Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    For Two Thousand Years
    For Two Thousand Years
    For Two Thousand Years
    Audiobook6 hours

    For Two Thousand Years

    Written by Mihail Sebastian

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    This literary masterpiece revives the ideological debates of the interwar period through the journal of a Romanian Jewish student caught between anti-Semitism and Zionism. Although he endures persistent threats just to attend lectures, he feels disconnected from his Jewish peers and questions whether their activism will be worth the cost. Spending his days walking the streets and his nights drinking and conversing with revolutionaries, zealots, and libertines, he remains isolated, even from the women he loves. From Bucharest to Paris, he strives to make peace with himself in an increasingly hostile world.

    For Two Thousand Years echoes Mihail Sebastian's struggles as the rise of fascism ended his career and turned his friends and colleagues against him. Born of the violence of relentless anti-Semitism, his searching, self-derisive work captures a defining moment in history and lights the way for generations to come-a prescient, heart-wrenching chronicle of resilience and despair, resistance and acceptance.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    TranslatorPhilip Oceallaigh
    Release dateSep 12, 2017
    ISBN9781541474246
    For Two Thousand Years

    Related to For Two Thousand Years

    Related audiobooks

    Jewish Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Stephen Dodson

      Dec 3, 2018

      I’ve read a lot of Russian literature and a lot about it, several general histories (starting with D.S. Mirsky’s classic) and a bunch of more specialized ones. Frankly, I didn’t think any book could add much to my understanding. But the massive new A

      4 min read

    • Article

      Interlude

      Mar 28, 2022

      Interlude
      10 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2024

      I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Leather Coat

      Apr 4, 2024

      The Leather Coat
      6 min read

    • Article

      Sigrid Nunez

      Sep 15, 2017

      During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khme

      23 min read

    • Article

      Noctuary

      Sep 2, 2021

      Noctuary
      11 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning,

      4 min read

    • Article

      J. Jezewska Stevens

      Dec 15, 2017

      The party was a failure. I can’t even tell you what a failure it was. There are no words. Only a great pain in my chest when I wake up. On the veranda. It’s better when I sit in the chair. Oh, but then I can see around. The gauzy curtains, pushed by

      15 min read

    • Article

      The Corridor Stories

      Sep 1, 2022

      The Corridor Stories
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for For Two Thousand Years

