Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  Wednesday, 10 April

  Yesterday the Germans occupied Denmark, with no resistance, and landed at a few points in Norway, where they met a strange kind of formal resistance.

  After so many months of calm, we are being reminded that there is a war on—that it may flare up anywhere and at any time, that the life we lead is no more than chance, an accident, a coincidence. This evening, or tomorrow, you can suddenly lose everything: home, family, life.

  On Sunday I went to Sinaia and Predeal (with Camil, Rosetti, Lassaigne); an implausible winter’s day, with snowdrifts as in January. I was sorry not to have my skis with me.

  Dupront9 told Rosetti at a lunch the day before yesterday that he intends to send me to France. Well, that’s another idea!

  Saturday, 13 [April]

  Cioculescu’s review in Jumalul1 talks mainly about the skiing: not a word about Ann, not a word about Nora, not a word about Paul. The Grodeck episode is described as a “drama with shades of Ibsen” (?). The rest of the article is made up of vague words of praise, old all-purpose epithets such as lucid, graceful, limpid, and so on. All rather disheartening, I must say.

  What depresses me most is that the novel is not selling. Today I saw a report to management on recent titles: Accidentul, “fairly well at first, slowly at present.”

  It has disappeared from bookshop windows, aging and forgotten.

  In Norway the German victory looks greater than one would gather from London’s propaganda dispatches. After the first hours of euphoria, when we believed in a great naval battle involving the destruction of isolated German pockets in Narvik, Oslo, and Bergen, there has followed a lull of disappointment. Not one British or French soldier has set foot in Norway, not one airplane has landed, not one port has been occupied. The Germans, on the other hand, are continuing to shore up their presence there.

  Tuesday, 16 April

  The British victory in Narvik at midday on Saturday (which I heard about late at night, after writing the last dejected note), and especially yesterday’s announcement of the landing of British troops on the Norwegian coast, have brought a little hope, a degree of confidence.

  Sometimes I see ahead a somber Hitlerite world, but at other times the ugly dream fades and I start to believe in a Europe that I myself may even live to see, a free Europe without terrors, without superstitions. Then I feel younger, more courageous, more contented to be alive. The truth is that—however unhappy I am—I wish with all my heart that I will personally live to see the collapse of Hitlerism.

  Music all the time and everywhere—but so much and so varied that I no longer manage to record it all here. From Paris-Colonial, I find nearly every morning some Mozart, Haydn, and Bach. Yesterday, on Deutschlandsender, there was a Mozart piano concerto that I did not already know, and Haydn’s Symphony No. 15, which I think I heard for the first time.

  Wednesday, 24 April

  After a few days of physical weakness, in which I felt sick without having the will to rest in bed, there followed days of complete idiocy. I feel downhearted, deadened, and carry with me a taste of bitterness, of demoralized laziness, of futility. No one anywhere can do anything for me, no one anywhere can come to my aid.

  Sometimes I tell myself that I must get down to work again, perhaps on the play, or go to the Academy to work on the history of the novel— so that I finally do something that makes me feel my life is not totally pointless.

  When I see people, it is more out of disgust with myself, out of fear of again being alone. Belu, Ghita Ionescu, Comşa, Lena, Leni: all of them I met by chance, without seeking them out, and in the end without really seeing them.

  I am writing these lines with the radio switched on (short pieces of Gluck, Beethoven, Weber). Maybe music could still be a consolation, a drug. But now spring has come and I can no longer bear anything. The other day I listened inattentively to a Handel organ concerto, and one evening to Haydn’s Symphony No. 101. This afternoon there were two Beethoven piano sonatas. Almost every day I have listened to something or other, but apathetically, without passion and almost without pleasure.

  I wrote Poldy a long letter, sad and resigned. I feel that my fate is sealed, but why can’t at least they be happy?

  I think I’ll go to Balcic on Friday for a few days (ten, if possible). I’d have left yesterday, but there are fresh problems at the regiment, where they are trying to extend my call-up period by another month. In principle this would start on the first of May—and thus cut my Easter holidays in two.

  I am hoping that something will come of these days in Balcic. I’d like to change my pale, tired, ugly appearance of a man at the end of his tether, at whom I dare not look closely in the mirror. I’d like to regain a little self-confidence, a little courage.

  Friday, 3 May

  Six days in Balcic, a cloudy, chilly, damp Balcic, more like November than April. Yet I return rested, my face tanned by the wind if not by any sun.

  A trip to Ecrene on Easter Monday turned into a minor shipwreck, because, though the sun had been shining when we left, we immediately had to abandon Ecrene beach, chased away by clouds that gathered in a few moments. The storm broke when we were still in the open. With the rain and hail pouring down, we moored on the other side of Hilalgi and took refuge, barefoot and soaking wet, at Pen’s way, where we broke the cabin door. I laughed like a maniac, and it all seemed to me in the end a wonderful adventure.

  The next few days were so cold that I kept wanting to run back to Bucharest. It is also true that Comşa and Lereanu wearied me. They were very reliable, as usual, but I found their very presence tiring. In Balcic, unless I am alone and free to walk or be idle, I do not recognize myself. Benu alone (whom I took to show him Balcic) would not have bothered me, to be sure.

