From Pariah’s Isolation to Resistance: The Case of Mihail Sebastian

• In Event: Resisting Fascism

Abstract

In times of ideological frenzy, thinking becomes a form of action, by enabling not only passive resistance to evil, but also the active effort to fight and prevent its fungus-like spread. I argue that, during the fascist years in Romania, Mihail Sebastian, a Jewish Romanian journalist, novelist, playwright, and literary critic, transformed thinking into active resistance to evil by writing his personal journal with the mind of a critic, whose mission is to observe with lucidity and act as an “agent of dialogue” who avoids narrow partisanship and the divisiveness of tribal nationalism. Sebastian’s private journal was a form of active resistance to evil because it was written as: (i) an examination, criticism, and rejection of the irrationality, destructiveness, and evil of the present he witnessed in fascist Romania; (ii) as an anticipated dialogue with others about their blindness and inability to see themselves and their actions in their true light; and (iii) as a testimony to the rhinocerization of Romanian cultural elites and a call to future national self-scrutiny and dialogue in Romania about the country’s anti-Semitism and the responsibility it bears for the Holocaust.

Author

• Mihaela Czobor-Lupp, Carleton College