Journal 1935–1944 Read online

  (One of the colonels threw in this question when Nae was in full flow. I well knew that he had never met Hitler. He said so categorically a year ago, and again last summer. But he was at risk of disappointing the colonel, who was so full of admiration.)

  “Yes, I’ve seen him. There’s a great politician for you. You see, Trotsky, who is enormously intelligent, and Stalin, who is a fool, . . . (The change of tack was probably out of prudence, but he kept up the lie—a lie of pure bluster—because he could not bear to let slip any of the glory he had promised himself. What a child he is! Five minutes later, Vechiu asked him in turn, “Have you seen Hider?” And he again replied “Yes,” rapidly moving on to something else, either because he felt awkward or because he was bored with having to dream up too many things to say)

  He looked as he must have fifteen years ago holding forth at the Capşa.9 How young he is, dear old Nae Ionescu!

  Saturday, 30 March

  Nae’s class yesterday was suffocating. Iron Guardism pure and simple— no nuances, no complications, no excuses. “A state of combat is what we call politics. One party contains in its very being an obligation to wipe out all the others. The final conclusion is that ‘internal politics’ is an absurdity. There can only be a conquest or seizure of power and a merging of the party with the whole collective. From that moment all that exists is household management, since all possibility of reaction has been eliminated. A collective that contains within itself the idea of war is called a nation. A nation is defined by the friend-foe equation.” And so on and so forth . . .

  I should have liked to tell him how monstrously he contradicted himself, but he was in too much of a hurry and left straight after the lecture.

  His whole heresy stems from a wild and terrifying abstraction: the collective. It is colder, more insubstantial, more artificial than the abstraction of the “individual.” He forgets that he is speaking of human beings; that they have passions and—whatever one may say—an instinct for freedom, an awareness of their own individual existence.

  Even more depressing is the fact that all those theories stem from vulgar political calculation. I am convinced that if he spoke like that yesterday—with so many political allusions and so painfully Hitler-like—it was because an Iron Guardist dressed in national costume was sitting in the front row of the audience. I could feel that he was speaking for him.

  I have been listening a lot to Bach recently. Last Sunday the St. Matthew Passion at the Ateneu. I think I am really very fond of his music. In any case, I can now easily tell a piece by Bach from any other.

  Over the past three weeks I have picked up many of his works on various radio stations. One evening, from Warsaw, there was the Double Violin Concerto in D Minor.; the Concerto in D Minor for Three Pianos, and another concerto, also in D minor, for piano and orchestra. Stuttgart had the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, two cantatas, and a trio sonata for harpsichord, violin, and viola da gamba. (The same evening, from Warsaw, there was a Debussy sonata for flute, cello, and harp. Magnificent.) Later, two preludes and a fugue for organ, from Bucharest. Last Monday the Second Brandenburg Concerto, an aria, and a cantata from Budapest, and on Tuesday—again from Prague—the Third Brandenburg Concerto and another one in E major. One evening Berlin had a few organ pieces―I no longer remember which ones—and a suite for unaccompanied cello, heartrendingly calm and solemn.

  And then, very many things I can no longer recall. (Bach two to three times a week from Stuttgart, after one in the morning. And one evening a delightful Kleine nachtmusik by Mozart, also from there.)

  Finally, longer ago, Vienna had a memorable performance of the double violin concerto. A Handel sonata, Ysaÿe’s Variations on an Old Theme, and a sonata by Philipp Emanuel Bach.

  A cold rainy spring—I do not mean sad . . .

  Sunday, 7 April

  Elections at the S.S.R.1 How wretched! I cannot forgive myself that for one moment I had the naiveté to think the game was serious.

  As soon as you give up being alone, everything is lost.

  Thursday, 11 April

  This evening I listened to a Bruno Walter concert from Prague.

  The overture to Gluck’s Iphigènie en Aulide, a Mozart violin concerto in G major (the first time I have heard it, I think), and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The Mozart seemed more delicate and melodic than ever.

  The universities are closed. So tomorrow I no longer have Nae’s course.

