Radical Shadows Page 28

  The reader of these fragments I selected for Conjunctions from Cahiers will recognize the obvious separation and also the lasting connection between the young and the old Cioran. Already aging, he seems, at the time of writing these “notes,” more sensitive to human suffering, more vulnerable and even more tolerant. His loneliness and lucidity still play with negation, even in some frivolous form, but his melancholy runs deeper as the consequence of a painful knowledge that the end of his earthly, pagan adventure was near. He seems, indeed, “more inclined to accept even the liberal democratic Western world with its quintessential injustice, with its vermin of businessmen and shopkeepers, with its freedoms,” as Matei Calinescu wrote in an excellent study, “Reading Cioran” (Salmagundi). And yet, Cioran still thinks, in 1960, in History of Utopia that: “‘Freedoms’ prosper only in a sick body politic: tolerance and impotence are synonymous.”

  As a master of paradox and, therefore, an “anti” type of thinker, a fighter of banality, canons and standards, common sense and common taste, Cioran always followed his stubborn “anti”-ness, even when the result was not necessarily of real spiritual relevance. “Being paradoxical—embracing ideas and opinions that go against the grain, that are shocking to the common sense or to what is more or less generally accepted—becomes an imperative, a categorical aesthetic (and implicitly amoral) imperative, as it were. A certain kind of (theoretical) extremism is always involved,” proposed Matei Calinescu.

  This may be also a key for reading some of the fragments in our selection from Cahiers. It may contribute, in a way, even to the understanding of the most scandalous statement, such as “There is something worse than anti-Semitism: it is anti-anti-Semitism.” What exactly does Cioran mean by this? Does he equate anti-Semitism with the gas chambers? Does he see anti-anti-Semitism as a profitable “show,” a false rhetoric and demagogical militantism? And can these two be compared? He doesn’t qualify the terms with any adjective: neither dark or frivolous or boring anti-Semitism, nor cheap or vigorous or inflated or boring anti-anti-Semitism. The reader should be reminded, at this point, that Cioran’s relationship with Jews and their fate was never simple. He never wrote about the Jews in the consistently harsh way he wrote about his fellow Romanians, and we, probably, cannot ask for more from a zealous nihilist and a heretic. Yet, his statements about Jews were always ambiguous and often held double meanings.

  In 1937, when Romanian anti-Semitism was booming and the generic iconoclastic Rebel-Cioran already was a supporter of the extreme right-wing political movement, he proved ready to adopt the “banal” view that the Jewish “antinational spirit” was, of course, a threat to the country. He added, however, that another threat was Jewish “superiority.” This was a quite daring “paradoxical” statement, at a time when anti-Semitic laws were based on the assumption of the inferiority of the “Jewish race,” but it was not necessarily a statement of sympathy or solidarity towards the “enemies” of his country. Similarly, he wrote, then, that anti-Semitism was “the greatest tribute paid to the Jews.”

  During and after the war, Cioran was, it seems, shocked by the Jewish tragedy, by what happened to his Jewish friends (the novelist Mihail Sebastian, who remained in Bucharest; the Romanian-French poet Benjamin Fondane, killed at Auschwitz, the Romanian-German poet Paul Celan, who committed suicide in Paris). In his postwar essay dedicated to the Jews (“A People of Solitaries”), which Susan Sontag considered “surprisingly cursory and high-handed” (a reference to this statement can be found in this Cahiers selection), Cioran attempted a kind of codified dialogue with his prewar texts on the same topic. “I found myself loathing them with the fury of a love turned to hate … I had only a bookish commiseration for their suffering, and could not divine what was in store for them.”

