Saturday, 20 November
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.
Friday, 26 November
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
Sunday, 28 November
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?
Sunday, 5 December
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.
Monday, 6 December
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!
Wednesday, 8 December
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.
Saturday, 11 December
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?
Tuesday, 14 December
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.
Tuesday, 21 December
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.