  Still, tout compte fait,2 it was a holiday: a few excursions to Hilalgi, to the Tatar areas, and in the direction of Cavarna, some hours idled away in cafés, some mornings of sleep—and everywhere the sea, green, bluish, mauve. It has all left me in a much better state than the dreadful one in which I arrived.

  After the flight back yesterday evening I found a sunny Bucharest that also turned autumnal in a couple of hours. It has been snowing in the mountains. It is cold in the street. Nothing to do but stay indoors and work.

  Things are serious in Norway. It’s not yet clear to me whether the British withdrawal is a local setback or means the collapse of the whole operation.

  Tonight I had a long and irritating discussion with Camil Petrescu; he saw it all coming and is now afire with jubilation. His philosophical system, which “achieves things that haven’t been done for two and a half thousand years” (his very words), is finding fresh confirmation. I have the feeling that he himself is scared by so much success.

  Sunday, 5 May

  Yesterday was a day of panic, with the most fantastic rumors flying around. The King has met Horthy. No, it was Goering. Correction: it was Prince Paul. A German attack is imminent. Italy is preparing to enter Dalmatia, perhaps also Greece. Our own days are numbered. The Germans will occupy Hungary exactly as they occupied Denmark, and our role will be that of Norway . . .

  But I calmed down toward evening (after I had seen Vişoianu and, quite by chance, Read from the British legation). Of course things are serious. Of course anything is possible. Of course destruction may one day come out of a clear sky, and there’s no telling when or how. It’s not just round the corner, though. It could be a matter of several days or several weeks. Dare I say “several months”?

  Tuesday, 7 May

  Yesterday evening, the delightful Rondo for Violin and Strings by Schubert (very Mozartian). Yesterday and Sunday, a host of chance discoveries: a Haydn cello concerto (once on disc from Sofia, a second time from Berlin)—a concerto which, as I get to know it, is beginning to strike me as simplistic; a Mozart symphony which I don’t think I knew; Beethoven’s Second Symphony, Haydn’s Clock Symphony, a Vivaldi concerto for cello and violin, and so on.

  Great financial difficulties,
which I don’t know how to overcome.

  Lazy, dejected, unable to concentrate. I must think that I’ll be called up again soon, and that free time will then be so precious to me.

  Zoe keeps coming. Yesterday evening, Saturday evening—and I don’t have the heart not to receive her.

  Friday, 10 May

  At dawn today the Germans occupied Luxembourg, crossed the Belgian and Dutch frontiers, and bombed the Brussels airport.

  It is twelve o’clock, and I have no other news at the moment. This time, perhaps, the whole of Europe will be ablaze. There is a strange silence on the Italian stations, which broadcast trivial news items unrelated to the issues of the hour. I don’t think it impossible that Mussolini will also strike in the Mediterranean, now that the Allies are probably reeling from the fresh blow. I am terribly afraid of what might happen in the next five days.

  Tuesday 14 May

  Liège has fallen. At least that is what the German communiqué says. The French one claims there is still strong resistance, but it does not actually deny that the city has been occupied.

  In Holland things are continuing in the same way. The fall of Rotterdam is imminent, even according to the French communiqué.

  The German attack has been devastating. A stunned desperation can hardly be concealed in the Allied dispatches. Italy too is preparing to enter the war. In Rome the classic “student demonstrations” are paving the way for a kind of popular enthusiasm to be put together. An Italian attack could happen any hour now—in Dalmatia, in Greece, in Switzerland, no one quite knows where.

  There is no telling what lies ahead here. Will the Russians attack us? Will the Germans occupy us? Will we wake up one morning with parachute troops in Bucharest? Will we put up a fight? Will we still have time to fight?

  Tomorrow morning I report to barracks again. Call-up.

  Wednesday, 15 May

  A very serious situation on the Franco-Belgian frontier. The Germans have crossed the Meuse at a number of points, the thrust being especially powerful at Sedan. The tone in the press and in the Allied communiqués is very dejected. Maybe it is not a full-scale rout, but I can feel a great despondency in all the Allied reports—even the sense of a possible disaster. Some are speaking of a French capitulation: this is certainly untrue, and unlikely, but the idea is ceasing to be completely absurd, as it was before.

  Holland capitulated last night. It is appalling—after just four days of war! The German army appears devilish in its power to overwhelm resistance.

  These events have affected me deep inside. I wish I had greater courage, I wish I could spread more courage around me. I wish my spirits were stronger, more secure, less anguished. I can see Mama terrified, Benu without hope (without hope at twenty-four, why? oh why?), and I so much wish I could do something for them, tell them that nothing is lost, that everything still can be, and one day will be, made up for.

  I find the problems at the regiment too frightening. In my army life my reactions have always been too catastrophist.

  Thursday, 16 May

  An exhausting day at the regiment. How hard it is for me to get back into barracks life! This is my third call-up, yet I still find exasperating— rather than comical, as I should—all the miseries of the first day after “reporting for duty”: the registration office, the allocation, the medical checks, the counting up, the handing over of equipment, etc., etc.

