I am beginning to get used to the years of war. We seem to struggle through the same journey from first of January to first of January, in a nightmare that is itself beginning to have a certain monotony. The seasons always bring the same phases. Winters of German semislumber, when you feel the armies are tired: low reserves, no stamina left. Then spring comes and you live in expectation of a new offensive—in April? in May? in June? And when the fighting suddenly becomes fierce with the arrival of summer, the offensive and the propaganda reach dizzying new heights, and you live a few days of fear, doubt, and mortification. Could it just possibly be that. . . ? Later, in September or October, you realize that nothing decisive has happened. The pace of events slackens again in the weeks before the first snow, and the cycle begins all over again. How much longer will this continue? Will 1943 bring us peace? I don’t think so. Not unless a miracle happens. I tend to think, rather, that 1943 will repeat without major differences the trajectory of 1942, certainly accentuating the German decline and the Allied rise, but not by so much as to bring the denouement rapidly closer. Perhaps in 1944. Anyway, I find it easier to say 1944, precisely because it is still far away.
What is becoming of me, of us, in all this madness? I don’t know. For the moment we are still alive. We have got this far, and it’s possible that we will get further. Nothing depends on me, on us. Everything takes place over our heads. All we can do is wait. But God knows, it is not easy.
Place names that used to be totally unknown to us now concentrate for a moment all our attention, as if everything were being decided there: Velikiye Luki, Elista, and so on. What they mean in themselves, what they represent in the general course of the war, we do not know and hardly even ask ourselves. But for one day, one hour, or one minute, our whole being is there.
Hitler’s order of the day is grim but not desperate. His speech in May was much graver.
“Look, this war will go on till 1947 or 1948,” Sică said yesterday. It was the first time I had heard those numbers (my thoughts have never gone beyond ’44), but now I am beginning to get used to them. Yes, in the end, why not?
In translating Topaze, I see close at hand what is called a great play, a surefire success, a faultless construction. Topaze is a machine that will always work and bring people to the theatre anytime and anywhere. It is rich in material and full of drama, its characters are precisely drawn, and, above all, it has a satirical vigor that hits right on target. No wavering, nothing fuzzy or vague. In my own plays there is an inclination to “delicacy,” which means that they have no chance at all of being a great success. As long as I play the key of “subtlety,” I’ll never win a large audience. Pagnol has shown me that you don’t have to be crude, but you must without fail be vigorously dramatic. Can I stop being what I am? Can I deliberately achieve what I lack? The material for “Alexander the Great” was excellent, but after Act One (so rich, so lively, so energetic) I became “subtle” again. I keep committing the sins of a litterateur. I wish I could treat theatre as an industry and write a play with a perfect mechanism.
Beginning today, Jews will get not fifty but one hundred grams less bread than Christians. Four of ten daily rations have been withdrawn from us.
Rebreanu is preparing Shylock for the National. Camil Petrescu, who reported the incident to me this evening, asked him whether the passage in which Shylock rebels against anti-Semitic hatred (Are we too not human? “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”) would not be difficult to act in today’s conditions.
“No, it won’t,” Rebreanu replied, “because we’ll give it an anti-Se-mitic interpretation.”
“And he wrote Iţic Ştrul dezertor,” Camil added.1
I have reread Hedda Gabler. (I think it’s fifteen to seventeen years since I last read a play by Ibsen. I had a strange passion for him in my youth: I knew almost by heart Rosmersholm, Brand, The Wild Duck, and so many others, which I probably didn’t understand but read five, six, ten times.) In the first two acts I find Hedda irritating. My sympathy goes out more to the simple characters in the play: to Thea, to the old aunt, even to the mediocre Tesman. Hedda is just mean, tense, and egoistic. But Acts Three and Four give her an intensity and depth that go beyond the others’ likable honesty. While reading the play I thought of my own novel, whose first chapter features a tour in the provinces with Hedda Gabler. In this respect my reading was unexpectedly useful, because it suggested a lot of ideas to me. My poor heroine is a very good interpreter of Hedda, but she does not understand the work and is terribly afraid of the character she plays.
Can I start work on the novel before I finish off my outstanding theatrical projects? Is it not more sensible first to get Insula out of the way and then to write “Freedom”? I think it is—and again I make promises to myself in this spirit. This evening I seem to have come up with some solutions for the second act of Insula, and to have found a taste again for working on the manuscript.
Dr. Kahane went to Alice Theodorian’s the other day to pass on some terrible information. “Madam, I must speak to you about a very grave matter. I have heard that Sebastian is an agent of the secret police. It has been drawn to my attention that he has a great deal of money (where from, no one knows), that he lives in extraordinary luxury and makes incredible purchases.” His very words!
This evening the subject for a play occurred to me out of the blue. Another subject. How many does that make? Not counting “Alexander the Great” (but counting Insula), it makes four—or rather, five, because I have asked Celia Serghi to work with me on a drama of the Manolescu-Marioara Voiculescu type, and have even drafted a scenario for it. The comedy that popped up yesterday seems to me a charming idea: ingenious, lively, witty. I have written the whole scenario, in considerable detail, for Act One. The other two acts are less clear, but it has started so well that there are great possibilities for the plot to develop. I am now at a crossroads: either I move toward a sentimental comedy; or, with a little courage and lack of scruple, I can head straight for a situation comedy, if not an outright farce (which I unfortunately don’t think I am capable of writing). I’m not quite sure what to do, but in any case I don’t want to leave it as a mere project. I want to sell this scenario. (Quickly, before I get too fond of it; quickly, while it is still something alien.) I want it to earn me quickly several tens of thousands of lei, so that for a while I can get out of my great financial difficulties. (Today I have two hundred lei left in my pocket, and I drew my January salary from the school before Christmas.) If Nicuşor gives me fifty thousand, I’ll propose that we immediately write it together. If not he, then Sică.
The night of Thursday to Friday was the kind of feverish night that usually follows my first vision of a book or play. I tossed and turned almost until morning, besieged by ideas, solutions, questions—and it seemed that I was finding an answer to everything, with magical ease. The play grew, filled out, became urgent, demanded to be written at once. The next day, Friday, was equally agitated. First I rang Nicuşor, to tell him without delay of my proposal. The plan was simple: to make the scenario tend toward farce; to eliminate elements of poetry, delicacy, subtlety, etc.; to draw everything in a burlesque direction. The man’s role would suit Beligan,2 and I would write the woman’s with Nora Piacen-tini in mind. I would ask Nicuşor for fifty thousand and we’d get straight down to work, so that the play would be finished in three to four weeks and rehearsals could begin at once (there being a slot at the Sârindar after La petite chocolatière). I couldn’t get through to Nicuşor, and it was impossible to get hold of Nora’s or Septilici’s3 number. I went to look for them in town, but then the front cover of the recently published Cortina caught my eye in a kiosk opposite the post office: Tudor Musatescu, it seems, is under contract to write a comedy in seventeen days for the Sărindar Theatre, in collaboration with V. Timus, with Nora Piacentini in the leading role. What a blow! But the blow was even greater when I learned from the text of the report that the first act of Musatescu’s play would take place “in a corner of North Station.” The coincidence infuriates me, or actually depresses me. My first act is set on the platform of a small provincial station, on the Sinaia to Bucharest line. All the rest is quite different, of course, but nevertheless . . . I felt with irritation that it really is necessary to do things quickly and energetically, while there is still time (if there is still time).
I rang Sică (why?), tried Nicuşor again, and went to the Sărindar in the evening to see the actors in performance, hoping that I would be able to check my first sketch of the roles. But I did more—what a stupid mistake! Not only did I tell Şeptilici that I had a scenario for Nora (which was already premature, because it committed me to the plot line), but I said I was determined to write it with him, Septilici. I am so angry with myself for this lack of tact.What a babbler I am! How little self-control I have! With a couple of words I shut off all my possibilities. Since then I have tried every way of wriggling out of it, but it’s no use. I get pointlessly entangled in all sorts of lies from which I cannot escape. I and my scenario are the prisoners of a gaffe. For a moment I thought I might yet save the scenario by showing him “Alexander the Great” or even Insula in its place. But no! That’s impossible. I’ll have to give it to him tomorrow evening. I say “give” because I feel that the simple act of communicating will alienate it from me. The same would have been true if I had communicated it to Nicuşor, but at least I would have had a chance of earning some money. I am beyond forgiveness.
Both Piacentini and Şeptilici thought my scenario “fantastic” when I read it to them last night. Both see it being a great success. Both prefer the farce option (they even want music, if that’s what there has to be). What will remain then of my play? Nothing. But at least if I can write it quickly, and have it put on quickly, and score a great success that brings in a lot of money fast, I won’t feel too bad about it. I am so cornered by poverty that I’ll write anything for the theatre if it makes me some money. But I won’t even have that compensation. They are off on tour until the 15th of February, so we can begin writing only when they return. This means that the play could not be performed earlier than June or July, perhaps even next autumn. I am losing interest in the whole thing. I consider the scenario lost and have put it into a drawer along with so many other useless papers.
I have now copied out Act One of Insula and will try to press on with the rest. The first half of Act Two is very good, while the second half is easy to rework. If the tone is somewhat lightened and the pace quickened (through the introduction of a new character), it will be excellent. Act Three seems straightforward. But Act Four (because I am tending to go for four acts) remains unclear for the moment. I must force myself to work. I am lagging too far behind my projects, which are more plentiful than my poor output. I also think that a serious schedule will serve as a kind of penance for my curious blunder with Piacentini and Şeptilici.
