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8/20/2019 Rosh Wald
1/9
R E C O N S ID E R A T IO N
Stefan
Zw eig: A Witness
to the
Collapse of
Europe
Mordecai
Roshwald
S T E F A N
Z W E I G
(1881-1942) belongs to the
past—a past
not
distant enough
to
mea-
sure
him against th e wider setting of
Wes te rn c iv i l i za t ion ,
yet not
close
enough to be remem bered by the
bulk
of
contemporary humanity.
In
other words,
he
might have been relegated
to that
blind spot of the past w hich is erased and
forgotten.
If
this
is his
lot,
it
mus t
be
reversed. Zw eig deserves to be remem-
bered, reconsidered—not only for his
sake,
but
also
for the
benefit of
the
present
and future generations.
Zweig
could
be
best
described
as a
man of letters in the broad and
compre-
hensive sense, wha t is nowadays con-
veyed
by a less
felicitous term,
a "gener-
alist.
His w ri tings,
diverse
in both form
and
theme, include poetry, numerous
novellas, a major novel, studies
of
h istori-
cal
figures (literary
and otherwise), drama.
T he topics range from anonym ous "little"
m en
to
individuals
who
shaped history.
His writings encom pass real persons and
situations,
and
ima ginary stories pre-
sented in a realistic way. He reprodu ced
in
a polished literary form exotic legends,
and described in a vivid mann er his own
life
and
t ime.
I t
could
be
said that
h e
followed the adage nihi l humani mihi
al ienum.
M O R D E C A I R O S H W A L D
taught fo r twen ty-five years
at the
Universi ty
o f
Minneso ta .
He
was not a
lonely hum anist wri ter
struggling
for
acceptance
and
recogni-
tion in an alien world. Zw eig was a suc-
cessful
and
po pular w riter ever since,
a t
the age of nineteen, he started contr ibut-
ing
to the prestigious V iennese paper, the
Neue
Freie Presse .
His books were selling
very well in the German-speaking coun-
tries, as well as in translations in some
forty languages. His dramas we re pro-
duced in leading
theaters
and some of his
stories were made into films. He could
live
quite well
on his
royalties
and
reap
th e
fruits of his literary
success.
Indeed, to a
degree,
he did
t ha t .
Yet it is not ou t o f a
happy
life
that m ost
literary achievements are forged. For,
despite the
initial idyllic conditions, there
are elemen ts
of
deep
sadness
and t ragedy
in Zweig's subsequent times
and life,
which
found
their
expression in
h is liter-
ary w ork—w h e th e r
fictional,
semi-fic-
tional, or autobiograph ical. I t is th is paint-
ing in ch iaroscuro—all too often more
oscuro t han
chiaro,
the dark ness prevail-
ing over l igh t—tha t lends weight to
Zweig's
legacy.
His self-percept ion was a composite
of
various
elements.
He was born in
Vienna,
at that t ime the capital of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire; h is mother tongue,
which
h e
cultivated
and in
which
h e
wrote, was Germ an. Th is
made
h im a "citi-
zen"—a
cul tural citizen—of t h e German-
359
8/20/2019 Rosh Wald
2/9
speaking world. Being
a
native
of the
Austro-Hungarian
E mpire, and thus a sub-
ject of the Emperor , h e owed political
allegiance
to the multi-national state.
T his,
at
least
in his
case,
was not a
me re legal
technicali ty.
For
Zweig, like many
other
loyal subjects, was attached and devoted
to the
peculiar political entity, consist-
ing of
many national-ethnic
elements:
G e r m a n s ,
I t a l i a n s , C z e c h s , Poles,
Ruthenians ,
C roats, Hu ngarians, Slovaks.
Th i s e thnic me lange added a distinctive
flavor
to
Zw eig's national aw areness.
I t
differed
from
German, French, or I tal ian
nationalism,
in th at i t was
based
on eth-
nic pluralism . Zweig and many others saw
this
as a
distinction
and a
privilege.
For
th e
diversity
of
e thn ic
and
cultural ele-
ments
created—or
we re believed
to
cre-
ate— an essentially tolerant and easygo-
ing nationalism, a collective awareness
benefi t t ing
from the
diversity
of
dispar-
ate cultures that st imulat ed each other. It
is this
mult icul tural
am bience wh ich con-
tr ibuted
to
Zweig's self-awareness
as a
European,
as a
member
of a
polity
of the
advanced and advancing civilization , the
spearhead
of
h u m a n progress. T h e n
he
was
born into
a
well-to-do Jew ish
family.
Al though h is
family
w as
rather assimi-
lated and he had little Jewish e ducation ,
he was aware of his
roots,
and proudly
acknowledged them.
