RECONSIDERATION

Stefan Zweig: A Witness to the Collapse of Europe

Mordecai Roshwald
He was not a lonely humanist writer struggling for acceptance and recognition in an alien world. Zweig was a successful and popular writer ever since, at the age of nineteen, he started contributing to the prestigious Viennese paper, the Neue Freie Presse. His books were selling very well in the German-speaking countries, as well as in translations in some forty languages. His dramas were produced in leading theaters and some of his stories were made into films. He could live quite well on his royalties and reap the fruits of his literary success. Indeed, to a degree, he did that. Yet it is not out of a happy life that most literary achievements are forged. For, despite the initial idyllic conditions, there are elements of deep sadness and tragedy in Zweig's subsequent times and life, which found their expression in his literary workwhether fictional, semi-fictional, or autobiographical. It is this painting in chiaroscuroall too often more oscuro than chiaro, the darkness prevailing over lightthat lends weight to Zweig's legacy. His self-perception was a composite of various elements. He was born in Vienna, at that time the capital of the AustroHungarian Empire; his mother tongue, which he cultivated and in which he wrote, was German. This made him a "citizen"a cultural citizenof the German359

STEFAN ZWEIG (1881-1942) belongs to the pasta past not distant enough to measure him against the wider setting of Western civilization, yet not close enough to be remembered by the bulk of contemporary humanity. In other words, he might have been relegated to that blind spot of the past which is erased and forgotten. If this is his lot, it must be reversed. Zweig deserves to be remembered, reconsiderednot 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 comprehensive sense, what is nowadays conveyed by a less felicitous term, a "generalist." His writings, diverse in both form and theme, include poetry, numerous novellas, a major novel, studies of historical figures (literary and otherwise), drama. The topics range from anonymous "little" men to individuals who shaped history. His writings encompass real persons and situations, and imaginary stories presented in a realistic way. He reproduced in a polished literary form exotic legends, and described in a vivid manner his own life and time. It could be said that he followed the adage nihil humani mihi alienum.
MORDECAI ROSHWALD taught for twenty-five years at the University of Minnesota.

speaking world. Being a native of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and thus a subject of the Emperor, he owed political allegiance to the multi-national state. This, at least in his case, was not a mere legal technicality. For Zweig, like many other loyal subjects, was attached and devoted to the peculiar political entity, consisting of many national-ethnic elements: Germans, Italians, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Croats, Hungarians, Slovaks. This ethnic melange added a distinctive flavor to Zweig's national awareness. It differed from German, French, or Italian nationalism, in that it was based on ethnic pluralism. Zweig and many others saw this as a distinction and a privilege. For the diversity of ethnic and cultural elements createdor were believed to createan essentially tolerant and easygoing nationalism, a collective awareness benefitting from the diversity of disparate cultures that stimulated each other. It is this multicultural ambience which contributed to Zweig's self-awareness as a European, as a member of a polity of the advanced and advancing civilization, the spearhead of human progress. Then he was born into a well-to-do Jewish family. Although his family was rather assimilated and he had little Jewish education, he was aware of his roots, and proudly acknowledged them. The various components of Zweig's affiliation and identity did not create any conflicts of loyalty. The diverse elements blended harmoniously and Zweig, like many others, felt such belonging to different "republics" of humanity to be an assetcultural, social, human. This conviction could thrive in Vienna, the capital of the Empire, its vibrant cultural center, a place of intellectual and artistic ferment, a city which could claim to be all-European more than any other capital in Europe. Thus, to Zweig's many loyalties one should add his Viennese local patriotism, which he eagerly expressed. Zweig was born into an affluent, re360