But meanwhile, where can I lay hands on some money? Gradually I have been drawing more from school, my only resource: three thousand lei on Monday, seven thousand today. This will be enough for the present week—and then? A translation for Sică would be a salvation right now, but can I ask him so soon? I am also thinking of dashing off a farce for Birlic (I have stitched together a kind of scenario from here and there, but it’s not usable). In the best of cases, however, even that could not be staged before summer. I just don’t know how I am going to make ends meet.
I have not followed the war this last week. I read the communiqués at random. They say nothing, but at least it is a nothing that has some special meaning. The Soviet offensive is being maintained. The Germans appear to be retreating from the Caucasus but holding firm in the Millerovo region. Amusing euphemisms sometimes allow you a glimpse of the situation. For instance, behind the description of the Kalmuck steppes and the Caucasus as “elastic zones,” one senses that Georgievsk, Piatigorsk, and other towns have been abandoned. But the general view of the war remains, I think, unchanged. With greater or lesser difficulty, with higher or lower casualties, the armies will remain locked together until the spring. This winter will not “overturn fate” either.
The streets are again filled with Jews clearing the snow. Classes 7 and 8 have broken off lessons. Everyone over the age of sixteen, except those with special papers, has been called up. But will these papers protect us for much longer? I hardly dare to think so.
Once again, a childish awe at the colossal power of the snow. It fell for twenty-four hours—from Saturday night to Sunday night—and the whole city was clogged with thousands of tons of the stuff.
I have again been reading a lot of Balzac. I regret not having the patience to make notes. Sometimes I am irritated by his style—a certain melodramatic sentimentality, a certain grandiloquence—but in the end the vigor of the creation carries you away. It is an extraordinary provincial gallery, with characters profoundly drawn as if by a more fiery and lucid Daumier. (What a lot I could say about Pierrette, which I read yesterday and today!)
The day before yesterday, at a private gathering at the French Institute, I listened to the whole of Pelléas et Mélisande on twenty crystal-clear disks. It was twelve years since I had heard Pelléas, and I seemed to enjoy it more in this rediscovery. At the opera the whole stage apparatus had weighed the text down, covered the music, and accentuated everything incidental. What a strange piece it is! A long recitative lasting four hours, with diffuse tuneless music, like a dull, filtered sound-light. I think I shall go there tomorrow afternoon, when they are playing it again.
The offensive on the Russian front seems to be growing sharper at each of its central points. Recent German communiqués, while reporting that attacks have been repelled with heavy Russian losses, indicate less vaguely than before the seriousness of the situation. “Attacks launched with numerically superior forces.” At Stalingrad, “our troops have for several weeks been waging a heroic defensive struggle.” “The enemy is attacking on all sides.” “Powerful enemy attacks.” “Fierce fighting.” “Hard defensive battles.” “Massive new enemy attacks.” Today, on top of all this, there was an ingeniously euphemistic new formulation: “mobile defense.” For the last two to three days a new offensive seems to have come from Voronezh, and the elastic zone has now expanded as far as Millerovo. Rostov is under attack from nearly every direction—but is it conceivable that it will fall?
Using a reworked scenario, I have written another scene in Act Two of Insula, but I can’t tell whether it is good or bad. I could simply eliminate it and make things even more straightforward. In principle the idea of someone drunk on aspirin seemed very funny. But as I wrote the scene, everything seemed to become false and far-fetched. As soon as I lose the right tone and a sense of “truth,” I no longer have any talent.
In Russia, as in Tripolitania (where Montgomery resumed his offensive two days ago), we are witnessing “mobile defense.” The mobility has reached as far as Schlüsselburg in the north and Kamensk in the south, and in Tripolitania it probably extends beyond Misurata. I do not have any definite geographical details. Yesterday evening’s German communiqué is revealing in both style and tone, but it does not signal any actual facts: “In the south of the eastern front, the fierce winter battle that has lasted for two months is continuing with undiminished strength. . . . German forces in the Stalingrad region, who are fighting in the most difficult conditions, show firm perseverance and combat spirit in resisting powerful new attacks.”
I am writing Scene 6 in Act Two, with a character who did not enter into my original calculations and came to me only the evening before last. So far it seems to me successful. I’ll see more clearly later on. I think the rest of Act Two will be straightforward. I should be able to finish it in three to four hours of work, especially as I’ll be using some material from the first draft.
“The Stalingrad island is under attack on all sides,” says the Berlin correspondent of Universul in today’s edition.
Two years since the Legionary revolt. The anniversary has passed almost unnoticed.
Gheorghe Nenişor is back after three years in France. He looks surprisingly youthful. The Titulescu inheritance has made him a very rich man; this is not obviously visible, but you can see it nevertheless. Wealth seems to change people physically, giving them a kind of heaviness, quietness, or physiological assurance.
I might translate another play for Birlic. It would come just in time, because otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do for money.
From yesterday evening’s German communiqué: “In the southern sector, the enemy is attempting to break through the whole front. . . [but is being driven] back at many points. In the eastern Caucasus, German troops have methodically retreated in the face of the enemy, as part of mobile battle tactics. The German force in Stalingrad is hemmed in by the enemy . . . fierce resistance . . . powerful enemy pressure [with] much larger forces . . . breakthrough from the west. . . a few kilometers into our positions. . . . At the great bend in the Don and in the Don Sector, the fighting is heavy and fluctuating. . .”
In Africa, Tripoli has fallen.
Finally completed Act Two of Insula. I may add a few things to the final scene when I copy it out, but the act generally strikes me as very good. Of course, it does not have the rapid pace of the first act (which maintains a racing allegro), but nor does it have the slowness of the first version. I would pass straight on to Act Three, but I have to deal with the translation for Birlic.
The translation for B. has taken up all my time. I haven’t had a breathing space even to note anything here. It is a silly farce, which I am translating mechanically and without any pleasure—What a Dirty Thing. I’ll try to force myself to finish it by Saturday and then return to Insula, as if with washed hands to something finally clean. I think with a little melancholy—not a lot—that I am capable of writing plays infinitely better than Jean de Letraz. But what’s the point? I am translating him, not the other way round.
“The major winter battle on the eastern front is continuing with undiminished strength and spreading to new areas.” So begins yesterday evening’s German communiqué. But it is a sentence that we find virtually unchanged in all the communiqués of the last ten days. The tone of the whole press (dispatches, commentaries, official communiqués, articles) is fundamentally altered. As if from a sudden turn of a starting handle, the optimistic style has given way to a style of grave concern. Before everything was “tant mieux”;now it is “tant pis.”4 The explanation, I tell myself, cannot lie only in the gravity of the situation (unless there really is a catastrophe—which in my view is not the case). Rather, I think that the main lines of the propaganda are being revised. Military setbacks usually lead to a political crisis—and we may be on the eve of one now. Such a crisis cannot be overcome through the trivialization of problems but rather through their dramatization. Hence the excess of pathos, after the previous excess of nonchalance. In any event, even for someone forewarned as I think I am, the real difficulty is to uncover the meaning of things amid this terrible chaos.
The battle of Stalingrad is over. General Paulus, appointed marshal yesterday, has ended all resistance today. A stunning chapter of the war is drawing to a close. No one in September would have ventured to consider today’s epilogue as a faint possibility, let alone to predict it.
For two or three days the German communiqué has regained some of its old optimistic style. It signals resistance, counterattacks, new initiatives, and successes, but one does not gather from it that the fighting is less intense. All the offensive thrusts are continuing.
On Saturday evening at Camil’s, I met a Legionary (the lover of Marietta Anca). It amused me to hear him talk about the war. I realized that, seen from the other side, things can even today have a different aspect. It is not the facts that count but the eyes that behold them (at least until things have gone so far that there is no longer room for different interpretations). In his opinion, nothing new has happened. The Russians will be annihilated in April (“the Führer said this to Antonescu”), or in July, or at worst in the autumn. The Germans are stronger than ever; their reserves untouched. They are developing formidable new weapons. Stalingrad will be recaptured very soon, perhaps in the next few days. . . .
There is in me something of the petty bourgeois, something of the low-grade functionary used to living on a pittance and childishly treating money with a ridiculous fear. I saw Gheorghe Nenişor in his room at the Athénée. A packet of Maryland cigarettes cost him 760 lei, a bottle of whisky 6,000. He seemed to be talking from another planet. One day, in my novel, I must write a lot about poverty and about money.
Today I read Act Two of Insula after a week’s break, and checked my first impressions. I think it really is good. But now I must keep working at it.
With the thirty thousand lei I got from Birlic, I could breathe easily for three weeks, maybe even four. But if it proves true that I have to pay military taxes (nearly forty thousand lei for Benu and myself), what will I do then?
In Germany there are three days of national mourning and recovery for the divisions lost at Stalingrad. The whole press has a solemn, majestic tone, as in a funeral hymn. A kind of tragic grandeur, probably by directive, conceals the questions and doubts concerning political and military affairs.
A possible title for an essay: “On the Physical Reality of Lying.” It would be shown that lying, however arbitrary, grows, branches out, becomes organized and systematic, acquires definite contours and points of support; and that once a certain level is reached, it substitutes itself for facts, becomes a fact itself, and begins to exert inescapable pressure, not only on the world of others but also on the one who originated the lie.
