Journal 1935–1944 Read online

  Principal Figures Mentioned in the Book

  HAIG ACTERIAN, theatre producer, active Iron Guard member, husband of Marietta Sadova.

  FELIX ADERCA, Jewish novelist and friend of Sebastian's.

  SICĂ ALEXANDRESCU, theatre producer.

  MADELEINE ANDRONESCU, friend of Sebastian's.

  ION ANTONESCU, general, fascist dictator of Romania, 1940-1944.

  MlHAl ANTONESCU, minister of justice, later minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister in the Antonescu government.

  CONSTANTIN ARGETOIANU, politician, prime minister September-November 1939.

  ALEXANDRU AVERESCU, general, prime minister March 1926-June 1927.

  BABA, nickname of Sebastian's grandmother.

  CAMIL BALTAZAR, novelist.

  JULES BASDEVANT, French diplomat.

  RADU BELIGAN, actor.

  JOSÉ BEREŞTEANU, manager of the Comoedia theatre.

  ANTOINE BIBESCU, prince, close friend of Sebastian's.

  ARISTIDE BLANK, banker.

  DORINA BLANK, daughter of Aristide Blank, friend of Sebastian's.

  AGNIA BOGOSLAV, actress.

  GEO BOGZA, writer and journalist.

  GEORGE BRĂTIANU, leader of the right-wing faction of the Liberal party.

  TONY BULANDRA, actor.

  LENI CALER, actress and friend of Sebastian's.

  NICOLAE CARANDINO, journalist.

  CAROL II, King of Romania 1927-1940.

  DEMETRU CEACĂRU, Jewish journalist.

  RADU CIOCULESCU, literary critic and brother of Şerban Cioculescu.

  ŞERBAN CIOCULESCU, literary critic and brother of Radu Cioculescu.

  ALEXANDRU ClORĂNESCU, literary historian.

  GINA COCEA, wife of the novelist N. D. Cocea (also Gina Manolescu-Strunga, also Gina Ionescu).

  TANTZI COCEA, actress.

  CORNELIU ZELEA CODREANU, leader of the Iron Guard.

  PETRU COMARNESCU, art critic, friend of Sebastian's.

  IOAN COMŞA, friend and law colleague of Sebastian's.

  N. M. CONDIESCU, general, novelist, president of the Romanian Writers' Association.

  LENA CONSTANTE, artist, friend of Sebastian's.

  NICUŞOR CONSTANTINESCU, theatre director, playwright.

  NICHIFOR CRAINIC, extreme right journalist, author of a xenophobic and racist National Christian fundamentalist theory.

  NICOLAE CREVEDIA, extreme right anti-Semitic journalist.

  JENI CRUŢESCU, friend of Sebastian's.

  A. C. CUZA, one of the main "theorists" of Romanian anti-Semitism, leader with Octavian Goga of the heavily anti-Semitic Goga-Cuza government.

  GH. CUZA, son of A. C. Cuza, member of the Goga-Cuza government.

  ARMAND CĂLINESCU, prime minister 1937-1939, coordinator of the repression against the Iron Guard.

  GEORGE CĂLINESCU, literary critic.

  TITU DEVECHI, journalist and close friend of Sebastian's.

  VICTOR EFTIMIU, playwright.

  SANDU ELIAD, theatre producer.

  MIRCEA ELIADE, novelist, historian of religions, ardent supporter of the Iron Guard, friend of Sebastian's.

  MIHAI EMINESCU, nineteenth-century poet considered the creator of the modern Romanian language, a strong anti-Semite.

  GEORGE ENESCU, famous Romanian composer.

  ŞTEFAN ENESCU, Sebastian's friend (pen name Ştefan Mincu).

  WILHELM FILDERMAN, leader of the Romanian Jewish Community.

  BEATE FREDANOV, actress.

  SCARLAT FRODA, theatre director and literary commentator.

  GRIGORE GAFENCU, politician and diplomat.

  MARIA GHIOLU, friend of Sebastian's and wife of Stavri Ghiolu.

  ION GIGURTU, foreign minister, prime minister July-September 1940.

  GENERAL HENRI CONSTANTIN GIURESCU, historian.

  OCTAVIAN GOGA, prime minister December 1937-February 1938, leader with A. C. Cuza of the Goga-Cuza government.

  MIRON GRINDEA, journalist.

