The World of Yesterday
Robin
Hello, Agnes.
Agnes:
Hi, Robin.
Robin
What should we discuss?
Agnes:
We are going to discuss a book called The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig,
an Austrian writer. He was born around 1880 and died, like, 1942, something
like that. And it's a kind of autobiography, but there is you know, a lot of
the personal material that you would expect in an autobiography is not present
in this book. It's really a book about life in Vienna around the turn of the
century and then the life of an intellectual and a cultural enthusiast sort of
traveling throughout Europe, you know, from basically 1900 until, like, World
War two. And in you know, Tzai was a Jew, and so he first had his books banned
in Germany and then eventually had to flee Austria and went to England, United
States, eventually ended up in Brazil. And he writes this book in Brazil and
then commits suicide, I think, something like the day after he submits it to
his publisher. He and his wife at the age of, like, 60, 62, something like
that. So this is a book about it's called The World of Yesterday, and it's
really I think that's what it's about. It's about a world that he loved and
that he lived in and that he sees as being gone and over.
Robin
I just read a half a dozen book reviews written on it in the last ten years,
and they all say how it helps them see themselves versus Trump today because
they're all
Agnes:
You didn't read the review by Hoffman, by Michael Hoffman. No. I guess not. I
recommend that one. It's the nastiest review I've ever read of anything. It's,
like, full of spite and hatred, and it got a good review, but it's kind of
such an extreme example of something that it's instructive. Anyway, it's very
much not not along those lines. So not Okay. The one I've read as actually,
happened. The only Well,
Robin
I've said that a lot of historical fiction typically presents modern
characters and ancient characters side by side, where the first are the heroes
and the last are the villains. And that's how a lot of historical fiction
goes. And I feel like this is presented roughly that way, but from somebody
who lived there. That is, many people, I think, like this book because it
presents someone with our views mixed up among other people back then, and how
he was, you know, relating to the other people who didn't see things our way.
Agnes:
The most well, one of the really striking things about this book is how
extreme an example it is of a self identified exemplar of the cultural elite
sincerely and full throatedly singing the virtues of being a member of that
elite. So and and it's, I think, very it's very striking the degree to which
Zweig, who was during his apex, maybe the best known German novelist and
translated into the most languages. He was an incredibly popular writer. He
barely tells us about his novels, and he doesn't he sort of has a little bit
on his success, but the book is mostly about how he was friends with all the
top artists and kind of lists of, you know, encounters and experiences with I
was hanging out with Rilke, and he said and that you know, and also went to
the best places and, like, it's kind of showing off except it's so sincere and
straightforward and direct, like, there's no kind of bit it's a it's such pure
showing off that it's I find it inoffensive in a way that if somebody else
were boasting in this way, it might be offensive, and there's something
touching about somebody who was such a successful novelist being like
repeatedly being like, yeah, but I'm a second rate compared to these people.
Like, he mostly cared that he had these connections. I I, today, looked up. He
wrote biographies or sort of biographical discussions of Berlin, Balzac,
Montagne, Magellan, Erasmus, Marie Antoinette, Freud, Foucher, Stendahl,
Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Rolland, and Ferreira. So he he he like, a lot of his
output was just these tributes to people he thought of as greater than
himself. Dickens too. I love that Dickens. And he was he was an appreciator,
and he was very, very happy to be able to be part of this cultural life. He
didn't see himself as one of the, like, main leading lights, but just to
belong to it was the joy of his life. And one gets the sense from the book
that once it is over, he sees no reason to live. In a way that if you were a
different kind of exiled novelist, if you were someone like Robert Mussol,
okay, exiled to Switzerland, Mussol didn't kill himself because Mussol had a
project. He was on a mission from God to finish the man without qualities.
Right? Slade does not like that. His mission was not in his novels. He his
mission was this cultural world that he belonged to and loved.
Robin
So, I mean, I do he writes very well, and, you know, it's very compelling, and
makes you see things from his point of view, and and feel sympathetic toward
him. I think I think it's like, say, a professor in college who is teaching
you about great people, and then you come to respect this professor via their
focus on this greater person than them. I think that's sort of a part of our
high education experience, really.
Agnes:
It's very much like that. And it's great people, but it's also, like, the
beginning where it's like Vienna was this great place. That is, it was the
city that devoted itself to culture in a country that could never really
prevail politically or economically, and it just decided to be the place where
culture mattered. Now, obviously, this is a selection of Zweig's circle of
Right. Rich Jewish intellectuals and artists. That's the world that he
traveled in from birth. He never really saw much outside of that in Vienna.
Eventually, at a certain point, he travels to Russia, he goes through Galicia,
and he's, like, a bit shocked by how the Jews live over there. But but so he's
partly seeing, obviously, a particular side of Vienna, but that's what Vienna
is for him.
Robin
Now he is, in the last third of the book, really focused on, you know, like,
rise of Hitler and the change of culture because of that. And I think, as a
result, it makes us more think of this dichotomy before and after Hitler. But
if you look at it, the world changed a lot before Hitler.
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin
So we're we're less focused on it. You were talking as if there was the world
before Hitler and after. But there's lots of different worlds before Hitler,
many different stories that happened, and that's part of the interesting story
he tells. But still, the central morality tale is when Hitler arrives, people
like him don't like him, and other people do, and that's the central morality
tale that drives, I think, a lot of people who like this book when they
compare it to, say, Trump and how they don't like Trump. But all these
different eras that he went through and how things changed then, I mean, the
most striking thing for me is that this view that he had of a pan Europe and
it should be united wasn't the view that existed when he was born. It was a
view that grew and developed over his lifetime, and he just kind of thinks
it's obvious. He doesn't really defend it or explain why other people might
disagree or why it changed over time. Like, at the beginning, when he talks
about his his teenage years, he describes change, and he describes a lot of
change happening in his world of his teenage years and soon after, and he's
just caught up in the new part of the change and carried along. But then
later, we see more change happening, and he doesn't really reflect on why
other than just thinking it's obvious that his point of view that he's
acquired is the best and other people are just wrong.
