Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  I’d be happier writing the play, which has been constantly in my thoughts today. I am still close to Gunther, since the novel has not yet completely detached itself from me. I even feel that I owe it to Gunther to take up again the things I did not manage to say, or even suggest, in the novel. He is so alive for me, with so many secrets to unravel. What makes me pause is my weariness with writing. I know the joy of starting, of being swept along, of feeling things come alive—but I also know the horror of seeing them grind to a halt in the mud. When I begin it seems a simple matter to wrap a play up in a few weeks, but then there is no way of escaping the torture, the bondage, the obsession.

  Wednesday, 14 [February]

  Last night on Deutschlandsender, Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G Major and his Divertimento for Two Horns and Strings.

  Zoe is back from Brasov. Beautiful, tender, sensual. But why doesn’t she give up? Why is she still waiting?

  Still a soldier. Rung up by the company, I raced as a civilian to the regiment, took five minutes to disguise myself in uniform, reported double-quick to the colonel, and in another five minutes got rid of my “things.” By two o’clock I was outside the regimental gates, a civilian again. It is a farce that might amuse me if my place there on the “active” list did not give me a constant feeling of insecurity.

  “I won’t let you go until you’ve built a library for me,” said the colonel.

  Just now, from Radio Paris, the finale of a violin concerto by Max Bruch. I was surprised I knew it so well—from where, I wonder?

  I am trying not to think any more about the novel. Otherwise it will never give me any peace. It looks as if it will come out on the first of March.

  Wednesday, 21 [February]

  I left Bucharest on Friday evening and came back last night after three days in Predeal and one in Brasov.

  The days in Predeal were the most serious from a skiing point of view. I did nothing but ski from morning till evening, with passion, perseverance, and a firm resolve to learn. I feel regenerated, renewed, freer and younger.

  On Saturday morning, in Ve§tea, I did no more than inspect the lay of the land. But a few hours later I had recovered the ease with which, two years ago, I used to speed down to the edge of the forest. After lunch I went out with an instructor and worked on nothing but sharp christies until dusk fell. I repeated the action dozens of times, resisting the temptation to take on one of the “dizzying” courses. My problem is that, at the point when I shift my weight from one ski to the other, I “lift” the freed ski into the air instead of dragging it on the ground.

  On Sunday, while Comşa and Lereanu (who had arrived the day before) did exercises in plowing and controlled avoidance, I continued with my sharp christies and made visible progress. Toward evening I was managing to do some joined christies all the way from top to bottom—but I still haven’t mastered the action, and I’d need a few more days of concentrated work to get it right. The three descents to the base of the ski lift were vertiginous: the speed there is truly terrifying. I cannot describe, or even mentally grasp, the sensation at that moment: it is one of extreme lucidity in a vertical fall. Everything happens in a fraction of a second. When you reach the end of the course, you are breathless and cannot remember anything.

  On Monday I left the practice area and set off for Diham. It was a wonderful trip, both because of the weather (sun, sun!) and because of the route itself. The approach was the most beautiful and varied ski course I have ever done. The run down to Forban is a sheer delight. I fell three times in all, but was generally pleased with myself. By evening I was exhausted but happy, youthful, with a profound feeling of strength and vitality.

  A day of love in Bra§ov. Zoe was nice and affectionate. Alone at Scheeser’s,4 it felt a long way from town. Sometimes I like to mimic happiness.

  I saw Leni for a moment in her room at the Hotel Aro. She struck me as especially ugly.

  It was a funny coincidence that all three of us—Leni, Zoe, myself— were in Brasov on the same day. As in the final chapter of Accidentul.

  Monday, 26 [February]

  The lover of Tantzi Cocea (the “Miciu” Zoe keeps telling me about) is Ciulley. So Zoe is receiving money from Ciulley! Gina Cocea5 confided this to me when she was here the other evening with Ghi^a Ionescu.

  I met Nae Ionescu on Saturday evening at the Ateneu (a very fine Walter Gieseking concert). It was a great pleasure to see him, and we agreed that I would pay him a visit one morning.

