Messages from a Lost World

Europe on the Brink

Stefan Zweig, Will Stone

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781782271888
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Theory & Criticism
• Index: History

A collection of essays and speeches by Stefan Zweig from the 1930s and 1940s published here in English for the very first time.

'Darkness must fall before we are aware of the majesty of the stars above our heads. It was necessary for this dark hour to fall, perhaps the darkest in history, to make us realize that freedom is as vital to our soul as breathing to our body.'

As Europe faced its darkest days, Stefan Zweig was a passionate voice for tolerance, peace and a world without borders. In these moving, ardent essays, speeches and articles, composed before and during the Second World War, one of the twentieth century's greatest writers mounts a defence of European unity against terror and brutality.

From the dreamlike 'The Sleepless World', written in 1914, through the poignant 'The Vienna of Yesterday', to the impassioned 'In This Dark Hour', one of his final addresses, given in 1941, Zweig envisages a Europe free of nationalism and pledged to pluralism, culture and brotherhood.

These haunting lost messages, all appearing in English for the first time and some newly discovered, distil Zweig's courage, belief and richness of learning to give the essence of a writer; a spiritual will and testament to stand alongside his memoir, The World of Yesterday. Brief and yet intense, they are a tragic reminder of a world lost to the 'bloody vortex of history', but also a powerful statement of one man's belief in the creative imagination and the potential of humanity, with a resounding relevance today.

Stefan Zweig was one of the most popular and widely translated writers of the early twentieth century. Born into an Austrian-Jewish family in 1881, he became a leading figure in Vienna's cosmopolitan cultural world and was famed for his gripping novellas and vivid psychological biographies.

In 1934, following the Nazis' rise to power, Zweig fled Austria, first for England, where he wrote his famous novel Beware of Pity, then the United States and finally Brazil. It was here that he completed his acclaimed autobiography The World of Yesterday, a lament for the golden age of a Europe destroyed by two world wars. The articles and speeches in Messages from a Lost World were written as Zweig, a pacifist and internationalist, witnessed this destruction and warned of the threat to his beloved Europe. On 23 February 1942, Zweig and his second wife Lotte were found dead, following an apparent double suicide.

EUROPEAN THOUGHT IN ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

HISTORY, this seemingly tideless ocean of events, in fact obeys an unswerving rhythmic law, an internal swell which divides the epochs through ebb and flow, in forward and backward currents—and how could it be otherwise, given that it is created by man and his psychic laws only reflect those of the individual? In each of us this duality exists; the process we call life is in the end only a state of tension between opposing poles. Fortunately we are able to name these opposing forces as the centrifugal and the centripetal, or, in the language of the new psychology, the introvert and the extrovert, or, in that of morals, the egoistic and the altruistic—and it is always through this formula that we express the shifting tendency which is in each of us, on the one hand with the “I” isolated from the world and on the other the “I” bound to the world. We want to retain our “I”, the unique personality, who we are, to make this personality still more personal. But simultaneously this personality, this substance which binds us to the world, our individuality, is drawn inexorably into the community. What then is a people other than a collective of individuals? So, underlying all nations is this double tendency: on the one hand their individuality, their spirit and cultural personality, coloured by nationalism, and on the other the supranational search for a higher community which will enrich them but which will demand in return a measure of their wealth and personality. Across all history, these two tendencies of attraction and repulsion, peace and war, the concentric and the expansive, proceed in eternal opposition. As soon as the great structures of state and religion are built they dissolve; over decades and centuries periods of hostility are succeeded by those of reconciliation and friendship; but essentially humanity, with its ever-expanding vision, has always striven towards unions which are more elevated and illuminative. Both of these tendencies, the national and the supranational, already have, since they exist, their cultural and corporeal sense; one is not possible without the other in the intellectual organism of beings that we call states or nations. This opposition is necessary in order to maintain a creative tension at the heart of humanity. But I shall take only one as the object for my study here, in an epoch of nationalist disunity. I wish to underline the contrasting element of unity, that mysterious Eros which has always drawn humanity over differences in language, culture and ideas towards a superior union. I wish to attempt, by casting a glance at the intellectual development of Europe, to furnish a brief history of this perennial yearning for unity, in feelings, wills, thoughts and lives, which across two millennia has created the magnificent common edifice which we can proudly name European culture.