Agnes:
I think that one way to think about it is that his book is a kind of
propaganda for that point of view, and he sees his whole life as having been
propaganda for that point of view. He says that in the book. That is that the
project of his life more than, you know, being an artist and writing novels
and and writing, you know, lots of other forms of literary accomplishment,
that that's all been great, but the sort of political goal of all that was
this kind of pan European elite global culture not global, European culture.
Right? I think he would have been happy to expand it globally if the whole
world wants to be like Europe, which I think is, you know, it's it's Did have
it. It's a suggestion at the end that there would be the new Europe and South
America or something like that. But that but that there's, like, there's,
like, the best of humanity are these artists, and if only the world would
listen to them and would let them determine everything, then everybody would
be friendly to each other and you wouldn't need he complains about how you
need a passport to go into another country. He's like, when I was young, you
could just walk to America.
Robin
Right. And that's true.
Agnes:
Kind of and and and and that's his sort of dream is that Europe would have
open borders, and there would be all kinds of connections being made between
people as was happened in his youth. Of course, he had a very exceptional
youth of wealth and privilege and connections that allowed him to travel all
over Europe and have you know, meet a poet everywhere he went and then become
friends with that poet and but but that's his sort of dream, and he just
thinks it's obvious. Or rather, on one hand, would say he thinks it's obvious
that that's the world we should aspire to. But I also think he he wants you to
become convinced of that by reading this book, and that he but he sees that as
a project of his life, and he thinks that project failed because of Hitler.
That is, Hitler, that one lone single individual, it's not the Germans, it's
Hitler. Hitler individually ruined everything, ruined the project of Zweig's
life. So I think it's not his point is not, oh, well, Hitler caused change. I
think you're right. Zweig thought there was lots of change going on, and some
of it was good over the course of his own lifetime. For instance, sort of
sexual freedom. He has a whole chapter, basically, on sexual openness and
sexual freedom and why that's a good thing from you know, if he compares his
youth to twenty years later or something like that. But his point is that he
had a project, and it was this kind of pan European cultural union. And then
Hitler was the enemy of that project, and Hitler won, and he lost, and thus he
committed suicide would be the simplistic story.
Robin
I mean, and that story makes sense of maybe the last half, but World War one
is a striking counter to his vision, and most of the artists he celebrates are
embracing World War one and propagandizing for it. So that doesn't have
anything to do with Hitler. There's some other problem that happens in his
vision at the start of World War one.
Agnes:
It's true. No. That's right. And there's quite a lot of discussion of World
War one. So one thing we should note is I was quite suspicious of his
treatment of his World War one. Basically, he presents himself as having, from
the beginning, opposed the war, World War one, and from the very first moment.
I was like, wow. I didn't know there were any Germans in that position because
the people were very enthusiastic about World War one when it started. And I
asked Chatuchi Bitti, and it basically said that's the big distortion of this
autobiography. And it, you know, it could well we could be charitable to
Zweig. He could just sort of be he has to write this book without any notes.
Right? And so he's thinking back, you know, in, like, 1941, he's trying to
remember back to 1914, and he might not he might not remember that at the
beginning he kinda went along with it like everyone else did, and then he
slowly, you know, but maybe a little more quickly than some other people, came
around to the thought that this war was a mistake. But he almost presents
World War one as though it were, like, the the ghost of World War two coming
in advanced. It's like it's the you know, it revealed that there was a crack
in the European facade, and that that was the crack that Hitler was then going
to exploit.
Robin
But what is that crack? I mean, later, he just wants to blame it all on
Hitler, but clearly, Hitler isn't the cause of the crack if he exploits it.
Agnes:
Right. So one discussion that he has at the very end is, like, maybe Freud is
right, and there's just something inherently brutal about human Human beings
love brutality. They are they are just not civilized. That is, I have this
ideal of civilized life. Europe could be a standard for the whole world, and
in particular, the civilized cultured artistic elite would be the standard for
everybody else. And then we could all just, like, be artists and it would be
amazing. But maybe that's not what people want. People want brutality. They
want killing, violence, etcetera, and and that's just deep in human nature,
and so we're never gonna have good things.
Robin
So he often describes these deep, you know, fulfilling conversations that he
has with people in Paris and everywhere else. That's much of his life he
describes. And he describes all these people as insightful and humane,
etcetera. And then I'm always lacking what he never says what they talked
about or what sort of insights they got from any of these conversations. He
just seems to get great you know, satisfaction from these conversations. But I
go like, if you don't remember what you talked about and what you got out of
it, how how do we so know what value you got?
Agnes:
The counter example is Freud. He actually does tell us what he got out of the
Freud conversation. The thing
Robin
That's near the very end of the book.
Agnes:
Right. But it actually doesn't stand to reason that he's reporting all these
conversations, many of which happened many, many decades earlier. The one
where he's able to give us the insight is the one that happened maybe just
three years earlier rather than 20 Right. There. So but you're right. I mean,
you're right. Especially, he goes on and on about Fairhairn and Romain Rolland
and all these poets that he hangs out with, oh, we had this wonderful
afternoon together. We had these wonderful conversations, and and I feel
really jealous. And like, wow, this is not my life at all. I don't like like,
I don't go around and just have these amazing conversations with all the top
intellectuals of my world. That's like my dream. That's what I would like to
do, but doesn't really happen. And even when I meet these people, we just
don't have great conversations. That's not actually what happens when
Robin
Right. I mean, I would think if you the way to have great conversations would
be to risk bad ones, and so there should be a percentage of difficult, bad
conversations that he would have had by trying to talk about important things.
