu assures me that these are Mircea’s exact words. Now I understand perfectly why he is so reticent with me when it is a question of politics, and why he appears to take refuge in metaphysics to escape “the horrors of politics.”