Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  If I ever write anything about “Balzac’s technique,” I shall refer to La Rabouilleuse in particular, where the alternation of slow exposition and sudden quickening of the pace is so manifest.

  At a late hour I heard that Filderman3 was deported this evening to Mogilev.

  Wednesday, 2 June

  What will June bring? Will the phase of preparation and transition in the war last much longer? We are going into summer and approaching what have each year seemed to me the “decisive months.”

  I met Dinu Noica yesterday. He is going to Berlin to give a lecture on “The Tension Within Romanian Culture.” It seemed to me so grotesque that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.

  Friday, 4 June

  A brief call on Pippidi, whom I hadn’t seen for several months. His little studio flat, so quiet and with so many books, is for me an image of peace.

  I anxiously walk the streets looking in vain for ridiculous solutions (I have no money and don’t know where to find any), when a life of study would calm me down and give me everything I want.

  Spent the evening with Tutea.4 (I want to ask him something to do with “business.”) He is an enjoyable character. The same volubility, the same amusingly arbitrary and unexpected formulations. He feels that his side has lost, so he takes refuge in metaphysics. “Europe is a pigsty. I feel disgusted with Europeans.”

  I have begun translating Pride and Prejudice. I am determined to work on it seriously and regularly.

  Thursday, 10 June

  Although I have worked between five and eight hours a day on the Jane Austen translation, it has gone incredibly slowly—not so much because of the difficulties of style (which are also unexpected) as because of the actual writing. With a typist I think I could triple my output. As it is, I cannot do more than eight to twelve pages—which is much too little. I’d like to be able to deliver the manuscript at the end of the month, so that I have some money to pay the rent.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do. Again I have no money. Where can I find a hundred thousand lei to get me over this latest hurdle? Shall I ask Nenişor? Yes, I’ll ask him, but without expecting anything.

  Rosetti tells me I could sell my edition of Gide for a hundred thousand lei. If I find a buyer, I’ll sell.

  At the fronts the wait continues. You feel that major events will break out in a few days, or even a few hours.

  Monday, 14 June

  Pantelleria was occupied on Friday, Lampedusa on Saturday. The Sicilian Channel is completely free. One has a feeling that the coming operations will also take place there, in the central Mediterranean. But, of course, other possibilities remain open—including, we shouldn’t forget, the possibility that nothing will happen. There could also be a kind of premeditated armistice, in which both sides mount a constant watch for an attack that threatens at any moment.

  Wednesday, 16 June

  Yesterday and today were the first hot days of summer. It is stifling indoors and exhausting in the street. I would like to be somewhere naked at the seaside or in the mountains, on sand or grass. Here I lead the life of a grub.

  I keep on mechanically translating Jane Austen, but without a lot of headway. When you are doing something clear and definite, your limitations weigh heavily and depress you. You can do only so much.

  How much easier, and more intoxicating, it is to think and dream!

  I have no difficulty with Jane Austen’s vocabulary. I open the dictionary once in twenty pages. But there are big problems with the syntax. Some sentences are so old-fashioned (how Jewish!5) that I have to rebuild them from scratch. I won’t finish it before the 10th or 15th of July. So long as all this work is not in vain!

  I have drawn twenty thousand from school for my July and August salary. A few days’ respite are enough for me to lose my anxiety about this. And yet, what am I going to do?

  The war is at a standstill.

  Monday, 21 June

  Tonight marks two years of war in Russia.

  We have counted the days, the weeks, the months—now we are starting to count the years.

  It is surprising that we are still alive—but I am too tired even to feel surprise.

  Thursday, 1 July

  June passed without any major developments in the war. After a landing seemed about to happen any day (I bet on the 20th and lost), it is starting to become not problematic but in any event less urgent. “Before the autumn leaves fall,” Churchill said yesterday. That could mean either tomorrow or the 15th of September.

  The fact is that once the Germans stop attacking in the east, one of the aims of a landing has been achieved. The problem of relieving the Russians of excessive German pressure is no longer acutely posed.

  Undoubtedly the war now looks completely different; the initiative has passed to the Allies, at least in the present phase. Waiting and nervous tension have passed over to the Axis camp. The bombing in Germany and Italy is wreaking ever greater destruction. British losses in the sea war have declined considerably. But this does not mean that a new German push (whether in the air, underwater, or on land) can be ruled out. Maybe the balance has not stopped tipping; maybe the scales of victory have not fallen for the last time.

  Some five days ago I stopped work on Jane to do a quick translation of Scribe’s Paharul de apă [The Water Glass] for Sică. If this brings me in thirty thousand lei (not cashed yet), it will slightly relieve my serious money problems. I still haven’t paid the rent. I have borrowed twenty thousand from Zaharia for daily expenses. On Saturday all we had left in the whole house was sixty lei.

  Antoine was driving me mad with two or three letters and wires a day (asking me to go to Corcova), and in the end I was forced to write back that I can’t go anywhere for the moment because of major financial problems that have to be resolved. He answered me today: “Les embêtements d'argent n’ont rien de déshonorant.”6 A consolation, at last!