He talks about a wide range of personalities of these people, and some of them
are very self centered, etcetera. And so, might think he would report that
sometimes the conversation went badly, and he had trouble, and that, you know,
this guy didn't like him anymore, and, you know but everybody likes him, and
everybody's friends with everybody, it seems.
Agnes:
Yeah. It is amazing the degree to which he represents sort of everybody is
liking him. We know, in fact, that, like, he was scorned by a lot of the top
German novelists. So people like Thomas Mann and Mussol. Mussol reportedly
refused to go to South America because Zweig was there. The whole continent
was
Robin
Right.
Agnes:
Was was was a was a a no go if Zweig was in it. But I think the people who
hate so lots of people did hate him. But I think they hated him not
personally. They hated him because he was a second rate. They thought he was a
second rate talent who was very, very successful. And so it's a little bit
like how people hated Zola. Like, if he wasn't as high class an artist as
someone
Robin
Would you do they hate third and fourth class people even more, or or do
second class people get the peak hate from the first class people?
Agnes:
I think that maybe second class people who are very successful I mean, I think
someone like Thomas Mann, it would be like it'd be like, you know how you
kinda hate the people who you fear like yourself? Like, Yeah. I might have
worried. Am I really a first rate? Am I like am I like Mousseau? You know, am
I the level of Mousseau? It's like, no. You're not Thomas Mann. And so but
he's way more popular. Right? And then Stefan Swag is like one level down, and
so that that might be the the best environment for hatred is if there's
somebody who a little bit exaggerates the vices that you are worried that you
have.
Robin
So I thought the best evidence he gave for his own humility was the fact that
he said that he tried to write some stuff of himself and got some, you know,
recognition for that. And then he backed off and decided, no, I need to learn
from other people. And he spent like another decade just trying to read other
people, and write biographies and summaries of them, and then later on, after
that, maybe to write on his own. So that is a interesting respect for
tradition of the form of, you know, this professor we might imagine, who's
focused on other people greater than themselves. He takes a while before he
writes for himself.
Agnes:
I think throughout this, he's really focused on people than himself. That is,
I think there's a certain kind of humility that comes across. There's both a
kind of humility and a really kind of deep, like, cheerfulness and love that
is, like like, the the responses, you know, where someone like someone like
Man or Musil being like, that's a second right talent, like, bitterness of
that. There's nothing of that in Sveig himself. He thinks he's a second right
talent. He thinks he's not as great as some of these other people, and he's
like, isn't it wonderful that I get to meet them and that they exist? He's
just happy that these these higher people will even, like, talk to him. So
it's very I find it very charming, and and it and it it it makes you trust him
because it makes you trust him as a guide through this world. Like, you're
being, you know, someone who had great access and doesn't think that he's the
best part of it.
Robin
So, after World War two, for the last seventy five years, I think, many
artists want to present their role in the world as not just an appreciation of
art and an enjoyment of a good life, but as being on the right side of history
and pushing for the right sort of things. And, he is kind of doing that here
in the sense of, once we get to Hitler, he is against Hitler, and on the right
side there, although relatively minor in terms of his actions, but he's taking
a position. But he's not very much, in his life up until that, asking how can
he influence the world outside of art. He is focused on the world of art, and
that that's enough for him. That that's the valuable world he wants to focus
on and pay attention to. And he doesn't feel much need to justify himself in
terms of an effect outside of art.
Agnes:
Right. He I think he is interested in saying that he was ahead of the curve
with Hitler.
Robin
On his opinions, but then what did he do exactly?
Agnes:
Right. He I think he's also very interested in presenting himself as
apolitical. That's very important to him.
Robin
Then why why does it matter if he was on the right side of history in terms of
his opinions if he didn't do anything with the opinions?
Agnes:
Yeah. That's a good point.
Robin
Why should we admire so much that he saw Hitler was bad if I mean, he was
warning people about Hitler, and doing things to help get people out of For
example, he basically says he didn't really try to get people out of Germany.
He was just so despondent that nobody would listen that he just, like, left.
Agnes:
It's true. Like, he he he didn't use his advantage to help people, it seems.
Like unlike many people, we're heroes and, you know, helped get people out,
and Right. Guy just like got himself out.
Robin
At the last moment.
Agnes:
Right. And but but not so much at the last moment that he not not at the very
last moment that he Right. Was, you know, he he he visited Austria in, like,
November or something like that, and then it was March when, you know, it was
invaded. Right? And so there was some time there. And he talks about that
final visit in November where he tried to convince people, they were just
like, no. It's all fine.
Robin
But that is a more of a world of yesterday from our point of view. In our
world, artists more want to justify themselves in terms of larger political
impact.
Agnes:
Right. I mean, I think part of it is that his I almost feel like his politics
is being apolitical. That is he has this idea of a world that elevates
artists, where the artists what they care about is art, and part of what it is
to care about art is not to care about politics very much.
Robin
Right. So his world of yester is the world, say, between 1880 and 1940, not
the world from before then or the world afterwards. It's a particular
transitionary world.
