The Amazing Revelation of a Right-Wing Extremist Sebastian (I)

by: Ion Bogdan Lefter NR. 29 August 13. 2009.

Marta Petreu, Diavolul şi ucenicul său: Nae Ionescu-Mihail Sebastian (The Devil and His Apprentice: Nae Ionescu-Mihail Sebastian
- n.t.), Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2009, 296 p.

The cultural history - and history in general - rarely offers surprises

of proportions, even if the archives are seen as a depositary of some
great mysteries. In general, the past epochs are known on the whole,
the information and interpretations have accumulated and clarified
in time, even if - sometimes - in different images, even divergent.
The major novelties do not really have from where to come out. It
happens - for example - when there appear novel documents, a
journal or a set of intimate letters that can reveal things not revealed
up to then to the public: private information, data on personal
relationships that shed new light upon some behaviours otherwise
difficult to comprehend, hidden thought or - who knows? - unapplied
conspiracies. There are also - of course - the 'secret' political
archives, with data on the recent backstage governing, with
information on the actions of spies or - in a post-Communist version -
on the functioning of the political police, with case files, assignment
and reports of informants and all the rest. On the cultural side of
things, in order to return to where we began - small hopes, especially when it's a matter of far off
periods: just about everything has been read and reread, evaluations have been made, issues have
been placed. I remember but one exception from past years: the set of letters by Eminescu published
by Christina Zarifopol-Illias. Rara avis, unrepeatable.

The book of Marta Petreu about the youth of Mihail Sebastian is an example of a different type,
equally rare: that of a library research from whose result arises something practically unknown,
ignored by the entire world, though it has to do with a sufficiently prominent cultural figure,
intensely discussed after 1990 relating to two important guidelines to his works: 'the case' De două
mii de ani (For Two Thousand Years n.t.), about which a discussion could not be held during the
Communist period because it put the problem of Romanian anti-Semitism; and the novel Jurnalul (
The Journal n.t), from which , because of the dominant theme, only two extracts wee published
between 1970 and 1980 (in Manuscriptum and in Caiete critice / Criticism Notebooks - n.t.),
although it became legendary in some circles of the literary world back then. Once the censure was
abolished, the novel was re-edited and the notes from 1935 to 1944 saw the light of printing,
re-dimensioning the image of the author, known until then just as an author of slushy prose (Oraşul
cu salcîmi / The City with Acacia Trees - n.t.), a representative playwright of modernity (Jocul
de-a vacanţa / Playing Holiday - n.t., Steaua fără nume / The Nameless Star - n.t., Ultima oră
/ The Last Hour - n.t.) and an effervescent cultural publicist, resuscitated by a massive journalistic
edition from 1972 (Cronici, Eseuri, Memorial / Chronicles, Essays, Memorials - n.t). Once
restored her main literary work, De două mii de ani (For Two Thousand Years n.t.), with the
impressive add-on from Cum am devenit hooligan (How I Became a Thug - n.t), republished in
1990, like the splendid, disturbing journal, edited in 1996, Sebastian became another: a literary and
intellectual figure of great interest, dramatically involved in the ideological convulsions, from his
era, taken up once again in the intellectual debate after half a century, at the coming out from
Communism, that had blocked the discussion upon such subjects.

Now, in the book of Marta Petreu - again, another Sebastian.

The passion of the researcher for the 30's-40's

Our author did not come by chance by the subject and to the discovery from the book. Reputable
poet, one of the most important voices of Romanian literature from the last decades (I will not insist
here upon her membership to the 'echinoxism', to the post-modern 'new wave' that had its debut in
1980 and to Apostroful that she set up and runs from 1990 to the present), she is at once a top
essayist, of a philosophical forming (and professor at the Babeş-Bolyai University from Cluj), author
of studies and speciality books. Putting back to back the professional competence concerning the
analysis of ideas with a good knowledge of our literary and cultural history, she has dealt with a sort
of system of the blurry, sensational, highly controversial segment of the slipping of a part of native
intellectualism towards the extreme right in the inter-war period. The incursion into the biography of
Mihail Sebastian is the fourth in a series, after Un trecut deocheat sau Schimbarea la faţă a
României (An Indecent Past or The change of Face of Romania - 1999, 2004), Ionescu în ţara
tatălui (Ionescu in the Land of His Father - 2001, 2002) and Despre bolile filozofilor. Cioran (
About the Deseases of Philosophers. Cioran - 2008). In the first, the author analyses the youth of
the author of Culmilor disperării (the Peak of Desperation - n.t) and of Schimbării la faţă (The
Change of Face - n.t.)...as 'indecent wandering (according to the joking-bitter Cioranian notes: "the
writer that did stupid things in his youth, in the beginning, is like the woman with an indecent past.
It is forever held against him"). She analyses Eugen Ionescu's "sophistication", in which she
discovers the resorts of his literary career, she indicates his contact points with the ideology of the
young 30's generation and discovers the profound, psycho-analysable psychological motivations for
the separation from Romania: the individualism, the vocation of liberty, the repulsion towards the
extremist leeway of his colleagues of generation, but probably also the hidden Jewish origin of his
mother, which would also explain his anti-nationalism, carried to the description in the post-war
period of a "guilty Romania, because of racism". Probably everything is explained in this manner - it
is to be added - and the keeping of the secret after leaving the country, when he worked as an
extreme right diplomatic worker in the country, alongside the government of Vichy...again about
Cioran, in the third book, Marta Petreu puts face to face - on the one side - the writings of the
essayist and - on the other - his real or imaginary illnesses, the obsessions of the diseased man and
of the hypochondriac, with startling conclusions. In each case - very attentive documenting, from
which resulted impeccable constructs, 'plated' with evidence, with informants and quotes;
everything in order to prove as convincing as possible novel hypotheses, formulated from
unexpected angles, that permit ingenious reinterpretations of the biographies and works analysed.
Otherwise said, the era attracts her, however she does not write about her 'actors' except when she
has something new, as surprising and revealing as can be said about them.

On other occasions, the author studied Nae Ionescu as well, the 'guru' of the young adepts of
'trăirism' (life for life's sake - n.t.), she edited him, analysed the ideology and she even caught him in
a glaring case of plagiarism, the fascinating professor being - in fact - a compiler.

In his turn - the author of De două mii de ani (For Two Thousand Years - n.t.)...

(To Be Continued)