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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
This chronicle of the dark years of Nazism by the Romanian Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian, long delayed in its publication, has aroused a fury in Eastern Europe where appraisals of the Nazi period have been frozen in the cliches of old Communist regimes. In this respect the book resembles Victor Klemperer's massive diary from Germany, but Sebastian's Journal is a much greater literary achievement. It is now translated into English for the first time. Sebastian journalist, novelist, playwright was an elegant stylist who moved from theme to theme with admirable ease. His Journal offers a lucid and finely shaded analysis of erotic and social life, a Jew's diary, a reader's notebook, a music-lover's journal. Above all, it is an account of the "rhinocerization" 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 Europe's "reactionary revolution." In poignant sequences that are not easily forgotten, Sebastian touches on the progressions of the "machinery" of brutalization and on the historical context in which it developed. Under the pressure of hatred and horror, his writing maintains the grace of its intelligence. Today Sebastian's Journal stands as one of the most important human and literary documents of the climate that preceded the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