I say “across two millennia”. But in truth this basic instinct for an eventual creative community reaches well beyond the history we know, to the primitive times of myths. Already in the most ancient book of the world, at the beginning of the Bible, when it speaks of the first men, we find through a magnificent symbol the first signs of this desire for the creative union of humanity. It is of course the profound legend of the Tower of Babel, and it is this myth that I wish to recall here and explain a little. At that time, having barely departed a state of ignorance, men—whom we might call humanity—had gathered to undertake a communal work. Above them they saw a sky, and because they were men they already experienced the sense of the superhuman, the beyond, so they said to themselves: “Let us build a city and a tower, whose summit will touch the sky, in order that we might secure our place in eternity.” And they set to work as one, kneading clay and firing bricks, and began to build their first colossal work.

But God gazed down from heaven—so says the Bible—at this ambitious striving and realized the magnificent scale of the work. He recognized the greatness of the spirit with which he had endowed his creature man, and the extraordinary strength which existed, irresistibly, in this humanity, as long as it remained as one. And in order that humanity was not presumptuous, the Creator decided to obstruct the work and said: “Let us confuse them, so that none knows the language of the other.” And the Bible states that the men’s work quickly foundered, since they could no longer understand each other; and because of this they became angry and irritable among themselves. They threw down their bricks, their trowels and other tools and fought each other; then they abandoned their half-begun work, each returning to his home and town. They cultivated their own ground and stayed in their own homesteads, professing love for their country and language alone. Thus the Tower of Babel, a communal work of all humanity, remained deserted and fell into ruins.

This myth taken from the opening pages of the Bible is a wonderful symbol of the idea that with humanity as a community all is possible, even the highest aspirations, but only when it is united, and never when it is partitioned into languages and nations which do not understand each other and do not want to understand each other. And perhaps—who knows what mysterious memories can still be traced in our blood?—there is still some vague reminiscence in our spirit of those distant times, the Platonic memory of when humanity was united and the persuasive, haunted longing that it might eventually recommence the unfinished work; in any case, this dream of a unified world, a unified humanity, is more ancient than all literature, art and scientific knowledge.

A legend, a childish myth, a heroic fable—but what was it our great master of psychology Sigmund Freud taught us on the subject of myths? That they are nothing more than the wish dreams of a people, no different to an individual’s dreams, which are merely expressions of the unconscious and conceal a desire hidden deep within. Never are dreams, especially those of whole generations, completely futile. We should trust in these myths of primitive epochs. For each idea which occurs was formerly a dream, and all we invent and realize now was simply what our courageous forefathers desired or longed for before us.

But let us depart from the vestibule of legend and enter the inner sanctum of history. In its earliest beginnings there was unrelieved darkness. Then we see, on the shore of the Mediterranean and in the east, empires begin to form, then disappear, their destiny sometimes down to the will of a single man, an Alexander, or that of a whole people concentrated in a force so powerful it spreads like a tide across different countries, but only to plunder, ravage and destroy them; and when this warrior tide draws back there is left only the silt of decay. Those civilizations born at the dawn of history possessed no edifying or organizational powers; they did not yet serve the idea of community, and even the Greek civilization did not stamp the seal of unity on the world. There was a measure of it, and it was new and wondrous for the human soul, but it was not bestowed on humanity. The true political and intellectual unification of Europe only began with Rome and the Roman Empire. Here for the first time a city was established, a language and, through law, the will to govern and administer all peoples, all nations of the world under a single system, brilliantly worked out—domination not only by force of arms but on the basis of a spiritual principle, domination not as an objective in itself but for the intelligent organization of the world. With Rome, Europe had for the first time a unified format—and one might say for the last time, for never was the world so unified as in that distant epoch. A single plan, a visionary plan, stretched like an ingenious network across the countries of Europe, still uninformed and devoid of culture, from the cloudy isles of the Britons to the blistering sands of the Parthian Empire, from the columns of Hercules to the Black Sea and the steppes of Scythia. One single system of administration, of finances, military organization, justice, morals, science, and a single language, Latin, dominated all others. On the roads constructed with Roman technology, marching behind the legions came Roman culture, a methodical and constructive spirit to succeed one of unthinking destructive force. Where the sword had cleared the land, language, laws and morals were sown and germinated. For the first time Europe’s chaos was replaced by unified order, a new idea was born, the idea of civilization, of humanity managed according to moral principle. If this edifice had held out for two or three centuries more, the roots of peoples would have been inexorably intertwined and the unified Europe which is today a mere dream would have been a reality, and all continents discovered later would have fallen in line with the central idea.