  CORIN GROSSU, writer.

  SOLOMON (CHARLES) GRUBER, lawyer and personal secretary to Wilhelm Filderman.

  CAROL GRÜNBERG, friend of Sebastian's.

  EMIL GULIAN, poet and Sebastian's friend.

  RADU DEMETRESCU GYR, poet and fanatical follower of the Iron Guard.

  BOGDAN PETRICEICU HAŞDEU, nineteenth-century writer, strongly anti- Semitic.

  POLDY (PIERRE) HECHTER, Sebastian's elder brother, lived in France during the war.

  RICHARD (RICCI) HILLARD, journalist, friend of Sebastian's.

  EUGEN IONESCU, playwright, Sebastian's friend.

  GHIŢĂ IONESCU, political scientist, friend of Sebastian's.

  NAE IONESCU, Iron Guard main ideologist, professor of philosophy at the University of Bucharest, early mentor of Sebastian.

  JACQUES LASSAIGNE, French art critic.

  IONEL LAZARONEANU, lawyer with literary inclinations.

  RADU LECCA, commissar for Jewish affairs in the Antonescu government.

  ANGELA LEREANU, secretary at Sasa Roman's office.

  VASILE V. LONGHIN, judge from Brăila.

  EUGEN LOVTNESCU, literary critic.

  NINA MAREŞ,, wife of Mircea Eliade.

  VASILE MARIN, Iron Guard ideologist.

  ISTRATE MICESCU, lawyer, minister of justice in the Goga-Cuza government.

  ION I. MOŢA, leader of the Iron Guard.

  FRANKLIN GUNTHER MOTT, head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Bucharest.

  TEODOR MUSATESCU, playwright.

  GHEORGHE NENISOR, diplomat and Sebastian's friend.

  MARYSE NENISOR, wife of Gheorghe Nenişor and Sebastian's friend.

  CONSTANTIN D. NICOLESCU, general, former minister of national defense.

  IACOB NIEMIROWER, chief rabbi of the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities until 1939.

  CONSTANTIN (DINU) NOICA, journalist, philosopher, strong supporter of the Iron Guard.

  VICTOR OCNEANU, publisher.

  OCTAV ONICESCU, mathematician.

  GEORGE OPRESCU, art critic.

  ANDREI OŢETEA, historian.

  PETRE PANDREA, left-wing journalist.

  LUCREŢIU PĂTRĂŞCANU (wartime name ANDREI), Communist leader.

  PERPESSICIUS (DIMITRIE S. PANAITESCU), literary critic.

  CAMIL PETRESCU, novelist, friend of Sebastian's.

  CONSTANTIN PETROVICESCU, general, pro-Iron Guard minister of the interior.

  NORA PIACENTINI, actress.

  DIONISlE PIPPIDI, historian.

  MIHAI POLIHRONIADE, Iron Guard journalist and theorist.

  STELIAN POPESCU, lawyer and politician, director and owner of the newspaper Universul.

  LILLY POPOVICI, actress and Sebastian's friend.

  DRAGOŞ PROTOPOPESCU, right-wing journalist.

  GHEORGHE RACOVEANU, Iron Guard journalist.

  MIHAI RALEA, minister of labor March 1938-July 1940.

  MARIETTA RAREŞ, actress.

  LIVRIU REBREANU, novelist, director of the National Theatre under the Antonescu administration.

  ZOE RICCI, actress.

  ALEXANDRU RIOSANU, head of Siguranta (the secret police) September 1940-June 1941.

  NICULAE ROSU, Iron Guard journalist and ideologist.

  SAŞA (SACHA) ROMAN, lawyer, in whose office Sebastian worked as a clerk.

  ALEXANDRU ROSETTI, director of the Royal Foundations, Sebastian's close friend and benefactor.

  MARIETTA SADOVA, actress, fanatical supporter of the Iron Guard, wife of Haig Acterian.

  MIHAIL SADOVEANU, writer.

  ION SĂN-GIORGIU, extreme right journalist and playwright.

  "BENU" ANDREI SEBASTIAN, the writer's younger brother.

  CELLA SENI, the writer CELLA SERGHI, wife of Alfio Seni.

  W. SIEGFRIED, stage designer.

  SOARE Z. SOARE, theatre producer.

  ŢOŢA SOIU, actress, wife of Ion Iancovescu.