spected, and enlightened family, which facilitated his education and respected his intellectual inclinations. There was no pressure to steer him into the direction of a practical career. He could follow his interests and study philosophy and history, rather than law or medicine, and engage in literary ventures. This freedom did not spoil the young man, for he plunged into an energetic life of literary activity and remained a diligent and productive writer throughout his lifein happy times and in periods of utmost depression. The outset of Zweig's life, prior to World War I, promised a life of prosperity and fulfilment in an era of consistent human progress. Zweig describes this era in one of his last books, The World of Yesterday. The original title Die Welt von Gestern is significantly complemented by the subtitle Erinnerungen eines Europders [Reminiscences of a European]. The book is a remarkable autobiography of the writer and his time: the personal and the historical are inextricably linked. The years preceding the Great War are described by Zweig as the age otSicherheit, which means both certainty and security. The sense of security was bound with the trust in stabilitypolitical, economic, social. Personal life was carefully planned and proceeded according to pre-determined goals concerning personal advancement, income and expenditure, holidays and the like. Insurance guaranteed the future. Moreover, there was trust in scientific and technological progress, and thus the future looked brighter than the present. Social progress was advancing at its own pace and ever wider circles of society were gradually encompassed in political and personal benefits. Earlier times, replete with wars and conflicts, were regarded as manifestations of barbarism, never to recur. It is against the background of such inveterate optimism that the subsequent disillusionments have to be measured. Indeed, writing from
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the depth of disenchantment, Zweig admits not to have completely discarded the trust developed in the times of his childhood:
Even from the abyss of horror, in which today we grope around, half-blind with a disturbed and broken soul, I always look again to those old images of stars which glistened over my childhood, and console myself with the inherited confidence, that this relapse will appear at one time merely as an interval in the eternal 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 the nineteenth century. The initial public enthusiasm for the war and its "just cause," by which Zweig himself was swept, was followed by the carnage on the battlefields, the misery and suffering of the population in the regions pillaged by the Russian invaders, and the consequent shock. Zweig turned into an opponent of war, along with his French friend and famous writer, Romain Rolland (18661944). War was recognized as a reversal of civilization, as the enemy of progress, of humanity, of the basic creed of an enlightened Europe. As the carnage went on, it seemed as if the world, as Zweig knew it and identified with it, disintegrated and collapsed. And with the downfall of the world, his world, Zweig himself, as a writer and ahuman being, was deeply wounded. He lost what by now appeared to have been his innocent beliefs, as did many of his contemporaries. He could not anymore see the world as it had appeared to be before the great calamity. The beautiful, harmonious, predictable world changed into an indescribable horror. If, gradually, the horror somewhat subsided in the post-war years, and a streak of optimism asserted itself in Zweig's overall disposition, a new blow came from an unexpected source. It was the rising to power of Hitler and his Nazi Party in GerModem Age

many. Zweig was affected by it also in a personal way, when his books were burned, together with the 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 the German culture by writing in German. The obvious means of preserving the purity of the Teutonic creation and spirit was to ban Jewish books from German readership. The other sin was having been born a Jew, which was to be punished by the murder of millions of Zweig's kinsmen some years later. Mercifully, he did not live to witness that stage of horror. The banning of Zweig's books from Germany hurt him deeply. He was cut off from his main readership at the peak of his success. His role as a writer, his raison d'etre, the justification of his existence as he saw it, was undermined. For he took his writing seriously. It was the expression of his personality, it was the extension of his self. Though the translations of his books were not affected, it was the German original which secured the intimate contact with the readersmostly Germans. He was condemned to exile from his cultural milieu. Then came a further blow that swept the ground from under the feet of Zweig and the Jews of Austria, in a more basic, elemental way. It was the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germanyin 1938. A year later Europe plunged into World War II. These dramatic stages of seemingly unavoidable catastrophe had a cataclysmic impact on Zweig, as is manifest from his works at the time, as well as from his correspondence. Indeed, the external events played havoc with his mind and eventually led to his suicide. Zweig sums up his life-experience in the Preface to The World of Yesterday his personal tragedy and the tragedy of his generation. He points out the extraordinary burden allotted to him and his contemporaries by history. Like a con361

tinuous volcanic eruption, the political upheavals of Europe unsettled them in their innermost being. As he puts it, "as an Austrian, as aJew, as awriter, as ahumanist and a pacifist, I have always been standing right there where the earth-quakes were the fiercest. Three times they have overthrown my home and existence, severed me from everything that once had been and was gone, and with dramatic force thrown me into the void, into the already familiar 'I know not what.'"2 At the time of writing these words Zweig could not know the degree of depravity of Nazi Germany and the depth of misery which it was to inflict on millions who were at the very crater of the volcano. Thus, his plight was almost benign by comparison. Nonetheless, it was real, felt acutely, and expressed vividlyboth in direct statements and in fiction. One does not have to descend into the lowest levels of the inferno in order to sense the misery, the plight, the estrangement. Indeed, at the lowest levels one may be past the capacity 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:

