For Two Thousand Years

by Mihail Sebastian

  I sense that European matters are hard to judge from Paris. I note with surprise, and not for the first time since arriving here, that Paris is a poor vantage point for viewing the continent. There are too many certainties here, too many habits of thought for the view from Paris not to be distorted. An ‘instability factor’ should be worked into any problems we solve on the banks of the Seine. Security provides a poor environment for reflection.

  5

  I went to see some Chagall paintings in the Rue de La Boétie. What tumult! The flowers are white, dreamlike, and beneath them, in shadow, the weary heads of the lovers – with pale brows and long hands and smoky gazes – detach themselves. Everything – the colours, the sky, the trees – is washed in light other than daylight, in shadows that are not those of the night. Where do these strange plants and petrified trees come from? The sun is diffuse, as if smothered beneath the burden of several superimposed oceans.

  From what mountain does this hay cart descend, blue like a retouched photograph, unreal and solemn? The season is weary, with remembered light, with fields from dreams, with windows that open inwards. The grass is a brutal green in places, with an excess of colour and a straining at life that betrays a desperate nostalgia for the sun.

  The timidity of the Jew before open country. His awkwardness in the face of plants, his reserve before animals! Of all the forms of loneliness, this is the hardest. It’s so hard to get close to a tree in a simple manner when you’ve never lived close to one.

  Chagall loves grass, hay, trees, but doesn’t know how to love them. There’s too much fervour in his love and then too much sadness. These are arrested impulses, enthusiasms without the courage to go all the way, shouts that get tripped up over a smile. Humour? Perhaps. But, more, the inability to escape or renounce yourself, to go tumbling among stones and weeds, to shut up shop and pull down the evening shutters on your personal problems and step fully into the sunlight, without memories or nostalgia.

  *

  The synagogue of my childhood had small windows with blue and red frames. That’s the source of the light in Marc Chagall’s paintings. I remember well those two bronze lions that sat guard on each side of the tablets of Moses. In Chagall’s drawings I come across them again. It’s a new kind of fauna, passed first through gold and bronze, through fabrics, ornamented by an entire folk-memory. Chagall has his roots in this old synagogue tradition. He’s a Talmudist who has had his fill of abstractions, a Hasid who has set off for the countryside, where he will turn his worried eyes on the lazy gait of oxen, where he will smell the damp earth, follow the skittish flight of sparrows, but will not forget, will not manage to forget, the eternally nodding reader in the synagogue, leaning over the open books.

  *

  I’ve returned to the rue de La Boétie with Maurice Buret. He’s a good judge of painting, but he doesn’t like Chagall. When he stood before the paintings, I could feel the hostility of a man who has only ever permitted himself carefully measured emotions. In the bus, on the way back, he explained to me:

  ‘I dislike tumult. Perhaps you find it exciting, but it doesn’t agree with me. Heavy symbols, unfinished verses, confused images, what good are they? I find it all a bit twisted, and it unsettles me, makes me uneasy.’

  ‘You want to feel at ease?’

  ‘I do. Is that shameful? Every individual does, if they have any self-respect. I certainly do want to feel at ease and don’t wish to be subjected to random bursts of lyricism, whether in life or books or painting. I won’t have myself swooning, so why stand for it in others? You can only get along with those who can keep a grip on themselves, who are in control of their ideas, who keep an eye on their feelings and keep their emotional turmoil to themselves. I’m a Frenchman. And a Breton, furthermore. I have no patience with Teutons and Jews.’

  ‘An anti-Semite?’

  ‘Yes. Not in politics, but in psychology, certainly. I hope you understand and are not offended.’

  ‘Dear Maurice, in my career as a Jew I’ve known so many furious anti-Semites. You, as anti-Semites go, are just a dabbler, an amateur. Far from being offended, it is an honour.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s very kind, but I have to warn you that it’s unmerited. Whether dangerous or not, I’m still an anti-Semite. Or, to put it better, I’m against certain expressions of Judaic sensibility and psychology. I detest the agitated, convulsive, fevered aspect of the Jewish spirit. There’s a Jewish way of looking at the world that distorts the proportions of nature, disturbs its symmetry, attacks its reality. The dreamlike tendency you were praising in Chagall is exactly what I denounce. My eyes are wide open. I don’t like those who are only half awake. Your Chagall stumbles about between sleep and wakefulness, which disqualifies him from making art. A clear-headed Jew is a phenomenon. The great majority are sleepwalkers.’

  ‘Perhaps, before I respond, we should agree on what the term “clarity” means. Do you believe there’s a single way of being clear? A notary can be clear, or a poet, but they don’t seem to me the same thing.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’ll take the clarity of the notary. A notary thinks along the purest line of the French tradition: a word for each idea.’

  ‘And so? This is more a stylistic virtue, not one of life. Clarity can be sterile, while tumult can be fertile. Some things are created in upheaval, at high temperatures, which the frozen eye of clarity can’t take. There are things you understand with your blood or not at all.’

