Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  Sunday, 20 April

  G. B. Shaw, quoted by Frank Harris: “I shall never have any real influence, because I have never killed anybody, and don’t want to.”

  How absurd was the “love affair” with Madeleine Andronescu! After Nadia, who at least had the excuse of age, came Madeleine, who had no excuse at all. With the greatest simplicity and in complete good faith, without trickery, archness, or play-acting, I tried to convince her that she was making a big mistake.

  Continual retreats in Albania and Greece. Argirocastro has been evacuated in Albania, and Larissa abandoned in Greece. But the front is still holding.

  Evening

  Radio sets are being confiscated. Today, the first day of Easter, the operation began without any warning. It does not come as a surprise; it was even to be expected! But the blow makes me feel depressed again. I was so unaware and childishly irresponsible as to live for five days with my literary projects, to let myself be stupefied by the joy of writing, to make plans and dream of future successes—forgetting everything around me, everything that has happened and that is in store, everything that is there all the time, lying in ambush. We have ahead of us a long and terribly difficult summer. And I have been preparing to welcome it as a kind of holiday! How stupid I can be sometimes!

  Wednesday, 23 April

  The last day in my apartment. I must hand it over by Friday at the latest. I’ll pack all my stuff tomorrow and move it on Friday morning. Then we’ll have to organize ourselves as best we can in Strada Antim. I still have moments of sadness and regret—but that too will pass as I get used to things. I have got used to greater, more profound suffering.

  I spent all afternoon putting my papers, manuscripts, letters, and photographs into some sort of order. It was a kind of stock-taking. And throughout I had a sense of greyness, of a life wasted in pointless fretting. This war, with its constant anxiety, has overshadowed my old sources of personal unhappiness, but they still hurt when I get close to them. Through a kind of replacement effect, the war has taken me a little outside myself and my horrible secrets. Indeed, it has given me reasons to live and wait—I who, for so many years, have had no expectations. And yet I don’t want to leave here with my head bowed. I still want to hope. I still want to say and believe that there are chances of escape, and that at least the things which can still be made good will be made good. I was saying to Zoe—who came round so that we could spend the last day in this house together, as we did the first—that I sometimes have bursts of vitality. I count on them, even if they are intermittent. I’ll do what I still can to stop myself from going under. Since I must leave here, may something good come of it.

  Thursday, 24 April

  The last night in this house on Calea Victoriei, where I am no longer “at home.” I lie down among wooden boxes, upturned furniture, and heaps of torn paper. I think I could leave Bucharest, Romania, and Europe with an overcoat and nothing else—but it is so complicated to move from Calea Victoriei to Strada Antim. I haven’t had a radio for four days! It seems to make me feel more lonely, more disoriented, more lacking in support. The familiar voices from London were like friends’ voices, and it is difficult now that I have lost them. Only yesterday could I listen at Alice’s to a British news bulletin. The news gets worse and worse, but for me at least it is not unexpected. In Greece the armies of Thessaloniki and Epirus have surrendered. The war in Albania is over. The Greek government and king have withdrawn to Crete. Even if the armies manage an orderly retreat, resistance is not likely for some time in the Peloponnese. In ten days at the most, Hitler will be free to strike another blow. Toward France and Spain, aiming both at the French navy and at Gibraltar? Toward Turkey? Or Suez? Everyone talks of war soon against the Russians. But I don’t believe it. Hitler won’t do the British such a favor.

  Do you see how good general politics can be? It makes you forget your own miseries, both large and small.

  Tuesday, 6 May

  Since I have been in Strada Antim, my only pleasure and joy has been to turn the pages of the calendar in the morning: that’s another day gone.

  A letter from Shaw to Frank Harris (quoted from the biography I still have not finished because of the many interruptions): “What was wrong with Frank Harris? Wasn’t he a Jew, or a financial blackmailer journalist, or another Verlaine, or a German spy or something!” This in connection with the naiveté of those who expect a British victory to result in the end of anti-Semitism.