T he
various components
of
Zweig's
affiliation
and
identi ty
did no t create any
conflicts of
loyalty. T he diverse elements
blended harmoniously and Zweig, like
many others, felt such belonging to differ-
ent "republics" of h um anit y to be an as-
set—cultural,
social, h um an . T his convic-
tion could th rive
in
Vienna,
th e
capital
of
the
E mpi re,
its
vibrant cu ltural center,
a
place of intellectual and artistic ferment,
a
city which could claim
to be
all-E uro-
pean m ore tha n any other capital in E u-
rope. T hus,
to
Z weig's m any loyalties
one
should add his Viennese local patriot ism,
which
he
eagerly
expressed.
Zweig
was born into an
affluent,
re-
spected, and enlightened
family,
wh ich
facilitated
his
education
and respected
his intellectual inclinations. There
was
no
pressure to steer him
into
the
direc-
t ion
of a
practical career.
He
could
follow
h is interests and
study philosophy
and
history, rather th an law or medicine, and
engage
in
literary
ventures.
T h is freedom
did not spoil the
young man,
for he
plunged
into an energetic
life
of literary
activity and remained a diligent and pro-
ductive wri ter throughout h is life—in
happy times
and in
periods
of
utmost
depression.
T he outset
of Zw eig's life, prior
to
W orld
War I, promised a l i f e of prosperi ty and
fulfilment
in an era of
consistent h um an
progress.
Zweig describes th is
era in one
of his last books, The
World
of Yesterday.
T he
o riginal title
Die Welt von
Gestern
is
significantly complemented by the sub-
title
Erinnerungen e ine s
E uropders [Remi-
niscences
of
a European] . T he book is a
remarkable autobiography
of the
wri ter
and his time: the personal and the h istori-
cal are
inextricably linked.
The years
preceding
the
Great
War are
described by
Zweig
as the age otSicherheit,
which
means both certainty and security.
T h e sense of securi ty was boun d with the
trus t
in stability—political,
economic,
social. Personal life
was
carefully planned
and proceeded
according to pre-deter-
mined
goals concerning personal
ad-
vancement, income
and
expendi ture ,
holidays and the like. I nsurance guaran-
teed the future.
Mo reover,
there was
trust
in
scientific
and
technological progress,
and thus the
future
looked brigh ter than
the
present . S ocial progress
was
advanc-
ing at its own
pace
and ever wide r circles
of
society
were gradually encompassed
in political
and
personal
benefits. Earlier
times, replete
with
wars
and
conflicts,
were
regarded
as m anifest ation s of bar-
barism, never to recur. It is against the
background of such inveterate optim ism
that the subsequent disi l lusionments
have to be
measured. Indeed, writing
from
6
Fall
8/20/2019 Rosh Wald
3/9
th e depth of d i senchan tment , Zweig ad-
mits
not to have completely
discarded
the
trust developed
in the
t imes
of his
ch i ldhood:
Even from the
abyss
of ho rror, in w h i c h
today we grope aroun d, half-blind wi th a
disturbed
an d
broken soul,
I
always look
again to those old
images
of stars
w h i c h
glistened over my childh ood, and console
myself with th e inher i ted confidence, tha t
this
relapse will
appear at
one tim e merely
as
an
interval in the e ternal rhythm of the
onward
march.
1
World
War
I,
or, as it was
called prior
to
its sequel, the Great War, was atraumatic
awakening from the blissful dream of the
turn of th e nineteenth century. Th e
initial
public enthusiasm for the war and its
"just cause," by wh ich Zweig himself w as
swept, was
followed
by the carnage on
th e battlefields, th e misery and suffering
of th e population in the regions pillaged
by the
R ussian invaders,
and the
conse-
quent shock. Zweig turned into
an
oppo-
nent o f war, along wit h h is French friend
and
famous
w riter, R omain Rolland
(1866-
1944).
War was recognized as a reversal of
civilization,
as the enemy of progress, of
humanity,
of
th e basic creed of an enligh t-
ened E urope.
A s the
carnage went
on , it
seemed as if the world, as Zw eig knew it
and identified with it, disintegrated and
collapsed.
A nd
wi th
t he
downfall
of the
world,
h is world, Zw eig himself, as a wri ter
and
ah um an being, was deeply wounded.
He lost what by now appeared to have
been h is innocent beliefs, as did many of
h is
contem poraries. He could not any-
more see the world as it had appeared to
be
before
th e
great calamity.
T h e
beauti-
f u l ,
ha rmon i ous , p r ed i c t ab l e wor l d
changed into an indescribable horror.
I f ,
gradually,
th e
horror
somewhat
sub-
sided in the post-war years, and a streak of
optimism
asserted
itself
in
Zweig's over-
all disposition, a new blow cam e
from
an
unexpected source. It was the rising to
power o f
Hitler
and h is N azi Party in Ger-
many.