Agnes:
Right. And he highlights the fact that his generation, unlike previous
generations, didn't respect their parents. That is, he there was this break,
and that's the very striking the the beginning of the book, I think, is the
most striking, where he just talks about, like, what it was like for him to be
a teenager and, you know, someone in their twenties around '19 hundred, and
that there was this world where it for and for sort of as far as one could see
backward, there was this veneration of age, and people would try to look
older, and no one could achieve any status until they were a certain age, and
that his generation was sort of the generation that celebrated youth and that
broke with their parents and that were gonna form, like, a new way and and
that that's his sort of origin story is, you know, coming of age in that time
that was beginning to celebrate youth in a new way.
Robin
So the reason I read the book and recommended it to you was that we've been
reading things about the transition to the modern era and what caused that.
And this does seem to be an early description of the change to the modern, and
it helped me to maybe hypothesize that a key element was youth movements,
because that's what he describes is a very he was involved in youth movement,
and he was describing the youth movement as influential and causal in terms of
changing culture. And then over the rest of his life, he doesn't seem to see
youth movements very often as important. I mean, he describes the Hitler
Youth.
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin
Yeah. And then he describes after World War I, lots of youth artists and how
they were making big changes in art, but those are all somewhat, in his mind,
somewhat separate from the world he's describing, the trajectory he's
describing. Youth movements mattered to him in his youth, and later on, it
doesn't seem like youth movements matter so much. But I have to suspect that,
in fact, youth movements continue to drive this world change, and he's not
very aware of how the new youth generations are influencing him and his world
of art. He seems to think that these older people he's around that are very
famous are the center people of the world of art. When he's older, that's what
he thinks. But when he's young, he thinks it's the youth who are having this
strong effect on the world of art.
Agnes:
Right. I mean, I think that he respects the older figures as well, even in his
youth. But but there is this just super powerful peer effect that he
experiences and that maybe is something new. The fact that people like, we
never find out anything about his family except at the very end where he,
like, visits his mother before she dies. And then when she actually dies, he
doesn't go back because it's already been Nazi has already been taken over by
the Nazis. And that's basically the only thing we learn about his mother is
that he doesn't go back to she's dying. So so, you know, we we just don't know
much about we don't find out if he had siblings. I don't know if he had
siblings or I
Robin
mean, so that's there's there's two ways in which his world of art is separate
from other things. One, just talked about politics. It's a world of art that's
separated from politics, but also just family. He describes Yeah. All his deep
experiences with other artists, and he doesn't even mention when he gets
married or divorced or is visiting his brothers or anything like that?
Agnes:
His second marriage was interrupted by the declaration of war, and that's why
you find out that he was getting married a second time. Right. War. Like, it
was a way to talk about the war. But, yes, he doesn't he sorta doesn't think
his own life is that interesting or
Robin
He doesn't think it matters with respect to art. That is, he just sees this
separate world of art that's separate from family life, and he, you know, he
talks about going to an area where he lives and visiting, meeting people, but
he doesn't meet family. That doesn't seem to matter to him. Or does he write
letters to family? Does he think about family? He doesn't talk about dating.
He doesn't talk about anybody else but artistic associates. Does he not have
any other associates? I mean, we know he must have some, but, like, he doesn't
want to present that.
Agnes:
Right. Right. So so so so it's not just a culture that crosses national
boundaries. It's also a culture that's in some way deracinated from one's
family that he's sort of promoting. It's this literary culture. And
Robin
and it's denationalized. That is it's he's not very interested in culture
that's anchored in its original place.
Agnes:
Right. Right. Nationalism is the big evil. Like, even though he wants to sort
of explain how he loves Austria without being a nationalist. And in fact, I'm
just remembering now that I saw a photo of him. He has a brother. He never
shows up. I don't know what happened to him. But he but I saw a photo of him
where he is sitting and his brother is standing with one or the other. So he
had a brother, But we never find out anything about his brother or what
happened to the brother after World War two, during World War two.
Robin
Right. So this world he's celebrating is remarkably unanchored. That is it's
not connected to the world before he was born. It was a it was a whole
deviation from it, and now it's arising out of use cultures across Europe, I
guess. So it's not anchored to any particular place in Europe, and it's not
connected to politics or personal life. So, what is it connected to? Where
does it come from? Why is it valuable? He just sees it as its own thing.
Agnes:
I
Robin
mean, he doesn't even say, and people enjoy their lives because of this. Or,
you know, my many readers wrote to me about how much I meant to them, and how
beautiful. He doesn't even talk about the non artists, the consumers of art,
and their relation to the art. It's all about the artists themselves.
Agnes:
There are so so there's a there's a very vivid and moving description of the
opera, the Viennese opera productions that are put on after World War one when
the city is, like, in shambles and nobody has any money and, like, a loaf of
bread could cost, like, 20,000 whatever the unit of I don't know what Right.
Currency is, You know, one day, and then, like, 5 the next day or whatever.
During that time that they would go to the opera, and it was like there was no
heating, and they were all huddled together, and they were all wearing these,
like, threadbare clothing, but that, like, there was never such a, like,
beautiful such an attentive and appreciative audience because they thought
this might be our last opera performance that we ever get to see. So there are
things like that, you know, about, like, appreciation. And and he's very much
an appreciator of personalities. So he gives these very vivid descriptions of
faces and of bearing and of, you know, what it was like to talk to Maxine
Gorky or right? Like like, what the persona, the sort of yeah. Like, what the
human individual of the artist is like. You find out that a lot about the
people for Heron, those people. You they they they're major characters.
Robin
There was this TV show a while back called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,
where they would just walk you to famous people and see their world. And this
book feels a bit like that. That is, we are sort of just enjoying hanging with
celebrities, basically.
Agnes:
Yes. Lifestyles of the Artistic and creative. Artistic cultural elite, where
it's important to Zweig to point out that these people aren't wealthy, or
they're not necessarily wealthy. Most of them most of them aren't wealthy.