  From a letter sent by D. H. Lawrence in 1913, just after he had finished writing a play: “I enjoy so much writing my plays—they come so quick and exciting from the pen that you mustn’t growl at me if you think them a waste of time.”

  Thursday, 8 May

  The war in Greece has been over for ten days or so. We are certainly on the eve of another German offensive, without knowing where it will be directed. Turkey? Gibraltar, Alexandria? Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco? The decision will certainly come very soon. By the 15th or 20th of May at the latest, nous aurons du nouveau.6 Even war with the Russians no longer seems to me completely excluded (though it is still the least likely from every point of view). This May will not pass without some major events.

  I have at last finished Shaw’s biography of Harris. No difficulty in reading it. Almost everything I read is English, all jumbled together: Ruskin, Shelley, even Shakespeare. I tried The Tempest and it went a little more easily than I had expected.

  What I miss most is my place in Calea Victoriei. I long for it as for a person I have lost. I am resigned to Strada Antim, but I can’t say I am getting used to it. I think of myself as being in a provisional state, not knowing when I can leave it.

  I try to discourage Madeleine Andronescu, but I don’t succeed. Maybe I shall have to be nastier, firmer. Maybe even brutal, if there is no other way.

  Too bored to note here last week’s delightful encounter with “Mrs. Ma-teescu.” I have told it several times as if it were a scene in a comedy, always with great success. It is so funny it seems made up.

  Saturday, 10 May

  A year since the German invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands! On the morning of 10 May 1940, nothing tragic or definitive had yet happened; paths were open in every direction. Then followed that terrible year we commemorate today, a little surprised to be alive, to be still be-lieving and hoping. Yesterday and today there were groups of people opposite the closed bakeries, waiting for bread. Shouts, scuffles, growls— and above all a kind of stupid weariness. Old images of Brăila in 1917.

  Signs of a new German-Russian accord. The Russians are probably making big concessions, but it is not known what they are.

  Sunday, 11 [May]

  Cold and rainy. A wet chilly spring. But from my window on the eighth floor, even the rain was beautiful.

  This morning I called in briefly at the Simu Museum, where I hadn’t been for some fifteen years. (I find it hard to stay indoors, so I walk in the street, pay visits, wander around.) Among hundreds of very ordinary paintings, signed by various obscure artists, the ten or fifteen interesting ones easily get lost. A Renoir landscape, two or three Monets, a Paul Signac, a few by Luchian. The rest are pompous bric-a-brac, old-fashioned, academic, dusty, most often stupid. And this is called Bucharest’s main art gallery.

  I am still reading documents from 1848, and sometimes I think of my play, but from a kind of duty rather than with pleasure, as if I had signed a contract with myself to write this play. And perhaps—who knows?—I really will write it some day.

  The fresh German offensive we await from day to day, hour to hour, has still not started. Perhaps we are in an interlude for diplomacy (an agreement with the Russians is possible), but the pause cannot last much longer.

  With great difficulty, by getting up at daybreak and waiting in line for two hours at the baker’s, our maid succeeded in buying a single loaf of bread today.

  Tuesday, 13 May

  Rudolf Hess has disappeared: he fled with an airplane on Saturday night. The National Soc
ialist party has stated in a communiqué that: 1) Hess was suffering from a serious brain disorder; 2) Hitler had forbidden him to board the plane; 3) he should be considered lost in an accident; and 4) his adjutants have been arrested. The first logical supposition is suicide. The second, assassination. But neither the one nor the other is correct. It is all more sensational and fantastic than anything we could have imagined or believed. Hess is right now in Britain: he flew a Messer-schmitt alone to Scotland, where he parachuted somewhere near Glasgow and immediately presented himself to the authorities. Nothing more is known at present. The comedy begins with a coup de théâtre whose likes have not been seen before. Neither Sardou nor Arnold nor Bach would have gone so far in the most absurd of their farces. It literally makes you dizzy. For a few moments you suspend all political judgment and contemplate the event with stupefaction.