  I saw some appalling things in the street. Wild animals.2

  Sunday, 14 April

  Yesterday Leni3 came at one o’clock to pick me up at the newspaper. It was a beautiful day, like the middle of June. She was superb. Tailor-made suit, shoes, handbag, a little ribbon around her neck, the brim of her blue hat. With me she has a kind of timidity that makes her look solemn.

  She said she had heard of a lover I am supposed to have had for a long time in Brăila.

  “That’s the reason I haven’t called you any more. It’s how I explain why you are so reserved. I haven’t wanted to disturb you.”

  I protested and said there was no truth in it.

  “So then?”

  “So then”—I said to myself: be sensible, kid. “So then, it’s just my natural reserve.”

  “Caution, in other words.”

  “If you like. But I think it’s more a question of self-knowledge. It would be expecting too much of things I don’t deserve.”

  “You don’t know what you do and do not deserve. And in particular, you don’t know what someone else may be thinking about you.”

  We went for a walk in Cişmigiu, and I was proud of how beautiful she was. It could be love.

  Thursday, 18 [April]

  2:30 a.m.

  An eventful day. Visited Leni. We are in love; we said it to each other. She is young and beautiful, has an admirably simple way of speaking— and I find it so inexplicable that she is coming closer to me.

  But it is not prudent, and I don’t know how I’ll ever get out of this. How many things have gone wrong because of my ill luck! I had so much going for me to be happy. I had enormous ability, with no complications and no drama. And all that broke down horribly at the age of seventeen and a half. I am disgusted by it sometimes, or more often saddened. Why, Lord, why?

  I would so much like to be happy, and I would have asked so little.

  The evening at the Nenişors’4 and then at Zissu.5 (I danced.) When I hooted for fun on the way home, she said: “You’ve so much of the child inside you, yet you’re so tired of life.”

  For someone who has known me for only ten days, that was surprisingly accurate. Yes, it’s true. It’s terrible how calmly I accept the idea of death.

  Sunday, 21 [April]

  Went for a walk with Leni and a friend of hers, Jeni Cruţescu, on the Şosea. The first spring morning, after so many rainy ones. It was warm; a lot of green, a lot of yellow. We had vermouths and snacks at the Flora. Leni was delightfully dressed. People turned their heads at us, and I was again proud to be walking beside her.

  But in the afternoon I felt a terrible need to see her again. That is not good at all, though I’m beginning to be seriously in love with her. How will I get out of that?

  Tuesday, 23 [April]

  I met her at a football match (Venus-Juventus), but she arrived late from a theatre rehearsal for the next premiere.

  I cannot explain the interest she has in me. She is so beautiful—I am so badly dressed, so awkward. I realize how simple this love could be, how restful.

  Wednesday, 22 May

  Lunch at Aristide Blank’s6 with Leni, Froda, Mrs. Blank, a guy I’ve never met before, and two young women—a rather ugly Viennese brunette and a South American blonde who spoke French with a delightful Anglo-Saxon accent.

  Coffee and cognac on a terrace, in a kind of courtyard made restful by the colors and the wind blowing through it. Blank is a poseur. Leni was surprisingly ill at ease, but with adorably simple gestures. She is extremely shy, to my amazement. She
claims that I intimidate her.

  (Yesterday, at the football match at the O.N.E.F. [Stadium], she was uneasy, silent, “melancholic” for a lot of the time, but immediately became talkative, expansive, almost boisterous when Ronea, from the Regina Maria Theatre, joined our group—a man with whom she has certainly slept in the past. Her sudden “mise à Paise”7 infuriated me. But it is certainly not her fault. I am always the one to blame: I am probably too complicated and basically incomprehensible for her, whereas she has been so straightforward with me from the beginning.)

  I did not mean to write about this, however, but about the South American blonde. We exchanged a few words, enough for me to draw a cinema sketch of her. She said:

  “I’m South American. Where do I live? Pretty well everywhere. Look, I’ve just come from Vienna and plan to stay a couple of weeks. Then I’ll go back to Vienna and meet up with my husband, who is on a business trip in Africa at the moment. No, I don’t live in Germany. I have a house in Hamburg, though I haven’t been there for three years. But I’ll be going on the Rhine for a while this summer. We have a villa there. Then maybe to North Africa, where we also have a little house.”