Zweig is wealthy. I mean, not at all times because but, you know, he he just
talks about these artists in France who eat eat in the same way as, like, the
peasant not peasants, but the the mechanic or something who lives downstairs
from them, and they have this simple life, but they're, like, living for art.
And so it's this beautiful life, and they are you know, they have these
communities, and they all love each other. And, like, this was another I asked
ChatGPT to tell me more of what's unrealistic about this book, and the other
was, like, that it doesn't reference the kind of nasty, vicious, backbiting
world of, like, the Parisian cultural elite, which you see in, like, some of
Zola's novels that, like, you know, someone like Zola and, like, different
artists would be would become enemies to each other. And they they weren't
just, like, in living in friendly harmony. But still, that's yes. That's what
he wants to present us with is lifestyles of people who are artistically rich.
And his own wealth, the thing that makes him proud in terms of having wealth
is that he's able to buy a lot of, like, signatures and, like, autograph and,
like, magazines or pages of, you know,
Robin
ad grit. I read this history of Christianity a few months ago, sometime in the
last year. And Christianity went through this era of relics, which is kinda
strange when you look back on it, people are really obsessed with relics. And
now this guy's obsessed with relics here.
Agnes:
He's very obsessed with relics. So he wants, like, you know, an original
Mozart score, or he's very proud of having Mozart's own catalog of Mozart's
music. Right. He a blank drawing. Like, we have a list in the book of all
these things that he was able to collect, and he's very, very proud of this
collection. He's kinda maybe a way to think about Zweig is, like, he's, like,
the ultimate fanboy. He was just this fan of Kolbert, and he wants to share
his fandom with the reader.
Robin
And this fandom functions partly as a religion for him in the sense of it's
just the ultimate value. It doesn't need to be justified in terms of other
things, And he just really worships even the relics associated, physical
relics associated with it. And, you know, basically, I'm I'm just struck by
how little he ever seems to need to justify this world in any other terms than
its own. That is, he doesn't tell us why it was good all these people were
doing art, and why anybody else cared, and anybody else benefited. It was just
clearly in his mind the thing that was valuable, the sacred, really, and he
was just happy to be associated with it anyway, and to share it with the rest
of us, and he's trying to put the best possible light on it. And then he's
going to say that it's threatened and destroyed by these, you know, profane
people in World War one, and then later Hitler. Although, I mean, in a sense,
Hitler and World War one people didn't dislike his art. So there's something
of a disconnect. How is it exactly that Hitler is so anti his world that is,
yes, war gets in the way of this world, but it's not
Agnes:
Hitler Hitler banned all his books and made them be burned.
Robin
But because he was a Jew, not because of the art. That is the world of art in
general, Hitler was fine with.
Agnes:
Well, I mean, no. There were a lot of restrictions. It and it like, Jews
Robin
Sure. But it was, know, it it was not prioritizing his rule.
Agnes:
Who's not a Jew was also had his Right. And so that is, I think, that Hitler's
not known as, like, an a literary appreciator. He is somewhat known as a
musical appreciator. Right. But, you know, he was I mean, I think if there was
you know, Zweig suggests that he was one of the harder people to ban because
he was so popular. The Germans really liked him and they read him and, you
know, they'd like, it was hard to say we're not gonna let him be read. But I
do think he felt attacked, and But I think it
Robin
was more just that he thought the world of art was just so sacred above it
all, and he did see it as above it all in his own life, and then he was mostly
offended by somebody like Hitler saying, you're you're good, but you're not
the highest priority. We we have these other higher priorities, and we, you
know, sometimes make you
Agnes:
So I think in some way, like, let's say you went to Zweig, and you were like,
yeah, but what if I don't care about Beethoven or Goethe? He would just be
like, I guess I guess you're just not part of the club. Like, I guess you just
this book is not for you. That is, if you don't recognize what the greatest
achievements of human civilization are, if you're blind, like, you'd feel
sorry for you. He'd be like, well, you have some disability, but you're unable
to appreciate what the best things are. I I I'm not gonna be able to, like,
give you sight if you're blind.
Robin
So in talking about World War one propaganda, he he more explicitly says that
at the beginning of World War one, most national elites, government elites,
respected cultural elites greatly, and they wanted cultural elites to be
saying positive things about them, and they were gonna go out of their way to
solicit cultural elites' endorsement. And later on-
Agnes:
I had be had write a poem about the war that was like the biggest thing ever,
but then when everybody turned against the war, they turned against that guy.
Cautionary tie. Don't let yourself get politicized because politics switches
quickly.
Robin
Right. But I think he says that in World War two, the government elites were
just less eager to get cultural endorsements.
Agnes:
That's not quite true. Remember the thing about Strauss? So I think that, you
know, it's so so the thing was that the cultural elites were not gonna endorse
Hitler because he was not a cultural elite. That is, he came from nothing. He
didn't have a university education. This was, like, unheard of that somebody
could attain significance in politics from such a lowly, disrespectable
beginning. And the cultural elites were just they they couldn't he says this,
that they couldn't imagine taking such a person seriously. But Strauss was a
counterexample. He was the very at the very top musically and very, very well
respected, and he was sort of willing to play ball with Hitler even early on
what Zweig says, and I think that this is I asked someone about this who knows
more than I do and substantiated this is roughly accurate that Zweig sorry.