  Yesterday in Buzau, for the birth of Marcu’s son. An amusing provincial reception. I was interested in everything Dr. Brofman told me about his work as a specialist in abortions. I could use it one day in a novel.

  Evening

  The first copies have arrived from the printer’s. I cut the pages of one and leafed through it. I am calm, though not actually indifferent—which would be asking too much. Anyway, it makes me feel good to see this new book on my desk.

  Wednesday, 28 [February]

  Rosetti doesn’t like the book. By yesterday evening he had read some 250 pages—but that is all he said to me. This morning (by which time he would have finished it) he didn’t say anything at all to me. The silence is all the more significant in Rosetti’s case, because usually he never stops sending words of praise, both in writing and by telephone.

  I honestly feel bad that he agreed to publish me with his eyes shut.

  Yesterday evening I was suddenly seized with real panic. Maybe Accidentul is just idiotic nonsense; maybe it contains outright stupidities that will discredit me forever. These were not doubts about such and such an episode (the kind of doubts I have always had). I feared that the book was a blunder from beginning to end, a trifle that said nothing and led nowhere, a pointless and mediocre failure. I went home literally terrified. I didn’t have the courage even to pick up the book and open it. I had a sense of irreparability. I felt compromised and discredited. I’d have liked to sleep and sleep, to forget and to escape.

  Mircea Eliade, having read the book, gave me a telephone call that seemed more kindhearted than enthusiastic. “Your best book,” “a modern novel,” “very interesting,” “a book with a lot of character”—all said fast and furious, with a kind of forced warmth. I’m not sure it means much, or is even what he really thinks about it. His friendly volubility seemed to disguise a lot of things about which he was reticent. I’d like to tell him that I need to know his real impressions, clear, blunt, and precise, but I realize that it is very difficult to obtain such honesty from anyone. Did not I myself—after Şarpele, Domnişoara Christina, and, very recently indeed, lfigenia—use a few admiring declarations to cover my real sense of dissatisfaction? (It is true, also, that what discourages me in my relations with Mircea and stops me from speaking plainly, honestly, and, if necessary, sharply is the thought that Nina would not tolerate any withdrawal of admiration.)

  Of those who have read my book up to now—Benu, Com§a, Rosetti, Mircea—not one has been won over by it. Benu, though keen on the Ann episode, was silent and seemingly embarrassed about the rest. Comşa gave the impression of being altogether puzzled.

  Whom shall I ask? Who will tell me something enlightening? Maybe Camil.

  By myself, I can no longer see anything.

  Thursday, 29 [February]

  A musical evening yesterday. I read the “Berlioz” chapter in Combarieu as I listened to the Symphonie fantastique from Budapest (I’ll hear it again this evening at the Philharmonic, conducted by Philippe Gaubert). A little later Radio Bucharest had Le carnaval roman on disc, as if it were a real Berlioz evening. What I find more interesting than the music is Berlioz the man, so stormy and so intelligent. In the end I must confess that I listen to his music more out of sedulity than out of any real liking—but he is extremely interesting as a person.

  Also yesterday there was a Bach mass from Vienna (the Great Mass), divinely beautiful, sometimes more so than the oratorios. The Benedicts, in particular, sounded quite angelic, with the violin and tenor
answering each other in the foreground, and the organ austere and powerful in the distance. It is a long time since I felt such clear emotion in music.

  Mircea is right to point out that Accidentul sometimes resembles Norah James’s La reine équipée.

  Wednesday, 6 March

  Skiing on Sunday and Monday. I caught the seven o’clock express to Predeal on Sunday morning (again with Comşa and Lereanu), and immediately set off by sledge to the “huts” and from there to the Vînatori cabin. It was sunny, but with a fierce wind. In the forest it was indescribably beautiful because of the thick powdery snow, but conditions became cruel as we came into the open. My cheeks were clenched tight from the cold; I no longer felt or saw anything. The devilish wind flung snow into our eyes—yet the sun shone as on the brightest of mornings. The ascent on Forban was terribly hard: a few times we stopped dead with the thought of turning back; but when we reached the top the wind died down and we were able to keep going to Diham. A dizzying wealth of colors: dozens of shades of mauve, of violet. I don’t think the Bucegi range looks more beautiful from anywhere else.