  So, I said, you live on the whole planet.

  “No,” she smiled with sincere modesty. “No.”

  Strange people. And we can vegetate for a whole lifetime in Sfinţii Apostoli, Popa Tatu, or Radu-Vodă!8

  [Monday], 10 June

  I must see Poldy! The trip that I initially thought to be out of the question must become possible. Things need to be cleared up—so that at least I know where I stand. How funny it would be if there were only a medical matter involved!

  But no, I don’t have too many illusions. But I do want to know.

  Like a fool, I allowed myself to get caught up in a story that I knew from the beginning would lead nowhere. Here I am smitten, jealous of every man with whom she ever slept, preoccupied at every moment with what she is or might be doing, happy when she is smiling, miserable when she is too jolly, trembling when I hear her voice on the telephone. I am rediscovering that ebb and flow of emotions that I have not experienced for a long while, since Jeni’s time, in the most feverish moments of my love—mornings when everything is simple and unimportant, when it seems neither here nor there whether I see her or not; evenings heavy with melancholy, with a desire to see her that is physically located in the heart.

  All this takes a form that is comically sentimental, schoolboyish, adolescent. It sickens me to think that she is meanwhile occupied with a load of trivia that amuse or excite her, in her little life of pleasures, walks, and frivolities. It is altogether likely that she is sleeping around—and I am stupid enough to talk to her gravely and with a ridiculous lack of skill about various overcomplicated “problems.”

  She, who expected just another man, seems weary of my hesitations, of my excessive complications. And I suffer like a child because of all these meaningless trifles.

  She is a “good girl.” Will I one day be able to receive her in my bachelor flat, fuck her, drink a glass of wine and smoke a cigarette with her, put a record on the gramophone, and listen with indifference—or at best with amusement—as she talks about her past lovers? If I can, everything will be perfect. That too is a kind of happiness, and I would certainly be happy. But what if I can’t? Another failure and it’s all over.

  Anyway, things are very bad as they stand. It is sickeningly trite that today I bought her a copy of Barbellion’s9 Journal—for her about whom Berariu said to me two months ago: “Go chat her up—you can’t go wrong—she’ll screw with anyone.”

  And he was probably right.

  I’m seeing her tomorrow. She leaves on Sunday.

  I broke with Jeni appallingly. The poor girl!

  [Tuesday], 11 June

  She was supposed to call me and she didn’t. Everything can end at that, in the simplest way. Any move on my part would be more than ridiculous, worse than imprudent.

  I ought to understand—and do understand perfectly—that it would be out of all proportion to note- here every sordid little thing that has happened to me in this “love story.” Enough!

  Four hours later

  More stupid than any lovesick fool, for I have absolutely no excuse.

  I went to see her after all (after phoning twice: the first time she was asleep, the second time on her way out shopping). I told her—and I did it quite well, with perfect gestures, frown, and voice—that I am in love with her. Then I left, because someone was due to call on her at a quarter past eight.

  “I got the times mixed up,” she said candidly.

  What an ass I am!

  [Thursday,] 13 June

  Chance has it that I am just now rereading a volume of Proust—the second one of Albertine disparue.

  So many things should make me skeptical about my amatory “sufferings.” I am well aware that they will not last, that I shall forget them, that they are all derisory, and that one day they will mean so little as not even to appear ridiculous. Yet such words of wisdom, such calculations that I know to be objectively correct, do not lessen in the slightest today’s depression, the absurd need to see her, the physical pain of constantly thinking about her, of seeing again certain moments that now present a mystery I should like to clear up.

  I wonder, for example, what happened that day when we went to lunch at Blank’s. He took her aside, put his hand around her waist, and talked with her about something or other. Later, in the afternoon, I tried to reach her by telephone. Once she was asleep, the second time she was out. Something tells me that he met her that afternoon, and that when he took her aside he arranged a rendezvous.

  And the following evening—on Monday, I think, as we were leaving the Piccadilly where I had met her by chance (she was with J[eni] C[ruţescu], I went with her toward the telephone and she stopped to call someone—whom?