Starting on Wednesday, evening performances will begin at seven and end by ten at the latest. Shops will close at five, theatres at ten, and streetcars will no longer run after eleven. Soon we shall probably have a general curfew, as one of a series of sweeping measures of civil defense. Everyone is obsessed with the thought of heavy bombing. The raids on Turin, Milan, and Genoa have brought the specter of air war closer to us. The Casablanca Conference, the Adane negotiations, the events on the Russian front, the approach of spring: all together create a sense that Bucharest is becoming a vulnerable target in a wider field of operations. This is leading to a certain nervousness and a few early signs of panic. There is talk of large-scale evacuation of the city, in which case Jews would be isolated in ghettos. After a lull in anti-Semitism, there is again worry, fear, and insecurity.
The war on the Russian front is growing ever more intense and spreading to new sectors. The German communiqué rarely gives more than vague geographical details, but these are enough to indicate a shift toward the Oskol, Shakhty, the mouth of the Don, Zheisk. We can’t know exactly what is happening—both because there is a lack of news and because the front keeps moving. In the Caucasus the retreat continues on two separate fronts: one toward Rostov, the other toward Taman, the last two bridgeheads. Rostov is under attack on all sides. In any event, the game now seems over in the Caucasus. The situation is perhaps more acute in the north, in the region of Kharkov and Kursk, where the Soviet offensive is reaching places that were part of a stable front in Autumn 1941. Is the pace of events speeding up? Are we already on the slope leading to the end? Or could there still be halts, recoveries, turnarounds? Have the scales tipped for the last time, or will there still be movements this way and that? I don’t know. But the questions are becoming possible.
“Ursa Major” is a possible title for my latest scenario—if I give up the idea of a farce and go for a delicate comedy. “Ursa Major” because the provincial math teacher has a passionate interest in astronomy. He has a telescope at home. The book that is waiting for him at the station is a treatise by James Jeans. The woman in evening dress, who will spend the night in his house, will be fascinated by his talk of the sky and the stars. And Act Three, in which the cynical lover appears, will see him fall from sky to earth. The play thus has a nicely rounded structure. But I can’t yet know whether I shall have a free hand with my scenario. First, when Septilici returns, I have to get out of our agreement to work on it together.
Meanwhile I am writing Act Three of Insula. It is going much too slowly. I work too little and am too disjointed. I think that if I could again have a month of calm and solitude somewhere in the mountains, I would enjoy working and make rapid headway. For all my theatrical projects, I would need a few months of steady hard work. Then I could get down to more serious things.
The snow tax for Benu and myself is fourteen thousand lei. I have to pay another forty thousand in military taxes by 23 February, and in March the rent will be a terrible problem. Where will it all come from? How will I find it? I dare not think.
The Russians have retaken Rostov and Voroshilovgrad, a day or two after Krasnodar, Shakhty, and Novocherkassk. The Caucasus front has been wound up. The battle is now advancing ever westward, along the Sea of Azov to Taganrog, and up toward Kharkov. All the territory gained by the Germans in their summer offensive has been won back. The zone of operations is extending to places that have long seemed “out of the question.”5 It is hard to look further ahead and make any predictions; the pace of events is too fast for our brains to keep up.
I called on Longhin. He is stunned by events, neurasthenized, thrown into panic. He thinks that there can be no stopping, even at the Dnieper, and that the situation is serious for Jews. He has been told—from the best of sources!—that the Germans are demanding the organization of a pogrom, and that a new series of anti-Semitic measures will anyway soon be passed.
“Be careful,” he said to me. “In case of danger, come and hide at my place.”
He set me thinking. He is given to panic, I know, and today he was incredibly on edge. But I remember that both in August 1939, at Stîna de Vale, and in June 1940, in Bucharest, he was pretty well informed.
Act Three (of Insula) is proving harder than I expected. I wrote the first three scenes easily and quite fast, but now I have been stuck for several days. The difficulty arises from a change in the scenario. My plan last week envisaged two tableaux for this act, but I have given up that idea. I want to concentrate everything in one tableau, so that the play does not lose its lively rhythm. This removes some of the old material planned for this act (which will be replaced with new incidents), but the original structure has been lost in the process, so that I am now in a kind of “scenario breakdown.” I know the characters and the settings and the action, but I don’t know how things will hang together on stage. It is much easier to write in tableaux, but I don’t want to use that easiness here.
Berlin denies the fall of Kharkov, which the Russians seem to have announced back on Tuesday. Yesterday evening’s German communiqué, however, reports fighting both in and around the city.
I had a conversation with Ovidiu Lupaş (apparently in response to the one with Longhin). The Germans are enormously strong, he argued, and the Russian advance inconsequential. Hitler did make a mistake about the size of Soviet forces (he thought in November he was facing 25 divisions, when there were actually 520), but that can be corrected. The thaw will tie down the Soviet offensive, which is anyway due to lose momentum. Meanwhile the Germans are achieving a great concentration of forces which, if not in 1943 then certainly in 1944, will wind things up in Russia. At the same time they will take action in the west. The events in Tunisia are much more important than those in Russia. Rommel will crush the British and Americans—especially once German armies occupy Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar, as they will easily do in the summer with hardly any resistance. Submarine warfare will completely paralyze the Allies.
Yesterday Maria Magda said to Camil: “In my view, the war will end in a compromise peace.” It might have been a witty remark if the girl were not a delightful little goose.
The fall of Kharkov was announced in yesterday evening’s German communiqué. The dispatches and commentaries have been more optimistic of late. “Defensive successes,” “major Soviet losses,” “the approaching thaw” are the general themes. Amid all this good cheer, however, Goebbels’s speech last night sounds unexpectedly dramatic. Stalingrad represents a fateful moment: the Russian offensive is becoming catastrophic, and the whole situation critical. The Jews are once more threatened with extermination.
Yesterday I outlined a scenario for Act Three of Insula, but then almost immediately I realized that my original plan was preferable. It is true that if Act Three is written in two tableaux, I risk a slowing of the pace, but in return the story will have more space, more perspective, more richness. This will make the transition to Act Four more natural. Strangely enough, in writing Act Three as a single tableau (with less material and a faster pace), I am actually involving myself in a digression. The basic line of the play would be more unified in the two-tableau solution. I regret that the thing is dragging on so much.
I have read with delight Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It has the same luminous irony as Emma, the same gentle poetry, but it is even more sensitive, because the whole story is more rounded, better constructed.
The German communiqués of the last two days indicate that as the thaw sets in, the Soviet offensive is slowing down.
A dream last night. I am at a political meeting, in a hall which, though not large, is crowded with people. Goebbels is speaking, together with a tall, dark-haired man—probably Gunther. Someone (he looks like Coşoiu, a pupil of mine from 5th Year) shouts: “Hechter! Hechter!” I make desperate signs for him to be quiet. Goebbels comes up to me but is then again speaking at the rostrum. He seems to propose the formation of an action committee. Then Perpessicius appears from a neighboring room and says: “I’ll sign if you like, but I won’t work.” Goebbels consults his assistant in the first row and calls on everyone in turn: “And you are Aryan, and you, and you. . He stops in front of Camil Petrescu, hesitates, and smiles awkwardly: “Ah, I’m not sure about you. Maybe you’re not.” Camil is mortified. That is all I can remember. In fact, it was more complicated and richer in incident—and it was not even as coherent as my account suggests, though I think my broad outline is accurate enough.
I have dropped Insula for the time being. It wasn’t working—so it’s best to leave it in peace. I’ll try again in eight to ten days, when I have some distance from it again. A play is always amazingly simple at first; the difficulties and resistance come later. In order to overcome them you have to do stubborn (almost physical) work that has nothing to do with inspiration. The worst is that, though I realize the qualities of Insula as a piece for the stage, it does not interest me directly, personally. I find it more pleasant to think of “Ursa Major,” though with that too, an early period of captivation will certainly be followed by similar frustrations.
The press, the communiqués, and dispatches still indicate a gradual slowing of the Russian offensive. The optimistic tone is being systematically consolidated in readiness for the thaw.
German resistance in the Donbas is becoming sharper. They seem to have recaptured Kramatorsk a few days ago and to be counterattacking, with Stalino firmly in their hands. The Soviet advance has halted at the Sea of Azov, where Taganrog is still in German hands. But the Russians are still keenly on the offensive in the center and the north, in the regions of Kursk-Orel, Ilmen, and Ladoga. The situation in Tunisia is confused. The Eighth Army is advancing from Tripolitania, but the First Army is losing ground near the border with Algeria.
An envelope from Aristide has calmed my money worries a little. I’ll try not to open it until the rent is due, and meanwhile search elsewhere for money to pay the household expenses and (most serious) the military taxes.
Yesterday evening’s German communiqué reports the recapture of two towns in the Donbas: Kramatorsk and Lozovaya. German resistance in this sector seems to be more and more active. On the rest of the front, the Russian offensive is continuing unremarkably, but with no loss of intensity.
March! You can feel that spring is coming—and with it so many unresolved questions, so many worries.
In the south, after Kramatorsk and Lozovaya, the Germans have recaptured Slavyansk and are maintaining their counterattack in the Donbas. In the north, however, they are evacuating Damyansk and (surprisingly) Rzhev. The Russian offensive remains intense at Orel.
Vague unease. Fears, forebodings, doubts. The evening papers published a new anti-Semitic law, with provisions for internment and deportation. Disturbing mainly as a symptom.
I am patching up for Sică the third act of a Viennese play that he is not even sure he will put on. Will I do a good job? Will I get some money out of it?
The Germans are attacking and gaining ground in the Donbas, to the south and west of Kharkov, but are defending and giving ground at Orel to the north. The names of small localities find a place on the asset sheet on both fronts. But one has the impression that the overall battle has lost much of its intensity. The dramatic climax was the fall of Kharkov. Since then the war seems to have entered one of its phases of transition and waiting.