  I am back with Jane, but it is going terribly slowly. I have translated only a little more than half—which means that I couldn’t finish it before the 20th or 25th of July. It also tires me too much (eyes and head), and I don’t even know whether I’ll get any money for all this work, and if so, how much.

  I have read Monzie’s7 journal for the years 1938-1940 (Ci-devant)—at first with disgust, then with interest in spite of everything. I now understand better the collapse of France. With every day that passed, it was sliding politically and morally into a stupid and comfortable death agony, without realizing the huge historical stakes.

  Monzie’s ridiculously smug sense that he “was right,” amid the most grotesque blindness, knows no bounds.

  As I read him I also realized once more that political attitudes make up a complex system from which there is no escape. Tout se tient.8 In 1938 Monzie is pro-Munich. So by 1940 he is inevitably an anti-Semite.

  Some ten days ago I read Balzac’s La muse du département. It is a second-rate novel, but it sometimes displays ingenious technique and is a pleasure to read, especially for its behind-the-scenes picture of Parisian literary life.

  How much I would once have enjoyed writing a book about Balzac!

  Yesterday evening I dined alone with Mouton9 at the Institute. Long discussions in connection with his book about Proust, which he has given me in manuscript.

  In the afternoon I listened to the third act of Pelléas.

  Wednesday, 7 July

  For two days a great tank battle has been raging in the Kursk sector, on a wide front between Orel and Belgorod. I know only the reports based on German sources, and I cannot gauge either the scale or the significance of the battle. The official communiqué claims that when the Russians responded to a local offensive with powerful counterattacks, the German commander threw large reserves into the struggle. We have to wait for more details.

  Is this the beginning of a wider German offensive? That’s hard to believe, with the specter of a landing at their rear. Or is it just a limited action, designed to reduce the “Kursk salient” or to p
robe the Russian forces? Maybe. But even if the original purpose of the operation was limited, no one can say for sure that things will not develop further.

  In any event, it is this summer’s first real episode of war.

  Sunday, 11 July

  The Allies have landed in Sicily. They launched the attack yesterday at dawn. No geographical detail is yet available, but there seems to be major fighting in the southwest portion of the island. The battle of Orel-Belgorod remains violent and unclear. Some German progress.

  Tuesday, 13 July

  According to yesterday evening’s Italian communiqué, the British and Americans have established Sicilian bridgeheads at Licata, Gela, Pachino, Syracuse, and Augusta, all on the southern or eastern coast.

  Thursday, 15 July

  From Licata to Augusta, the whole southeast corner of Sicily is in the hands of the British and Americans. A battle for Catania is taking place.

  In Russia the offensive seems to have come to a halt, without any notable progress. The communiqué has returned to the vague tone it had before the attack was launched.

  Lunch with Mouton—likable, timid, friendly. What I like about him is a kind of expression of humanity, a kind of capacity for emotion, which I can sense beneath his unexpected awkwardness.

  I’m nearing the end of Jane. Another three or four days.

  Saturday, 17 July

  The Russians report that a few days ago they launched a major offensive to the north of Orel. The German commentaries admit this but try to play it down, suggesting that it is merely an attempted diversion to relieve the front at Belgorod. Nevertheless, yesterday evening’s communiqué notes that at Belgorod (where the Germans are attacking) “combat activity has diminished,” whereas at Orel there are “hard defensive struggles” and “hard and fluctuating struggles.” It is the vocabulary of last winter.

  Je fais semblant de vivre—mais je ne vis pas. Je traine.1

  Mechanical gestures, monotonous habits, some simulated liveliness. Otherwise, a big void that is my life.

  I am waiting for the war to end—and then? For what will I then wait?

  I have seen a lot of people in the last few days. Maybe no one sees that among all these living people (with their tastes, interests, loves, and relationships), I am an absent person.

  On Thursday at Mouton’s, then at Marie Ghiolu’s and in the evening at Mogosoaia, then at Gruber’s and this afternoon at Tina’s—I have seen all kinds of people. Each had something, each is set on something, each pursues something. I walk among them as a shadow. I speak, see, listen, answer, wonder, agree—and beyond all this surface agitation, I always remain alone with my irrevocable fate.

  Tuesday, 20 July

  In Sicily the invasion is spreading quite rapidly. Agrigento was already taken on Saturday. The deep push to the center of the island has reached Caltagirone, and now Caltanissetta. Infiltration along the coasts is thus paired with breakthroughs in the center. Catania still seems to be resisting, though yesterday evening’s Italian communiqué does not mention anywhere by name.

  Rome was bombed yesterday for the first time. The pressure on Italy, both military and psychological, is being continually stepped up.

  In Russia the communiqués speak of formidable operations on a thousand-kilometer front. In fact, the only really sensitive spot is still Orel, where the recent German communiqués invariably signal “heavy defensive fighting.”

  Yesterday morning I finished translating Pride and Prejudice. I have already delivered the manuscript, though there is still need of serious revision, especially in the passages I dictated. I’ll get an advance of fifty thousand lei, in two installments.