That that that that Strauss sort of could see the writing on the wall and
thought he was gonna get more cooperativeness from this regime if he too was
he hated it as well. He also looked down on Hitler. He thought he saw him as a
second you know, someone who couldn't make it as an artist, the worst thing
you could be, but was willing to, like, pretend for the sake of in what he you
know, he wanted indulgence for his grandchildren who were Jewish and also for
his artworks. So I think that the Nazis very much did want cultural
legitimacy. It was just hard for them to get. But when they could get it,
like, with someone like Strauss, it mattered a lot to them.
Robin
But they were more able to do without it. I I think the description at the
beginning of World War one is that the elites just thought they really needed
these cultural endorsements, and that that was really important. So there was
a mutual respect of the top of he he definitely talks about how before World
War one, pretty much everybody, I guess including him, just presumed that
government elites were just competent, and, you know, whatever they said was
probably a reasonable thing. So there was mutual respect between government
elites and cultural elites, and that broke down through World War one and then
into World War two. And by the end of World War two, I guess the story is that
there's just no longer a mutual respect so much between the cultural elites
and the government elites, and that was part of the world that was lost, the
world of yesterday.
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin
Which is striking that it's a revolutionary world compared to the world he I
mean, he talks about this very stable world of authority before he was a
child. Right? But now this new world is is very creative, etcetera, but it
still contains some of the elements of that old world, including this mutual
respect of the elites. And, you know Right. After World War two, we have much
more hostility and conflict between different kinds of elites.
Agnes:
Right. So you might think of it as there's something closer to a unified elite
beforehand. And then, like, the world we live in now, right, is very much a
world with multiple elites, each of whom sees itself as oppressed by the
remaining elite that it is not a part of. Right? So there's Right. University
professors like us. There's the tech elite. There's just the Hollywood elite.
You know, elite, government elite. Right? There's all these elites, and they
kinda hate each other, and they don't trust each other. And and Zweig
basically gives us a picture of a world in which this was not the case, that
the, you know, actors, theater actors were revered by politicians. And like,
it was all one big love fad Right. According to now.
Robin
Well, except there was a time component, that is the world he grew up in, they
were rejecting older elites in favor of newer ones. So there was this element
of fashion, but maybe at any one time, all the new fashion people respected
each other across different categories, even if they weren't respecting the
older elites quite so much. Or maybe they respected them, but just, you know,
decided their time was over or passed. But there's there's a bit of a conflict
with this idea of a world where all the elites respect each other and
everybody knows their place, and the idea that everything was changing
rapidly, and they were rejecting a lot of old stuff. And that the young people
were getting much more status than previously had been able to get.
Agnes:
Right. I mean, I find his picture like, I I find myself being jealous of his
life when I'm reading it. I'm thinking, like, this sounds really amazing to to
have this kind of social life where anytime you go somewhere, you have these,
like, deep friendships with, you know, the most creative, interesting people
in all over the world that you are able to activate. It like, not the war
part, but and the exile part, but just the the kind of cultural peaks of his
life seem very attractive to me. Do they not seem no idea?
Robin
Well, they they just seem less accessible. That is, he describes his early
life as he, early on, gained fame and very high endorsement, and then he could
go travel and use that to get access to the most prestigious people. So, you
know, if you didn't have that fame like he has, you're not gonna be able to go
to these walk into a city and meet and wealth. Yes.
Agnes:
Yeah. Right. I mean, sure. Like, you need you also need to live at his time
period, which we don't. Mean, there's many net preconditions that we don't
meet. But
Robin
Well, my jealousy would be, what was in these conversations? Would I actually
have gained insight from them? What would I have learned? What what, you know,
would we have talked about that I could have developed and learned from?
Agnes:
I I agree that there's something frustrating about the fact that he kinda
presents you with all these people and these supposed great conversations, and
you were like, what what actually like, don't you share it with us? You know?
You you feel left out. There's one anecdote that I wanna tell because I was
very struck by it. It was a French I can't remember the name, but it was
during his time in it was during the Paris section. Maybe I'll find it as I'm
talking to you. And he there was a guy who he's very close with. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He's a big fan of Walt Whitman and reminds him of his name
is Leon Bazalgette. That was his greatest friend among the French, and he, you
know, I think lived with him and went to his house or whatever. But
Basalgette, Swag writes, disliked everything I was writing at the time very
much. He liked me personally and felt respect and gratitude for my devotion to
the work of Verherin, this other poet that Twig was into. He was always came
to Paris to welcome him. He helped him whenever he he could. They were, like,
better than brothers. Okay? We don't find out anything about Slyde's actual
brother, but this is his brother. But he just unsparingly told Slyde that he
was just a bad writer. And and that and they remained friends. They remained
close through this. That's a kind of ideal of friendship, I think. The ability
to close friends with somebody who, like, to the point where it's like tells
that this guy would often be editing some volume and looking for contributors
and ask Zweig for help, but it was understood that Zweig should not volunteer
himself because the guy didn't wanna publish anything he wrote. Right? Right.
But he would help him find other people. So that's the sort of thing where I'm
like, wow. That is kind of an ideal of intellectual friendship that we don't
see where else do we see that kind of thing articulated?
Robin
It does make me wonder to what extent Zwieg, in his interactions with these
people, took a lower role. That is, he might have just praised them, and then
talked about how great they were, and just took on a subservient role to them
in his interactions with them, which allowed him to meet so many of them and
get along with them so well, because he would just always be praising them and
not really asking him much about his own opinions or his own writing or, you
know, pushing his own conversation topics. Maybe the reason everybody got
along with him so great was because he was just very accommodating.
Agnes:
Right. I mean, maybe it's very clear that his appreciation for all these
people is quite sincere and if it was clear to them too, I think it's quite
enjoyable to be in the presence of somebody who very sincerely appreciates
your artistic talents and contributions.
Robin
But then what would they have talked about?