If the terms are right (that is, royalties of 10 percent), I might translate Pride and Prejudice. In principle it does not seem out of the question. In three days I have written a whole new third act for Sică’s play—quite skillfully, I think. Why shouldn’t I be able to work as easily for myself? I suppose it’s because I get overscrupulous about things and feel paralyzed by my responsibility. But when I am able to shut my eyes, I “let go” and it doesn’t work out badly.
The Germans are taking back Kharkov. Yesterday evening’s communiqué reported that their troops have reentered the city and are engaged in street-fighting. In the center, on the other hand, “disengagement” operations are under way. Vyazma was evacuated last night.
The street-fighting in Kharkov has ceased. Yesterday evening’s German communiqué announced that the whole city has been recaptured. On the other sectors of the front, it mentions only “reduced-scale operations.” Has the Soviet winter offensive come to an end? I don’t know. But there is certainly something to be learned from the latest twist: that nothing in this war is final; that any event, however important, is sooner or later lost in the general movement of the war; that a situation never changes instantaneously. The war is a slow accumulation of facts, some minor, some more sensational, which all merge into the general drama. Sometimes, when “a heavy blow is struck,” we feel dazed for a moment and get the impression (whether confused or excited) that everything may end suddenly, as if by a miracle, in one great triumph or disaster. But then the dust settles and everything looks less important. We return to the long slow succession of days, until the next “major blow” again takes our breath away for a moment.
Meanwhile, our life passes by.
In the south on the Russian front, the initiative seems to have completely passed to the Germans. Yesterday evening’s communiqué announced the recapture of Belgorod. The German advance is continuing in the Donbas, even spreading in the area of Kursk. The official attitude is quite reserved, but there has been a clear change in the situation.
I have enjoyed reading another of Jane Austen’s novels, Persuasion, though it is less vigorous than the first two.
I have wasted a great deal of time on that act for Sicâ. I keep patching and patching—and never manage to finish. Together with Dickinson,6 I today began translating Jocul de-a vacanţa into English.
Yesterday I had lunch at Mogoşoaia with Rosetti, Camil, an Italian prince, a French monk, and a Swiss diplomat. Martha Bibescu was simpler and less showy than before. She has an extraordinary way of leading a conversation, of trying out one, two, or three subjects until she finds the right one, of varying attitudes and bringing people together. In this sense she is a great actress. I myself was dull and silent. My French sometimes goes through a difficult period, and this was one of them. I didn’t have the confidence to start a sentence unless I could already see how it would end. Poor Camil cut a sorry figure as a Balkan writer, speaking in dreadful French about his own work. I’d have liked to help him out, but his deafness amongst this group of complete strangers destroyed all the bridges between us. In the end, the nicest thing about it was the drive there and back, on a bright spring day with the fields colored in numerous shades of blue, violet, and mauve.
I have read “Esther’s Letter” in the English Bible, and today Racine’s Esther (This too is a way of celebrating Purim!) Three centuries, a few millennia—and our story is still the same. What a fantastic mystery.
In Tunisia the Anglo-American offensive began on Sunday and is in full swing. So far—at least according to the Axis press—nothing is known about the course of events. In Russia the German counterattack in the south seems to have stalled. The German communiqué of the day before yesterday reported a stabilization of the front. But fighting is continuing at Kursk, where the Germans are gaining ground in the battle for the city. As to Orel, yesterday evening’s communiqué presents the Russian offensive as completely smashed.
The visit to Mogoşoaia transported me into the entire atmosphere of an episode in my future novel. The project has suddenly come alive again. I looked through the material in my files with great interest. It is a book that I feel obliged to write.
In Tunisia, after some early successes, the British have clearly been shaken by Rommel’s counterattack. But the offensive is continuing, at present through fierce air and artillery clashes. In Russia the communiqué does not mention anything new across the whole front. The thaw is general. Will it lead to a kind of cease-fire until the ground dries? Or will there be new developments between now and May? In any event, the war is no longer in a dramatic phase.
This evening I have reread Insula. It was instructive. Act Two doesn’t work even in the new version; I haven’t dumped enough ballast. But I do think I am seeing things clearly. I need to make some huge cuts. Some twelve pages will go by the board—pages of reverie and lyricism. A month ago, when I was too close to the text, I couldn’t have borne the thought of eliminating them, but now I can do it without feeling bad. The play will be brisker, more coherent, more simple and concise. I may be wrong, but I have a sense that this time je suis dans le vrai.7 I also have a clearer picture of Act Three. I shall divide it into two tableaux, as I originally planned. I’d like to write it quickly, not only to wrap up Insula but above all so that I can get started on “Ursa Major,” which has recently taken clearer shape and become just too tempting.
Chesterton about Thomas Hardy: “I will not pretend to sympathize with his philosophy as a truth, but I think it is quite possible to sympathize with it as an error; or, in other words, to understand how the error arose.” This is a possible motto for a portrait of a friend in the opposite camp. But is such friendship still possible?
In Tunisia, Rommel has again turned to a war of movement. The British have crossed the Mareth line and occupied Gabès. I don’t have a map to follow the situation, nor do I have enough information. I can’t work out the possibilities and perspectives, but if the British and Americans are bent on a serious fight, you wonder what is left for Rommel to do. Resist? Counterattack? Take to ships?
Nothing new at the fronts. The communiqués say nothing. Standstill in Tunisia, thaw in Russia. And it is already April.
I visited Ortansa Gulian yesterday evening. No news of Emil. Is he a prisoner? Or dead? The poor people are consulting fortune-tellers, who read things in cards or coffee grounds, and arranging for masses to be said. I stayed until Anca (Emil’s daughter) said her evening prayers for “Daddy.” It was harrowing.
Terribly tired. Almost sick with tiredness. I fear that last year’s insomnia is returning. Some nights I sleep only two or three hours. I am also working too much at school: twenty-three hours of classes (sometimes eight a day) is too much for my level of stamina. I get home dizzy, hoarse, incapable of two consecutive thoughts. I await the Easter holidays as a period of convalescence. I’d have liked to go to Corcova, but Antoine— to whom I sent a letter—doesn’t seem in any rush to receive me.
Camil is performing Mioara at the “Studio.” I had no choice and went along yesterday to a rehearsal, or rather to the preview. People getting worked up, plotting against one another, trading insults and praise. I feel completely indifferent to it all. In a way, maybe I should feel scared. Am I so old, so lethargic, so disgusted that this game—in which I too used to take part—no longer means anything at all to me?
By a stroke of good fortune I have been able to reread my journal for January-June 1941, which for a moment I thought I had lost. The big surprise was that it seemed so uninteresting: too dry (despite the dramatic nature of the events), too cold, too impersonal.
In Tunisia the Anglo-American offensive resumed a few days ago and is expanding in every sector. Rommel is retreating in the south and is also yielding ground in the center. The resistance seems stronger in the north. Yesterday evening’s German communiqué, as well as today’s, say that the enemy forces are several times larger. From now on it looks as if it is just a question of time. Three weeks? A month? Two months? In Russia there is nothing new.
In Tunisia, Rommel’s retreat has become headlong in the past few days. Kairouan, Sfax, and Sousse have fallen in turn. Resistance is taking place only in the north, in a kind of semicircle containing Tunis and Bizerta. The campaign has entered a new phase, in which there is no longer room for strategic retreat. That formula, possible up to now, has been overtaken by events. From now on the alternative is quite simple: either resistance or surrender. We can’t be sure how things will work out in the immediate future; for that we would need to know what forces have been committed.
In Paris, the seventy-four-year-old General Mordacq has thrown himself into the Seine. No identifying papers were found on the corpse. The dispatch gives no more information, but what a tragedy must lie behind it!
An unusually forceful statement was issued this morning about Marshal Antonescu’s visit to the Führer. “The common struggle against bolshevism and the Anglo-American plutocrats.” “The mobilization of all forces. . . The Romanian people will wage this war until the final victory . . . This historic contribution will be the foundation and guarantee for the future of the Romanian Nation.” Is something being prepared? What? War in the Balkans? An attack on Turkey or from Turkey? There is a silence that betokens major new events. With the exception of the Tunisian front, the war is passing through one of those quiet periods from which it may suddenly burst out again, in one of a number of unexpected directions.
I leave for Corcova this evening. I don’t know how this rather improvised “séjour” will work out, but a few days’ holiday will do me a power of good. I’m in bad shape, tired and miserable, and I have great hopes for this week of rest.
I returned last night from Corcova, where I spent nine blissful days. I am suntanned, calm, and relaxed. I know I’ll soon lose this sporting “form”—Bucharest and the war grind it all out of me—but the fact that these few days in the open air were enough to restore me suggests once again that my health has not been deeply undermined. A sick person would not respond so readily to the first call of life. My reflexes are still healthy. In Corcova I gave a lot of thought to all manner of personal and other problems (literature, the war, etc.), but I won’t record it all here. For that I would need a few hours of solitude—which is what I lack so much in Bucharest. (I keep thinking of my studio flat, where I could be alone when I needed to be.) I amused myself in Corcova by keeping a diary in English: thirteen pages, with an entry for each day, more for the fun of writing in English than for the actual record.
Any journey is a stimulus for me. In the carriage between Corcova and Strehaia, I saw a lot of new things for my future novel. The “Princess Stana” chapter, in particular, has grown richer in incident. I’ll put some notes about this into the file with material for the novel.
