1) His Biography:
Mihail Sebastian, a writer and accomplished playwright who was born Losif Hechter, in Braila on the Danube in 1907, was well-known in Bucharest’s intellectual and political circles. Sebastian also left behind a diary that spans the years 1935–1944 in addition to his novels and plays.
Sebastian was an intelligent Romanian Jew who strived to write effectively and to find an existential meaning to his life. He was also a sensitive storyteller who consistently supported democracy against dictatorship and aggression. He made friends with wealthy and well known liberal aristocrats, real liberals or reptile opportunists, Zionists or Communist Jews, as well as actors, authors, and literary critics. He authored his books and plays both in Bucharest and the nearby Bucegi Mountains. He occasionally went on vacations to the Black Sea and abroad, particularly to France.
Sebastian, an integrated Jew, experienced terrible rejection from the society he loved. He belonged to a group of talented young people associated with the newspaper Cuvintul, and this gave him a peculiar fate. Nae Ionescu served as these young people’s mentor, and his contemporaries characterised him as unreliable, without morals, opportunistic, and cynical.
Sebastian became the Iron Guard’s chief ideologist, Cuvintul became the group’s official newspaper, and many of his comrades began to lean toward Romanian fascism. Ionescu released a virulently anti-Semitic forward to one of Sebastian’s books even before he turned fascist. Sebastian’s acceptance of this forward is unclear why he did so.
The tragic thing about the Romanian intelligentsia during the inter-war years was that instead of working to make a flawed political system better, they decided to abandon it and align themselves with dictatorial figures and political systems. Some of Sebastian’s inter-war acquaintances, like Cezar Petrescu, were just sleazy opportunists who altered their beliefs based on changing interests. Others, like Emil Cioran, honestly embraced xenophobia and anti-Semitism in response to the Iron Guard regime’s “attractive” nationalistic “qualities.” Few of Sebastian’s friends and acquaintances refused to acquiesce in the prevalent fascist mindset of the time period.
Sebastian recognised the planned core of the Romanian state’s anti-Semitism right away, referring to it as a huge anti-Semitic factory. Exasperated by the fascist zeal of his society, he frequently attempted to provide a justification for his friends’ involvement in fascist politics, sometimes coming dangerously near to being justified. However, it is still unclear why he kept hanging out with his anti-Semitic fascist friends.
Due to this flaw, he was able to see in close proximity as the Romanian intelligentsia was brutalised. After being freed, he denounced the “indoctrinated stupidity” of the newly established Communist administration, but he nevertheless volunteered to work for it before being murdered in a car accident in the spring of 1945.
2) Main Works:
Journal:
Sebastian kept a journal for ten years, and it was finally published in 1996 in Bucharest amid “considerable debate” and in America under the title Journal, 1935-1944: The Fascist Years. It details the growing persecution he faced as well as the growing contempt from former friends in the increasingly anti-Semitic socio-political climate of Romania. He was greatly saddened when Mircea Eliade, a friend, backed the Iron Guard. The diary also exposes Sebastian’s unwavering sense of humour and self-irony despite his ominous tone.
The Journal has been compared to those of Victor Klemperer’s or Anne Frank’s as a key testament to anti-Semitism in Europe, both before and during World War II. He had a deep appreciation for classical music and frequently went to performances. Numerous assessments of radio transmitted concerts and allusions to various classical composers may be found in his journal as well.
Women:
Women is a book by Mihail Sebastian. In 1933, it was originally printed in Romania under the name Femei. Women is divided into four chronological segments, each of which focus on a certain period in Stefan Valeriu’s life and the women who were important to him at that time. The pieces come together to paint a picture of life in inter-war Europe.
The Town with Acacia Trees:
The main character is seduced by the allure of the “Little Paris of the East,” but her devotion to her long-time love, Gelu, is put to the test by a fortuitous meeting with the impulsive composer Cello Viorin. Mihail Sebastian gently depicts his heroine’s path of self-awakening as she learns the boundaries of her independence and works to define her identity as a woman in this funny, lyrical coming-of-age book.
The Star with no Name:
Mona finds herself alone and in a small town at night after being kicked off the train for not having a ticket. She may be dressed in style, but she is homeless and without funds. Fortunately, Marin, the local teacher, extends an invitation for her to remain at his house while he spends the night at a friend’s house. However, a strong attraction quickly emerges.