  We may assume, perhaps, that after stating in Cahiers “I am metaphysically Jewish,” he thought he might allow himself the kind of statement with which some real Jews, well known for their bittersweet humor and sarcastic self-criticism, would have agreed. So, gambling with negativity, playing tricks on himself and on the entire world … equating anti-Semitism with anti-anti-Semitism (and, hard to believe, even less than equating) seemed, probably, simply too easy for that promoter of any and all “anti” impulses. He had forgotten, however, that he also introduced himself, in the same notes, as a Mongol, a Hungarian, a Slav, a Central-European, people not known as great friends of the Jews or of “anti-anti-Semites …”

  This and other outrageous quotes mix in a very personal way (“implicitly amoral,” as Matei Calinescu emphasizes) right and wrong, and also enter into a dialogue with many opposite, contradictory, stimulating thoughts, original ideas, acute questions, in a challenging miscellany of original stylish bravura.

  From a nearly one-thousand-page book, different readers would choose different excerpts. Our selection from Cioran’s notebooks tries to offer a diverse image of his preoccupations, pleasures and pain in the period covered by the Cahiers. The reader will find references to his reading and writing, to his friends and dilemmas, his connection to music and poetry, his productive insomnia and anxiety, his obsessions with Romanians and Jews and Europeans, with belonging and estrangement. This is a fragmented account of the daily and nightly life of a restless soul, a troubled and troubling mind: the thinker as a blasphemous troublemaker, as an uninnocent child of a tragic century.

  I would like to express my gratitude to Patrick Camiller, who translated from Romanian my essay “Meeting Cioran,” which is partially incorporated in this afterword; and to Bradford Morrow for his generous help and advice with the entire project. Also I thank Richard Howard, Cioran’s brilliant translator, for his deft work here, done on short notice.

  Three Stories

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  —Translated from Russian by Anneta Greenlee

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  THIRTY-YEAR-OLD MIKHAIL BULGAKOV arrived in 1921 in Moscow where he was to live for the rest of his life. Unaware of the troubles that lay ahead for him, he looked forward to life in the capital, where he thought he would earn his living during the day, and write his books and plays late into the night. “A single wish made me rush about this vast and strange capital,” Bulgakov wrote in his diary, May 27, 1924. “To find work that would feed me. And I was always able to find it … work most fantastical and brief, like galloping consumption …”

  In 1925 Bulgakov began working for Gudok (A Horn), a newspaper published by the Union of Railroad Workers, where he started out as an editor, and later became a writer of short satirical stories which he based on letters sent in by Gudok journalists.

  The three stories in this issue of Conjunctions first appeared in Gudok in 1925, and have never before been translated into English. They remained uncollected in Russia, and for all intents and purposes were unavailable to scholars until a few years ago. Extant copies of Gudok are extremely rare. Indeed, before Glasnost, special permits were required to gain access to the archives they were kept in. These stories conjure themes and images found in the author’s later work. The séance in “Mademoiselle Janna” reminds us of the varieté show in The Master and Margarita, where the audience is also mercilessly duped. The hilarious dialogue in “Jumping the Line,” defying logic and yet so real, is mirrored in the descriptions of the Soviet bureaucrats and the half-educated bores in works such as The Heart of a Dog and The Fatal Eggs. The spine-chilling joke of a dream in “The Conductor and the Member of the Imperial Family” becomes phantasmagoric reality in Bulgakov’s play Flight.

  Bulgakov’s stories constitute an entire Theater of Satire. A great lover of the stage, he writes as if the action were unfolding before his eyes. This theatrical quality is particularly striking in “Jumping the Line,” which consists entirely of dialogue. Descriptions are external, very much like stage directions; characters and situations are highly stylized. These stories puzzled Soviet critics, who often could not make up their minds whether or not Bulgakov was criticizing the “New Man” of Soviet society. The
re is a universal quality in Bulgakov’s social types—they are mirrors of human foibles and paradoxes of existence.

  MADEMOISELLE JANNA

  We had a performance at our club at the train station in

  the town of Z, with a clairvoyant called Mademoiselle

  Janna. She read people’s minds and made 150 rubles in

  a single evening.