Antoine forced me to talk about one of my scenarios, and so I gave him a brief outline of “Ursa Major.” I grew excited as I talked, and again it seemed to me that the scenario offered good chances of success. He was even more excited. “Ecrivez tout de suite. II le faut. Tout de suite. Pas un moment a perdre. ”8 I have come back with the idea of working as much as possible in the theatre. I’ll finish Insula, get down to “Ursa Major,” dramatize Comăneştenii. With so many projects, I may succeed in having a play put on this autumn and earning a few hundred thousand lei to pay the rent and the household expenses. Come the end of the war, I’d like to have in my suitcase two or three plays that might go down well in New York or London. I don’t say I’ll succeed. But I have to try, especially as I don’t know many other games and would find it hard to get used to any.
What Corcova mainly meant for me was nine days out of the war—as if I had slept for nine whole days. Then I woke up and found things as I had left them: nothing new on any front.
I am quickly returning to my daily routine, which tires me and grinds me down. I have lost my “holiday form.” On Monday and Tuesday absolutely everyone was amazed when they saw me. I was “unrecognizable.” Now, alas! I am more and more easily recognizable. I tell myself that the life I lead must be seriously wrong if in five days it can bring me to this state: rings around my eyes, pale cheeks, frequent headaches, insomnia. My health is too unreliable a machine for such a way of living.
In Tunisia, after three weeks of inconclusive fighting, the Americans have broken through the German positions in the north and center. Mateur was abandoned a couple of days ago. The advance is approaching Bizerta and Tunis, which are likely to be cut off soon.
On the River Kuban, “renewed Russian attacks.” The German communiqué reverts to the formula: “heavy defensive fighting.” What is happening in Tunisia and on the Kuban does not, however, wipe out the general impression of sluggish expectancy. It may be that the last five or six weeks have been the dullest period of the war so far—as if the war were set to go on forever.
Meanwhile, an article by Goebbels has reopened the anti-Semitic offensive, which had somehow become less topical.
Tunis and Bizerta have fallen, exactly six months after the Anglo-American landing in Africa. The campaign was unexpectedly long, but the denouement is unexpectedly short. Even after yesterday’s rather solemn German communiqué, which reported a deep penetration of their defensive system, I still thought that Tunis, and especially Bizerta, would be capable of holding out for another couple of weeks. In no way did an immediate collapse seem possible after such a long resistance.
Camil Petrescu is affected by the Mioara affair as by a disease. He speaks of nothing else, is aware of nothing else. He reads the latest review for or against, organizes publicity, negotiates with those hostile to it. When I returned from Corcova and found him in his room buried beneath newspapers and magazines, I honestly had the impression that I was visiting a madman.
This evening, after he had spoken for a whole hour about Mioara and Mioara, I asked him what had been happening in the war and was amused to realize that he had no idea. News no longer gets through to him.
“Bizerta and Tunis have fallen!”
“What’s that you say?”
He put his hands to his head in a gesture of uncontrolled horror, then stood up, walked a few paces and stopped:
“What will become of us?”
Poor Camil! He feels a diffuse fear—a real fear, but he’s not quite sure of what. If he could stop everything as it is, so that the war continued and he kept his apartment and job, some money and personal security, he would be a happy man.
I am afraid of a possible anti-Semitic campaign and wonder whether Goebbels’s article was not a signal.
We Romanian Jews, I heard, have been told to come up with four billion lei. How can that much be found? If it can’t, what might happen next?
Lunch at Mogoşoaia with Antoine, Elisabeth, and the Basdevants (the first time I have met them for some three years). It’s impossible to establish a relationship with Martha Bibescu. I don’t really want it, but since we talk to each other I’d like to be able to get some communication going. I am terribly awkward and uninteresting in such surroundings.
Three years ago! I’ll never forget it.
In Tunisia things have been suddenly wound up. The fall of Bizerta and Tunis has broken the whole front. I’m still not quite sure how it happened.
I have translated A[ntoine] B[ibescu]'s Quatuor in two days, yesterday and today, dictating to a typist. It is very witty, but slight and unpolished.
The Africa campaign is over. The last German-Italian resistance in Tunisia ended yesterday. Capitulation. One chapter of the war comes to an end, after so many dramatic moments. In three years, how many times has one side or the other been inches away from victory or defeat?
What will happen next? This is the only question preoccupying us. Will the Allies attempt a landing? Is it not too difficult, too risky? Are they well enough prepared? And if they don’t organize a landing now, will it not be too late next year? Will a year without major hostilities not give Germany the breathing space to escape its present crisis? It is only the middle of May. Ahead of us are four or five months in which anything is possible.
Yesterday evening I met the Havas Agency correspondent, Ypert, for dinner at the Bibescus. He is a right-wing Frenchman, anti-Gaullist (without saying so), and strongly anti-Semitic.
“Prince, aimez-vous les juifs?” he asked Antoine.
“Pas de gaffe!” A. broke in. “Notre ami est juif. ”9
A brief moment of stupefaction. For my part, I’d have preferred it if the guy had been allowed to speak.
Two hundred and fifty young Jews belonging to what are called “mobile detachments” were taken yesterday from their place of work. Within a few hours they had been formed into columns and sent off for labor in Transnistria.
A long visit to Marie Ghiolu, who talked to me about Creata and how she died. She had many absorbing things to add to their story, which is already pretty strange. I’d like to note them down. Maybe tomorrow.
Two terrible dreams last night. In one I was with Hitler, who spoke Romanian and threatened me with dreadful things. In the other I was in Paris, the same German-occupied Paris of which I have dreamed a number of times. I felt horror, a choking sense of unease. Then I woke up terrified.
I regret that I can no longer remember the details.
Marie Ghiolu talked about Creata as if she were still alive. She tries to meet her, waits for her, would not be surprised if she were to come.
I have been thinking about the young Mrs. Grodeck. Unexpectedly, after such a long time, I found the whole story of the Grodecks still intact in my mind. Is it possible that I will one day write the play with Gunther? There was a time when the need to write it calmed me, gave me peace. Then I lost contact; I forgot it.
But the afternoon at Marie’s has brought things back from oblivion. I think I could write it—in fact, I want to. This evening I reread some passages in Accidentul with Gunther, and they all seemed full of dramatic intensity.
How strange, how implausible is the story of Maria and Creata, living the same loves in turn, as Marie took relationships further than Creata could because of her physical disability (“Elle pouvait à peine écarter les jambes”1—Marie told me, to show that Creata probably never slept with Allan). But this story of theirs depended on the incredible physical similarity between them.
Zissu came yesterday morning to offer me seventy thousand lei, and to say how unhappy he had been a year and a half ago when he had been unable to meet my request for help.
I refused to take the money and told him that I didn’t need anything. The man acts cheap theatre, and he does it badly. He claims to have ruined himself of his own free will, so as not to grow rich from oil under the Germans.
Had lunch at Alice’s. Aristide is looking for some refuge in the countryside. Several people (Alice, Branişte . . . ) have told him that we are approaching a crisis that could shatter the previous calm overnight. Nothing precise, but fears are secretly smoldering.
I don’t know what to think, but the old anxiety suddenly gripped me.
The war is again in suspense. Nothing has happened since the winding up of the Tunisian front. We are at a crossroads—rather like the situation in Spring 1941, only in reverse. Then we were anxiously awaiting a German push in an unknown direction; now we await an Allied initiative. The Axis frankly admits that it is biding its time, and does not suggest that it might take any action. The Russians or the British will be left to take the offensive themselves.
The basic elements of the war have completely changed, but the danger weighing on us is no smaller—on the contrary, perhaps.
In one day, one hour, one second, it could be all over for us.
I have lived the last few days in a kind of mindless euphoria, making grotesque plans on the basis of nothing more than an opinion, a word, a smile. Simply because Marie Ghiolu told me on the phone that she had discussed my Shakespeare translations with the Swiss ambassador, I childishly constructed all kinds of plans (including a job at the Swiss legation!). But when I saw Marie today, she didn’t remember any of it.
No one can do anything for me, nor can I do anything for anyone. Relationships with other people, unless based on definite interests, are merely incoherent gestures. We each live in our solitude, as in a glass cubicle. We can exchange smiles and greetings—that’s all.
I turn for help to all my friends and acquaintances (the Bibescus, Nenişor, Alice, Marie Ghiolu, Sică, Leni and Froda, Devechi, Zissu), and in none of them do I find more than shadowy figures of varying indifference or amicability. And in this daily comedy, I am not a more interesting character than they.
I read La Rabouilleuse with passionate interest (which brings me to the end of the third volume of the Pléiade Balzac). Strange that it isn’t considered one of his masterpieces. For everything in it is masterly: the construction, the range of methods, the characters, the atmosphere.
I wonder whether Dostoevsky’s The Devils does not owe something to it. The group of “chevaliers de la désoeuvrance”2—veritable “devils,” with Maxence Gilet at their head—resemble Stavrogin’s people well enough to have been a starting point for them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 probe 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?).
Mussolini has resigned. Badoglio is the new head of government. It is the hour of Pétain.
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.
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.
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 travel 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
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.
SS parachute troops have kidnapped Mussolini and “freed” him. It was a spectacular coup de théâtre, but it hasn’t changed anything essential.
Fighting is continuing in southern Italy. Badoglio’s capitulation took the Italian armies out of play (they were effectively paralyzed anyway), but the conquest of Italy is an objective that the Allies will only now begin to achieve, probably slowly and with difficulty.
Heavy fighting at Salerno, where American troops met stiff resistance when they came ashore. Yesterday and the day before, the DNB press was jubilant. Big headlines announced “a new Dunkirk,” “a new Waterloo.” What a great catastrophe! What a great disaster!