  Now, in a great hurry, I have to touch up a melodrama for Sicâ. I fear this will delay my departure for Corcova by a few days, but it will ease my money problems.

  Saturday, 24 July

  Marsala, Trapani, and Palermo have fallen. The whole Sicilian front has been broken, with resistance continuing only in the northwest corner. Catania is still being firmly defended. Probably Messina will try to hold out as long as possible.

  But Sicily seems an affair of minor importance now that the war in Russia is coming to a head. The Russian offensive is spreading to hitherto quiet regions: Izyum, Kuban, Lake Ladoga. The situation remains extremely tense at Orel.

  The German communiqués give fantastic figures for the Russian losses—hundreds of tanks and aircraft destroyed every day—but no geographical precision. Instead they talk again of “war of movement,” “mobile fighting,” and “elastic defense”—formulas familiar from last winter.

  Once again, events are proving mightier than our reasoning. I didn’t believe in a Soviet summer offensive, and certainly not in one of such proportions.

  Nevertheless, I don’t at all feel that the final scene is upon us. Maybe one reason for this is that we are not as anxious as in the past (rightly or wrongly—who knows?).

  Monday, 26 July

  Mussolini has resigned. Badoglio is the new head of government. It is the hour of Pétain.

  Thursday, 29 July

  I am off to Corcova in an hour’s time.

  I wish I had had an hour’s peace in the last few days to note here something of the turbulent emotion, restlessness, and nervous agitation through which I have passed.

  The end of fascism is a dizzying turn of events, a bewildering moment in the great drama of the last ten years. It is as if the curtain had briefly fallen after an unexpected (though theoretically predictable) twist of the plot.

  I haven’t had time to write, and I won’t do it now.

  I have worked flat out the last few days to finish Sică’s melodrama— which I eventually did last night at half past three. With the money I have collected (Ocneanu, Birlic, Nenişor), I have been able to solve all my immediate problems. So I am leaving for Corcova with my mind reasonably at rest over money. In September it will start all over again. I’m used to that.

  The day before yesterday I was still not sure that it would be wise to leave town. I had a feeling that the fascist collapse might speed up the whole war (which will indeed happen) to such an extent that everything could change in five or six days. Now, however, I think there is still time to spend two, three, or four weeks in the country.

  I shall see how things shape up, both internationally and in Corcova.

  Monday, 6 September

  I returned from Corcova on Friday night, 3 September, after thirty-seven days there. I exceeded all my deadlines: I hoped to spend two or three weeks there and didn’t think it possible that I would stay for five. Their hospitality is both more attentive and more discreet than anything I have ever known before. It is an art, a profession, a vocation.

  I didn’t even keep the “English diary” of April. I don’t know why, but I felt very tired nearly all the time. Probably my old physical exhaustion was deeply rooted and was taking its revenge.

  On the other hand, I did write the first two acts of “Ursa Major”— Act One quite easily, Act Two with much greater difficulty, as I kept stopping and fell prey to doubts.

  I followed the war better (at least five or six broadcasts a day) and with a shorter delay than I am used to here, but with less anxiety. When I left Bucharest I had the impression that everything was speeding up. It is true that there was no shortage of developments, but amid the avalanche of events and place names a certain slowing could be detected in broad outline. Our question is always: when? Well, it won’t be today, and it won’t be tomorrow. Maybe in three months or six, maybe in a year.

  I still haven't seen everyone. I'm not yet back in circulation in Bucharest. After I've "got back in touch" with everyone, I'll try to calm down and work. I should at least finish "Ursa Major" before too long.

  Wednesday, 8 September

  Italy has surrendered!

  I was at the Athénée Palace. I heard the news at seven o’clock from Antoine Bibescu, who had happened to pick it up on the radio.

  In the lobby I watched the news trav
el like an electric current from person to person. Antoine had no patience. He wanted to shout it out loud. Then an Italian officer suddenly walked into the main lobby.

  “Siete italiano?” Antoine called out to him.

  I gulped as the man approached our table.

  “Si, io sono italiano. ”

  “Monsieur.; vous n’êtes plus en guerre. Votre pays a fait la paix.”2

  Saturday, 11 September

  In Italy the situation following surrender is confused. The Germans occupy towns and regions in the north and are the masters of Rome, with the Vatican under their protection. How? When? No one quite knows.

  Meanwhile the British and Americans have slowly occupied Taranto and landed near Naples. Italian forces have disintegrated and abandoned everything to the Germans or the British, whichever arrive first.

  Where is the king? Where is Badoglio? Where is Mussolini? General bewilderment and breakdown.

  On the Russian front the Germans have lost Mariapol after Taganrog, and almost entirely withdrawn from the Donbas. The war of elastic retreat continues right across the front, from Bryansk to the Sea of Azov.

  Monday, 13 September

  SS parachute troops have kidnapped Mussolini and “freed” him. It was a spectacular coup de théâtre, but it hasn’t changed anything essential.