"The World of Yesterday" by Stefan Zweig (translated by Anthea Bell)

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I'm excited to finally start this book. I was conned into reading something before this, but that moment has passed.

I love Wes Anderson's movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and I noticed something at the end of that movie on my most recent viewing (back in December, the previous month).... a thanks directed towards this book as serving in large part the inspiration for the movie.

Even the forward is written in such a pleasing and engrossing way:

For I have indeed been torn from all my roots, even from the earth that nourished them, more entirely than most in our times. I was born in 1881 in the great and mighty empire of the Habsburg Monarchy, but you would look for it in vain on the map today; it has vanished without trace. I grew up in Vienna, an international metropolis for two thousand years, and had to steal away from it like a thief in the night before it was demoted to the status of a provincial German town.

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Zweig, a Jew, mentions how tolerant and accepting the Catholic Habsburgs were to the Jewish population of Austria.

For Jews, adaptation to the human or national environment in which they lived was not only a measure taken for their own protection, but also a deeply felt private need. Their desire for a homeland, for peace, repose and security, a place where they would not be strangers, impelled them to form a passionate attachment to the culture around them. And nowhere else, except for Spain in the fifteenth century, were such bonds more happily and productively forged than in Austria. Here the Jews who hand been settled in the imperial city (Vienna) for over two hundred years met people who took life lightly and were naturally easygoing, while under that apparently light-hearted surface they shared the deep Jewish instinct for intellectual and aesthetic values.

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I'm in a section where Zweig is explaining how among his friends (all of them in their youth - 13 to 16 years of age) they eschewed sports and girls to focus on literature, poetry, the stage...

He posts this very funny quote by the Shah of Persia:

As for sporting records of speed or skill, I am still in the position of the Shah of Persia who, when it was suggested that he might go to a horse race for amusement, asked with oriental wisdom, "What's the point? I know that one horse can run faster than another, but which horse does it is a matter of indifference to me."

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When it comes to the topic of pre-WW1 attitudes in Austria (and possibly elsewhere) toward sexuality, Zweig is pretty libertine.

Though he seems to hate what the world of 1940 has become. He praises the lax and open views of sexuality and female empowerment.

He states,

The present generation has little idea of the vast extent of prostitution in Europe before the world wars. While today prostitutes are seen in big cities as seldom as horses in the streets, at the time the pavements were so crowded with women of easy virtue that it was harder to avoid them than to find them.

He goes on to give a warm nod to prostitution allowing for an avenue to direct extra-marital 'energies'... and the states approach to sanctioning prostitution.

The official attitude of the state and its morality to these murky affairs was never really comfortable. From the moral standpoint, no one dared to acknowledge a woman's right to sell herself openly; but when hygiene entered the equation it was impossible to do without prostitution, since it provided a channel for the problem of extramarital sexuality. So the authorities resorted to ambiguity by drawing a distinction between unofficial prostitution, which the state opposed as immoral and dangerous, and licensed prostitution, for which a woman needed a kind of certificate and which was taxed by the state.

I'll have to take his word on this. Though I disagree entirely with the idea of needing to vent sexual energies somewhere. This whole chapter (titled, "Eros Matutinus" seems woefully ignorant of a thomistic view of sexuality.... which is understandable. But, I would hope that even reason would have guided Zweig away from some of his conclusions. He views the modern (1940s) approach as so much the better because one is able to have sex outside of marriage and the degree of scorn directed at those people is significantly diminished, across all classes. He sees something imbalanced about a person forgoing sexual relationships even for religious purposes. Fine enough... but did he really have such a poor understanding on appetites in general? Didn't his own experiences show him that unfettered indulging does not lead to a healthy satiation.

He comments on how smut magazines and books would completely leave when a society 'knocks down that fence' of morality. Oh come to the 21st century, Zweig and see how wrong you were.

Some of his views and criticisms of that pre-war time do make sense. For one:

Here again we can detect dishonesty, for the bourgeois calendar was by no means synchronized with the rhythms of nature. While nature brings a young man to sexual maturity at sixteen or seventeen, in the society of that time he was of marriageable status only when he had a 'position in society', and that was unlikely to be before he was twenty-five or twenty-six. So there was an artificial interval of six, eight, or ten years between real sexual maturity and society's idea of it, and in that interval the young man had to fend for himself in his private affairs.... or 'adventures'.

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Zweig does touch on something that is heart breaking... the treatment of those unmarried woman who are no longer sought after.