  —A Reporter of the People

  THE AUDIENCE FROZE. A lady in a purple dress and red stockings appeared on stage with anxious, made-up eyes, and behind her a perky, moth-eaten-looking impresario in striped pants with a chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. The impresario darted his eyes left and then right, bent over and whispered into Mademoiselle Janna’s ear:

  “In the first row, the bald one with the paper collar—he’s the second deputy station master. He recently proposed, she turned him down. A certain Nourotchka. (To the audience, loudly): Greetings, Ladies and Gentlemen! I have the great honor to introduce the famous clairvoyant and medium, Mamselle Janna of Paris and Sicily. She can see the past, the present and the future, and on top of that, our most intimate family secrets!”

  The audience went pale.

  (To Mademoiselle Janna): “Make your face mysterious, you idiot. (To the audience): However, you must not think that here we have some kind of witchcraft or other miracle or something. Not at all, for miracles do not exist. (To Mademoiselle Janna): Didn’t I tell you a thousand times to wear a bracelet for the show? (To the audience): Everything, with the permission of the Local Party Committee and the Commission for Culture and Education, is based exclusively on the powers of nature. It consists of vitalopathy based on hypnotism, as it is taught by India’s fakirs, who are oppressed by English imperialism. (To Mademoiselle Janna, in a whisper): The woman under the poster, to the side, the one with the tiny purse! Her husband is having an affair at the next train station. (To the audience): If anybody should wish to know deep family secrets, please direct your questions to me, and I will transmit them by means of hypnotism, having put the famous Mademoiselle Janna to sleep … please, Mademoiselle, take a seat … one at a time, citizens! One, two, three—Yes! You are beginning to feel sleepy. (He makes a gesture with his hands as if he were about to stick his fingers in Mademoiselle Janna’s eyes.) Ladies and Gentlemen! You have before you a most extraordinary example of occult science! (To Mademoiselle Janna, in a whisper): Fall asleep already! How long are you going to keep staring at me? (To the audience): So, she’s asleep. Let’s begin!”

  In the dead silence the station master stood up, went purple, then white, and then asked in a voice wild with fear: “What is the most important event in my life right now?”

  (The impresario to Mademoiselle Janna): “Keep looking at my fingers, you idiot!”

  The impresario twirled his index finger under his chrysanthemum buttonhole, then made some mysterious signs with his fingers which spelled out “bro-ken.”

  “Your heart has been broken by a perfidious woman!” Mademoiselle Janna spoke in a graveyard voice, as if in a dream.

  The impresario blinked approvingly. The audience moaned and turned its eyes on the miserable deputy station master.

  “What is her name?” the rejected deputy station master asked in a hoarse voice.

  “Nou-ro-tch-ka,” the impresario’s fingers spelled out near his jacket’s lapel.

  “Nourotchka!” Mademoiselle Janna answered firmly.

  The deputy station master rose from his seat, his face all green. He looked gloomily in all directions, and, dropping his hat and a pack of cigarettes, marched out.

  “Will I ever marry?” a hysterical woman’s voice suddenly shouted from the audience. “Please tell me, my dear Mamselle Janna!”

  The impresario appraised the woman with the eye of a connoisseur. He eyed the pimple on her nose, her thin yellow hair and her crooked back. He stuck his thumb between his index and middle finger next to his chrysanthemum buttonhole.

  “No, you won’t!” Mademoiselle Janna said.

  The audience thundered like a squadron crossing a bridge, and the mortified woman scuttled out.

  The woman with the tiny purse moved away from the posters by the wall and sneaked up to Mademoiselle Janna.

  “Dasha darling, don’t!” a man’s hoarse whisper came from the crowd.

  “No! I will! I’m going to find out all about your tricks and treachery!” the owner of the tiny purse shouted. “Tell me, Mademoiselle! Is my husband cheating on me?”

  The impresario eyed the husband, glanced into his embarrassed little eyes, considered the deep crimson of his face and crossed his fingers, which meant yes.

  “He is cheating!” Mademoiselle Janna answered with a sigh.