Zw eig
w as
affected
by it also in a
personal w ay, wh en his books were
burned ,
together w ith th e works of other
"undesirable" writers, in
Berlin
in May
1933.
He
was,
of
course, guilty
of two
cardinal sins. One, that being a Jew, he
polluted
th e Germ an culture by w ri t ing in
German.
T he
obvious means
of
preserv-
in g th e pur i ty of the Teutonic creation
and spirit was to ban Jewish books
from
German readership. The other sin was
having been bo rn a Jew, wh ich was to be
punished
by the
murder
of
millions
of
Zweig's kinsm en some
years
later.
Merci-
fully,
he did not
live
to witness that stage
of horror.
T he banning of Zweig's books from
Germany h u r t him deeply. H e was cut off
from
h is main readership at the peak of h is
success.
His
role
as a
wri ter ,
his
raison
d'etre, the
justification
of h is existence as
he saw it, was u nderm ined. For he took his
writing seriously.
It was the
expression
of
his
p ersonality,
it was the
extension
of
h is
self. Th ough
the
translations
of h is
books
were not affected, it was the German origi-
nal w hich secured
the
intimate contact
with th e readers—mostly Germans. He
was condem ned to exile from h is cul tura l
milieu.
T hen came a fur ther blow that swept
th e ground
from
unde r t he
feet
of Zw eig
and the
Jews
of
A ustria,
in a
more basic,
elemental way. It was the A nschluss, the
annexation
of A ustria by N azi Germanyin
1938. A year later E urope plun ged into
World War II. T hese dramatic stages of
seemingly unavoidable catastrophe had
a cataclysmic imp act on Zweig, as is m ani-
fest
from
his work s at the tim e, as well as
from his correspondence.
Indeed,
the
external events played havoc with his
mind
and
eventually
led to h is
suicide.
Zweig
sums up his life-experience in
th e Preface to The
World
o f Yesterday—
h is personal tragedy
and the
tragedy
of
his generation.
He
points
out the
extraor-
dinary burden allotted
to him and his
contemporaries by history. Like a con-
Modem Age
361
8/20/2019 Rosh Wald
4/9
t inuous
volcanic eruption,
th e
political
upheavals of Europe unsettled them in
thei r innermost being. A s he puts it, "as an
Austrian,
as
aJew,
as
awriter,
as
ahuman-
ist and a
pacifist,
I
have always been stand-
ing
right there where
t h e
earth-quakes
were
the
fiercest. Three times they have
overthrown
my home and
existence, sev-
ered m e from everything that once had
been
and was
gone,
and with
dramatic
force thrown
m e
into
th e
void, into
th e
already familiar I
know not
what.'
2
A t t he
t ime
of
writ ing these words Zweig could
not
know
the
degree
o f
depravity
of
N azi
Germany
and the
depth
of misery which
it
was to inflict on
millions
wh o were at the
very crater
of
the volcano. Thus, h is plight
was almost benign by comparison. None-
theless, it was real, felt acutely, and ex-
pressed vividly—both
in
direct state-
ments
and in
fiction.
O ne
does
not
have
to
descend into th e lowest levels of the in -
ferno
in order to
sense
the misery, the
plight,
the
estrangement. Indeed,
at the
lowest levels
one may be
past
the
capac-
ity
of intellectual reflection and cogent
argument.
The
contrast between the past and the
present, revealed
in
Zweig's personal
plight , is
drawn
in
clear
and
decisive
strokes:
was
born
in
1881
in a
great
and
mighty
Empire,
in the
Hapsburg
m onarchy...: it h as
been wiped
ou t
without
a
trace.
I grew up in
Vienna, the
two-thousand-year-old super-
national
metropolis, and had to leave it like
a criminal, before it was degraded to a
German
provincial city.
My
literary work,
in
th e
language
1
wrote
it, was
burned
to ashes
in th e very land where m y books had made
friends of
millions
of readers. Thus I belong
nowhere anymore—a stranger everywhere,
a guest at
best. M oreover, Europe,
the
home-
land
that
is my
heart's
choice,
is
lost
to me,
ever since
it fo r the
second time suicidally
tore itself to pieces
in
a fraternal war. Against
my
will,
1 have become
a
witness to
the
most
terrible
defeat of reason and the wildest
triumph of brutality in the ch ronicle of
times .
3
Zweig
expresses h is
pain
and
despair
not only in general terms, and not merely
in
presenting his own plight. He
also
ad-
dresses the misfortunes of
other
individu-
a l s—hun ted , denigrated, persecuted.
