The Accident (Accidentul, 1940) was Mihail Sebastian’s final work published under his own name. Its elegiac tone belies the author’s personal turmoil and the extraordinary political situation through which he was living as a Jew in an increasingly authoritarian anti-Semitic state. Its production was even more traumatic for him as he lost the original manuscript and had to rewrite it. Although it was the fourth (and last) of his novels, it was the first to be published in English, in 2011.
The
accident in question happens to Nora, a 34-year-old teacher of French. On the 18th of December, 1934, she jumps off
a Bucharest tram as it is still moving, slips, and falls over on the pavement,
briefly stunning herself and hurting her knee.
A crowd gathers, out of which a man picks her up and unenthusiastically
helps her to her apartment. He is Paul, a
lawyer, who is still in shock from the end of an intense relationship with Ann,
a rising artist and a manipulative and unfaithful lover. The breakup has left him obsessing about her
and feeling apathetic about life.
Meeting
in such unusual circumstances will have implications for both Nora and Paul. Nora is an independent spirit, sensitive to
others, and relaxed where Paul is tightly-wound. After Paul helps her, then abruptly leaves
her flat, Nora seeks him out. She learns
it is his 30th birthday, not an event he was planning to mark, and she decides
to organise a surprise celebration for him.
They sleep together, but still he is emotionally absent. She is concerned that his disengagement,
marked by an annoying habit of shrugging his shoulders, hints at a suicidal
impulse, but she also finds something worthwhile in him. It is obvious she is far better for him than
Ann was, if he could only see it.
Despite
having known him for such a short time, she makes it her goal to rescue him
from his depression, and the obvious way is to teach him to ski, something he
had never done before. Overcoming his
ambivalence, she kits him out and takes him to the mountains near Brașov in
Transylvania for the Christmas holiday.
It is a popular winter sports region and they find it difficult to
secure accommodation. They finally board
with a Saxon pair who have a troubled family history, a young boy, Gunther
Grodeck, and his gruff older companion, Hagen.
As
the four become closer the story expands, with Nora extending her calming
influence to Gunther as the four (and dog) absorb the peaceful atmosphere of
the mountains and develop an affection for each other. Initially resistant to instruction, Paul
gradually learns to ski, and in its freedom is able to let go of his personal
obsessions by rejecting his isolation.
Then, under Nora’s tutelage, he has to learn self-discipline, and to
temper his wild feeling of freedom with the skills necessary to ski safely. He has to learn balance.
So,
after a few hiccups and some backsliding, with Nora frequently convinced Paul
is going to leave, and Paul not sure whether to stay either, putting them into
a state that is ‘together, yet alone’, the therapy proves successful. Paul is seduced by the pleasure of skiing, an
antidote to his unhealthy self-absorption and city-bred ennui. He has learned to live in the present and not
be weighed down by the past.
At
the end of the holiday, a chance meeting with Ann in a Brașov cafe demonstrates
to all concerned that he has been cured of his obsession, now appreciating the
difference between self-centred and deep selfless love. The novel ends on an optimistic note with
Paul purified by his time in the clean mountain air (it is no accident Nora’s
surname is Munteanu, containing munte – mountain) and free of Ann’s unhealthy
influence. At the dawn of the new year,
Paul and Nora are able to look to the future, not realising how few years of
peace are left to them.
Stephen
Henighan, who translated the novel, supplies an afterword outlining the cultural
and political environment, and the trajectory of Sebastian’s career, as the
context for a discussion of The Accident. He points to a subtle hint of the coming
conflict at the end of the novel when Paul does not appreciate that a bland
headline in a Hungarian-language newspaper is a harbinger of the political deterioration
during the rest of the decade. It was the
beginning of a period that was to end in tragedy for Sebastian; after the
privations he had experienced during the war, the loss of his livelihood and
the betrayals of friends. he died in a traffic accident, in 1945, aged 37.
In
contrast to the impending catastrophe, as well as the romantic story of Nora
and Paul, Sebastian depicts Romania at peace, before war and dictatorships
blighted it for half a century. It is a
place where Romanians and Saxons live side by side, while maintaining their
ethnic identities. Bucharest, ‘the Paris
of the East’, is thriving and cosmopolitan, full of life, like any other
European capital. Skiing and the
mountains of Romania were important for Sebastian, becoming more so as his
personal situation worsened, and he transmits this love through the story of
Nora saving Paul from himself.
Although
I have never tried it. I’ve always thought skiing possibly one of the dullest sports
one can engage in, but having read Sebastian’s exuberant descriptions of skiing
as a social activity I can now see its merits.
Not enough to want to strap on a pair of skis, admittedly, but I
understand why Nora thought it would be good for Paul: vigorous activity can be
an antidote to a feeling of dejection, distracting the sufferer and encouraging
a positive attitude. Paul was lucky to
meet Nora in his hour of need, and even luckier that she possessed the cure for
what ailed him.