    4/5

    58 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      For two thousand years is a journal kept intermittently by a Romanian jew during the late 1920s - early 1930s, divided into six sections. Each section sees Sebastian at a different phase in his life, whenever he feels the need for regular journal-keeping. The first section deals with his experiences as a first-year undergrad, dodging punches in the aula and anti-semitic trouble-seekers in the hallways. Later sections see him striking up a friendship with a revolutionary-spirited professor, as an ordinary architect in a factory serving as American-led modernization propaganda, and hanging out in Roaring Twenties Paris. There’s no real structure to this journal: life just happens to uncoil plotlessly. Sebastian uses his journal to keep track of what happens, what he feels about that, and what his friends think -- fellow jews, revolutionaries, students, mentors, hard-working colleagues, mistresses. He’s more the hanger-on type, writing almost wistfully about his idealized friends, wishing he could sometimes be bothered to want to be more like them. One recurring worry is the individual’s inability to change a (sub)culture, when that group considers his undesirableness to lie in what he is, not what he does. Another is the lament that adulting is hard, but dogged persistence in aiming for lower-hanging fruit is one way of getting somewhere. A Romanian friend of mine described Sebastian as “a shitty philosopher”, and I can see that: many of his musings can come across as underdeveloped, and, dare I say it, as coming from a first-year undergrad. Also, as Sebastian grows up and his concerns turn to his job and his easy living, assorted practicalities dominate -- there is less time for Pure Thought. That is true. But the philosophical themes surrounding man-versus-society and man-versus-himself and man-versus-subculture are pretty universal and essentially without definitive answer, and I’m not faulting Sebastian for using his diary of musings to only cover well-trodden philosophical ground. Every individual mind will have to deal with the beginnings of philosophy, however fumbling. Even the ones who wrote pre-Adorno and pre-Levinas.
    • 4/5
      How does one make sense of a world to which he does not belong? This brilliant narrative tells of the coming descent of European politics from the very personal view of a young man trying to make sense of this strange world and his own stranger self.
    • 3/5
      Even in these days of a resurgent anti-Semitism, I doubt whether there is anyone of my post-war generation, brought up in England, who has experienced it in the very unsubtle and very physical way that the author describes in this semi-autobiographical novel. As a student in Bucharest in 1923, the writer experiences daily anti-Semitism at the university, where Jews are obstructed from attending classes and beaten up by violent fellow students. "I received two punches during today's lectures and I took eight pages of notes. Good value, for two punches." Mihail Sebastian, who survived the Shoah but was subsequently knocked down and killed by a car, was a Romanian Jew born and brought up in Braila, a port on the Danube. This, his most well known work, was first published in 1934, but an English translation only appeared for the first time in 2016. It is written as a first-person journal, covering periods of the writer's life between 1923 and 1931. 1923 was a tumultuous year in Romania, when - accompanied by much violent political activity - a new constitution was established, granting citizenship to all the many ethnic minorities of the country - including Jews. Although the need for protection and group action force Sebastian's protagonist into a physical solidarity with his fellow Jewish students, he resists identifying with any of them; the Marxist who sees everything from a class-conscious point of view, the Revisionist Zionist who believes that Jews need to take the responsibility for creating a country into their own hands, the seller of Yiddish books who tries to impress on him the authenticity and beauty of Yiddish culture. He feels isolated, and blames this on his Jewishness: " if I could overcome two thousand years of Talmudism and melancholy and recover - supposing one of my race has ever had it - the clear joy of life." There is indeed some justification for the criticism leveled at Sebastian, when this book was published, that he was an anti-Semitic Jew. "I regret that, in this internal conflict, I retain some sympathy for myself. I'd like to hate myself without excuses or forgiveness."He is advised by an academic mentor to switch from studying law to architecture, on the grounds that this more practical down-to-earth subject will relieve him of his existential anxiety. This advice is apparently well founded; several years later, working as an architect, he reflects on his student years:" it was a moment of crisis... I reduced everything to the drama of being a Jew, not such an overwhelming reality that it should cancel or even supersede strictly personal dramas and comedies." He muses on the fact that a colleague, who had been a cudgel-wielding anti-Semite in their student days, was now a good friend. He dismisses the self-professed anti-Semitism of another colleague as "the marking out of an intellectual position, not an antagonism", and expresses his confidence in being able to overcome it, as if it were just one of the common barriers to establishing any personal relationship.In the end, the persistent anti-Semitism of people whom he considered friends or whom he had respected for professional reasons, brings him face to face with its enduring and universal nature. Anti-Semitism is not based on religion, economics or politics; it precedes and underlies all of these excuses and rationales. "If tomorrow's social structure centres on bee-keeping, the Jew will be detested from the point of view of keeping bees", he argues to a colleague who tells him (just as today's anti-Semites clothe their prejudice in opposition to Israel) that he is only concerned with the economic, political and social threat that the Jews represent to Romania. Although there are echoes of the same self-hatred that characterized his student days - "the Jew has a metaphysical obligation to be detested" - he ends with the more optimistic reflection, that his identification with the land of his birth is as real and as permanent as the fact of his being a Jew, and that no prejudice or discrimination can alter those facts. The fact that the author appears to accept anti-Semitism as inevitable - and almost justifiable - makes for uncomfortable reading; one wonders how the Shoa might have changed this point of view. However the evolution of his protagonist's experience of anti-Semitism - from a disability like a birth defect, to something that can be dispelled by personal relationships, and ultimately as an enduring prejudice - makes this a worthwhile read.
    • 4/5
      Written in 1934, this largely autobiographical fiction features a young Jewish Romanian university student. This young man and his friends ponder the plight of Jews across the globe, for the eons of persecution. They also give thought to the on-going question of the Palestinians. Given that this was written prior to WWII, the Holocaust, and the creation of Israel as a nation, there is much that is thought provoking, and also terribly sad. Most of this book is written as a kind of constant stream of the young man's thoughts as he goes about his days.I received an audio edition of this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
    • 2/5
      I really really could not get into this book. I wanted to like it as I'm very intrigued by the topic and era of history, but the writing style was so odd that it was very offputting to me and I couldn't enjoy it. I couldn't even finish it and I very rarely ever give up on a book.That said, don't let my opinion stop you from checking it out if the subject interests you. You may like it. Personally, I just couldn't track with the author's way of telling the story, but you may have a different experience.I received a free audiobook copy of this book via the Early Reviewers program.
    • 1/5
      This review is completely related to the format sent to me, and not the literature itself. The vocal performance is excellent. The software that allows the clunky, and almost impossible to use. Saving the cd to my laptop would never work, and thus electronically bookmarking the book was impossible. Sad, because I was loving the book.
    • 3/5
      I found this book to be incredibly depressing. The voice from 1934 of a student who encounters ant-semitism at every turn, but cannot fathom the nightmare that will become reality in the 1940's.
    • 4/5
      Upon receiving the MP3 CD copy from LibraryThing's Early Reviews program I couldn't wait to listen to it. Simon Vance is an excellent narrator of the fictional diary of a Romanian student between WWI and WWII. Apparently it is loosely autobiographical of author Mihail Sebastian with his struggles and debates to come to terms with himself as a Jew in a hostile society. It is a sad, bleak read at times filled with lines which made me stop and reverse to hear again a section and for that reason I wish I was reading the print or ebook version to annotate and ponder the thoughts.
    • 3/5
      The narrator was great, Simon Vance and was the only reason that I was able to listen to this book. The LibraryThing meter was correct, I would not like this book. It is not a story. It is a collection of memories, thoughts about those memories and felt so tangential. One part at the beginning struck me. The author Mihail Sebastian had taken a walk with a professor who he greatly admired. The professor told him to change his goal to a more concrete, down to earth profession. I laughed and agreed with the professor. The author was beaten up by other students for being Jewish and hid that from his mother. He wanted to protect her. I would have preferred to hear more to hear more about his experience. The Holocaust had not happened yet. I was angry to hear him accept that he would be beaten. He wants to be left alone to study his thoughts much like his uncle with all the coils, springs, all sorted on the table. It is still a good book to read to get some idea of what it was like for Jews prior to the Holocaust but it did try my patience.I received an a finished MP3 audio Cd as a win from LibraryThing from the publishers in exchange for a fair book review. My thoughts and feelings in this review are my own. (less)
    • 5/5
      Interesting story of a Romanian Jew set in the 1920s - a stimulating read, the meaning of prejudice is felt & it could be called a political journal - so worth reading.
    • 4/5
      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.