  We spent the night in the cabin and woke up the next morning in another winter: the sky completely overcast, the wind diminished, the snowfall calm and vast. Nevertheless, up on Diham the ground was favorable for skiing because of the ice and the winds of the day before. At ten we set off for Predeal, keeping to the familiar way as far as the “huts,” but then we abandoned the rather monotonous highway that passes alongside Sanatorii and climbed up to Fitifoui before coming down again on the other side. (A splendid view over Predeal, as in a color sketch.)

  All told, they were two happy days, restful and full of life—but I have to say that in terms of skiing, they were not at all up to scratch. There has been a big regression since last time. Is it possible for me to lose my touch so easily?

  Had lunch at Rosetti’s yesterday, with Derek Patmare,6 Lassaigne, Comarnescu, and Basdevant.7

  Patmare, a young Englishman of thirty-one, speaks excellent French, is easygoing, witty, and friendly, very Latin, very Parisian. I heard today from Camil that he is a pederast—which explains a lot of things.

  Camil pointed out that the ending of Accidentul has something demonstrative (“go skiing and you’ll be cured of your sorrows in love”). It is a fair observation. I realized from the start that the final chapter—or, to be more precise, the final sentences—trivialize the book, diminish its significance.

  Thursday, 7 March

  Haydn’s Symphony No. 13 (the first time I’ve heard it, I think) from London, a few Scarlatti sonatas from Rome, Borodin’s quartet played by the Calvet Quartet from Paris, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony from Bucharest, a sinfonia concertante for violin and cello by Haydn, plus Schubert’s Fifth Symphony from Vienna—all in the course of today.

  Blizzard, thick snow, terrible frost. Winter’s back with a vengeance. But I have a number of court deadlines to meet and I don’t think I’ll be able to go skiing.

  Friday, 8 [March]

  Mama, who read two hundred pages of Accidentul yesterday, said she was so upset that she couldn’t sleep all night.

  “How can you love and suffer that much?” she asked me. And I tried in vain to convince her that I am not Paul, that Ann does not exist, that Nora is an invention, that nothing in the book actually happened.

  This morning at the Chamber of Labor I had to plead in a case involving Hachette. It had no importance, of course—but I left there feeling angry. In my own judgment, I had not remained calm, had not spoken convincingly, and my usual ironic tone had not impressed the judge.

  Monday, 11 March

  Friday evening from Paris, Acts Two and Three of Pelleas et Melisande. Greatly enjoyed listening to them.

  Yesterday I was in Brasov. Zoe had asked me to go because she didn’t want to come back to Bucharest alone.

  A snow-covered Brasov, such as I don’t remember ever having seen before, even in the depths of winter. I went to Poiana, where the snow was ideal for skiing. I got there too late to “work” on it, but the return to Brasov was nonetheless very pleasant. Zoe, who was doing a course for the first time, fell at each bend—which reminded me of the difficulty I had had in covering the same ground two years ago. Now it struck me as child’s play.

  An emotional phone call from Froda. He has read Accidentul from beginning to end, without putting it down once. He is astounded, doesn’t know what to say, how to congratulate me, how to thank me. He hasn’t read such a fine book in years—not since Maurois’s Climats (well now!); it is a book that should be read only by initiates, only by people who have lived such things and can understand them. He followed the book in the minutest detail. He knows Ann. He knows who she is.

  I can well understand F.’s excitement. It is not a literary emotion; it is something else, which I find less pleasant but also more interesting— a feeling that he too is personally implicated in the book.

  “Please don’t tell Leni that I’ve spoken to you with such feeling about it.”