Convention mercilessly decreed that an unmarried woman of thirty must remain in a state of inexperience and naivety, feeling no desires—it was a state not at all suitable for her at her present age—preserving herself intact for the sake of the family and ‘decency’. The tender image of girlhood then usually turned into a sharp and cruel caricature. An unmarried woman of her age had been ‘left on the shelf’, and a woman left on the shelf became an old maid. The humorous journals, with their shallow mockery, made fun of old maids all the time. If you open old issues of the Fliegende Blätter or another specimen of the humorous press of the time, it is horrifying to see, in every edition, the most unfeeling jokes cracked at the expense of aging unmarried women whose nervous systems were so badly disturbed that they could not hide what, after all, was their natural longing for love. Instead of acknowledging the tragedy of these sacrificial lives which, for the sake of the family and its good name, had to deny the demands of nature and their longing for love and motherhood, people mocked them with a lack of understanding that repels us today.

And a beautiful quote he makes that rings true for any society at any time:

But society is always most cruel to those who betray its secrets, showing where its dishonesty commits a crime against nature.

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Zweig has just graduated from university in Berlin. Where he dedicated most of his time to translating the works of Emile Verhaeren after befriending him.

Zweig had to catch up, "within a few months with the entire scholastic material on which more conscientious students had been labouring for almost four years."

And he apparently pulled it off with distinction.


After graduating he travels to Paris. "Nowhere but in Paris did you feel so strongly, with all your senses aroused, that your own youth was as one with the atmosphere around you. The city offers itself to everyone, although no on can fathom it entirely."

That was before the Germans invaded. His description of what it was like shortly after that invasion is harrowing:

Of course I know that the wonderfully lively and invigorating Paris of my youth no longer exists; perhaps the city will never entirely recover that wonderful natural ease, now that it has felt the iron brand forcibly imprinted on it by the hardest hand on earth. Just as I began writing these lines, German armies and German tanks were rolling in, like a swarm of grey termites, to destroy utterly the divinely colourful, blessedly light-hearted lustre and unfading flowering of its harmonious structure. And now they are there - the swastika is hoisted on the Eiffel Tower, black-clad storm troopers march challengingly down Napoleon's Champs-Elysees, and even from far away I feel how the hearts must be sinking in the buildings of Paris, how its downtrodden citizens, once so good-humoured, must be watching the conquerors tramp through its pleasant bistros and cafes in their jackboots.

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Zweig isn't hostile towards religion... but he is very indifferent towards it. He seems to be critical of tradition in general, but only when that tradition seems to thwart one's "good time". He appears to think that good relations between people just naturally bubbles up.

Zweig was close friends with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He tells about how Rilke would regularly bring along with him a:

Russian icon and a Catholic crucifix which, I think, went with him on all his travels gave a slightly religious touch to the place where he worked, not that his sense of religion was linked to any particular dogma.

Zweig recalls that once on a walk by himself he saw a convent of some "beguines" (lay Catholic women who live in a community together) "telling their rosaries without a word, and walking in a circle as if in a devout reverie."

Zweig tells Rilke of what he saw. Upon telling him Zweig recalls:

It was one of the few times I saw that quiet, self-controlled man almost impatient; he had to see it all for himself.

So Zweig brings him to the convent, but the women are not doing "telling" their rosaries yet. So Rilke asks Zweig if they can wait until they appear. After a few minutes a nun comes along and said, though they can't come in and watch them say the rosary, she said, "if (they) went to the gardener's cottage next door, he (Rilke) could get a good view from the window on the upper floor."... which they go and do.

Maybe Zweig is right, maybe not... but Rilke definitely had some sense in him of the beauty of Christianity.

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Zweig is working for the War Archive office, refusing to go to the front line (as requested by a few major newspapers), because he refuses to write any puff-pieces to cheer on the war effort, refusing to favor any side in the conflict.

The War Archive wants him to collect "originals of all the Russian proclamations and placards".... after the Austrian-German front pushed through the Russian lines in Tarnow in the spring of 1915

In Tarnow, I came upon the first transport carrying Russian prisoners of war. They sat penned up in a large rectangular space on the ground, smoking and talking, guarded by two or three dozen middle-aged Tyrolean reservists

In a touching section:

One Tyrolean reservist took photographs of his wife and children out of his dirty old wallet and showed them to the enemy who all, in turn, admired them, asking questions with their fingers, ‘Was this particular child three or four years old?’ I had an irresistible feeling that these simple, even primitive men saw the war in a much clearer light than our university professors and writers. They regarded it as a misfortune that had befallen them. There was nothing they could do about it. And anyone else who was the victim of such bad luck was a kind of brother.

