Mihail Sebastian - A Danubian Romanian or the Writer’s Triple Identity

Abstract

Mihail Sebastian – the Romanian writer of Jewish origin - lived in one of the mosttumultuous and frustrating periods of history, the two world wars, marked by deep social and politicalchanges, and, last but not least, by psychological ones. He was part of a generation who experiencedan age of profound changes, when instability, insecurity and alienation were the factors that led toanalyzing the inner world. Mihail Sebastian was destined to be “the child of suffering”, according to awrong mentality induced against the Semitic community along the time; and thus, his life took theshape of his destiny. Undoubtedly, Joseph Hechter’s (his real name) childhood was frustrating, thewriter often evoking it as a troubled childhood, which was to mark him for the rest of his life; MihailSebastian recognized the enormous inferiority complex that the “lost” child had because of hisHebrew identity. That is why, Sebastian aspired to re-create a painful reality through art; his worktried a solution, a version of an autobiography marked by the awareness of loss. As far as his birthplace is concerned (the city of Braila, on the Danube river), for Sebastian it represented a “mythicgeography”. “Jewish, Romanian and Danubian” is how the writer named himself or “the mostRomanian Jewish”. Therefore, we can talk about Sebastian’s triple identity: Romanian, Jewish andwriter of the Danube.

Keywords

• Mihail Sebastian
• triple identity
• Semitic community