Today the tone is more subdued, the attitude more prudent. Montgomery is advancing from the south. If he meets up with the Americans, the situation will be consolidated.
In Russia a DNB dispatch yesterday reported the evacuation of Bryansk. The news has not appeared in the official communiqués. The offensive continues in every area affected. Kiev is becoming a possible objective.
Yesterday I read Balzac’s La vieille fille\ splendidly incisive. As a provincial portrait it perhaps stands alongside Pierrette, though it caricatures the oppressiveness of life in a way that somewhat detracts from the tragedy of the story.
I have been home for a fortnight and still have not managed to return to a normal life, to organize a work schedule of writing and reading. I live haphazardly, go out too much, pay visits to people, accept invitations, walk in the street, allow all kinds of trifles to pull me here and there.
I haven’t found an hour of solitude to collect myself and work out a clear picture.
What I lack most is a place of my own. Two and a half years have passed since I left Calea Victoriei, but I still keep thinking about it.
On the evening before I left Corcova, I went for a last walk alone in the vineyards and forest that was perhaps the most troubling hour I spent there. I felt the shiver of autumn coming from afar through the grass and trees, approaching and traversing me. It was a painful and nameless melancholy, which I had never felt anywhere before, because I had never looked autumn in the face as I did there.
Yesterday evening’s German communiqué speaks of “a broad correction of the front” in Russia, in the south and center, and reports the evacuation of Bryansk and Novorossiisk.
In Italy the Allies have gone on the attack again at Salerno, which seemed for a moment to be slipping out of their grasp.
The war is everywhere in a phase of large-scale movement. It is a question not only of the front lines but above all of profound dislocations that are probably occurring (even if we do not see them) in the whole structure of the conflict. Somewhere beyond the speeches and the dispatches, great events needed in the coming period are struggling to be born; they may take a while longer to appear, but they may also burst forth from one day to the next.
In this time of unease, with its barely disguised anxieties, our own fate hangs by an invisible thread on some incident that we cannot foresee.
Poltava has fallen, and Melitopol is about to fall as well. Everywhere the Germans are hastening to the Dnieper. All the DNB dispatches call it a methodical retreat (and it is true that the Russians never mention a large number of prisoners), but the official communiqués, including the one this evening, keep referring to “powerful Soviet attacks,” “growing intensity,” and “heavy fighting.” We still don’t know the general significance of the operations, but the war has rarely—perhaps never—been through such a dramatic phase.
The day before yesterday, Camil and Rosetti saw gloomy prospects ahead—bombing, destruction, collapse—if the war gets closer and actually comes to Romania.
My own great worry relates to the domestic situation. If the Germans are capable, this autumn or winter, of mounting a desperate action that places their own frontiers in question, they won’t hesitate to lay Romania waste. The closer the front comes, the more likely they are to brush Antonescu aside and take over the country themselves “to cover their backs,” perhaps making use of a Legionary government hastily assembled for the purpose. The blow in Denmark can be repeated at any time. And the experience with Badoglio will not make them likely to exercise caution.
Who knows if the blow is not already being prepared somewhere in the shadows?
The fact is that I know nothing. But sometimes I suddenly feel a kind of anxiety—an anxiety that has never really left me throughout the war. From time to time, however, it nods off and leaves me in peace, so that I can forget it for a while.
Yesterday the Germans pulled out of Smolensk, after holding it for two years. If you think back to the dramatic battle of September 1941, you get a sense of the ground that has been covered since then.
The Bibescus have returned to Corcova, after three weeks at the Athénée Palace during which I spent a lot of time with them (lunches, dinners, correspondence, explanations). They were extremely nice to me at Corcova, but in the end they become tiring. I had some tense moments with them, once even a quarrel that seemed to me irrevocable. I realize that he is, if not mad, then at least “loony,” and that nothing lasting can be built with such a person.
But he is still one of the most interesting people I have known.
I begin teaching tomorrow. At the same time I’d like to start a regular work schedule again.
Too much time-wasting, too much disorder in my life. I fall into the habit of doing meaningless things. I let myself be dragged along by petty obligations, which I accept out of carelessness, politeness, or indifference.
If I had a place of my own, I would probably lead a more orderly existence. But in any event I shouldn’t make my fragmented life worse by being reckless or thoughtless.
For some three days I have been translating a play by Achard (Je ne vous aime pas). I don’t know what Birlic will do with it, but he has paid me, and this will give me some material security for another three weeks or so.
The war goes on: quite slow in the case of Italy (Naples was occupied by the Allies yesterday); more lively, and sometimes more intense, in the case of Russia, so that you have to wonder whether major events are not in store for the autumn.
What is called “the Battle of the Dnieper” is in full swing. If the Germans can halt the Russian advance here and organize a relatively firm defensive line, then their deep retreat—though still representing a battle lost—will not be a disaster and the war will enter a new period of waiting. But if the Dnieper does not become the front line, if the Russians (who already have a few bridgeheads on the right bank) manage to press even farther, then everything is possible.
Rains could slow the advance and mire the whole war for a few weeks, but there is no sign of any. It is a warm, clear, sometimes torrid autumn, with afternoons as in July, even if the mornings and nights are cooler.
I am still worried about our fate. I keep fearing that the Germans will do something on their own authority to restore the faltering political morale throughout the southeast. A sudden pogrom is still a possibility.
Yesterday evening I read The Merchant of Venice, and today As You Like It. I have returned to Shakespeare after a break of nearly a year. It has been enthralling: there is nothing lighter, more graceful, more enchanting. Even in The Merchant of Venice, the figure of Shylock is overshadowed by the glorious game with the handkerchief. And As You Like It takes you right into fairyland. There is something dancelike in a Shakespeare comedy. Floating movements detached from reality—as in a ballet.
The Jews in Denmark are being annihilated. A DNB dispatch leaves no doubt about their fate.
And once again I shudder.
“For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe,” says Shylock.
It seems that the German front is holding on the Dnieper, and that the Russian offensive is losing momentum. The DNB press speaks of the “Melitopol dam,” “the natural barrier of the great river,” “solid defense” from new positions.
The major battles have been scaled down to “local fighting.” If the Soviet summer offensive really is over, then the pause on the eastern front will take the war out of its dramatic phase and—for one, two, or three months or more—remove that decisive aspect it has seemed to have since the 25 th of July.
Should we be preparing for another hibernation?
I have to translate Melo for the Baraşeum. It will give me no pleasure at all. Anonymity enables me to translate anything without scruples for Sică. I’d like to have nothing to do with the Baraşeum and not to sign anything—even a translation—for the duration of the war.
Saturday was Yom Kippur.
I do not try to put any order into my “Judaism.” I fasted, and I went to the synagogue in the evening to hear the sound of the shofar. Reading over someone’s shoulder, I tried to intone the “Avinu-malkenu.”3
Why? Do I believe? Do I want to believe?
No, not even that. But it is as if, in all these unthinking gestures, there is a need for warmth and peace.
On Thursday evening I listened to Camil’s play at Rebreanu’s.
I hesitated a lot before going—and later I was furious with myself for having gone. I shouldn’t have done it.
It’s better to wait until the war is over before meeting Rebreanu. Now I have nothing to say to him—especially in his home.
It is a weakness, an act of carelessness on my part, which already holds out the prospect of forgetting everything, of compromising on everything.
Will I go back to those people? Wdl the war have come and gone without breaking anything, without inserting anything irrevocable or irreducible between my life “before” and my life “tomorrow”?
So why? What is the point?
In Russia the new Russian offensive has resumed right across the front after a pause of three to four days. Moreover, a new area of operations has opened northeast of Vitebsk, where Nevel has already fallen.
The DNB propaganda, which had focused on solid defense and the halting of the Soviet offensive, is going through some difficult moments.
Autumn is more and more in the air, however. (Yesterday was very cold, and this morning could have been November.) Maybe a pause will nevertheless develop sooner or later.
But things are dragging on too much for the state of our nerves.
Cold, windy, autumnal.
A warm, cozy house in which I can read and write beside a woman I love—an unrealizable dream after which I have always hankered, especially on days like today.
A long meal just with Branişte, from lunchtime until seven somewhere on the Şosea. He drinks slowly and methodically, like a man on a long journey. Conversation about war and peace, but still basically café chatter.
The Russians have retaken Zaporozhye. How will the southern front now hold? Hasn’t Melitopol been left somewhat in the air? We shall see in the next few days.
It is by no means certain that the Dnieper will form a solid line of resistance. The Russians claim that the so-called “Battle of the Dnieper” is over and that “the river has been crossed at all points.” The German attitude on this matter is vague, euphemistic, and insecure.
The situation on the German front at the Dnieper seems more and more serious. A breakthrough at Kremenchug is on the point of cutting the whole bend of the river, in a great encircling movement similar to last year’s at Stalingrad. The whole of the southern front is tottering. The offensive is almost equally powerful at other points, especially at Kiev and Gomel. For several days the DNB communiqués and commentaries have afforded some glimpse of the seriousness of the situation.
There is great concern in town. The dragon’s breath can almost be felt, though it is still far away.
Basdevant (whom I visited yesterday with Antoine) thinks the Russians will be here this winter!!
This morning I finished translating Melo. Bernstein’s technique infuriates me. It is so self-confident that it can simulate anything: even emotion, even depth, even gravity.
But there is something profoundly trivial, I would even say obscene, in this falsely noble play.
What a professional, though! What theatrical virtuosity! What a rogue! As I translated him, I saw more closely how the machinery works, but even I was tricked here and there by the dramatic pretense!