  An unwise request, I should have said, except that all the time I had the impression that F. was not trying to gloss over the intimate aspect of the book, that he actually wanted to talk to me about it but did not dare, or did not know the right way to go about it.

  Friday, 15 March

  Nae Ionescu has died.

  Saturday, 16 [March]

  Nervous, uncontrollable sobbing as I entered Nae Ionescu’s house yesterday morning, two hours after his death.

  He takes with him a whole period of my life, which is now—only now—over for good.

  What a strange fate he had, that extraordinary man who has died unfulfilled, beaten, and—hard though it is for me to say it—a failure.

  He is so dear to me precisely because he had so little good fortune. How insolent, how insulting seems to me the success of others! Seicaru is healthy, wealthy, and triumphant. Manoilescu will become a minister. Tătărescu is prime minister. Herescu is a tenured professor and president of the Writers’ Association. Corneliu Moldovanu has the national prize for literature and appears at café events. Victor Eftimiu gives receptions.

  But Nae Ionescu dies at the age of forty-nine, not taken seriously, defeated.

  Tuesday, 26 March

  Two days at Cimpulung, with Rosetti and Solacolu.

  Money worries again. I feel the cost of living continually rising and my budget becoming more and more unbalanced. After paying the rent I have nothing left from the twenty-thousand-lei advance on the novel. How laughable is the amount I have gotten from that book, which meant several years of work!

  I feel poor, and humiliated by my poverty, though I should have grown used to it by now.

  Friday, 29 March

  I happened to be at Cartea românească and couldn’t help but ask Mi§u how things were going. “Fairly well,” he said—by which he obviously meant “pretty badly.”

  The truth is that the book is not selling. Did I need to learn again that I am not a successful author? If a publisher pulls out the stops on the publicity and distribution, a book of mine may sell three thousand copies; if not, it can lie around in bookshops unnoticed.

  This lack of success doesn’t surprise me, and doesn’t upset me either. It may be that Accidentul could have sold more copies than any other of my books. But that would have called for publicity, for a persistent effort—and unfortunately I am not capable of either.

  Otherwise people like the book. Mrs. Ralea, Mrs. Vianu, Mrs. Brátescu-Voine§ti, G. M. Cantacuzino (all of whom read French books and usually steer clear of novels by Romanian authors) seem to talk about it wherever they go. On the other hand, I think that Gulian is not happy with it.

  1 April, Monday

  I thought again this morning about the “Grodeck mysteries,” and a novel—or rather, a story—set twenty years before Accidentul seemed to me a possibility. I’d tell about the relationship of the young Mrs. Grodeck with Hagen, the betrothal to Grodeck Senior, the early years of marriage, the birth of G
unther, and so on. This does not mean that I would have to give up the play. For in a sense the play takes up the action of Accidentul, whereas this novella would precede and prepare it, explain it and make it possible.

  A possible title would be “The Young Mrs. Grodeck.”

  Mircea has been appointed cultural attaché in London. He leaves in a few days’ time. Apparently with a fantastic salary.

  Giurescu8 told Rosetti that the King, at his audience this morning, said he would appoint as general secretary of the Foundations none other than Herescu. This is a great blow for Rosetti and a great misfortune for me personally. I am dismayed twice over. That was the only thing missing for me to enter a period of gloom, of depression.

  Tuesday, 2 April

  Yesterday there was a Schubert rondo for violin and orchestra on a German radio station—very beautiful and, above all, surprising. In places it sounded like Mozart.

  Feeling intrigued, I read the chapter on Schubert in Combarieu and realized that I have known nothing about him, not even the approximate period in which he lived. I’ll pay more attention to him in the future.

  Thursday, 4 April

  Yesterday from Vienna, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, though I caught only the concluding parts (Sanctus, Benedictus, Miserere). Then, from Bucharest, some works by Bach, including the Second Suite. This morning, from Paris-Colonial, a Vivaldi concerto followed by Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, and this evening (now, as I return from the Jacques Copeau recital) a splendid trio by Ravel, also from Paris.