Zweig expresses his pain and despair not only in general terms, and not merely in presenting his own plight. He also addresses the misfortunes of other individualshunted, denigrated, persecuted. Here is his description of scenes in Vienna, following the annexation by the Nazis: "Now it was not merely theft and plunder, but every private lust for revenge was given free rein. University professors had to scrub the streets with bare hands, pious 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 downtrodden and persecuted Jews, his kinsmen, 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 If one may be tempted to speculate that it was the horror of the Nazi conduct and of World War II that awakened the humane sentiments of Zweig, his own testimony shows that he was moved to I was born in 1881 in a great and mighty such compassion much earlier, by witEmpire, in the Hapsburg monarchy...: it has nessing human suffering in World War I. been wiped out without a trace. I grew up in Referring to his experiences in the Great Vienna, the two-thousand-year-old superWar, he writes: "Today I know: without all national metropolis, and had to leave it like that I suffered then during the war, through a criminal, before it was degraded to a German provincial city. My literary work, in feelings of participation and anticipation the language 1 wrote it, was burned to ashes [mitfiihlend, vorausfiihlend], I would have in the very land where my books had made remained the writer I had been before the friends of millions of readers. Thus I belong war, 'pleasantly moved' [angenehm nowhere anymorea stranger everywhere, bewegt],... but never seized, grasped, hit in a guest at best. Moreover, Europe, the homemy bowels.... In trying to help others, I land that is my heart's choice, is lost to me, have helped myself."6 Much as Zweig apever since it for the second time suicidally preciated the self-contained domain of tore itself to pieces in a fraternal war. Against aesthetics, his overriding passion became my will, 1 have become a witness to the most the wish to help humanity. As he wrote to terrible defeat of reason and the wildest triumph of brutality in the chronicle of times .3 Remain Rolland in 1918: "My aim would be one day to become not a great critic or
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a literary celebrity but a moral authority."7 Compassion and moral commitment are characteristic of Zweig's Jewish contemporary writers, such as Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Werfel, Josef Roth, Jakob Wassermann, and, in a more veiled manner, Franz Kafka. This penchant may have been linked to Jewish tradition and even to the moral exhortations of the Bible and the impassioned appeals of the Prophets. Zweig's moral commitment and sense of compassion are reflected in many of his writings, notably in his only novel, UngedulddesHerzens, or Beware ofPityin the English translation. Indeed, Zweig offers a philosophical description of the meaning of compassion, as a motto to his book. It succinctly sums up what is elaborated in the story, as in his many other writings.
For there are two kinds of compassion. One, the weak-spirited and sentimental, which is really only impatience of the heart to get rid as fast as possible of the painful involvement in an alien calamity, a compassion which is not compassion at all, but an instinctive defence of one's own soul from the alien suffering. And the other one, the only one that countsthe unsentimental, but creative compassion, that knows what it wants, and is determined patiently and compassionately to endure it all to the limit of one's capacity, and even beyond it.8

his best, Die Schachnovelle [in English The Royal Game]. We need not, in the present context, outline the story, which takes place against the background of the Nazi takeover of Austria and the methods employed by the Nazis to attain their objectives also in respect of a Catholic lawyer, as in this case. The tottering and the collapse of civilization inform the story throughout. The setting is one often encountered in the novels of Graham Greene. What we want to highlight is a detached, philosophical analysis of chess game by Zweig which has implications forindeed symbolizeshis vision of the human condition, or the precarious situation of humanity with respect to reality.
I knew from my own experience about the mysterious attraction of the "royal game," the only game invented by man, which in a sovereign manner places itself outside [entzieht sich] the tyranny of chance and accords its laurels to the spirit only.... Is it not also a science [Wissenschaft], an art [Kunst], a unique tie [Bindung] of opposites; very old and yet eternally new, mechanical in its arrangement and effective only through imagination, limited in a geometrically rigid space, and yet limitless in its combinations, always developing and yet sterile, a kind of thinking which leads to nothing, a mathematics which calculates nothing, an art without works...and nonetheless proved to be longer lasting in its being and presence [Sein undDasein] than all the books and works, the only game that belongs to all thenations and all the times....9

