This is a wonderful story written in journal/diary form.

For Two Thousand Years by Mikhail Sebastian was first published in Romania in 1934 and only recently translated into English by Philip Ó Ceallaigh, the author of the excellent Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse and two other short story collections. The Other Press has done a service by publishing For Two Thousand Years in the U.S., and I would like to thank the Other Press and NetGalley for providing it to me.

For Two Thousand Years is a remarkable novel, interweaving several themes.

Underlying For Two Thousand Years are the reflections of a young Jewish intellectual coming of age in the politically chaotic interwar period in Romania. The Montaigne quotation that Sebastian placed at the beginning For Two Thousand Years is perfectly apposite: “I not only dare to talk about myself but to talk of nothing but myself. I am wandering off the point when I write of anything else, cheating my subject of me.” And so it is with the young narrator, who yearns to be left alone to pursue his law studies, despite roiling arguments among his friends about Zionism: “[E]ven though I’m in the midst of ten people who believe me their ‘brother in suffering,’ I am in fact absolutely, definitively alone.” Similarly, the young narrator yearns to be left alone, despite the political turmoil and virulent anti-Semitism surrounding him. He wants to continue plumbing his own melancholies, hopefully accompanied by occasional sexual assignations and by stimulating discussions with his academic mentors, rather than engaging politically. When Ghita Blidaru, a much-respected and anti-Semitic professor, challenges the narrator to abandon law and pursue architecture since it “connects you to the soil”, the narrator ponders, seeks the advice of his then female companion, and ultimately agrees to leave behind his beloved law studies and to switch to architecture. Some years later, after the narrator has established himself as an architect, he seeks to understand the anti-Semitism of a colleague: “What I find interesting about Parlea’s problem is that its origin lie in the movement of 1923. What remains from those years is not only the bloodied heads, the careers that were made and a steady engagement with anti-Semitism, but also a revolutionary spirit, a seed of a sincere rebellion against the world in which we live.”

The narrator’s struggles to define himself as a Romanian, an architect, and as a Danubian, rather than primarily or solely as a Jew and certainly not as a Zionist. Although surrounded by politically-sanctioned and accepted anti-Semitism, the narrator rejects what he views as the limits of Zionism. In the narrator’s Romania, beatings of Jews are common, evictions of Jews from university classrooms are common, and anti-Semitic street rallies are common. The narrator recognizes the “For Two Thousand Years” of anti-Semitism with the two thousand years clearly referring to the birth of Christianity as well as “two thousand years of Talmudism and melancholy”, but he opts to view anti-Semitism as a seemingly minor foible of his mentors, his friends and classmates, and Romanian society.

A minor but interesting theme, introduced late in For Two Thousand Years, deals with the role of facts versus the role of phantasy in politics. As the narrator says to a colleague, “It’s not about how many of them [Jews in Romania] there are, but how many of them you think there are. Why do you—so critical in architecture and so rigorous about every fact and affirmation. . . why do you become suddenly negligent and hasty when you start to speak about Jews, casually accepting a ninety percent approximation, when in any other domain you’d balk at an approximation of 0.01?” Of course, in highlighting this issue, Sebastian touched on a basic facet of fascism and a basic issue so central to contemporary U.S. politics.

Reading For Two Thousand Years more than eighty years after its initial publication is chilling, just as reading Anne Frank’s Diary is. Sebastian correctly identified the cross-currents tearing and Europe apart, but not surprisingly he could not foresee the massive horrors that would ultimately flow from those cross-currents. The few rays of optimism, desire for social acceptance, and wishes for social and political comity that range through For Two Thousand seem tragic in retrospect.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, and Penguin Classics - Other Books in exchange for an honest review. This manuscript was originally published in Romanian in 1934. This 2017 release is the first English language translation of this work.

This is an exceptional story, written as a journal or diary, by a young Romanian Jew as he moves through the late 1920's early 1930's. Sharing these glimpses into the difficult daily life of young Mihail Sebastian as he struggles through his schooling and into a career as an architect is heart wrenching. As the world crumbles around him, there is so much to learn of this time, this place. The first and hardest lesson is absorbing the fact that Mihail expects and accepts the bullying and harassment he encounters at school and on the streets without resentment. Add in the fact that you know what is coming for this community, this country, this young man, For Two Thousand Years can break your heart.

There is a lot out there to read in an effort to understand about World War II from the aspect of Europeans who suffered through these hard times. I have not found a great deal about Romania written by Romanians. I was most pleased to find this treasure. It will go into my history bookcase to read again at leisure. Thank you, Other Books, for bringing this work into our world. With more understanding of what folded our world into World War II perhaps we can back up and avoid WWIII.