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin
I mean, I almost feel like he's gonna say, I love that book of yours where you
did this thing, and why did, you know, why did you make this character this
way? And they would explain something about it, and
Agnes:
Right. It's true that the one conversation that we do get a report of, which
is Freud, he's basically like, well, that's how I learned that Freud is right
and I was wrong, and here's Freud's theory about how the innate human
barbarism will always surface in some way, and, you know, I was naive and I
had this approach that civilization could triumph, but Freud taught me that it
couldn't. So it's like, it's it's it's it's the report of a conversation where
you could get that same material just by reading Freud. You wouldn't have had
to
Robin
Right.
Agnes:
Talk to Freud.
Robin
And maybe that's where many of those conversations were.
Agnes:
Right. And I guess I think that now that I'm thinking about it, even that
conversation, the point of telling us about it was to get us to appreciate
Freud. That is his very elaborate descriptions of Freud's face because he had
this cancer of the jaw, I think, and and and how he became thinner, but how
he, you know, he forced himself to work through the pain and to talk through
the pain. It became painful for him to talk, but he would still he would
insist that he would keep talking, and he wouldn't take morphine even though
except as to the point where it became clear to him that he couldn't work
anymore, and only then did he allow the doctors to give him morphine. And like
this story about how Freud was right about the brutalism was really part of
the presentation of Freud, and that what Zweig was an appreciator of was
people. Like, not the works. The works were just a way to appreciate the
people. That's why he's so excited to get these
Robin
Well, he spent a lot of time writing biographies, so we might look at the
biographies and say, what was emphasized in those biographies? Maybe it was
the person, the personality.
Agnes:
Even just the fact that he wrote biographies. Right? He's, like, critical
essays on the works. He wrote, like, discussions of the people. So that's
already a sign. I haven't read any of his biographies.
Robin
And you might think if you are an artist and some a famous writer of
biographies comes around wanting to talk to you, you might think, well, maybe
they'll write about me.
Agnes:
But and he did. I mean, so a number of these people, Verherin, Rolland, Freud,
were people that he knew and then wrote about. So that was a real thing he
did. So, yeah, you might think he's gonna write about you.
Robin
So I think at some points, he suggests that he knew these people before they
got famous.
Agnes:
Yes.
Robin
So we might wonder, well, to what extent is he showing good taste in knowing
who will become famous later, or is it just a generational thing? He was along
with a cohort that was rising, and he was part of the cohort.
Agnes:
Yeah. I mean, it's hard not to have the impression that it's just like Vienna
around 1900 was the height of all human civilization, and just it was just
filled with geniuses. And so you could basically not walk down the street
without tripping over a genius, and so he he was connected became connected to
all these amazing people.
Robin
But not just in Vienna. When he went elsewhere at the zoo
Agnes:
He would go to France, and he would also trip over the geniuses, and Italy,
and he would also it's true.
Robin
It's
Agnes:
true. But maybe once you connected to enough geniuses in Vienna, then you
could use your circles.
Robin
Mean, it could be that he met a lot more people than he's telling us about,
and he selected the ones who became more famous. Sure.
Agnes:
That's true. Right? He's not gonna you know, he only has so many pages, and
he's right. He's gonna tell us about the ones that that later that from the
point of view of 1942 are still noteworthy. So yeah. I mean, I think that he
is pretty interested in showing off his good taste and his predictive ability,
like, more than he's interested in showing off his own literary scale, that he
could see who else to appreciate or that he, you know, could take the
temperature of the times. Those are the things he's really proud of.
Robin
So we could focus our on this person and his style and characteristics, or we
could focus on the time, and the book is pointing us to the time. Yeah. And
then I think, you know, the most interesting question then is, how is that
time different from the time before and after? And is is there some pattern
there of a trajectory across time, whereby the world first changed in one way,
and then it changed in another? So the first thing that happens, we might say,
is suddenly artistic stuff starts changing more rapidly, and younger people
can rise in status faster because of new artistic fashions. But that art is
separate from politics in an important way, at least among the artists, even
though there's a lot of political fashion happening, a lot of new young people
in politics also rising in status. So he sees these worlds as more separate,
but they have mutual respect. Yeah. They will give respect for the high status
people and the other status hierarchies, but they are just don't care much
about the other ones. They're sort of separate worlds.
Agnes:
Right. And the mutual respect, I think, is part of why all these artists were
willing to jump on the World War one bandwagon. Like, Zweig makes it pretty
clear, like, nobody really knew why they were fighting World War one. Like,
this guy was assassinated who everyone hated, and and it went by in the news
after a few days. Everyone thought it was gonna be nothing. But it was like,
well, I guess if the politicians have decided this, it must be really
important. And so that there was this kind of mutual faith that the that they
were then willing to back the war effort. And then at some point, I guess,
it's a result and I think it is interesting that it seems like it's a result
of these experiences that artists become opposed to politics, and they become
suspicious, and then you get this very antithetical relationship of Hitler to
the artists, right, eventually.
Robin
Right. So I think of it as a slow decline in coherence of culture. So, you
know, before he was born, the world is slow changing in a very coherent world,
where all the different kind of elites are integrated together and have mutual
respect, and many kinds of culture are just fit together. Even, you know,
furniture, and landscaping, and architecture, and art, and all sorts of
things. There's just this coherent world. And now, all of these things start
changing more rapidly, and that creates, like, incoherence over time, and that
things don't match over time, and that stuff is changing. But still, there's
this presumption that it all kind of fits together somehow, and that's the
mutual respect among the different kinds of elites. And then, that breaks down
after the end of World War II. That is, there's just less coherence in the
sense of different kinds of elites respecting or presuming to fit well with
the other kinds. And so culture has just become less coherent over time in in
several different ways.
