Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent
Mircea Eliade
Revised translation by Christopher Moncrieff with reference to an original translation by Christopher Bartholomew
First published in 2016 by
Istros Books
London, United Kingdom www.istrosbooks.com
Originally published in Romanian as Romanul adolescentului miop
Copyright © Estate of Mircea Eliade, 2016
The right of Mircea Eliade to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Translation copyright © Metamorphosis Limited
Cover design and typesetting: Davor Pukljak, www.frontispis.hr
ISBN:
978-1-908236-21-0 (printed edition)
978-1-908236-74-6 (Eook)
Istros Books wishes to acknowledge the financial support granted by the Romanian Cultural Institute
With thanks to the Prodan Romanian Cultural Foundation for supporting the publication of this book. www.romanianculture.org
Part I
I Must Write a Novel
As I was all alone I decided to begin writing The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent this very day. I’m going to work on it every afternoon. I don’t need inspiration; I only need to record my life, the life I know; besides, I’ve been thinking about the novel for quite some time. Dinu knows this: I’ve been keeping a Diary since I was in the Fourth Form1, when I had freckles like a Jewish boy and studied chemistry in a laboratory in a recess beside the stove. Whenever I felt sad feelings coming on, I would write in my Diary. And that Diary, which is now two years old, has always had one purpose: to describe the life of an adolescent who suffers from being misunderstood. But this isn’t all it contains. My Diary flatters me, satisfies my longing for revenge; just revenge on those who misunderstand me.
But the novel will be different. I’ll be the hero, naturally. Yet I’m worried that my life – stifled by writing and books – won’t be of interest to my readers. For me, everything I’ve been deprived of, everything I’ve wished for up in my attic in the restless, sultry twilight, is worth more than all the years my classmates wasted on playing cards, family parties and naïve romance. But what of the reader? Even I realize that the sufferings of a short-sighted adolescent won’t touch any hearts if the adolescent doesn’t fall in love and suffer. That’s why I created a character who I initially called Olga. I told Dinu everything that would happen in the presence of this girl. But he cut me short and begged: ‘If we really are friends, please change the heroine’s name to Laura.’
At first I was very agitated, because I didn’t know exactly what kind of girl would touch the heart of a short-sighted adolescent. The only girls I knew were the bootmaker’s daughters from next door, and under no circumstances could they be characters in a novel. The oldest, Maria, was skinny and sharp-tongued: she terrorized her brothers, stole green apricots, and screamed at the top of her voice when she chased after trams. The other one, Puica, was fat and grubby. Neither of them would beguile an adolescent; no one knew that better than I did.
Dinu insisted that he could help. He said he had known a great many girls. But how can I write a novel based on a heroine that Dinu knows? I decided that while I was writing, I would think about my cousin. For several weeks I have been questioning her whenever I see her. I told Dinu that I had her under observation.
‘If you want to write a novel’, she advised me, ‘you should make the hero handsome and kind. And call him Silviu.’
But when I told her the title and subject of the novel, she didn’t like it.
‘There should be two heroes,’ she said. ‘One handsome, the other ugly. And the title should be: Love between Children, or Spring Flowers; or Seventeen.’
My explanations were to no avail: ‘Vally, my dear, this is an intellectual novel, full of internal turmoil’, etc. All to no avail. And then I listened to her girlish confidences. It was very useful, because I learnt the vocabulary that girls use, and began to understand something of her dreams, longings, and troubles. It was as if I were listening to confessions that I had heard a long time ago. I remember thinking that my cousin wasn’t much different to the heroines in novels, or the sort of character that any lovesick soul could imagine. But how could I be sure that my cousin was really the same person who appeared in these girlish fantasies that she occasionally confided to me?
I know that she yearns to be friends with a kind young girl from a noble family, who would have a large country estate where she lives with her brother, a dark, courageous young man. He would lead them through the forest. He would teach them to hunt, and address them by the familiar form of ‘you’. She told me that, one night, she would like to be in the house when it was raided by a gang of thieves. She would grab a revolver and burst into the drawing room just as her friend’s brother was being strangled by a gypsy. She would save the brother’s life and nurse him back to health in a white bedroom where there was a small table covered with coloured flasks. His parents would be very grateful, and, smiling, would leave them alone together.
At this point my cousin stops. She doesn’t want to tell me if she would blush, or shyly withdraw her hand when her friend’s brother whispers in her ear: ‘I love you!’
I have no idea what else my cousin might imagine about this dark, convalescing boy, watched over by his younger sister and a beautiful friend.
Nonetheless, my novel still has to be written. ‘So after this’, said Dinu, ‘who else will dare let you down?’ Perhaps he takes delight in the important role his character will play in the book. He asked me to call the character inspired by him Dinu, and to make him melancholic.
Apart from that I can write whatever I like about him. In fact he insists that I write whatever I like about him. ‘But who could possibly find him interesting?’ I wondered, just like a real author.
For quite some time, school has been getting steadily worse. My one hope is that my novel will be in bookshops by the autumn. I’ll still fail my exams, but it’ll be the last time. My teachers will fear me, they will respect me, and in the staff common room they’ll protest if Vanciu, the maths master, or Faradopol, who teaches German, decide to fail me.
This week I haven’t had much luck; and the end of the final term is getting closer. In French on Monday there was a grammar test. For the past six years, Trollo has only ever tested us on French grammar. And naturally, for six years I haven’t learned a thing. This morning I’ll get an ‘Unsatisfactory’ as usual, just like I got in German when Faradopol asked me to summarize the first act of Nathan der Weise in German. He has made us speak German since we were in our second year. But he has never actually taught us any German...
This morning I set off for school in a melancholy mood. The chestnut trees were in leaf, the sky was blue, but I hadn’t done my homework. I thought: ‘I should go to the Cişmigiu Gardens instead.’ But I would have been embarrassed by my school bag. And the whole time I would have been terrified that I would be spotted by a master. It saddens me to think that I’m still so feeble, timid, and indecisive. I’d love to have a will of iron, to run away from home, to work in the dockyards, sleep in boats, and explore faraway lands. But instead I’m content to dream and put off victory for later, to fill the pages of my Diary. Lost in these gloomy thoughts, I made my way to school. Then Dinu caught up with me and shouted: ‘Hey, Doctor!’ He calls me this because I’m short-sighted and read books by lamplight. He was ecstatic: he had managed to get a ‘Satisfactory’ from Vanciu in the oral test.
Today