Here is his description of
scenes
in
Vienna,
following th e
annexation
by the
Nazis:
"Now it was not merely
thef t
and plunder,
but
every private lust
for
revenge
was
given
free rein.
University professors
had
to scrub the streets with bare hands, pi-
ous grey-bearded Jews were dragged into
the temple and forced by hooting youths
to
kneel
and to
shout
in
unison
'Heil
Hitler.'
Innocent
people
were
hounded
like
rabbits.... If
before this
new
regime
the murder of a single man would shock
the world, now a single
man
did not count
at
all.
4
Zweig's heart went out to the down-
trodden and persecuted Jews, his kins-
men, but his
sympathy
was
also extended
to
human beings
as
such. Thus
he
writes
in
one of his letters: People speak so
lightly of bombardment, but when I read
of houses collapsing, I collapse with
them.
5
I f one may be tempted to speculate
that it was th e horror of the N azi conduct
and of World War II
that
awakened the
humane sentiments of
Zweig,
his own
testimony shows that
he was
moved
to
such compassion much earlier, by wit-
nessing human
suffering
in
World
War I.
Referring
to his experiences in the Great
War, he writes: Today I know: without all
that I
suffered
then
during
the
war,
through
feelings
of participation and anticipation
[mitfiihlend, vorausfiihlend], I would have
remained
th e writer had been
before
the
war, 'pleasantly moved' [angenehm
bewegt],...
bu t never seized, grasped, hit in
my bowels.... In
trying
to
help others,
I
have helped
myself."
6
Much
as
Zweig
ap-
preciated
the
self-contained domain
of
aesthetics, his overriding passion became
the wish to help humanity. As he wrote to
Remain Rolland in 1918: "M y aim would
be one day to become not a great critic or
362
Fall2002
8/20/2019 Rosh Wald
5/9
a
literary celebrity
but a
moral author-
ity."
7
Compassion
and
moral commitment
are cha racteristic of Zw eig's Jewish con-
t e m p o r a r y w r i t e r s ,
such as
A r t h u r
Schnitzler, Franz Werfel, Josef R oth , Jakob
Wassermann,
and, in a more veiled m an-
ner,
Franz K afka. T his penchant
may have
been linked to Jewish trad ition and
even
to the
m oral exhortations of
th e
B ible
and
the impassioned appeals
of
th e Prophets.
Zweig's
mora l comm i tment
and
sense
of compassion are reflected in many of his
wr i t ings ,
notably in his only novel,
UngedulddesHerzens, or Beware ofPityin
th e
English
translation. Indeed, Zweig
offers a philosophical description of the
meaning
of
compassion, as a mot to to his
book.
It
succinctly sum s
up
wha t
is
elabo-
rated in the story, as in his many other
writings.
For
there
are two
kinds
of
compassion. O ne,
the weak-spirited and sentimental, wh ich is
really only impatience
of
the
heart
to get rid
as
fast
as
possible
of the painful
involve-
ment
in an alien calamity, a compassion
which is not co mpassion at all, but an in-
stinctive defence
of
one's own soul
from th e
alien suffering. A nd the
other one,
th e
only
one that counts— the unsentimenta l , but
creative compassion, that knows what
it
wants,
and is determined patiently and com-
passionately
to
endure
it all to th e limit of
one's
capacity,
and
even beyond
it .
8
Yet,
wit h all the compassion and all the
mo ral fervor, Zw eig did not delude h im-
self as to the power of the commi tment ,
th e
good will,
th e
printed word,
th e
logos,
the
idea,
to
co nfron t reality
and
shape
it
effectively. He was far
from
being the op-
t imis t who decides on the strength of his
good intentions that reality must con-
form
to the demands of mo rality and rea-
son.
I f
anything,
he was
more easily swayed
to pessimism and despair than to opti-
mism and hope. This is reflected in an
indirect mann er
by an aside on the
nature
of
the chess game. It
appears
in one of his
last writing s,
a
novella wh ich
is perhaps
his
best, D ie Schachnovelle
[in
E nglish
The
Royal Game] .
We
need not, in the
present
context,
outl ine
the
story,
which takes
place
against
the
background
of the
Nazi take-
over of A ustria
and
the m ethods employed
by the
N azi s
to
attain their objectives—
also in respect of a C ath olic lawyer, as in
this case.
The
to t ter ing
and the
collapse
of
civilization inform th e
story
th rough-
out. T h e setting is one often encountered
in the novels of Grah am Greene. What w e
want
to
highl ight
is a
detached, philo-
soph ical analysis
of
chess
game by
Zweig
which
has
implications for—indeed sym-
bolizes—his
vision of the hu man condi-
t ion, or the precarious situation of hu-
mani ty wi th
respect
to reality.