  “With whom?” Dasha asked in an ominous voice.

  “What the hell is her name?” the impresario thought. “Damn it! … Oh, yes, yes, yes, the wife of that … damn! … Yes! Anna!”

  “Dear J … anna, please tell us, J … anna, with whom the lady’s husband is cheating?”

  “With Anna,” Mademoiselle Janna said with aplomb.

  “I knew it! I knew it!” Dasha sobbed. “I’ve had my suspicions for some time now! You bastard!”

  With these words she slammed the tiny purse on her husband’s right well-shaven cheek.

  The audience roared with laughter.

  JUMPING THE LINE

  There was a line outside the Moscow Criminal Investigations Department.

  “Oh … Geez … all this waiting and waiting!”

  “Even here there’s a line!”

  “What can you do? Do you happen to be a bookkeeper, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Nope, I’m a cashier.”

  “Did you come to get arrested?”

  “Yeah, what else!”

  “That’s good. So how much were you caught with, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Three thousand smackers.”

  “That’s nothing, young man. You’ll just get a year. But if you take your heartfelt repentance into consideration … and the fact that the Bolshevik Anniversary is coming up … so, all in all, you’ll do three months, and then, the sweet bird of freedom!”

  “You sure? You’re comforting me no end. I was already real desperate. Yesterday I went to see a lawyer, and he scared the living daylights out of me—the article, he tells me, is such that you won’t get away with less than two years’ hard labor.”

  “Pure twaddle, young man! Trust my experience. Hey, you there! Where do you think you’re going? Get back in line!”

  “Citizens! Let me pass! I filched some official money! My conscience is biting me!”

  “Everyone’s conscience is biting them! You’re not the only one!”

  “I squandered the entire holdings of the Moscow Agrarian Industry Store in drink!” a low voice kept mumbling.

  “Quite a fellow, aren’t you! You’ll pay for it now! You’ll never see the light of day again!”

  “That’s not true! What if I’m ignorant? And not educated? And there are hereditary social conditions, huh? And my previous conviction? And being an alcoholic?”

  “How come they put you, an alcoholic, in charge of the wine store?”

  “I did warn them!”

  “Hey you! Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Citizen Officer! I am tortured by remorse!”

  “Hey, stop pushing! I’m tortured too!”

  “Excuse me! I’ve been waiting here since ten in the morning to get arrested!”

  “Just give me your last name, place of employment, amount!”

  “Fioletov, Misha, tortured by remorseful conscience!”

  “How much?”

  “In Makrettrest—two hundred smackers.”

  “Sidorchuk! Process this Fioletov!”

  “May I take my toothbrush with me?”

  “You may! And you, what was the amount?”

  “Seven people.”

  “A family?”

  “Exactly.”

/>   “And how much was it you took?”

  “Two hundred in cash, a robe, a watch and some candlesticks.”

  “I don’t get it. An official’s robe?”

  “What do you mean? Us guys don’t deal with officials. It was a private family. Shtippelman.”

  “You’re Shtippelman?”

  “Me? No!”

  “Then what’s Shtippelman got to do with it?”

  “What he’s got to do with it is we knifed him. I’m reporting seven people: his wife, five children and their granny.”

  “Sidorchuk! Kakhrushin! Take preventive measures! Now!”

  “Excuse me, Citizen Officer! Why is this man getting preferential treatment?”

  “Please, citizens! Be conscientious! This man is a murderer!”

  “Big deal! You’re telling us he’s a big shot or something? For all you know I might have blown up a state institution!”

  “This is an outrage! Bureaucracy! We will complain!”

  THE CONDUCTOR AND THE MEMBER OF THE IMPERIAL FAMILY

  Conductors on the Moscow-Byelorussian-Baltic Railroad have been issued Ordinance No. 85, printed in the prerevolutionary days of the Ministry of Transportation, requiring them to provide deferential treatment to members of the Imperial Family.

  —A Reporter of the People