#mihail sebastian

[soracities]

Mihail Sebastian, Women (trans. Phillip Ó Ceallaigh)

[Text ID: "September has arrived, lovely in its weakening light."]

[petaltexturedskies]

Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

[adiradirim]

"I asked Parlea: Aren't you afraid it's going to end again with cracked skulls and broken windows? Don't you ask yourself if it's going to end up with an anti-Semitic disturbance, and go no further? Don't you think calling this thing of yours a "revolution" is just using a new word for an ancient wretchedness?' He frowned, and answered: "There's a drought, and I await the rain. And you stand there and tell me: "A hard rain is what we need. But what if it comes with hail? If it comes with a storm? If it ruins what I've sowed?" Well, I'll tell you: I don't know how the rain will fall. I just want it to come. That's all. With hail, storm, lightning, as long as it comes. One or two will survive the deluge. Nobody will survive drought. If the revolution demands a pogrom, then give it a pogrom. It's not for me, or you, or him. It's for everybody. Whose time is up and whose isn't, I don't care, even if I myself die. I only care about one thing: that there's a drought and rain is needed. Apart from that, I want nothing, expect nothing, wonder about nothing.' I could reply. I could tell him that a metaphor is inadequate in the face of a bloodbath. That a Platonic inclination for dying doesn't balance out the serious decision to kill. That through the ages there has never been a great historical infamy committed for which there couldn't be found a symbol just as big, to justify it. That, in consequence, we would do well to pay attention to great certainties, to great invocations, to the great 'droughts' and 'rains'. That the temper of our most violent outbursts might benefit from a shade less enthusiasm. I could reply. But what good would it do? I have a simple, resigned, inexplicable sensation that everything that is happening is in the normal order of things and that I am awaiting a season that will come and pass - because it has come and passed before."

Mihail Sebastian, Two Thousand Years (trans. Philip Ó Ceallaigh), originally published 1934, Romania

[thebluesthour]

Below, on the guesthouse terrace, chairs and shawls and white dresses can be seen. And beyond, the idyllic, clear, blue lake. A postcard.

Mihail Sebastian, Women (trans. Phillip Ó Ceallaigh)

[mioritic]

Visited someone dear to my heart on his 116th birthday — and took the opportunity for an autumn stroll around the Jewish cemetery

[bulletpillarsinorion]

writings about november

[oldwinesoul]

“Nothing destroys general ideas and conclusions more radically than being in love, since love reduces everything down to your own sensibility, reinventing superstitions, certainties, and doubts and values, obliging you to live them, to test them, to re-create them. There is something profoundly original in every love, a principle of birth, of creating all things from the beginning.”

—Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years (tr. by Philip o Ceallaigh)

[imaginemirage]

I was happy three days ago. Today I'm depressed. What happened? Nothing. An inner crutch slipped. Some poorly suppressed memory rose to the surface.

Mihail Sebastion

[mossandfern]

my time of year, november. the month when i re-read books, leaf through papers, gather notes. it's a kind of hunger for work, for activity, for taking up all the old tasks once again. and that damp organic smell in the morning when i go out — and the warm halos of lamplight in the evening when i return.

[joybank]

“Those November evenings, when the streets were sad and the first fire brought warmth and laziness in the house, and something indistinguishable that could have been called happiness...”

Mihail Sebastian, The Town with Acacia Trees

[soracities]

Mihail Sebastian, Women (trans. Phillip Ó Ceallaigh) [transcript in ALT]

[petaltexturedskies]

(…) the melancholy of summer's end, when the sun is still strong and the light is clear but the tops of the evening trees shiver with a presentiment of the coming decline, a knowledge it contains within itself the way a loaf of bread recalls the hot embers of the fire where it was baked.

Mihail Sebastian, from Women

[adiradirim]

Now that I think about it, the problem isn't that three boys can stand at a street corner and cry "Death to the Yids', but that the cry goes unobserved and unopposed, like the tinkling of a bell on a tram. Sometimes, sitting alone at home, I realize I can suddenly hear the ticking of the clock. It has been beside me all along but, either because I wasn't paying attention or because I'm accustomed to it, I don't notice it. It has got lost, along with many other familiar little noises, in a kind of silence that swallows the sound of things around. Out of this stillness, you get suddenly caught off-guard by the clock ticking with unsuspected violence and energy. The ticks strike in short, clipped beats, like the blows of tiny metal fists. It's not a clock any more, it's a machine gun. The sound covers everything. fills the room, grates on your nerves. I hide it in the wardrobe - it resounds even from there. I smother it beneath a pillow - the sound continues, distant and vehement. There's no cure but to resign yourself. You have to wait. After a while, by some miracle, the attack is over, the cogs settle down, the second hand relaxes. You can no longer hear it: the ticking has blended back into the general silence of the house, merged with the general hum of all the other objects. Exactly the same thing happens with that age-old call for death, which is always present somewhere on Romanian streets, but audible only at certain moments. Year after year it resounds in the ear of the common man, who is indifferent, in a hurry, with other things on his mind. Year after year it rumbles and echoes in street and byway, and nobody hears it. And one day, out of nowhere, behold how it suddenly pierces the wall of deafness around it, and issues from every crack and from under every stone. Out of nowhere? Well, not really. What is required is a period of exhaustion, of stress, of tense expectancy, a period of disillusionment. And then the unheeded voices are audible again."

Mihail Sebastian, Two Thousand Years (trans. Philip Ó Ceallaigh), originally published 1934, Romania

[dk-thrive]

I was happy three days ago. Today I’m depressed. What happened? Nothing. An inner crutch slipped. Some poorly suppressed memory rose to the surface.

Mihail Sebastian, from ‘For Two Thousand Years’ (tr. Phillip Ó Ceallaigh) (Other Press; September 12, 2017) (via Alive on All Channels)

[mioritic]

From left to right: ?, Mihail Sebastian, Mihail and Mary Polihroniade, Marietta Sadova, Mircea Eliade, Floria Capsali, ?, Haig Acterian

At a cabin somewhere in the Făgăraș Mountains, 1932

[riemmetric]

I've had my Wordpress blog for ten years and I struggle to use it consistently. This week I decided to start simple: just talk about your all time favorite books, for now. They're mostly Sci-Fi, with a realistic one to represent my love of living in cities.