Hailed as one of the most important portrayals of the dark years of Nazism, this powerful chronicle by the Romanian Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian aroused a furious response in Eastern Europe when it was first published. A profound and powerful literary achievement, it offers a lucid and finely shaded analysis of erotic and social life, a Jewβs diary, a readerβs notebook, a music-loverβs journal. Above all, it is an account of the βrhinocerizationβ of major Romanian intellectuals whom Sebastian counted among his friends, including Mircea Eliade and E.M. Cioran, writers and thinkers who were mesmerized by the Nazi-fascist delirium of Europeβs βreactionary revolution.β In poignant, unforgettable sequences, Sebastian follows the grinding progression of the βmachineryβ of brutalization and traces the historical context in which it developed. Despite the pressure of hatred and horror in the βhuge anti-Semitic factoryβ that was Romania in the years of World War II, his writing maintains the grace of its perceptive and luminous intelligence. The legacy of a journalist, novelist, and playwright, Sebastianβs Journal stands as one of the most important human and literary documents of the climate that preceded the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Hailed as one of the most important portrayals of the dark years of Nazism, this powerful chronicle by the Romanian Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian aroused a furious response in Eastern Europe when it was first published. A profound and powerful literary achievement, it offers a lucid and finely s...