  Friday, 16 May

  I have seen Nina Eliade for the second time in the four weeks she has been in Bucharest. On Monday morning she flies with Giza to Lisbon, where Mircea is waiting for her. The last year in London has changed her a little (simply dressed in the English style; speaking with some self-assurance; ironical, reserved, “à l’aise”). But after the first fifteen minutes she becomes the old Nina I know: an honest, rather simple girl, respectfully repeating things that Mircea has said. The funny thing is that, arousing curiosity by the very fact of coming from London, she has been a real personality here in Bucharest, sought after, questioned, quoted. She casually tells me what she said to Marshal Prezan, what the head of the German general staff asked her, what she chatted about with the propaganda minister. How remote is the poor Nina Mares from the Imo-biliara arcade! Suddenly the ten years since then come back to mind. There is a large distance to cover between the two images (Nina then, Nina now), as with an open pair of compasses.

  In London they had 120 pounds a month (roughly half a million lei at the current rate of exchange!). In Lisbon, where Mircea is a Grade 1 press secretary, he makes 12,500 escudos. I don’t know what that represents—a lot, in any case. (A mere functionary cannot afford a plane trip right across Europe.) But Mircea, according to Nina, is not content. He works like a slave at the legation and is upset that he cannot write. His genius is being torn into tiny pieces. He’d prefer to return to Strada Palade 43, moneyless but free. Sometimes it occurs to him to drop everything and withdraw to a monastery. He would like to become a monk.— I tried to calm her, to tell her not to worry. Mircea won’t return to Palade 43, nor will he become a monk. Not for the moment, anyway.

  Saturday, 17 May

  The Hess business is still the latest sensation, with the political side of it still a mystery. The Germans’ stupor has manifested itself in the most comical ways. Several official explanations have been issued and withdrawn over the past three days: 1) that Hess is insane; 2) that his flight has no importance, since he was not in possession of any of the Reich’s secrets; 3) that he won’t divulge anything to the British, since he may be a utopian idealist but in no case a traitor; 4) that he fled to London only to warn the British that they have lost the war and that it would be a good idea if they sued for peace.

  I have never read such hilarious eyewash as in this Hess affair. Politically speaking, the very first assumption seems plausible (and is to some extent confirmed by the drivel from the DNB, the German News Agency): namely, that Hess’s flight is more a symptom than an event, indicating conflict inside Germany over the accord with the Russians. Direct consequences should not be expected at once. The war goes on. The Hess case (which puts Hitler in such a tricky position from a propaganda point of view) could at most precipitate some military actions that were already in preparation. A German operation (which we have been expecting since the first of May) could be launched at any moment. The areas toward which it might be directed have become clearer: Gibraltar, Iraq, Suez. Agreement already seems to have been reached with the Russians and with France. Admiral Daran has shown himself willing to sign anything. American pressure on the Vichy government will not stop him now, at the last moment. Les jeux sont faits. . .7

  Yesterday the British retook Sollum. If they didn’t also have to face a German attack on Syria and Iraq, they would be in a position to repeat last winter’s successful battle for Cyrenaica.

  Aderca, whom I saw the day before yesterday, regrets the death of Codreanu. He is convinced that he, Aderca, would have got from him a better deal for Jews. He thinks that Codreanu’s Pentru legionari [For Legionaries] is a historic book. He regrets that the Iron Guard is anti-Semitic—had it not been, he would have joined it himself. He regrets that he did not know Codreanu, who was a great figure (like Sarah Bernhardt, like Goga). He thinks that Hitler has the mind of a genius, equal to Napoleon’s or indeed greater.