I
knew
from m y own
experience about
the
mysterious attraction
of the
"royal game,"
the only game invented by man, wh ich in a
sovereign manner
places itself
outside
[entzieht sich] the tyranny of chance an d
accords its laurels to the s pirit
only....
I s it
not also a science
[Wissenschaft],
an art
[Kunst], a unique tie [Bindung] of oppo-
sites; very old and yet eternally new, me-
chanical
in its
arrangement
and effective
only th rough
imagination,
limited in a geo-
metrically
rigid
space,
and
ye t limitless in its
combinations, always developing
and yet
sterile,
a
kind
of
th ink ing w hich leads
to
nothing, a mathematics which calculates
nothing,
an art wi thout work s...and
none-
theless
proved
to be
longer lasting
in its
being and presence
[Sein
undDasein]
than
al l
the books and works, the only
game
that
belongs to al l thenations and all th e times....
9
Zweig's atti tude to chess is palpably
ambivalent:
he
admires
its
universality
and timelessness,
but
deplores
that this
self-contained perfection
is
impo tent
to
affect
life,
to be a force for the good. T his
appears to be a
complaint about
the
sepa-
ration between logic and
reality,
between
logos and
life,
between th e world of
ideas
and the lot of man. U ltimately, Zweig may
well express
here
th e frus tra t ion of the
men of spi r it— wh ether phi losophers ,
Modern Age
363
8/20/2019 Rosh Wald
6/9
writers, or
other individuals bent
on do-
in g
good—in
being unable
to
affect
th e
condition of
humanity
and to
avert
the
self-imposed
calamities.
W as
there
any
domain
in
which
Zweig
could
have
found
anchor?
W as
there
any
belief wh ich
could
offer h im a refuge from
the despair of an open-eyed idealist, striv-
in g
for good and reason and facing
evil
and
madness? Conceivably,
h is
Jewish
roots and
affiliation might have
offered
h im support
and a spiri tual way out
of
th e
despair, if not a physical refuge. Looking
into his
w rit ings,
such
an
eventuality can-
not be
ruled out. There
is an
explicit
t es t imony as to his Jewish conscious-
ness, stated in an
interview
in 1931:
Al-
t hough
I do not come from a rigorously
Jewish
family,
I have been vitally inter-
ested
in
Jewish problems
all my life, vi-
tally
aware
of the
Jewish blood that
is in
me,
ever since
I
have been conscious
of
it."
10
There is a clear element of pride in
Zweig's Jewish consciousness, when he
describes his own Viennese Jewish mi-
lieu, and expands his comments to Jews
in
general.
T h e
Jewish, seemingly bour-
geois, notion of the good family" [gute
Familie],
he
writes,
is not to be confused
with
thequesttoberich, usually
regarded
as the typical aim of the Jew.
Nothing is fur ther
from
th e
truth
[asserts
Zweig]. [Riches
are
only]
a
means
to the
true
aim....
T he essential wish of the Jew, h is
imm anent ideal, is the ascent into th e spiri-
tual, onto a
higher
cultural
stratum. A lready
in
t h e
eastern orthodox
Judaism...this su-
premacy
of the will to the spiritual
over
the
merely material
f inds a
concrete expres-
sion:
the
devout,
the biblical
scholar,
is a
thousand times more esteemed
in the
com-
munity
than
th e
rich man.
Thus, the
poorest peddler
will
spare
no
effort and
sacrifice
to
enable
at
least
one
son to
pursue higher studies,
and a
family
will
pride itself if it can claim a connec-
t ion
to a scholar, a professor, a musi-
cian—a man of higher culture.
Zweig delves deeper into Judaism
in
h is
poetical
drama Jeremias [Jeremiah],
wri t ten in
1915-1917
during the
painful
experience of the Great War. t was a
pacifist response
to the ongoing slaugh-
ter, and, at the same t ime, an attempt to
deal with the distinct
plight
of the Jews.
But Z weig
also attempts
to find a
univer-
sal answer and consolation in the pro-
phet ic
message, or in the message as he
understands
it.
One issue which Zweig raises is the
perennial
problem
of the
relationship
between
Might and R ight . T h e
answer
he
offers accords with t h e prophetic mes-
sage and
with Judaism
at
large.
The
claim
of Might to
control human destiny
is de-
nied
in the
name
of the
ru le of
God and the
principles
of R igh t and divine justice. In
th e drama, Jeremiah after the fall
of
Jerusa-
lem
is
offered
a
position
of
honor
and
privilege
by the
victorious Babylonian
ruler,
in
recognition
of the prophet's o p-
position to Israel's revolt and his predic-
tion
of the
disaster
to follow.
Jeremiah
spurns the king's offer as conveyed by his
messengers.
