Matter

excerpts Almost every night I talk to Adela on the porch. The ladies go to sleep earlier. Adela shows an attentive, almost submissive, sympathy to the maestro. She is, however, more personal in opinions than before. But what is going on inside her? When she talks it always

Like diaries and memoirs, portraits and especially self-portraits represent a favorite means of inserting the creator's self into history. One may eventually infer, if not directly grasp a writer's or a painter's positions and opinions about his milieu and

excerpts The Diary and Its Readers We should not overdo it with diaries and letters. We usually tend to deem them more revealing of the man than his public work. All that is secretive, familiar draws us as if it were a confession. It is the pleasure of breaking an interdiction,

* Excerpts from an interview with prose writer, political analyst and journalist Stelian TĂNASE (Observator cultural no. 121, 18-24 June 2002) Why did you choose to publish At Home We Speak in Whispers at this particular moment? Books come and go in a writer's imagination.

1. The Mirror of the SelfThere are people, quite a few, and not particularly the happy ones, who are themselves their main concern. They pay a great deal of attention to all the signals their body sends. For them, the physical well-being is a goal in itself, which should

6 March 1960So I am finally taken out as well, led inside an office hid in that tiny niche of the arched corridor; examined, identified, undressed. I am only left one towel, one bar of soap, one toothbrush, one toothpaste, two pairs of socks, one shirt, one pair of underwear,

1945 January 1st Absolutely alone, this Eve. First time ever, I imagine. Listening to the King's speech and to general Rădescu's[i]. Nonetheless, kicked off the evening by a prayer: asked God for PEACE, serenity, calmness. At the depth of my soul: melancholy,

Iaşi, July 12, 1942. We get news from Bucharest that Marshal Ion Antonescu is seriously ill in Predeal. All kinds of versions about his disease, general anemia or the consequences of an old syphilis, so he had to undergo malaria treatment. Meanwhile, it seems that the old

January 5, 1940 On Monday I must get down to work seriously and consistently. Apart from this, my life has become unbearable. I don't know what the devil is the matter with me, I feel as if I were growing old and stupid. I suppose I have some obsessions of my own,

*  Sunday, March 31, 1940Rotten weather. I stay indoors and work, bringing my Diary to date. The French and the British hold frequent, definitely long conferences – now in Paris, now in London – attended by militaries and politicians. This incessant activity evinces

Paris, February 7th, 1939The phone wakes me up: it's George, who calls me from Algiers. He keeps waiting for his plane to be repaired. The thought that he left on an old jade – as he says – worries me. I remember my mother-in-law's words and I agree with her:

Un sot n'a pas assez d'étoffe pour être bon. La Rochefoucauld Let alone the characteristics of the genre, Mihail Sebastian's Diary is a confession about relationships with the other set against the background of rising anti-Semitism between the two World