  THEODOR SOLACOLU, translator and poet.

  ZAHARIA STANCU, journalist
.

  MIHAI STELESCU, Iron Guard leader.

  LEOPOLD (POLDY) STERN, lawyer and writer, friend of Sebastian's.

  VLADIMIR STRELNU, literary critic.

  D. I. SUCHIANU, movie critic and journalist.

  ALEXANDRU ŞAFRAN, wartime chief rabbi of the Jewish Communities in Romania.

  PAMFIL ŞEICARU, journalist, owner of the Curentul newspaper.

  MIRCEA ŞEPTILICI, actor.

  GHEORGHE TĂTĂRESCU, politician, prime minister January 1934-December 1937, November 1939-July 1940.

  AL. CRISTIAN TELL, Iron Guard journalist.

  IONEL TEODOREANU, writer and poet.

  PĂSTOREL TEODOREANU, poet and writer.

  TUDOR TEODORESCU-BRANIŞTE, journalist and writer.

  CICERONE THEODORESCU, poet.

  DEM. THEODORESCU, writer and journalist.

  ALICE THEODORIAN, friend of Sebastian's.

  VASILE TIMUŞ, theatre manager.

  NICOLAE TITULESCU, minister of foreign affairs October 1932-January 1935.

  VIOREL TRIFA, president of the students' organization of the Iron Guard.

  SANDU TUDOR, journalist at Credinţa.

  PETRE ŢUŢEA, philosopher, ardent follower of the Iron Guard.

  AL. VAIDA-VOEVOD, a leader of the National Peasant party, leader of the anti- Semitic Vlad Tepeş League.

  CONSTANTIN VISOlANU, diplomat and politician, close friend of Sebastian's.

  TUDOR VIANU, literary critic.

  VICTOR P. VOJEN, extreme right pro-Nazi journalist.

  PAUL ZARIFOPOL, novelist, literary critic.

  HERBERT ("BELU") ZILBER, Communist publicist and friend of Sebastian's.

  A. L. ZISSU, leader of the Zionist movement in Romania.

  EUGEN ZWIEDENEK, under Ion Antonescu head of the government agency in charge of the Aryanization of Jewish properties.

  Journal

  1935-1944

  1935

  [Tuesday], 12 February 1935

  10 p.m.

  The radio is tuned to Prague. I have been listening to a concerto by J. S. Bach in G for trumpet, oboe, harpsichord, and orchestra. After the intermission, there will be a concerto of his in G minor for piano and orchestra.

  I am immersed in Bach. Yesterday evening, while writing a long letter to Poldy,1 I listened to the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto from Lyons— for the first time with extremely clear reception—and then to a Mozart concerto for piano and orchestra.

  I went to see an eye specialist. He recommended glasses and I have started to wear them. It changes me quite a lot and makes me look ugly.

  It was funny when I told him my name. He said that his family has much discussed my De două mii de ani [For Two Thousand Years], which he has not read himself. He has heard a lot of people cursing me. I realize that my trial has really been lost. Cum am devenit huligan [How I Became a Hooligan] is not reaching the circles where I am cursed even by “hearsay.”2

  On Sunday at Tîrgovişte, where I had gone for a lecture, Samy Herşcovici told me a story that indicates how the “affair” is seen by the public.

  The bookseller who was selling tickets for the lecture offered one to a professor at the teachers’ training college: “Sebastian? Aha! That yid who got himself baptized.”

  Yesterday evening, Nae3 was due to speak at the [Royal] Foundation about “National Solidarity.” His lecture was banned by the government.4 The students were herded together on the pavement near the palace, where they booed, shouted, and sang. Then they were driven farther, into Piaţa Ateneului, where Nae, bareheaded and wearing his coat with a wolfskin collar, made a speech while perched on their shoulders.

  “Nae was a fine sight,” related Nina.5

  There were scuffles, fistfights, firecrackers going off. Even some shots were said to have been fired in the air.

  Not a word in today’s papers.

  How disgusting is the issue of Credinţa devoted to Nae. Petru Manoliu, Sandu Tudor, and Zaharia Stancu—about Nae Ionescu!6 I’ve lived to see this too.

  [Monday], 18 February

  Yesterday evening, two of Handel’s organ concertos, in B-flat major and G minor, from Stuttgart. Very Mozart-Haydn. Could I tell him apart from those other two?