But precisely because this Roman Empire was so huge, so sprawling and so deeply anchored to the European soil, its unravelling signified nothing less than a moral and spiritual catastrophe, a collapse without parallel in the history of European culture. From this standpoint, the fall of the Roman Empire can only be compared to a man who, following a terrible convulsion of the brain, has suddenly forgotten everything that happened before, and from a mature intellectual state falls into one of complete imbecility. Communication between peoples ground to a halt and roads fell into disrepair; towns became depopulated, for a common language and Roman organization no longer linked the countries. The new colonies, like the old, forgot over an incredibly short period of time all they had known: art, science, architecture, painting, medicine—they all dried up overnight like springs following an earthquake. In a single blow European culture fell far below that of the Orient and China. Let us recall this moment of European shame; literary works were burnt or sat rotting in libraries. Italy and Spain were forced to hire their doctors and scholars from the Arabs and clumsily and onerously learnt art and trade from the Byzantines. Our great Europe, teacher of civilization, had to go back to school and be taught by her own pupils! A great heritage was needlessly wasted, statues were destroyed, buildings were razed, aqueducts collapsed and the roads were left in a state of dereliction. This tragic epoch was even unable to recount its own history, while only 400 years earlier Tacitus, Livy, Caesar and Pliny described theirs so artfully.

This moment is the culminating point of Europe’s fragmentation, the lowest point of our communal culture, the most withering blow that it has ever received. It is truly horrifying to recall this epoch—horrifying, because you are gripped by the fear that, once again and with a similar blow, the new edifice to which we have all contributed a stone might collapse through the same spiritual and moral upheaval and its catastrophic effects be loosed on the world. But let us not forget: even in the very moment of extreme anarchy, Europe did not completely jettison the idea of unity. For this idea is indestructible. Like the human body when it opposes murderous germs within its own blood, the organism called humanity, in moments of grave danger, draws from itself an equable curative strength. In the epoch where the earth has been devastated and then delivered from the elements of destruction, the spirit builds a new construction; for at the very moment the Roman Empire collapsed, the united architectural will of humanity created a new, admirable work, that of the Roman Church, as if it lifted to the clouds a reflection of its earthly power. The material was destroyed but the spirit was saved; the terrible hailstorm had passed; a grain had germinated, the Latin tongue, which rose phoenix-like from the flames. What the hand had built up might collapse, but what the spirit had created from the community of humanity could be obscured, but not lost. Latin, the language of unity, the mother tongue of all European cultures, has been preserved for us even at this apocalyptic hour.

True, the monks salvaged the language from the rabid destruction of the barbarians, hiding it in the catacombs of their cloisters, but the life force of Latin became clouded through this concealment. In the same way that pearls lose their lustre when lacking contact with the warmth of a human body, so Latin, when confined to the scholastic, unused as spoken language, dwindled on the lips of men and lost its international standing. Deprived of air, no longer irradiated by the Italian skies, this Latin language lost its sensuousness, its clarity, its elegance, all the highest virtues which had given us so much joy in the reading of its poets. In this language you could no more rejoice, joke, laugh or speak with finesse and taste of tender and vital things, no more maintain contact with your friends, neither by letter nor by voice. What had once been the language of the world was now only used for scholarly subjects, those “artes liberales”, and not for general usage. For several centuries all possibility of understanding within Europe was shattered.

A dark slumber weighed on the world of the spirit, a sleep peopled with mysterious dreams and visions. But awaiting its end, already beginning to shine, is a new dawn; already a handful of men are working to imbue Latin, lost in the shadow of theological parchment, with the blood-warmed rays of life, the suppleness of living speech. A whole cavalcade of poets, with Petrarch at its head, infuses the old mummified language with blood and vigour, forming a new alliance around it; a new class of spiritual men of the world, a kind of classical Esperanto.