Astronomer Marin announces that he has found a star that is not included on any star charts. They have a great, joyous evening together. But as soon as Grig, Mona’s lover, shows up, their idyllic situation is disturbed. Will Mona opt for a quieter life with Marin or go back to her previous life in the city?
The Accident:
The Accident is the author’s first piece of fiction to be published in English. It is a passionate, captivating love story about two individuals who meet by chance, situated in the Transylvanian Mountains and the Bucharest arts community of the 1930s. Paul and Nora, who are drawn to each other despite having repulsion-inducing attraction, discover the answers to their fate while exploring icy ski routes and living among a mysterious family in a cabin on a mountain.
3) Main themes in his writings:
His life under Nazism:
Sebastian started journaling, and he did so until his death in 1945. His diaries, which were smuggled out of Communist Romania in the 1960s but were not published in his home country until 1996, were a bombshell and forced a national reckoning with the atrocities committed against the Jewish population in the 1930s and 1940s, and the complicity of everyday Romanians in them.
The two references, though, are equally telling. Sebastian’s diaries include descriptions of his relationships with women, falling outs, misunderstandings, passions, and reconciliations, all portrayed with a charming naivety while detailing his existence as a Jew in Nazi-controlled Europe. He is a young man in love, just like any other young man in love, anywhere, at any point in history, in both the greatest and worst conditions.
Between 1935 and 1945, when Romania was aligned with and later occupied by Nazi forces, it underwent a violent, poisoned descent that is contrasted by his connections, particularly with a young actress named Leni. Numerous Romanian Jews were transferred to Nazi concentration camps, where almost all of them perished.
It is the second allusion that alluded to this darker aspect of Sebastian’s existence during the inter-war years in Romania. Sebastian was born Losif Mendel Hechter. He experienced anti-Semitism on a daily basis, first as a student and then as a dramatist and attorney, just like his protagonist in For Two Thousand Years. He was constantly exposed to the rhetoric and, as the 1920s gave way to the 1930s, an increasing amount of violence.
Anti-Semitism:
His diaries provide documentation of both his acquaintances’ and strangers’ abuse and violence. His acquaintances, co-workers, and mentors gradually transform from smart bourgeois liberals to virulent anti-Semites. He loses his job, his plays are rejected by theatres, and he becomes increasingly alone. He ends up being isolated.
The intriguing thing about Sebastian’s allusion to Women is not just that an intellectual in polite company in Bucharest in the 1930s would make an anti-Semitic argument, but also how Sebastian himself handles it. After challenging the speaker about the metaphor’s accuracy (which he had initially used in Women to describe a sense of post-coital satisfaction), he subsequently apologises for his error.
Long before the atrocities of the Holocaust, in many ways Sebastian’s brief life was defined by the way he dealt with anti-Semitism. For Two Thousand Years needed a forward, so Sebastian commissioned philosopher Nae Ionescu to write one in 1934. Sebastian gave his publisher the order to publish a violent anti-Semitic tract that Ionescu submitted, which insulted both the author and Romanian Jews in general.
War:
Women, as a novel, won’t push us to confront our prejudices or our past, as his other writing has and continues to do, nor will it prompt any national reckonings. The novel captures a distinct period in Sebastian’s life as well as Romania’s. Stefan Valeriu, the book’s main character, is a young man who spends his summers in Paris or by the sea. He is idealistic, daring, and nostalgic. He belonged to a younger generation of young Romanians who were interested in Europe, thought of Bucharest as the “Paris of the East,” and were generally upbeat about their own and their generation’s future. Knowing what was going to happen makes it difficult to read Women because you can feel the ugliness that was about to crush your youthful fantasies: the years of persecution, war, and survival, just to be killed in the street at the age of 37.
4) His influence today:
Sebastian, who had survived the war, was struck and murdered by an army truck in 1945 as he crossed the street. After his passing he was forgotten, when communist government replaced the fascist occupation in Romania. He was little known in Romania, let alone beyond, before the publishing of his diaries, which had been smuggled out of the country in a diplomatic pouch during the 1960s.
But in the years since, Sebastian’s work has been discovered internationally. For Two Thousand Years was published in English in 2016 – in a translation by Philip O Ceallaigh, who also translated Women – and won critical acclaim. His prose was compared to Anton Chekov by the late playwright and essayist Arthur Miller. With the publication of Women, all four of his novels are now available in English.
His novels provoke us to examine our prejudice and our history and self-reflect on how the level of prejudices has just increased over time. We need to turn to Sebastian’s work to break the cycle and avoid repeating the prejudices of our past time and time again