  For a week now, beginnings of revolution at the Bar. A few meetings campaigning for a “numerus clausus.”7 On Saturday, the day before yesterday, Istrate Micescu spoke and went right over to the Movement.8 It is exactly a week since my interview with him appeared. I am obviously losing my touch.

  What people! Made of whey, yogurt, and water. M[icescu] told me the other day: “If you want to know who is my master in politics, it is Alain.” He spoke then about freedom, about individual resistance to the state, about the stupid idea of a “collective” and how it is exploited by dictatorships. And now look at him, an anti-Semite gone over to the “national revolution.”

  Nae has had a hand in this too. Micescu admitted to Froda9 that he had had a visit from Nae, who had urged him to take the leadership of what was happening at the Bar. Look at how the professor is going to make a new Romania! What a cruel, ridiculous, terrible affair, in which everyone, including Nae, makes his little contribution.

  But spring has come. Yesterday I went with Benu1 to Băneasa. A March wind was blowing, it was sunny, and I felt young. Not for a long time have I felt such a keen desire to be happy.

  [Sunday], 17 March

  Midnight

  I have come tired from the station (got up at 6 a.m. to go to Brăila, now I am back). But I don’t want to leave this note until tomorrow, having vowed in the train to write it.

  I traveled with Nae Ionescu. He was going to give a lecture in Galaţi (about “Signs and Symbols”). Nothing interesting in the morning: we read the papers, talked politics, and had a pleasant time chatting with a girl who had struck up a conversation with us. I got off in Brăila and we agreed to meet again in the evening on the return journey.

  In the evening we did indeed find ourselves in the same compartment. Professor Vechiu, leader of Argetoianu’s2 supporters in Brăila, was also there with us. All three of us had dinner in the restaurant car. Nae put on a great political act.

  It is he who got Vaida’s movement off the ground.3 (Ten days ago he assured me of exactly the opposite.) He and the Iron Guard will support him, but without taking part themselves. He recognizes that the “numerus valachius” is really a platform for agitation, not at all a political program. He accepts the fact that it cannot be implemented. “Things like that could happen only as a consequence of something else, if there were a change in the general framework.”

  His plan is very simple. Keep Tătărescu4 in power for the time being— for another three months, say, until Vaida’s movement acquires solid foundations and cadres. Then a Vaida government, produced by sixty Iron Guard deputies and some ten to twenty-five from other parties, so that “the Guard will be His Majesty’s Opposition.” Logically, when this Vaida government falls, the succession will fall to the Guardists.

  I do not know what chances this plan has. Rather few, I would think, and in my view he is a fantasy-monger. Quite logical, of course.

  What made me feel a little sad for Nae was the tone in which he said everything. Scheming, artful, “enfant terrible.” What he said to Averescu,5 how he duped George Brătianu,6 how he got even with Vaida in Brasov . . .

  “I really landed them in the shit.”

  I certainly prefer him in the lecture hall.

  As we traveled back in the compartment, a feeling of vague unease turned into one of pain. What a poseur that man can be! There were two colonels in the compartment. He started chatting and managed to get them both “at sixes and sevens.” I could see victory on his lips, a sense of triumph at having flummoxed them. He said some bewildering things—of the kind he uses to startle people by turning the discussion from a local matter to a problem of world history. The talk was of a possible war between France and Germany.

  “Rubbish! The whole crux is in Singapore. That’s wh
ere Europe is playing its cards. And it can play without Germany. That’s all there is to it.”

  In Singapore? Maybe. But anyway, before the problem can be properly discussed, Nae’s bolt from the blue put an end to it. The colonels exchanged looks of admiration and astonishment, suddenly alight from the revelation of the truth. Nae could feel this and basked in the warm glow.

  In one hour he retold everything I know about him: how he lived through the revolution in Munich, how he gave speeches to the revolutionary ministers, how the revolution finally put an end to the Dachau money factory, how Colonel Epp did this and did that, etc., etc. Things I heard from him years ago, riveted to the wall in his office at Cuvântul.

  Then he moved on to more recent matters. To Beck in Warsaw7 he had said that it was necessary to move closer to Germany. To Karl Radek8 he had explained that Stalin’s successor would be Genghis Khan. In Berlin he had told a general this, shown a minister that. . .

  “And do you know Hitler personally?”