And all of a sudden the miracle is realized: spiritual men across Europe, separated by the diversity of their national languages, can now correspond with each other again, can write letters and understand each other in a fraternity enabled by language. Frontiers between countries are breached in a wing-beat thanks to the new language. It matters not in the epoch of Humanism whether you study in Prague, Oxford or Paris. The books are in Latin, the teachers speak Latin—one art of speaking, thought and social intercourse brings all Europe’s intellects under one umbrella. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Bacon, Leibniz, Descartes—they all feel themselves citizens of the same republic, the men of knowledge. Europe feels that once again it is forging towards a new community, a new future of Western civilization. The intellectuals of all nations visit each other, dedicate their books to each other, they discuss—and always together—the problems of the time. With a swiftness which contrasts uncannily with the heaviness and slowness of mail coaches and sailing ships, they share their knowledge, their literary works and the problem that they belong to different nations, the first being a Dutchman, the second a German, the third an Italian, the fourth a Frenchman and the fifth a Portuguese Jew is of less importance than the new-found exhilarating feeling that they are all deputies in an invisible parliament of Europe, that they have a heritage to manage together, that all new discoveries and all ancient spiritual conquests belong to the community. If a forgotten comedy of Terence is found in a hidden corner of Italy, there is a cry of joy in England as in Poland and Spain among the men of intellect, as if a child has been born, or some fortune dropped out of the sky. In this supranational kingdom of Humanism, through this supremacy of an international elite, indifferent to political struggles, guided by artistic passion, feeling themselves above all frontiers, the proof is furnished once more, for the first time since the collapse of the Roman Empire, that communal European thought is possible, and this concept enlivens and animates all minds. It seems to these men that the free world has become wider and richer; from the earth rise up, in the form of statues and speaking the language of former times, the spirits of an ancient world; across the seas old continents emerge, the invention of printing spreads its invisible wings—and likewise, with a richness hitherto undreamt of, the spiritual word. Whenever the world expands, spirits are gladdened, and this exuberance of strength, of pleasure, of life aura finds its greatest and most enduring form in what we now name the Renaissance, in the truest sense of the word a rebirth of the spirit.

This first form of European intellectualism, which we look on with envy, coming as it did after a protracted period of war, brutality and hostility, surely represents one of the high points of humanity. Although separated from one another by thousands of miles, the poets, thinkers and artists of Europe were more intimately connected than today, in the time of aeroplanes, railways and automobiles. The moment of the Tower of Babel, that of the highest human assurance, appeared to have returned.

But, just as pitilessly, after the flow comes the ebb, and these periods of fraternization are replaced by those of conflict and destruction: human nature is unable to exist without direct contrasts. Once again, after the highest summit comes the deepest downward plunge. The cohesion of the Catholic Church, which for more than a thousand years had linked the various countries of Western Europe, fails, the wars of religion begin and the Reformation destroys the Renaissance. With it also dies the sovereignty of that resuscitated body of the Latin tongue, this last symbol of a united Europe. Once again the European idea remains just a torso, an inchoate monument, left behind and forgotten. Through the discovery of antiquity on Italian soil the nations experience a prodigious sense of empowerment, and as always power is transformed into pride. Now each country is keen to achieve political and intellectual hegemony for itself; each wants to create through its own language a literature capable of rivalling that of antiquity. In every people, the poets throw off the communal language, Latin, and create masterpieces in their own: Tasso and Ariosto in Italy, Ronsard, Corneille and Racine in France; Calderón, Cervantes and Lope de Vega in Spain; Milton and Shakespeare in England. A glorious contest then follows, as if each European people felt the duty to prove on the Areopagus of history that they were the one best fitted to lead the direction of world literature after Rome. Nationalistic literature is born, the primary power, still peaceful, of the national consciousness, and for two or three centuries, from the end of the Renaissance to the French Revolution, any fraternal spirit in the arts all but dies out, the flame that Humanism had fanned so ardently and magnificently.

But as I have said from the outset, the impulsion for mutual engagement and confluence is an intrinsic element of the human soul, and nothing issuing from our innermost soul can ever be suppressed. World history knows no pause, no termination; the drive for a higher connection, the communal spiritual life force never falters, it only changes its mode of expression. This finds symbolic form in the civilization of Rome and her language, then in religion, then in Humanism, in the new Latin and in science. Now the common language has fallen into ruin following the awakening of Italian, Spanish, French, English, German, the inclination towards community seeks a new form, and finds it—a new language standing above all others—in music. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it’s not the poets, nor the theologians, nor the learned men but the musicians who are the standard-bearers for European unity; these most qualified representatives of cosmopolitanism form a single great fraternal family. Barely have Monteverdi and Palestrina in their “stile nuovo” brought a new brilliance and greatness to the language than Europe says to herself: here is a new language through which we all understand each other and so it matters little where the musician lives or where he practises his art, or which language he speaks: ubi ars, ibi patria. One nation accords to another the fullest hospitality. Musicians are the great travellers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the messengers between peoples. Let us not forget how they transform every country: the old Heinrich Schütz goes to Italy to learn from Gabrieli, Handel makes his home in Naples and London, Gluck is some...