He does so out of
commisera-
tion wi th
his
people's lot,
and
because
he
disdains
the
Babylonian king's ruthless-
ness and cruelty: "I shall not enter the
palace, in which the
steps
are scrubbed
by the daughters of my master, turned
into servants.... 1 do not want favour from
th e cruel, nor mercy from th e merci-
less....
12
The messengers' outrage at
Jeremiah's defiance of the
"king
of kings
meets
with a scornful comment on the
evanescence
of h u m a n migh t and its
car-
rier, the king:
Who
is he
that
1
ought
to be
afraid
of him?... Is he not a
human worm
and
does
not death wait behind his sleep
and decay in h is body?"
13
Moreover, t he
king is
evil
and
retribution awaits him:
"Greatly has he
enslaved Israel,
but he will
be
enslaved sevenfold....
Woe to the
con-
founder [Verstorer],
for he will be con-
founded, and woe to the plunderer, fo r he
will be plundered "
14
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7/9
Yet,
how does this defiance o f migh t
and
punishm ent of
the
mighty
and
wicked
console th e
victims
of
iniquity
and
cru-
elty?
H ow does the
eventual downfall
of
ambit ious
kings
and tyrants
resolve
the
problem
of suffering on the part of the
vanquished? What is the prophecy of
consolation
fo r
Israel
and
for
the meek of
the
earth? Here Zw eig
resorts to the
idea
that there is some meaning in suffering.
For Israel, the people of God, becomes
aware of Him only in the depth of suffer-
ing [ erst in der Tiefe des Leidens
werden
wirseinergewahr ] .
"Whom
He
loves,
h im
He
pushes
down into th e
depths
of life."
[
W en er
liebt,
den stosst er hinab in die
Tiefe
de s
Lebens. ]
K
Thus ,
the
conclu-
sion
is to
submit
to the
suffering
and see
in it
redemption:
Suffering is a test and test is an elevation,
Humiliation brings us close to God,
Every f a l l
brings
us
higher into
His
domains,
For
only
the
vanquished know about
Him.
16
[Leiden istPrufung un d
Prilfung
Erhebung,
Erniedrigung
ma c h t un s
go t t e snah ,
JederSturz
ftihrt hoher in se ine Reiche
D e n n n ur die Besiegten w issen urn ihn . ]
While
the
Might-Right
issue is
tackled
in
the Israelite-proph etic
spirit,
the praise
of
suffering
and its
religious
justif ication
is closer
to the spiri t of C hristiani ty. T hat
Zweig resorts to such an answer may well
be due to his
despairing
of the
resolution
of the M ight-R ight issue in a satisfactory
way.
Yet it is
noteworthy th at Zweig sug-
gests
a Zionist interpretation and
solu-
tion
of the
Jewish predicament
in an in-
vented legend, which
h e
publ ished
in
1937,entitledDer6egra6eneLeuc/iter/T/ie
Buried Candelabrum].
T he s tory itself need not concern us—
only
its
symbo lical
message. It
revolves
round
the
golden
Menorah (candela-
brum), part
of the
R oman loot
from th e
Temple
in
Jerusalem.
T he M e n o ra h
sym-
bolizes the Jewish
faith
and
hope
and is
pursued with devotion
by
Jews
who
want
to
protect
it from alien looters, after R ome
itself became
th e
victim
o f
conquest
by
the Vandals. Ultim ately the M e n o ra h is
buried in the land of Israel, aw aiting th ere
the national redemption. That i t is the
candelabrum,
th e
carrier
of
eternal ligh t,
that is buried underground, may have a
symbolical mean ing: he Jewish light, and
hope, is buried in the earth , awaiting the
moment
of the
return
of the
people
to
th eir land, wh en the M e n o ra h will be lit
again and the
suffering
of the
people
ended.
Yet Zw eig
does
not leave th e m eaning
hidden, invi ting
the reader's
interpreta-
tion.
The story conveys the message in a
dream
of the
protagonist,
an old man
totally comm it ted
from
ch ildhoo d to the
preservation of the holy object. In his
dream
he
sees
a
large gro aning crowd,
an
entire people, on the march from time
immemorial. He
murmurs
to
h imself:" 'N o
one should be kept
[wandering]
like
this....
N o people
can
continue
to
live wit h out
home an d w ith out goal... . A l ight m ust be
kindled
for
them....'
n
A nd, indeed,
at the
conclusion
of the
dream,
he
sees
the
wandering
people
at
rest
in
a land f r u i t f u l
and
peaceful, a land of vineyards,
fields of
grain and
flowers. "N ow
th e
Lampstand
rose
h igher
in the sky and shone
more
gloriously.
It s
lights
were
like
the
light
of
the sun, il luminating sky and land to th e
very
h orizon."