Yet, with all the compassion and all the moral fervor, Zweig did not delude himself as to the power of the commitment, the good will, the printed word, the logos, the idea, to confront reality and shape it effectively. He was far from being the optimist who decides on the strength of his good intentions that reality must conform to the demands of morality and reason. If anything, he was more easily swayed to pessimism and despair than to optimism and hope. This is reflected in an indirect manner by an aside on the nature of the chess game. It appears in one of his last writings, a novella which is perhaps
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Zweig's attitude to chess is palpably ambivalent: he admires its universality and timelessness, but deplores that this self-contained perfection is impotent to affect life, to be a force for the good. This appears to be a complaint about the separation between logic and reality, between logos and life, between the world of ideas and the lot of man. Ultimately, Zweig may well express here the frustration of the men of spiritwhether philosophers,
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writers, or other individuals bent on doing goodin being unable to affect the condition of humanity and to avert the self-imposed calamities. Was there any domain in which Zweig could have found anchor? Was there any belief which could offer him a refuge from the despair of an open-eyed idealist, striving for good and reason and facing evil and madness? Conceivably, his Jewish roots and affiliation might have offered him support and a spiritual way out of the despair, if not a physical refuge. Looking into his writings, such an eventuality cannot be ruled out. There is an explicit testimony as to his Jewish consciousness, stated in an interview in 1931: "Although I do not come from a rigorously Jewish family, I have been vitally interested in Jewish problems all my life, vitally 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 milieu, and expands his comments to Jews in general. The Jewish, seemingly bourgeois, 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 further from the truth [asserts Zweig]. [Riches are only] a means to the true aim.... The essential wish of the Jew, his immanent ideal, is the ascent into the spiritual, onto a higher cultural stratum. Already in the eastern orthodox Judaism...this supremacy of the will to the spiritual over the merely material finds a concrete expression: the devout, the biblical scholar, is a thousand times more esteemed in the community than the 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 connection to a scholar, a professor, a musi364

ciana man of higher culture." Zweig delves deeper into Judaism in his poetical drama Jeremias [Jeremiah], written in 1915-1917 during the painful experience of the Great War. !t was a pacifist response to the ongoing slaughter, and, at the same time, an attempt to deal with the distinct plight of the Jews. But Zweig also attempts to find a universal answer and consolation in the prophetic message, or in the message as he understands it. One issue which Zweig raises is the perennial problem of the relationship between Might and Right. The answer he offers accords with the prophetic message and with Judaism at large. The claim of Might to control human destiny is denied in the name of the rule of God and the principles of Right and divine justice. In the drama, Jeremiah after the fall of Jerusalem is offered a position of honor and privilege by the victorious Babylonian ruler, in recognition of the prophet's opposition to Israel's revolt and his prediction of the disaster to follow. Jeremiah spurns the king's offer as conveyed by his messengers. He does so out of commiseration with his people's lot, and because he disdains the Babylonian king's ruthlessness 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 the cruel, nor mercy from the merciless...."12 The messengers' outrage at Jeremiah's defiance of the "king of kings" meets with a scornful comment on the evanescence of human might and its carrier, 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 his body?"13 Moreover, the king is evil and retribution awaits him: "Greatly has he enslaved Israel, but he will be enslaved sevenfold.... Woe to the confounder [Verstorer], for he will be confounded, and woe to the plunderer, for he will be plundered!"14
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Yet, how does this defiance of might and punishment of the mighty and wicked console the victims of iniquity and cruelty? How does the eventual downfall of ambitious kings and tyrants resolve the problem of suffering on the part of the vanquished? What is the prophecy of consolation for Israel and for the meek of the earth? Here Zweig 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 suffering ["erst in der Tiefe des Leidens werden wirseinergewahr"]. "Whom He loves, him He pushes down into the depths of life." [ "Wen er liebt, den stosst er hinab in die Tiefe des Lebens."]K Thus, the conclusion 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 fall brings us higher into His domains, For only the vanquished know about Him.16 [Leiden istPrufung und Prilfung Erhebung, Erniedrigung macht uns gottesnah, JederSturz ftihrt hoher in seine Reiche, Denn nur die Besiegten wissen urn ihn. ]