  Maybe it is a sign of childishness that I find all this tragic (or anyway humiliating, crushing, disfiguring), but the fact is that I suffer in the barracks as in a hospital, a prison, or an asylum.

  Today, moreover, I was alarmed at being mistaken for a deserter. When I was eventually allocated to a new company (the Fourth, “fortifications”), I was at a disadvantage because the commanding officer did not know me, and I had to face both a new warrant officer and an unfamiliar “program.”

  Everything was cleared up very late, at 9 p.m., when I was finally able to “report to the colonel.” But I was feeling most apprehensive, because for two hours (in the waiting room) I had heard him shouting in his office, and at one point he had beaten a soldier there amid great uproar. When his voice called out for me, it shook me to the core. By some miracle, however, he was calm and jokey, gave me a friendly tap on the cheek, and ordered the mistake at the registration office to be put right tomorrow. Also tomorrow I’ll be transferred to another company (maybe supplies?) so that I can remain in Bucharest and—as in the last call-up— occupy myself with the library.

  What gave my day at the regiment its almost suffocating “anguish” was the awareness that, in those very hours, our whole destiny was being decided in France. This morning’s news seemed even worse than last night’s. But when I returned this evening from the regiment, I heard some heartening words from Paris and London. The battle (“the greatest in world history,” say the papers) is still going on. In France the military resistance seems to be recovering its shape, if not yet its composure. No, nothing has yet been lost.

  A little music, the only thing that calms me down after such a day: Beethoven’s overture to The Ruins of Rome (?), Beethoven’s Romance for Violin and Orchestra, and a Mozart violin sonata.

  On that note, good night!

  Saturday, 18 May

  Yesterday and today the situation has become ever more serious, maybe even critical. In Belgium, one town after another has been abandoned: Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp. The Germans have announced that at Sedan they broke through the French fortified lines over a distance of a hundred kilometers. The French themselves do not categorically deny this, speaking of a wide “pocket” that the Germans have made in their defensive system.

  The current formulation is that the final outcome depends upon this battle. Or, in plainer language, France’s immediate fate depends upon it. If it can find a way out, it will gain time. If it can’t, it loses everything.

  What especially depress me are the signs of panic: no one is allowed to leave Paris (which means that everyone is jostling to escape); no one can cross the border into Spain (which may mean that the frontier is besieged by refugees); General Gamelin has issued a desperate order of the day, Marshal Pétain has been urgently summoned by Reynaud. On the other side, the German communiqués have the kind of triumphant air that nothing else can match. Their losses may have been large, but their successes are mind-boggling. And this is just the ninth day of war on the new front.

  I think of Poldy and wonder where he might be. Perhaps the only desirable place, after all, is in the French army. At least he would feel he is taking part in this drama, that he is present and fighting. In a Sceaux in the throes of retreat and panic, what difficult hours, what desperate days he would be living through in his loneliness.

  At my parents’ I cannot and do not want to talk any more about the war. We all see eye to eye, without having to speak. We know that our whole life is at stake there, at the front.

  The barracks are the only place where the war is neither seen nor felt, where it almost does not exist. From the colonel to the sergeant, everyone is busy cursing, fighting, raging, thundering. What a terrible factory for the wasting of time, energy, and work! Everything there is empty and futile.

  I feel oppressed, disgusted, in a constant state of tension.

  Sunday, 19 May

  The Germans have reached Laon. Battles are taking place ten kilometers from Rheims. Half the way to Paris has already been covered. Today’s German communiqué announced the capture of more than a hundred thousand prisoners. Reynaud said yesterday on the radio that the situation is “grave, but not desperate.” And from Churchill this evening, “It would be madness to say that the situation is not grave, but even greater madness to think that we are lost.”

  It seems hard to judge the scale of the disaster. The news from the front is vague. The only precise facts are the names of places occupied by the Germans. The rest is impossible to follow. Everything is lost in an immense and confused batde, from which you cannot isolate any French initiative or
detect any sign that the army of Gamelin (replaced this evening by General Giraud) has the situation under control.

  Mrs. Tătărescu—according to Rosetti—said last night in despair that the French have lost 400,000 men.

  It is all like a terrible nightmare, from which you expect to wake up.

  Lord, have mercy!

  Monday, 20 May

  Weygand has replaced Gamelin as commander-in-chief. There is great German pressure to the west, around Saint-Quentin. It is still impossible to tell how the battle will end. The initiative still lies with the Germans.

  Oprescu, back from London and Paris, says that people are more calm and confident than they are here.

  Tuesday, 21 May

  Amiens and Arras fell today. The Germans report they have reached Abbeville and the Channel. A Franco-British-Belgian army of a million men is encircled. Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk are in this region.

  At Rethel the Germans have captured General Giraud and the whole of his general staff.

  It is disaster, collapse, perhaps the end.

  Hour by hour I keep thinking of Poldy. I pray to the Lord that he will have the will to live, to resist, and to wait.

  Friday, 24 May

  I entered the barracks on Wednesday morning and did not leave again until yesterday evening at nine. The whole regiment was confined to barracks. Why? Because the colonel is not happy with the soldiers’ “behavior” in town.