Mihail Sebastian, “For Two Thousand Years”: the Labyrinth of a Private Conscience
In the novel the realism of the traditional style is challenged. The narrative is metamorphosed into fragmentary notation, diary like. This is by virtue of the authenticity of the artistic expression belonging to the experiences of a private, personal conscience. Although the apparent problems of the novel is “the Jewish matter”, i.e. e. the Romanian interwar anti-Semitism, actually the work does not aim to voice a collective drama or to find out a universal solution. It has in view to present “merely” the bitter paradox of an individual conscience wishing to remain independent yet finding itself the captive of its own labyrinth like liberty. Albeit critical in the manner of style and with reference to the fabrication (the authenticity is not quite convincing, the subject feels too artificial and the scheme – schematic), nevertheless “For Two Thousand Years” is the faultless tome of a matchless intellectual and to a lesser extant of an artist.
Keywords: anti-Semitism, authenticity, conscience, independence, intellectual, liberty.
1.[1] Mihail Sebastian, De două mii de ani… Cum am devenit huligan, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 1990, p. 34.
2.[1] Ibidem, p. 35.
3.[1] Ibidem, p. 38.
4.[1] Ibidem, p. 50, p. 52.
5.[1] Ibidem, p. 57.
6.[1] Ibidem, p. 41-42, p. 42-43, p. 44.
7.[1] Ibidem, p. 77.
8.[1] Ibidem, p. 32-33.
9.[1] Ibidem, p. 48-49.
10.[1] Ibidem, p. 49.
11.[1] Ibidem, p. 59-60.
12.[1] Ibidem, p. 102-103.
13.[1] Ibidem, p. 80.
14.[1] Ibidem, p. 10.
15.[1] Ibidem, p. 12.
16.[1] Ibidem, p. 47.
17.[1] Ibidem, p. 48.
18.[1] Ibidem, p. 84-85.
19.[1] Ibidem, p. 96.
20.[1] Ibidem, p. 107.
21.[1] Ibidem, p. 115.
22.[1] Ibidem.
23.[1] Ibidem, p. 127.
24.[1] Ibidem, p. 128.
25.[1] Ibidem, p. 138-139.
26.[1] Ibidem, p. 141.
27.[1] Ibidem, p. 156.
28.[1] Ibidem, p. 136.
29.[1] Ibidem, p. 137.
30.[1] Ibidem, p. 139.
31.[1] Ibidem, p. 140.
32.[1] Ibidem.
33.[1] Ibidem, p. 122.
34.[1] Ibidem, p. 129.
35.[1] Ibidem, p. 158.
36.[1] Ibidem, p. 168.
37.[1] Ibidem, p. 178.
38.[1] Ibidem, p. 200.
39.[1] Ibidem, p. 203.
40.[1] Ov. S. Crohmălniceanu, Literatura română între cele două războaie mondiale. Vol. III. Dramaturgia şi critica literară, Bucureşti, Editura Minerva, 1975, p. 107.
41.[1] Mihail Sebastian, op. cit., p. 211.
42.[1] Ibidem, p. 223.
43.[1] Ibidem, p. 225.
44.[1] Ibidem, p. 226.
45.[1] Pompiliu Constantinescu, [Sobra şi demna confesiune a unei sensibilităţi ultragiate], apud Mihail Sebastian, Antologie, prefaţă, tabel cronologic şi bibliografie de Anatol Ghermanschi, Bucureşti, Editura Eminescu, 1981, p. 105, p. 107.