While the Might-Right issue is tackled in the Israelite-prophetic spirit, the praise of suffering and its religious justification is closer to the spirit of Christianity. That Zweig resorts to such an answer may well be due to his despairing of the resolution of the Might-Right issue in a satisfactory way. Yet it is noteworthy that Zweig suggests a Zionist interpretation and solution of the Jewish predicament in an invented legend, which he published in 1937,entitledDer6egra6eneLeuc/iter/T/ie Buried Candelabrum]. The story itself need not concern us only its symbolical message. It revolves round the golden Menorah (candelabrum), part of the Roman loot from the Temple in Jerusalem. The Menorah symModern Age

bolizes the Jewish faith and hope and is pursued with devotion by Jews who want to protect it from alien looters, after Rome itself became the victim of conquest by the Vandals. Ultimately the Menorah is buried in the land of Israel, awaiting there the national redemption. That it is the candelabrum, the carrier of eternal light, that is buried underground, may have a symbolical meaning: the Jewish light, and hope, is buried in the earth, awaiting the moment of the return of the people to their land, when the Menorah will be lit again and the suffering of the people ended. Yet Zweig does not leave the meaning hidden, inviting the reader's interpretation. The story conveys the message in a dream of the protagonist, an old man totally committed from childhood to the preservation of the holy object. In his dream he sees a large groaning crowd, an entire people, on the march from time immemorial. He murmurs to himself:" 'No one should be kept [wandering] like this.... No people can continue to live without home and without goal.... A light must be kindled for them....' "n And, indeed, at the conclusion of the dream, he sees the wandering people at rest in a land fruitful and peaceful, a land of vineyards, fields of grain and flowers. "Now the Lampstand rose higher in the sky and shone more gloriously. Its lights were like the light of the sun, illuminating sky and land to the very horizon."18 In this story Zweig seems to identify with traditional orthodox Judaism, seeing the exile as a catastrophe and hoping for a messianic delivery. There is no redemption outside the land of Israel, in the diaspora. The calamity is the consequence 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 reestablishing there a normal life, tilling the ancestral land, will the plight of the Jews come to an end, a happy end. Zweig
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may not have embraced the Zionist, let alone the traditional-orthodox, belief wholeheartedly. Yet, the fact that he chose to write this story at one of 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; Judaism, with its long experience of gloom and doomand, at the same time, of resilience and survivalextended a helpful hand, which Zweig grasped in desperation. Yet Zweig was neither an orthodox Jew nor a committed Zionist. His ties with his Jewish heritage were not strong enough to counter his despair of the European world, which was the air he breathed. Also the reality of the military success of Nazi Germany and all it meant for the future of Europephysically and spirituallycould not be erased by any sentiment or yearning. The worldhis world was collapsing. Zweig remained well-to-do and was not in personal danger, having escaped to England, and subsequently moved to Brazil, where he was held in high regard and where he wrote a book about that country. Yet the life of a refugee who lost his spiritual anchor, who was torn out of his world, whose past was erased and whose future was all but hopeless, seemed deprived of any worth. As he put it to a friend: "What sense is there in living on as one's own shadow?"19 As Zweig was approaching his sixtieth birthday, his resigned and dejected mood grew ever stronger. While in good physical 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 of Singapore at the hands of the Japanese armyall seemed to point to a likely victory of the Axis powers. And so, after his sixtieth birthday, he committed suicide, jointly with his wife, in their home in
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Petropolis, Brazil. In a letter he left, dated February 22,1942, he refers to "the world of my own language [which ] has been lost and my spiritual homeland, Europe, [which] has destroyed itself." His long years of homeless wandering have exhausted him. "So I hold it better to conclude in good time and with an erect bearing a life for which intellectual labour was always the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on this earth."20 In what way is Stefan Zweig relevant to our time and age, besides leaving a literary legacy which 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 personal life was intertwined with the high culture of the era and the brute forces bent on annihilating the achievements of humanity. The quest of beauty and of decency, the cultivation of a good life and fair society, was brutally assailed by two world wars and wanton cruelty, with the forces of evil and unreason obtaining the upper hand over the traditions of good sense and cultural creativity. Zweig, in his personal life and in the way he perceived and articulated the calamities of his era, reflects the tragic history of the half century in a remarkable way. But it is not only the world of yesterday that Zweig brings to our attention. For even if yesterday is past and gone, tomorrow always waits in the wings, ready to make its appearance. By looking at the world of yesterday, we may be warned about the world of tomorrow. Seemingly, the present situation is quite different. Europe seems to have learned its lesson. The final form of the European entity has not yet been determined, and its extent has not yet been defined, but armed hostility in Western and Central Europe is virtually unimaginable. Indeed, even the menace of war between Western Europe and its Eastern neighbor, the mighty Russian power, has receded. The expectaFall 2002