I have been reading Coriolanus with some irritation. (I think I’ll finish Act Five tonight.) I can well understand now why it aroused such fury in Paris in 1934.
Major battles in Russia. The breakthrough at Kremenchug is growing deeper. Another breakthrough has been announced at Chernigov.
It is not to be expected that the whole operation will suddenly reach a climax. The “new phase” (which, this time, really is new) could last two or three months before all its consequences appear. Last year the breakthrough on the Don began in December, but Stalingrad fell only in February.
The turnaround could be more dramatic at the level of politics and diplomacy. Anything can happen—at any time.
Onicescu (so Devechi tells me) has made up his mind to commit suicide if Germany loses the war. He cannot resign himself to living in a Europe occupied by the descendants of Australian convicts and American emigrants, come back to destroy Western culture. He cannot accept the annihilation of culture.
I asked Devechi to tell him on my behalf (I’d gladly tell him myself if I met him) that if culture is the issue at stake, he missed the right moment to commit suicide. It would have been much more appropriate on 31 January 1933 or 8 September 1940.4
Balmus (a professor of Greek at Iaçi) told me once again—as Otetea did last year—how the Jews were butchered there on 29 June 1941. “It was,” he said, “the most bestial day in human history.”
“Greater optimism in Berlin,” reported the Universul correspondent today.
All the commentaries are again much chirpier. “Soviet attacks driven off.” “Great defensive success.” “In the last twenty-four hours the enemy has not advanced one kilometer.”
The German communiqué is more hesitant, more circumspect. It signals “heavy attacks,” “an attempted breakthrough,” “heavy fighting,” “temporary breakthroughs”—all repelled, crushed, or annihilated.
As I have no information other than what I read in the papers, I can only conclude that there has been a temporary weakening of the offensive, but that its scale and directions, if not its intensity, remain the same as before. “Relative stabilization” is one commentator’s cautious expression.
I finished Titus Andronicus yesterday evening. In Shakespeare, if not in the whole of world literature, dreadful acts keep piling up in the most absurd way. At times it is almost coarse and puerile, when it can no longer be tragic: hands and limbs cut off, heads severed, people falling dead in almost every scene. A Chamber of Horrors museum, with everything jumbled together. Beneath or above all this bloody machinery, however, the thrill of poetry can sometimes transfigure everything it touches. Now I am reading Antony and Cleopatra (with language difficulties that surprise me, because the last three plays have gone easily enough).
The situation again seems tense at the fronts in Russia. Melitopol fell yesterday, after days on end of bitter street-fighting. You look at the map—and you no longer see what might happen in the Sea of Azov sector.
On the other hand, the breakthrough at Kremenchug has penetrated almost as far as Krivoi Rog. Finally, yesterday evening’s German communiqué has reported that Dnepropetrovsk is under attack on all sides.
An Indian summer, implausibly warm and clear, has made it possible for the whole operation to continue. A great encirclement, a major new retreat, or an energetic attempt to defend by counterattack: I try to visualize these three scenarios by looking at the map. The last of them is improbable, while the first two open the way to all manner of possibilities, including the most extreme.
Dnepropetrovsk seems to have already fallen yesterday, as the German communiqué reported this evening.
Yesterday and today I have read Le cabinet des antiques, a lively short novel, fast-moving, ironical, and robust. It is Balzac at his best: concise in exposition, firm in design. The first part of the story still has a certain slowness—but the ending (with the delightful travesty of the Duchess of Maufrigneuse) feels like an excellent third act in a perfectly constructed comedy. The portrait of judicial life in the provinces is as accurate and as funny as that of ecclesiastical life in Le Curé de Tours.
The breakthrough to the west of Melitopol is driving deeper. The Crimea is in danger of being cut off at the Perekop Isthmus. This is precisely why the Germans are trying to repel the attack on Krivoi Rog. If the front crumbles here too, the whole of the “Nogaic steppe” will be encircled.
The situation remains very grave, but I still cannot believe it will lead to a rapid ending.
A cold November, but clear and sunny Odd, unusual weather that defies the forecasters and the war. The fighting in Russia is continuing “with undiminished force,” as the communiqué invariably puts it.
The breach in the Nogaic steppe is moving ever deeper toward Perekop. At Krivoi Rog, however, the Germans report powerful counterattacks.
I am still on Shakespeare. Finished Antony and Cleopatra. Yesterday and today I read Othello. This evening, the first act of Lear.
Theatrically speaking, Antony and Cleopatra is disjointed, fragmented, lacking in dramatic coherence. Some beautiful scenes and passages, especially in Act Five.
But Othello struck me as a work of unexpected beauty (perhaps heightened by the pleasure of being able to read it almost without a dictionary).
Lear begins in a grand manner.
I shall again be paid quite well for teaching at Onescu—and it is an opportunity to organize my material for a book on Shakespeare that I may write sometime. (Sometime!! When? In another life?)
Since yesterday the Russians report having occupied and moved beyond Perekop. The German communiqué reports this evening “heavy fighting” at “the northern gateway to the Caucasus,” having yesterday reported a landing in the region of Kerch.
Will the results of the Moscow Conference give the war a different direction? Should we expect another blow to be struck this autumn?
This evening’s German communiqué reports the evacuation of Kiev “to avoid a breakthrough that was threatening to occur.” The Russians have retaken the city two years after losing it. The Kerch landing seems to have established a “bridgehead.” Now that the Crimea is under attack from both Perekop and Kerch, how will the Germans be able to hold on there? For how long?
The Nogaic steppe seems to be completely clear of Germans. The immediate point of attack for the Soviets is now Kherson.
The Russian offensive is continuing right across the front, with changes in intensity and violence at one point or another.
None of the propaganda formulas holds any more. No explanation stands up. The distances grow shorter each day; the obstacles fall one after the other.
Marietta Sadova never stops play-acting, as I saw when I visited her yesterday. (I need some books in connection with Shakespeare, and I thought I could get some from her—but I gave up.) I found her with the same gestures, the tears and faintness and changes in her voice, which have always made her a sublime Marietta. It’s unbearable, but also funny.
I spent a couple of hours in a tavern yesterday with Cicerone Theodorescu, who was pleasant and honest as always.
We read and work, see people, listen to music, make plans, but beyond all that there is the shadow of the disasters that might yet come.
I began my course on Shakespeare today at the college. An uninspired lecture—though I had good material.
In the last few days I have read Lear and Macbeth.
The war is continuing in all the areas of offensive action. The critical points are now west of Kiev and west of Nevel.
Hitler’s speech of the day before yesterday “fait bonne mine à mauvais jeu. ”5 I think it restored morale a little, even among people here, for a few days or hours at least. Even the most recent military communiqués have been less somber.
I am worried that my money is again running out.
The Russians have taken Zhitomir. Their breakthrough is becoming so deep that it threatens to drive a complete wedge between the northern and southern fronts.
On the map it strikes you how short is the distance between Zhitomir and Cernâuti, between Kherson and the Dniester.
Igiroseanu—I met him at lunch at the Bibescus’, who are back in Bucharest—is terrified by the approach of the Russians; he said that the Germans have not lost the war and will not lose it. They are in a period of crisis, but they will pull through it. With the new weapons they are developing (an invisible airplane, a self-propelled projectile, etc.), they will destroy London in the spring and force Britain out of the war; they will also annihilate the Russians. All this he said with a mournful air (“vous savez, moi fai toujours été pour les Anglais”6), but also with a show of knowledge and “objectivity.”
I spent the evening with Titel Comarnescu, first at the Gieseking concert, then at the Bavaria. He is completely distraught: the Russians will be here in two months, he says, and we will all perish wholesale, Jews and Romanians alike.
Yesterday was wonderful: warm, sunny, with a soft April light in which everything stood out. It was incredible. Today is also fine but more “normal,” less springlike.
Yesterday afternoon I went to Dragos Protopescu’s opening lecture—furious with myself for going, but having no other choice. (I want him at all costs to authorize me to read some works about Shakespeare in the faculty library.)
It was a “Nae Ionescu” type of lecture without Nae’s magnetism; a funny, couldn’t-care-less lecture in the Bucharest style. How easy that is!
What I want to note here is something quite different. He spoke of the “English genius” and said things that seemed wildly courageous in today’s conditions: on “the British moral genius,” on the Englishman as “the highest form of human evolution,” on “the stupid prejudice about British perfidy or hypocrisy,” when in reality the British spirit is an alloy of realistic common sense. He even spoke of Britain’s military genius. And he went so far as to describe Churchill as a model of political courage. It was “subversive” from the first word to the last.
I thought there was a basic lack of seriousness in the fact that such a lecture is possible today, in November 1943, when Romania is in the middle of a war alongside Germany. It might have been a grave incident, but it wasn’t. It had no significance, no consequence. A Legionary praises the spirit of England to an audience of students—who are themselves Legionaries, actually or potentially—but this means nothing to them. They feel no need to reexamine or abandon anything, or to stand up to anything that is said.
Yesterday evening I went with the Bibescus to The Marriage of Figaro. It was miserably performed, but I still listened to it with boundless pleasure. What riches, what youthfulness, what wonderful facility. Dozens of musical themes and ideas liberally tossed off, each of which could have been the starting point for a concerto, symphony, or quartet.
The front-page headline in this morning’s Universul: “The German Military Command Again Controls the Initiative in the East.”
The Germans have retaken Zhitomir. The Russians have been in Korosten for a couple of days, but it is too advanced after the fall of Zhitomir.