  ‘I object, most strenuously. You’re committing a major anatomical error. The organ man understands with is the head. Blood has other functions. This absurdity about “thinking with your blood” is Teutonic, Slavic or Jewish. A Frenchman would never say that. An Anglo-Saxon still less. I’m grieved to see you becoming emotional, which is synonymous with being Jewish. What a pity: I’m in danger of losing a friend.’

  Here I am, defending the claims of spiritual tumult against lucidity. Ştefan Pârlea, if he could see me, would rejoice. To him, I’m a monstrous sceptic. Before Maurice Buret, however, I become a metaphysician.

  I think in the Jewish spirit there is a continual open struggle between nature and intelligence, a struggle between extremes which none among us have reconciled. Because of this, to some we seem monstrously lucid, and to others we seem monstrously emotional. There will always be a Ştefan Pârlea to condemn our critical spirit. And a Maurice Buret to detest our tragic spirit. A golden mean should be found, but it’s hard to find, and once found it’s hard to hold on to. We commit ourselves carelessly, throwing ourselves down one road or another, and pay for this excess later through exhaustion and the antagonism of others.

  Naive of Maurice to imagine he’s telling me anything new. Haven’t I made the same criticisms much more fervently? There’s a character in me who loves tension and the whirling tumult of raging winds. And there’s another that likes cold ideas, precise distinctions, reserve and waiting. Agreement is difficult between these two characters, but all my personal efforts are directed towards finding this agreement, which needs to be arrived at and maintained.

  Michel Buret’s ‘anti-Semitism’ is, basically, nothing but an attitude of reserve – the only type of anti-Semitism possible in France. In the same way I might be anti-French or, more accurately, anti-Cartesian. It’s the marking out of an intellectual position, not an antagonism. There’s a buffer zone between the Jewish spirit and French values which time may well erode or the passage of generations overcome, but at the first meeting it is clearly very strong. Breaking through this wall of coldness is a problem for the individual, just as each of us has to overcome difficulties relatin
g to personality or temperament.

  In my case, I think I could manage the journey were it via Montaigne and Stendhal.

  *

  I said to Maurice Buret:

  ‘Do you never tire of your own intelligence? Has it never seemed wearying, demanding or inadequate? Having discussed everything, clarified everything and understood everything, isn’t there still a shadow or a light beyond your reach?

  ‘It is for remembering far too much that I would criticize you and the French spirit. You all have everything classified and assigned its place, as if in a laboratory, where every test-tube demonstrates a formula, a series of known reactions and certainties. It’s a barren landscape. Safe, but barren.

  ‘Your lives lack mystery and I wonder that you’re not bored of life. Life, in any case, Maurice, must be terribly bored in your company. You’re a person for whom there are no surprises. A “tactful person”, you would say. Perhaps. You’ll never let out a roar, never break anything, never jostle anyone. Politeness is your philosophy.

  ‘You guard yourself like a public institution. Policing yourself is your vocation. You have floors and apartments inside yourself for every feeling or thought, stairs and lifts which take you from one thought to another. You’re the doorman: you check who enters and leaves, close the doors, put out the lights, tidy up. You tend the houseplants, pruning any unruly branches, correcting drooping stalks, lopping off any shoots that rise too high. You can’t stand forests, you only feel good in parks. You yourself are your own park.

  ‘I’d like to know if, beyond the little certitudes that you cultivate, you ever stumble across the shadows of the dead … If you have ever shuddered at the feeling that what you do is petty, useless, vacuous, that all these “experiences” are barren, that you’re missing out on life … I’d like to know if you’ve ever had a sudden, irrational urge to throw everything to the wind and surrender to chance, letting fate take you where it will …

  ‘You’re a sane, well-balanced person, but you’re too sane. You lack that little grain of instability without which life never reveals itself to us, without which our immediate horizons never open further. You lack a sense which is less precise than sight, but more essential: “a sense of the tragic”.’

  6

  S.T. Haim got into Paris two days ago. He’s staying in Rue Daunou, in that sparkling little hotel where I promise myself, in my sumptuous dreams, to live some day. His suitcase has been around Europe a few times and is covered with coloured stickers. He has been in Paris previously in recent months, though never alone. Without a doubt there’s a woman in his life, but the voluble S.T.H. clams up and becomes sombre whenever the topic arises.

  We had a long wander together, from the Louvre to Abbesses by foot, and from there up towards the Place du Tertre.

  I was afraid he might not like this quarter, which I love more than any.

  ‘You can’t imagine how provincial Paris seems, when coming from elsewhere in Europe. You get the feeling of having stumbled into a station where the express trains don’t stop. It smells of 1924, or 1928 at most. And here we are in 1931. Never mind Berlin or Vienna, where things are at their most fevered, even Bucharest is livelier, more up to date. When you cross the border at Bale, heading for Paris, the clock goes forward an hour, but you go back in time several years. You’ll see what I mean this autumn, when you leave. In Europe, anywhere you go, you’ll feel something simmering that isn’t felt here and isn’t even guessed at.’

  ‘I don’t know that I will leave in the autumn.’