  What stupid, childish worries, especially as I know how little point there is in that old old game, so familiar and always the same.

  But knowledge is not a cure, just as precise knowledge of the stages of typhoid fever does not spare you from suffering them.

  Monday, 17 June

  The reading of Albertine has given me back a strong inclination for Proust. Maybe I shall also read a volume from Le temps retrouvé, the second volume of Du côté de chez Swann (especially Un amour de Swann, to which I am drawn by the events in my own life of the past three weeks), and finally some pages from À l'ombre des jeunes filles . . .

  Meanwhile I enjoyed reading Marcel Proust by Robert de Billy; it was not all that interesting, but it did have some letters and photographs that I had not seen before. I am sorry I cannot keep the book—it belongs to Nenişor—but I shall jot down a couple of things here. “Cette façon de projeter la lumière sur un fait divers, des hauteurs dissemblables, et avec des puissances dissemblables, chandelle ou phare, jusqu'à ce qu’y apparaissent en profondeur toutes les valeurs psychologiques qu'il est susceptible de manifester, est caractéristique de la méthode proustienne” (page 12).

  “Cette pursuite du volume à travers la diversité des formes. . .” (page 13).

  “N’est-il pas plus simple d'attribuer à l'étude de la valeur aristocratique, plutôt qu'au snobisme, le goût qu'il avait pour la société des familles dont les racines plongent dans le passé et que les années ont amenées vivantes jusqu'à nous avec d'étranges modifications de leur contexture spirituelle?” (page 86).1

  A quotation from Proust’s preface to his translation of Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies perfectly defines his own art of writing: “J'ai cru pouvoir noter jusqu'à sept thèmes dans la première phrase. En réalité, Ruskin y range l'une à côté de l'autre, mêle, fait manoeuvrer et resplendir ensemble toutes les principales idées—ou images—qui ont apparu avec quelque désordre au long de sa conférence. C'est son procédé. Il passe d'une idée à l'autre sans aucun ordre apparent. Mais, en réalité, la fantaisie qui le mène suit ses affimitiés profondes qui lui imposent, malgré lui, une logique
supérieure. Si bien qu'il se trouve avoir obéi à une sorte de plan secret qui, dévoilé à la fin, impose rétrospectivement à l'ensemble une sorte d'ordre et le fait aperçevoir, magnifiquement étagé jusqu'à cette apothéose finale.”2

  I saw Nae on Friday. A completely nonpolitical discussion. He spoke about his last lecture at the faculty, which I missed but which seems to have been exceptional. A revolution in logic, a complete revision of the discipline. Something epochal. . . . The logic of collectives becomes to formal logic what Einstein’s physics is to Newton! He went on talking for more than an hour, going over his whole lecture again with that smile of amusement and easily feigned nonchalance, which suits him so well.

  It was a beautiful afternoon, and I was glad that at least toward the end he moved away from politics and Iron Guardism.

  He is undoubtedly the most interesting and the most complex person I have ever known. In spite of everything that has happened in the past and will happen in the future, he is capable of opening my eyes about his moral values but not of disappointing me about his intelligence.

  Leni left this morning. Now it is five in the afternoon—I think the ship left at two, so she is on the high seas.

  I saw her on Saturday afternoon, for no more than three-quarters of an hour. But she tried to make up for the irritation of the last few days, and succeeded with a host of fond little gestures, hand-squeezing, and attentive looks. She made a point of using the familiar tu, obviously to let me know that our love is beyond all doubt.

  Now that she is gone, my fever has suddenly abated—though not yet completely. I hope I can bear these two months of absence with sufficient calm. I also hope that I won’t forget her but recover my previous peace of mind, when it was a pleasure to know her, to see and talk with her, without complications and without any difficulty in putting her out of my mind once I had put down the telephone or said goodbye. Anyway, I am a lot clearer about her, and I don’t think I shall have to change much in my image of her as a likable, slightly frivolous blonde, more curious than sensual, who happily maintains her personal egoism and feeds on the adoration of quite different people, both men and women, asking them to please her without any sentimentality and giving them in return an uncomplicated smile. An adorable little monster, in relation to whom all my thoughts up to now have been absurdly out of proportion.