18
In this
story
Zw eig seems to
identify
with
traditional orthodox Judaism, see-
ing
the
exile
as a
catastrophe
and
hoping
for
a
messianic delivery. There
is no re-
demption outside
the
land
of
Israel,
in
the
diaspora.
The
calamity
is the conse-
quence of the alienation of the people
from
their land. By the
same
token, the
story
conveys
the
Zionist
message:
only
by
returning
to the
land
of
Israel
and re-
establishing
there a
normal
life, tilling
th e
ancestral land,
will th e
plight
of the
Jews
come
to an
end,
a
happy end. Zweig
Modern Age 365
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m ay not have embraced the Zionist, let
alone
th e
traditional-orthodox, belief
wholeheartedly. Yet, the fact that he
chose
to
write this story
at one o f the
darkest
hours of his and of European Jewry's life,
indicates that he looked for a message of
consolation
in
Judaism. There seemed
to
be no
glimmer
of hope for his Austrian
and European allegiance in 1937; Juda-
ism,
with its long experience of gloom and
doom—and, at the
same time, of resilience
and
survival—extended
a
helpful
hand,
which
Zweig
grasped
in
desperation.
Yet
Zweig
was neither an orthodox Jew
nor a committed Zionist. H is ties with h is
Jewish heritage were
not
strong enough
to counter h is despair of the European
world, which was the air he breathed.
Also th e reality of the military success of
Nazi
Germany
and all it
meant
for the
future of
E urope—physically
and
spiritu-
ally—could not be erased by any senti-
ment
or
yearning.
The
world—h is world—
was
collapsing.
Zweig remained well-to-do and was not
in
personal danger, having escaped to
England, and
subsequently moved
to
Bra-
zil, where h e was held in high regard and
where he wrote a book about that coun-
try.
Y et the life of a
refugee
who
lost
h is
spiri tual anchor, who was torn out of his
world, whose past
was erased and
whose
future w as all but hopeless, seemed de-
prived
of any
worth.
As he put it to a
friend: What sense is there in
living
on as
one's own
shadow?
19
A s
Zweig
was approaching h is sixtieth
birthday, his resigned and dejected mood
grew ever stronger.
While
in good physi-
cal
health,
he
suffered from
the
sickness
of the age and of the calamity which
seemed to loom larger by the day. The
horrors of war, the great advancement of
the German armies into Russia, and the
fall
o f
Singapore
at the
hands
of the
Japa-
nese army—all seemed to point to a likely
victory of the Axis powers. A nd so, after
his
sixtieth birthday,
he
committed sui-
cide, jointly with h is wife, in their home in
Petropolis, B razil. In a letter h e
left,
dated
February
22,1942, he
refers
to
the world
of
m y own language
[which
] has
been
lost
and my spiritual homeland, Europe,
[which] has destroyed
itself."
H is long
years of homeless wandering have ex -
hausted him. "So I hold it better to con-
clude in good time and with an erect
bearing
a
life fo r
which
intellectual labour
was always the purest joy and personal
freedom t h e highest good on this earth."
20
In what
way is
S tefan
Zweig
relevant
to
our
time
and
age, besides leaving
a liter-
ary legacy
wh ich
holds a place
of
honor in
European literature of the first half of the
twentieth century?
The
most obvious
answer to this question points to the
tragedy of a man of letters whose per-
sonal
life was
intertwined with
t h e
high
culture of the era and the brute forces
bent
on annihilat ing the
achievements
of
humani ty .
T he quest of beauty and of
decency,
the cultivation
of a good life
and
fair
society, w as brutally assailed by two
world wars
and
wanton cruelty, with
th e
forces
o f
evil
and
unreason obtaining
the
upper hand over the traditions of good
sense and cultural creativity.
Zweig,
in
h is personal life and in the way he per-
ceived and articulated th e calamities of
h is era, reflects th e tragic history of the
half century in a remarkable way.
But
it is not only th e world of yesterday
that Zweig brings
to our
attention.
For
even
if
yesterday
is
past
and
gone, tomor-
row
always waits
in the
wings, ready
to
make
it s
appearance.
B y looking at the
world of yesterday, we may be warned
about th e world
of
tomorrow. Seemingly,
the
present
situation is quite different.
Europe seems to have learned its lesson.
T h e final
form
of the
European entity
h as
not yet been determined, and its extent
has not yet been
defined,
but
armed hos-
tility
in Western and Central Europe i s
virtually unimaginable. Indeed, even
th e
menace
of war
between Western Europe
and its
Eastern neighbor,
the
mighty Rus-
sian power, has receded. The expecta-
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tions of
Zw eig in his
early years of
a
peace-
f u l Europe
seem to be finally
vindicated.
