Mihail Sebastian - Journal 1935–1944 - The Fascist Years

Another air raid this morning. It wasn’t very long or particularly heavy, but the engines in the sky had a sinister sound. For a few moments I thought that Friday night’s ferocious attack was going to be repeated.

If, as people have been saying for a few days, Turkey breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany (expected for the 2nd of August), the availability of closer bases could easily make the bombing catastrophic for us. The war seems to be approaching the end. It may all be over in ten weeks. The question is how we can survive these final weeks in one piece.

I spent the whole of yesterday at a farm not far from Bucharest, in an enchanting house like a stage set for Jocul de-a vacanţa.

Turkey has broken off relations with Germany.

The president of Finland has resigned and been replaced by Mannerheim. This is interpreted as a prelude to fresh peace negotiations.

In France an American push toward Rennes threatens to isolate the whole of the Breton peninsula, in a repetition of the Cotentin operation.

In the east the Russians are simultaneously attacking Warsaw, Riga, and Memel. In Italy, Florence is still holding out, but not for much longer.

As the situation grows more acute, we become more and more impatient. Yesterday and today we were constantly overexcited, as if news of something definitive might arrive at any moment.

It is hard to follow what is happening in France. The German front, broken in both the west and the south, is crumbling away. In Brittany the “Atlantic wall” lies flat and useless. The Americans are inside Brest, Saint Nazaire, and Lauriau, while the respective German garrisons still hold the fortifications that were supposed to defend them from the sea. Armored thrusts crisscross the whole of the German rear, suddenly springing up where no one expects them. The operation is identical to the German advance in May 1940—only so far on a lesser scale. Paris is not excluded as an Allied objective: if things continue at this pace, anything is possible.

I have written the scenario for a play. Act One: a perfect outline, scene by scene, with great wealth of material. Act Two: less detailed. Act Three: completely general, except for the denouement. For a moment this afternoon, working my thoughts out on paper as they jostled for my attention, I was in the grip of a kind of fever (my old fever that makes me a little dizzy when I “see” a book or a play). I felt impatient: I’d have liked to get straight down to work; I wanted to tell someone the great news.

I went out and walked as far as the Alhambra, where Nora and Mircea are doing rehearsals. (It was as if I needed to be in an atmosphere where everything was bubbling behind the scenes.) But I felt out of place and returned home.

Now I have calmed down. I have put the scenario aside and will leave it for a while. I have other work that needs to be done (redoing Antoine’s play, rewriting Act Three for Potopul 8). In a week’s time I’ll look again at the pages I wrote so hastily today and see what can be done.

If I write this play, I shall owe it to the idea of a stage set. That is all I saw at first: no characters, no conflict, no ideas — only the set of a house that is under construction in Act One, furnished in Act Two, and flattened by an earthquake in Act Three. All three phases of the set are dominated by a single sight in the distance, which serves to link and unify them.

Today all the living material of the play has grown up around this bare schema. A funny starting point.

Air raids last night and this morning. I don’t think Bucharest was the main target, but at least once last night the gunfire was deafening. I swallowed. And poor Mama, who suffers like a frightened child!

It seems that American armor has pushed as far as Chartres!

I see again that Sunday in October 1937, with Poldy and Benu at Chartres, when we were so excited by the beauty of the cathedral. Paris is not far.

Nothing new on the western front. The Russian offensive has come to a halt, more or less at the 1939 frontiers. Riga, Memel, Warsaw, and Krakow are still to be reached. Is this a Soviet pause to regroup? Or a German attempt to use massive reserves to stop the advance to the frontiers of the Reich? A new assault may begin at any time, but for the moment the fighting (though still intense) is not of the same proportions as before.

In France, on the other hand, the battle is confused but is expanding in scale. We know nothing definite about Chartres, nor how far the thrust from Le Mans to Paris has actually reached. Bypassing Alen^on, it is aiming to strike the rear of the German front line in Caen — a sector that has been wobbly ever since the landings. If the operation succeeds, the invasion will become truly “invasive.”

It is a hot, enervating summer’s day. I am apathetic and cannot pull myself together enough to work. I have been redoing one of Antoine’s plays, but I am stuck on Act Four and find it impossible to move ahead. I also have to finish Act Three of Potopul for Beate 9and Finţi. 1All this has to be done double-quick, and I’m incapable of putting two words together.

A Franco-Anglo-American landing in the south of France!

Alerts this morning and evening. They surprised us because we had been expecting a period of aerial calm following the landing in southern France. They’ve got so much to do there — and they still find time for us.

The landing force is advancing smoothly and rapidly across the south of France: Cannes, Nice, Saint Maxime, Saint Tropez.

In the north the Allies have taken Orléans, Chartres, and Dreux. Paris is on the horizon!

Yesterday evening the Comoedia had Steaua fără nume “in a new production,” as the poster put it.

I didn’t go — nor do I feel at all curious about it.

I am writing these lines during a morning alert. Our run of bad luck continues. We also had an alert yesterday morning. From the street you could see swarms of aircraft passing in the distance, with their metallic glitter in the bright sunlight. Sometimes, when they show up against a whitish cloud, they become dull and hazy. Yesterday and today they have been to Ploiesti. Today they seem to be heading for Brasov. For the time being.

The advance on Paris continues, with the Americans already at Rambouillet. But the front is too fluid for the shape of the battle to be visible.

I saw Steaua fără nume yesterday evening.

What a splendid auditorium the Comoedia has! At the Alhambra everything gets lost, as in a huge barn. But here the whole hall is like a wonderful sound box.

A surprise: Tantzi Cocea. 2She has quite a few false touches, but (though everything is rather “dreamed up”) also a mixture of frivolity and emotion which is quite similar to my Mona’s.

The Soviet offensive in Moldavia and Bessarabia has been under way for two days. Apparently Ia§i has fallen.

The war is coming toward us. It is not the war that has weighed us down for five years like a moral drama; now it is physical war. Great turnarounds can occur at any hour or minute. Again our lives are on the line.