  Monday, 19 May

  The Duke of Aosta has surrendered, at Amba Alagi. A spectacular joint communiqué. The last two points of resistance in Abyssinia are at Gonder and around the southern lakes. But the Abyssinian war as such is over. At Sollum there are attacks and counterattacks; positions occupied now by one side, now by the other.

  Since yesterday we have ration books for bread, sugar, oil, and meat. It will be announced later when they take effect.

  Rosetti has been replaced by Cacaprostea8 at the Foundations publishing house.

  Addition to Saturday’s note on Aderca: He says that Groza9 and Trifa1 are Communists and are now in Moscow. That shows his level of political competence.

  Tuesday, 20 May

  Camil Petrescu rang and woke me early this morning to say that, by analyzing the German communiqué on Hess “according to his own method,” he has established that Hess did not flee but was sent. It was not an escape but a mission, in order to propose peace, or at least to cause confusion among the British.

  The war has not yet entered a new phase. We are still in a pause which, because of its length and inactivity, bears some resemblance to an armistice. There are some skirmishes at Sollum and Tobruk, and some reconnaissance flights over Germany and Britain. But for some days there have been no battles, no heavy bombing. We are passing through a phase of diplomacy. Everyone seems to be negotiating: the Germans with the French, Turks, and Russians; the Americans with the Japanese and Russians; the Russians with the Japanese; the British with everyone. So many diplomatic conversations, at what looks like a moment of tacitly agreed suspension of hostilities, are leading to some talk of the possibility of an unexpected pact. That’s a joke. This war won’t end with deals. Il y va de tout.2

  Wednesday, 21 May

  Titu Devechi drove me down the Şosea to see his house. From the outside it looks like a splendid English country house, with something of a Swiss “chalet.” Large rooms, huge windows. A long gymnasium, two bedrooms, a spacious living room, and a dining room suspended above it.

  “All that really needs good European order,” I said to him.

  I don’t know if he understood what I meant. In any case, he smiled.

  Devechi also thinks that Hess went on a mission from Hitler. “This war can only end in a compromise peace. Neither Britain nor Germany can be annihilated, and they have no interest in annihilating each other. They’ll strike a deal very soon; we’ll have peace in a fortnight at the latest.”

  I told him how superficial such a view seemed to me. We are involved in a much more complicated catastrophe.

  “Compromise peace” is a formula that is starting to do the rounds. Timuş repeated it to me this evening, in almost the same terms. But we won’t have long to wait until it becomes clear that this war is not a joke (has it been so far? !). Yesterday the Germans launched an air attack in Crete, with many landings and parachute drops. We don’t have enough information, but it sounds like business in the grand style.

  Sunday, 25 [May]

  Only today, after five days of fighting, do the Germans speak of their offensive in Crete and report that they have established themselves in the western part of the island. The British communiqués, too, more through their tone than t
hrough any real information, are preparing the ground for an announcement of defeat. Intense fighting continues—but as soon as the Germans have a firmly occupied position, with even one point on the coast where they can freely land, the conquest of Crete will be almost inevitable. There will be fighting, resistance, perhaps delays— but the game is over. So this proves that a landing is possible! In Greenland an important naval battle is going on. The British have lost a ship of the line: 49,000 tons and some 1,400 men. But both battles—in Crete and in Greenland—are still only the preliminaries. The great German drive to win the war for good will probably follow in June, July, or August.

  I have read Die vertreibung der Juden aus Spanien [The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] by Valeriu Marcu. I’ll look for the same period in Dub-now, where it is treated at greater length. With no qualities other than simple, naive exposition, Valeriu Marcu has made a name for himself in Germany as a “glänzender Historiker und Essayist.”3 I tell myself that if I had had a more precise view of things in 1929 (when I left Paris) and had decided to leave for Germany, Britain, or the United States, or even France, not to do some pointless studies but to learn perfectly one of these three great languages, with the definite intention of working in it instead of being a Bucharest writer, I might by now be a creative force in Britain or America, writing not for three thousand readers but for thirty thousand.