Can, then ,
th e
nightmare
of the
interven-
ing
decades
be
erased,
and the
gloomy
forebodings
of
Zweig
in his
later
years
swept away?
Alas,
this
does not
seem
to be the
case.
For the
forces
of
evil—to
put it in
meta-
physical
terms—have not
been annihi-
lated. They may have left the European
arena,
or
most
of it, but they have re -
grouped and made their appearance in a
new
form.
Th ey do not march in
ostenta-
t ious army form ations, but they hide in
shadowy places and str ike with mu rder-
ous
stealth
at
unexpected locations.
Moreover, they
can
take
advantage o f
advanced technology
to
inflict cata-
strophic damage.
In
comparing
the
world
of yesterday,
as presented by
Z weig, with
the
present
situation, we may
look with satisfaction
at the material
progress
and social ad-
vancement
of
Europe
and
W estern
Civili-
zation. Zweig wo uld have been hap py
to
see the
high er s tandard
of living and its
fairer distr ibution
in the
advanced part
of
the world. That is what he anticipated
one-hundred years ago.
This gratifying pic ture does
not ex-
tend into
the
domain
of
cul tural
life. In
this respect one may look w ith longing to
a t ime
and
place like
th e
Vienna of Zweig's
youth, when
the
city enjoyed
a
first-class
theatre and opera, as
well
as
lighter
enter-
ta inment of high quali ty, when gifted
writers
created
literary works of great
m e r i t ,
w h e n h u m a n i s t i c e d u c a t i o n
shaped
th e aesthetic
sensibilities
of the
generation.
T hen there
is the
example
of
Zweig
and
several of
his contemp oraries wh o
repre-
sent the ideal of the socially involved
writer,
of
th e
concerned artist, of
th e
com-
passionate man of
ideas.
In an age
when
publishing
increasingly becomes an in-
dustry, writing
a
commercial undertak-
ing, and
excellence
is
measured
by finan-
cial
rewards,
one can
only
cast a
nostal-
gic look
at a t ime when wri t ing was evalu-
ated by its
intr insic worth
and the
remu-
neration
was
incidental
to
literary worth .
Is
all
this
a cause for
despair?
N ot
nec-
essarily.
Zweigwas inclined to pessimism,
though
it has to be
conceded th at
he had
good
reasons
for such an atti tude. O ur
own
confrontation with born-again evil
puts
us on
alert,
and
jus t ly
so. The
more
aware
we are of the
menace,
the better
the
chances
of
overcoming
it .
A s
to the
cultural malaise,
it is not
universally recognized
as such in an age
which
is
wary of
"judgmental"
statements.
Unless the creations of writers, musicians,
and
entertainers
are
subjected
to a
sub-
stantive evaluation,
and are not
judged
solely b y th eir financial success, there is
not
even
a
beginning
o f a
reversal
of
present cultural trends.
Perhaps
looking
backwards
to
Z weig's World
of
Yesterday
may help
us to lay the
founda t ion
for a
saner
and
better W orld
of
Tom orrow.
I .S te fan Zweig,
Die
Welt
von Ges tern ,
1944.
English
translation,
The
World
of Yesterday,
1944,
T he
Viking Press, N ew York 1945, 18 [5]. T he transla-
tion in our
text
does not
necessarily follow
th e
English version, but the location in that version is
indicated
in
brackets .
2. Op.
cit.,
1
[v.].
3. Op.
cit.,
8 [vi.]. 4. O p. cit., 460-461 [405-406 ]. 5. Quoted from
D.A. Prater, European
of Yesterday, Oxford,
1972,
352. 6. D ie Welt von Ges tem, 291
[253-254].
7. D .A.
Prater,
107. 8.
Stefan Zweig, Ungedulddes
Herzens
(Stockholm,
1943).
9 .
Schachnoue l le , 1942. Qu oted
here, in the present writer 's translation, from D a s
Stefan
Zweig
Buch
(Frankfurt am Main, 1981),
350.
10. D.A. Prater, 190. 11. Die Welt vo n
Gestern,
25-
26 [11-12]. 12. S te fan Zwe ig , Jeremias, Eine
dramatische
Dichtung
in neun
Bildem.
Quoted from
Stefan Zweig,
Die
Dramen
(Frankfurt
am
Main,
1964),
483.13.
Op.
cit., 483.14.
O p. cit., 484.15. Op.
cit., 496. 16. Op. cit., 500. 17. Der begrabene
Leuchter
(Vienna,
1937). Quoted from th e English
translation.
The Buried Candelabrum, in
Stefan
Zweig, Jewish
Legends
(New York, 1987), 110-111.
18. Op. cit., 114-115. 19.
D .A. Prater, 300.
20. The
original
wording
can be
found
in Da s
Stefan Zweig
Buch, 339.