  ‘Yes, you will. The Dieppe project won’t happen. You’ll see.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I don’t. I can see. I see times are changing and I see what’s possible and what isn’t.’

  *

  I was surprised to learn that old Ralph T. Rice is well enough acquainted with S.T.H. The pair of them had a two-hour discussion up in the office in Boulevard Haussmann. S.T.H. did some work in the past year for Rice Enterprises in Berlin, where he has business information and openings that are of value to old Ralph.

  It amuses me to think of the expression of fear the old man had while listening to S.T.H., who paced back and forth across the office floor, waving his index finger in the air to illustrate the scale of the catastrophe.

  ‘It’s all over, sir, it’s all over. You can shut up shop.

  ‘We’re heading for revolution. It’s plain for all to see. Germany can’t hold out any longer, Austria certainly can’t either, the Far East is simmering. It’s not a matter of a seven- or an eleven-year recession, as you read in the books on economics, it’s a general calamity. I could demonstrate it with figures, but I’d rather not. I’ve too much respect for the businessman I sense you to be. I’ve come from Europe. Tell me: haven’t you noticed the whiff of dynamite tickling that nose of yours when you went sniffing after petrol?’

  Old Ralph frowns at the ink bottle, as if that first stick of dynamite S.T. Haim evoked were there on his desk.

  *

  I’ve introduced him to Maurice Buret. Fed up with conversations about social problems, which he has had already with myself and Rice, S.T.H. was admirable. He becomes a good-humoured fellow as soon as he gets off the subject of the fate of the universe.

  The three of us went to the Colonne concert. Honeger’s Horace victorieux programme was playing, a serious, flowing, precise piece with its great complexity tamed by a deceptive air of simplicity. I left refreshed and serene. Princely order rules the world – I reflected to myself – as long as such victories are possible.

  Our evening continued in Montmartre, where some time ago I discovered a miraculous Anjou. S.T.H. was in fine high spirits. He gave us the inside story on the Oustric scandal, which he turned into a full-length novel involving women, affairs, successes on the stock exchange and in the boudoir, all arranged wonderfully and tumbling out at speed, as in a film. He has a wealth of knowledge, but he also knows how to spin a yarn, which he does rather oddly but in a way that’s logical and hard to discredit. His explanations have something of Ponson du Terrail; they’re melodramatic and sensationalist but are plausible at least, even if not strictly accurate.

  ‘With your talents, you’re going to end up working for the Intelligence Services.’

  ‘It’s the only job that could interest me. The only one, certainly, if it wasn’t that something more decisive, more thrilling, exists. I’m sure top-level police work is highly engaging. But it’s limited, poor stuff. It’s a job requiring relationships, connections, hierarchies. I need something else. Let me whisper it in your ear, so we’re not overheard.’

  He leaned over the table and whispered confidentially: ‘The ab-so-lute.’

  ‘Rien que ça?’ asked Buret.

  *

  I haven’t seen S.T.H. for four days. I open the paper today and on page three see: Major arrests of communists in Romania. S.T. Haim is listed among the top names. I’m stunned. I called the hotel. Indeed, it’s so: S.T.H. left Paris on the 12th. Today is the 18th. Enough time for him to have reached Bucharest and been arrested.

  I’ve written home for news, to Pârlea and Marin. I’ve no idea what could have happened. He was so sure of himself, so calm in his heart. It seems like some kind of detective story. I find it disturbing to think that the man I was walking around with only a few days ago in Paris is now locked up in Bucharest. It’s a whole different order and level of events. How can it be? I walked alongside him, sat with him at a table, we talked, smoked, drank, and there was nothing about him to suggest his fall was near. Not even a distant sign announcing that somewhere
, in that hour, his fate was being decided.

  I’m unable to accept this ordinariness and every detail of our evening comes back to me, as though each one might contain a clue. His grey suit, his blue tie with white dots, the Chesterfields he’d bought on the way from the tobacconist’s beside Châtelet …

  *

  No reply from Pârlea, none from Marin either. On the other hand, a grocery-store envelope, with the address hurriedly scrawled. I open it: it’s from S.T.H.

  You’ll remember the hour of crisis we spoke of once. It has arrived.

  He has an extraordinary memory. I had forgotten.

  PART FIVE

  * * *

  1

  At the upper end of Şerban Vodă, where the houses begin to thin out, a motor car provokes something of a stir, as in a provincial town. You see the faces of the curious at the windows, doors opening as we pass, children trooping after us.

  ‘Are you going to the crematorium?’ a woman leaning in a doorway asked the driver. ‘Go to hell,’ he replied, furious at the potholes we’d just landed in.

  To our left was a sad, dirty wasteland, with broken crates, rags, tin cans and smouldering heaps of rubbish. A tree that had shed half its leaves, a sheepdog with nothing to do and, in places, tufts of grass that had endured until early November.

  … Perhaps my visit is a mistake. What can I say to him? What can he say to me? Nothing makes me feel more powerless than a solemn situation, since ordinary phrases seem insufficient and I find serious declarations embarrassing. For three days, since obtaining a visitor’s pass, I can think of nothing but the moment of farewell.