tions of Zweig in his early years of a peaceful Europe seem to be finally vindicated. Can, then, the nightmare of the intervening 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 evilto put it in metaphysical termshave not been annihilated. They may have left the European arena, or most of it, but they have regrouped and made their appearance in a new form. They do not march in ostentatious army formations, but they hide in shadowy places and strike with murderous stealth at unexpected locations. Moreover, they can take advantage of advanced technology to inflict catastrophic damage. In comparing the world of yesterday, as presented by Zweig, with the present situation, we may look with satisfaction at the material progress and social advancement of Europe and Western Civilization. Zweig would have been happy to see the higher standard of living and its fairer distribution in the advanced part of the world. That is what he anticipated one-hundred years ago. This gratifying picture does not extend into the domain of cultural life. In this respect one may look with longing to a time and place like the Vienna of Zweig's youth, when the city enjoyed a first-class theatre and opera, as well as lighter entertainment of high quality, when gifted

writers created literary works of great merit, when humanistic education shaped the aesthetic sensibilities of the generation. Then there is the example of Zweig and several of his contemporaries who represent the ideal of the socially involved writer, of the concerned artist, of the compassionate man of ideas. In an age when publishing increasingly becomes an industry, writing a commercial undertaking, and excellence is measured by financial rewards, one can only cast a nostalgic look at a time when writing was evaluated by its intrinsic worth and the remuneration was incidental to literary worth. Is all this a cause for despair? Not necessarily. Zweigwas inclined to pessimism, though it has to be conceded that he had good reasons for such an attitude. Our own confrontation with born-again evil puts us on alert, and justly so. The more aware we are of the menace, the better the chances of overcoming it. As 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 substantive evaluation, and are not judged solely by their financial success, there is not even a beginning of a reversal of present cultural trends. Perhaps looking backwards to Zweig's World of Yesterday may help us to lay the foundation for a saner and better World of Tomorrow.

I.Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern, 1944. English translation, The World of Yesterday, 1944, The Viking Press, New York 1945, 18 [5]. The translation in our text does not necessarily follow the English version, but the location in that version is indicated in brackets. 2. Op. cit., 1 [v.]. 3. Op. cit., 8 [vi.]. 4. Op. cit., 460-461 [405-406]. 5. Quoted from D.A. Prater, European of Yesterday, Oxford, 1972, 352. 6. Die Welt von Gestem, 291 [253-254]. 7. D.A. Prater, 107. 8. Stefan Zweig, Ungedulddes Herzens (Stockholm, 1943). 9. Schachnouelle, 1942. Quoted here, in the present writer's translation, from Das Stefan Zweig Buch (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), 350.

10. D.A. Prater, 190. 11. Die Welt von Gestern, 2526 [11-12]. 12. Stefan Zweig, Jeremias, Eine dramatische Dichtung in neun Bildem. Quoted from Stefan Zweig, Die Dramen (Frankfurt am Main, 1964), 483.13. Op. cit., 483.14. Op. cit., 484.15. Op. cit., 496. 16. Op. cit., 500. 17. Der begrabene Leuchter (Vienna, 1937). Quoted from the 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 Das Stefan Zweig Buch, 339.

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