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Zweig has received permission to leave his post at the War Archive to help put on his play Jeremiah (named after the prophet) in Switzerland. Zweig mentions how during WW1 (more so than during WW2) the various countries still wanted to show that they were culturally rich and not simply militarist. So they'd allow performances to be put on in places like Switzerland. Zweig had a bit more of a daunting prospect as his play essentially assumes defeat, but growth from that defeat. But defeat was not something you could casually chirp about in Austria.

On his way to Switzerland (Zurich) he stops off in Salzburg to purchase a house. He gives alittle shout out to the Catholics who hated the war.

There was a small clique of ardent Catholics in Salzburg, two of whom were to play crucial parts in the history of post-war Austria - Heinrich Lammasch and Ignaz Seipel. The former was one of the outstanding teachers of jurisprudence of his time and had chaired peace conferences in The Hague; the latter, Ignaz Seipel, a Catholic priest of extraordinary intelligence, was destined to take over the leadership of our little country after the collapse of the Austrian Monarchy, and in that capacity to given outstanding evidence of his political genius. Both were convinced pacifists, devout Catholics, passionate believers in the old Austria, and thus firmly opposed to German, Prussian and Protestant militarism, which as they saw it could not be reconciled with the traditional ideas of Austria and its Catholic mission.

"Protestant militarism"... interesting.

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Lammasch confides to Zweig that Emperor Karl (gotta get Charles Coloumbe in here) had expressed a desire to end Austria’s involvement with the war even if that meant leaving Germany on its own:

"No one can blame us for disloyalty," he said in firm, decided tones. "We have suffered over a million dead. We have done and sacrificed enough! Not one more human life, not a single one, should be thrown away in the cause of German world-domination!"

He took my breath away. We had often thought all these
things in private, but no one had had the courage to say in
broad daylight: "Let us break with the Germans and their
policy of annexation in good time." It would have looked like
disloyalty to our brother-in-arms. And here was a man who,
as I already knew, enjoyed the confidence of the Emperor at
home, and the highest esteem abroad because of his work in
The Hague, saying these things to me, almost a stranger, calmly
and firmly. I immediately guessed that a separatist Austrian
action had been in preparation for some time, and was well
advanced.

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There are so many fine descriptions of momentous events in this book... one in particular is when Emperor Karl and Empress Zita leaving Austria by train after the monarchy collapsed.

But this one really stood out. Interestingly, Zweig is telling of his trip to Soviet Russia in which he expresses ambivalence towards its goals. Something about Russia exhausted him. He stated he didn't want to stand with either side of those who cheer on the Bolsheviks or those who decry them. When he gets to visit the grave of Tolstoy you can tell how moved he is. In one of the best passages in this entire book (filled with great passages).

I saw nothing finer or more moving in Russia than Tolstoy's
grave. That illustrious place of pilgrimage lies out of the way
alone in the middle of the woods. A narrow footpath leads to
the mound, nothing but a rectangle of soil raised above ground
level, with no one guarding or keeping watch on it, only two
huge trees casting their shade. Leo Tolstoy planted those trees
himself, so his granddaughter told me beside his grave. When
he and his brother Nikolai were boys, they had heard one of the
village women say that a place where you planted trees would
be a happy one. So they planted two saplings, partly as a kind
of game. Only later did the old man remember that promise of
happiness, and then he expressed a wish to be buried under the
trees he had planted. And his wish was carried out. In its heart-
rending simplicity, his grave is the most impressive place of
burial in the world. Just a small rectangular mound in the woods
with trees overhead, no cross, no tombstone, no inscription. The
great man who suffered more than anyone from his own famous
name and reputation lies buried there, nameless, like a vagabond
who happened to be found nearby or an unknown soldier. No
one is forbidden to visit his last resting place; the flimsy wooden
fence around it is not kept locked. Nothing guards that restless
man's final rest but human respect for him. While curious
sightseers usually throng around the magnificence of a tomb,
the compelling simplicity of this place banishes any desire to
gape. The wind rushes like the word of God over the nameless
grave, and no other voice is heard. You could pass the place
Without knowing any more than that someone is buried here,
a Russian lying in Russian earth. Napoleon's tomb beneath the
marble dome of Les Invalides, Goethe's in the grand-ducal vault
at Weimar, the tombs in Westminster Abbey are none of them as
moving as this silent and movingly anonymous grave somewhere
in the woods, with only the wind whispering around it, uttering
no word or message of its own.