I have been ill for several days, without knowing what is wrong. I am not ill in the true sense: I don’t have a fever or any aches and pains, but I feel completely drained of energy. Yesterday evening I wanted to write a few lines here, but I couldn’t hold the pen in my hand. I am just about all right in the morning (now, for example, as I prepare to leave for school at nine o’clock, I still have the strength to scribble these few words), but by evening I am dropping from fatigue. It is a real “crisis,” all the more unwelcome as it finds me penniless. I haven’t been so hard up since June, and I don’t know what to do about it.
In Russia (judging by the German communiqué) the fighting remains intense but stationary.
However strange it may be, with its various bulges that do not look tenable, the southern front continues to hold. Things have been at a visible standstill for the last ten to fifteen days.
The German riposte at Zhitomir seems to have larger objectives. The papers are starting to talk of Kiev—an operation that would be similar to the retaking of Kharkov this spring.
Anyway, the war goes on. Nothing new has happened that might speed things up. On the contrary, a general slowing of the momentum is returning us to our old moral inertia.
To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow.7
Gomel was captured by the Russians on Thursday.
In the Zhitomir sector, the German communiqué has not mentioned for a couple of days the great counterattack that was supposed to retake Kiev.
Berlin has been heavily bombed in a series of air raids.
But the war is still the same: long, drab, oppressive. And our question is still the same: When will it end?
An exhausting week, with all manner of lunches and dinners. But with the Bibescus gone this morning, I can return to my customary life outside the social round.
Nothing new at the fronts. The Germans have retaken Korosten, the Russians continue their attacks almost everywhere; in Italy, Montgomery has reopened the offensive. But despite all these developments, we are in a period of relative quiet, perhaps because of the weather (implausibly clear and sunny), perhaps also for certain political reasons that we cannot know.
The British-American-Russian-Chinese-Turkish conferences, in Egypt and Iran, may lead to something.
Today I passed the final proofs of Pride and Prejudice. I’d be surprised if it had a big success in Romanian. It is too delicate, refined, subtle; no crudeness, no stabs of pathos, no wrenching. I am not at all happy with my translation, which lacks fluency. But will it bring me in some money?
I have recently listened a number of times to Mozart’s concerto in E-flat major, which I gave as a present to Leni some four or five years ago. I asked her to let me have it for a few days, and I have been listening to it with real enchantment. I force myself to follow it phrase by phrase, sound by sound. I try to identify and hold on to each instrument. It is an infinite joy in the fast movements—but what sadness, what melancholy, what heartbreak in the andantino!
A grave letter from Poldy, who is very ill and needs to have two operations. He was in a concentration camp for three months in 1941 and came out with his health ruined.
“J’ai eufaim, horriblement faim, ”8 he tells me. And I knew nothing of it. I still know nothing. Suddenly the war has again become the appalling nightmare that I have recently been so thoughtless as to forget.
The headline in an evening paper: “Twelve Thousand Arrests in France.”9
My thoughts went straight to Poldy. I talk, laugh, walk in the street, read, and write—but I never stop thinking of him.
This journal is becoming absurd—a bad habit, nothing more.
The war pierces me through, pierces my whole life, everything I love, believe, and try to hope. And of this whole grinding torment, what should I record here?
Yesterday evening I unexpectedly found myself reading “Ursa Major” for Nora Piacentini and Septilici. (I went to see them at the theatre, and they took me to their place upstairs.)
They were immediately very enthusiastic about it and decided to put it on straightaway, even though they had already started rehearsals of Michel Duran’s Barbara.
Today things happened with a speed that has swept away all my doubts and hesitations. From eleven this morning until four this afternoon, Mircea and I dictated simultaneously to three typists. At 4:30 the manuscript was delivered to the theatre. A quarter of an hour later, Soare (already introduced to the plot) presented the play on behalf of a teacher who wants to remain anonymous—and signed it Victor Mincu. The title: Steaua fără nume [The Star Without a Name]. (Personally, I regret the loss of “Ursa Major”—but in their view it sounded too literary.)
I waited for Nora and Mircea in a café, and at 6:45 they arrived aglow from the “rapturous excitement” it had aroused at the reading before the board.
Everyone is intrigued and happy about it. The first rehearsal will take place tomorrow. Soare told me over the phone:
“It’s a masterpiece.”
That’s all very well, but Act Three hasn’t been written. When will I do it? It is urgent—but I don’t have an hour to spare between school and college. Nevertheless I must try at all costs to finish it off, working day and night.
If this venture makes me some money, the rest is unimportant.
Today I finished Act Three of “Ursa Major.” I wrote it quickly, from Friday night until midday today, hurriedly, a little mechanically, almost without pausing to read back over it. Last night, “doped” on black coffee, I worked until four in the morning. It’s not my favorite way of working. I can’t produce anything good “under the whip.” I need more freedom to move, more time for reflection. I think there are some excellent things in the act, but I know that I haven’t given my all. Maybe I’ll come back to it later. The ending does not satisfy me.
But I don’t take this whole business too seriously. For a few moments—a few hours, perhaps—I was in a state of some tension. The casting annoyed me. I was depressed that Maria Mohor had the female lead (for whom I felt a kind of tenderness). The various echoes it has produced both amuse and irritate me. Victor Ion Papa calls it the best Romanian comedy, and Soare a masterpiece; Marcel Anghelescu is angry that he is not in Act Two and so does not want to appear in Act Three either; Nora wants an ending for herself, etc., etc.1 It’s time I said to all this nonsense: merde!2 Badly acted or well acted, praised or abused—the only thing I ask of this play is that it should bring me in 500,000 lei.
I think and hope that I’m serious enough for all the rest to be completely and utterly indifferent.
A dream on Monday night.
I’m at the University. I meet Onicescu in a corridor. He is leaving for Berlin—and tells me to leave with him. A moment later I am in a small room, at Nae Ionescu’s seminar. Here he comes. He asks me the time and notes my answer on a piece of paper. Then he asks the same question to the other students in turn, noting each reply under a special heading. The times given are not the same. Then Nae asks each of us to determine the right time—and gets us to sign our names. He turns to me and tells me that I speak with a Jewish accent. But immediately after that, he puts his hand on mine and adds that he is leaving on Saturday evening for Berlin.
“The town of Korosten has been abandoned after heavy fighting”—says this evening’s German communiqué.
Recently I haven’t noted anything in connection with the war. But some ten days ago, after a period when things had remained fairly stationary, the Russian offensive resumed with maximum intensity, at least in the Vitebsk and Zhitomir sectors.
Since the Cairo and Tehran conferences, things seem to have again entered an acute phase. Berlin has suffered a series of devastating air raids. In the North Atlantic a German ship of the line, the Schamhorst, was sunk three days ago. Everywhere, in both the Allied and the German camps, it is thought that a landing in the west is now imminent.
Just by reading the papers—because I have no opportunity and make no effort to listen to the radio—I gain the impression of a final stiffening of positions.
I can’t believe, however, that an offensive will begin in the west in the middle of winter. The Allies are exerting great psychological pressure on Germany, which is probably needed to prepare the blow at a later date.
Certain gestures and habits, by force of repetition, have become almost like superstitions: a letter to Poldy, a book for Aristide, some records for Leni. I went to Socec to buy a calendar refill. This evening I shall go for a meal at Alice’s. I have hastily reread this notebook.
The 31st of December. Like a year ago, or two years, or three years. When did this year pass? It seemed so heavy, so foggy, so uncertain. And yet it went. It has passed and we are still alive.
But the war is still here beside us, with us, in us. Closer to the end, but for that very reason more dramatic.
Any personal balance sheet gets lost in the shadow of war. Its terrible presence is the first reality. Then somewhere far away, forgotten by us, are we ourselves, with our faded, diminished, lethargic life, as we wait to emerge from sleep and start living again.
Footnotes
1. This World War I novel, Itzhik Strul, Deserter, described the persecution of Jewish soldiers in the Romanian army.
2. Radu Beligan: actor.
3. Mircea Çeptilici: actor.
4. All the better—all the worse.
5. In English in the original.
6. British Council employee.
7. I am on the right track.
8. "Write it straightaway. You must. Straightaway. There's not a moment to lose."
9. "Prince, do you like the Jews?"—"Mind your manners! Our friend is a Jew."
1. "She could hardly open her legs."
2. Knights of idleness.
3. Wilhelm Filderman continued to be the de facto leader of the Romanian Jewish Community. He was deported to Transnistria because he constandy petitioned Antonescu, asking the Marshal not to deport his fellow Jews and opposed various anti-Semitic decrees and decisions.
4. Petre Tutea: philosopher, ardent follower of the Iron Guard.
5. In English in the original.
6. “Money troubles are no disgrace.”
7. Anatole de Monzie: French politician, a Vichy supporter, and a former socialist.
8. Everything hangs together.
9. Jean Mouton: director of the French Institute in Bucharest.
1. “I pretend to be living—but I am not alive. I drag myself along.”
2. “Are you Italian?”—“Yes, I am Italian.”—“Sir, you are no longer at war. Your country has made peace.”
3. “Our Father, Our King”—the first words of the Hebrew litany for the days of repentance.
4. Hitler took power on 31 January 1933, and Antonescu on 6, not 8, September 1940.
5. "Puts on a brave face in adversity."
6. "You know, I have always been for the British."
7. In English in the original.
8. "I was hungry, terribly hungry."
9. The reference is to the roundup of Jews in France.
1. The premiere of Ursa Mare, renamed Steaua fără nume, took place on 1 March 1944.
2. shit