Agnes:
Right. Right. And I but I guess I guess specifically not coherent in the sense
of an adversarial relationship. And but then also that, like, the result of
that is that artists feel like they have to be political. They have to take up
politics as their profession where their art is that's part of what their art
is doing. And maybe part of what Zweig's book is helpful for is sort of a view
on what it was like to be an artist before you had to be political.
Robin
Or before you thought that was your role. So I I think
Agnes:
Yeah. That's what I mean.
Robin
In many ways today, artists are proud of their political role. Often, they see
themselves as thought leaders and sort of helping to set emotional tones for
the larger political world, and they see themselves as the advance guard of
cultural changes. Right. And they aren't substantially in many ways.
Agnes:
Right. And but like
Robin
But in opposition to other kinds of authorities.
Agnes:
Right. So so so if you think about just the number yeah. Maybe it's just a
very maybe it's a feature of our world that we don't reflect upon or notice
that much that there are all these elites competing to be the real elites. And
now, I mean, intra elite competition has been a thing for you know? Sure.
Certainly since, like, at the ancient world, and it's, like, the big theme of
a lot of, like Right. Political philosophy. So but I guess the point is that
Robin
You would you would the fast you would compete within your realm, but the
realms would sort of have a peep to taunt with each other.
Agnes:
Right. So like Weber. You know, Weber's idea was very much that, like, science
was one vocation, politics is another vocation, and or even even Kant, what is
enlightenment? It's like, well, in your capacity as whatever it is that you
do, you know, you're you shouldn't be political or say your mind, but then you
can put on a different hat or something. Whereas now it's like, there's just
one hat that everyone wants to put on. So, yeah, that's maybe a maybe a really
striking feature of
Robin
our world. But but earlier on, I I think we're seeing this movement. That is,
he's not just an artist. He's part of this pan European movement. That is,
he's part of a cultural movement, and it's trying to make a pan European art.
But it's, I think, not just art he wants to be pan European. He wants people's
identity to be largely Pan European.
Agnes:
Yeah. And it's a little confusing, like, what that means, because you might
think it means something like like the euro or something. You know? Right.
But, like, it's very clear that he respects and wants to preserve cultural
differences. I read somewhere today that, like, he insisted that French always
be spoken at lunch. This was when he was living in England. Okay. So he's
German. He's living in England. He has his German niece or something over.
Robin
Right.
Agnes:
They always had to speak French at lunch. And it was he she said she thinks it
was partly to shut the kids up. A mixie. But like he so he had this, It was
very important to him, like, to learn all these different languages and to use
these languages, and he's only he tells us that he presents, you know, in
Italian when he's in Italy and in French when he's France. And it's not that
he thought somehow, like, they should all be homogenized. Right?
Robin
Right. So he's not very clear on what what differences are okay and what
differences are not okay in this pan European concept. I guess he doesn't want
war differences, I guess, is one difference he doesn't want. Right. But what
other differences are okay?
Agnes:
But he like he likes the fact that there's that you can characterize, like,
what Russians are like, what Italians are like, and that they're different.
And, like, the Germans But
Robin
they all have a fondness for each other's differences as opposed to a
hostility for their differences, but you might think differences would cause
hostility.
Agnes:
Right. He wants this world where there are sharp cultural differences between,
like, French people and Italians and Germans, but that there's a kind of
fondness or appreciation for those differences.
Robin
I mean, it's also sort of echoing a modern travel ideal. That is, the traveler
likes to go to places that are different because that makes travel so much
more fun. And he is a traveler to some degree, but to what extent does he
want? Do they benefit by being different as opposed to the traveler enjoying
the differences?
Agnes:
Right. Right. He is very much a kind of appreciator or spectator of cultures.
Robin
Right. But World War one is where these differences, you know Yeah. Led it to
hostility for the differences. Submission for due to the differences. And then
he somehow thinks that's not at all appropriate, but the same differences you
might think that could lead to hostility and suspicion, as well as charming
entertainment. Yeah.
Agnes:
Yeah. I guess that's sort of what he means by his ideal is having the
differences lead one way, not the other. Okay. We we we
Robin
have We should.
Agnes:
But but we should say something. I feel like this has been a very indulgent
episode in that we've just, like, talked about this book that we both just
read. And and some of most of our listeners will not have read this book, and
so maybe say something about why someone should or shouldn't read it.
Robin
I read it in order to understand the nature of the modern, and the first part
of the book, you can stop there if you don't want to read the whole thing,
describes this youth movement in, you know, roughly 1900 Vienna. And I think
it's a great description of a youth movement from long ago, and what it's like
to be in that world with young people not only feeling tied to each other, and
that they had autonomy, and they had momentum, and that having influence on
the world. And then, what happens when those people grow up to have influence
on the world? That that, I think, is because we we, you know, people go back
to the sixties youth movement or something as if youth movement started then
sometimes, but, of course, they were much older than that.
Agnes:
K. So I will say that I recommend this book to people who are a certain kind
of activist. There is some of my best friends are part of an activism movement
that doesn't have a name, but it's like a humanities activism, great books
activism. And I think that Zweig was the, in some sense, the, like, unsung
leader of that movement. That is, this is a book, you know, people are
constantly feeling like the value of the humanities is somehow not
appreciated, and people don't understand how great it is. And, like, Zweig is
is the is somebody who is singing the praises of that kind of humanistic
learning. And, you know, the great men who wrote great books, they're pretty
much all men. And that you know, I think those people should read this book.
Maybe they'll it's a little bit of a mirror, and maybe they'll think it's a
positive mirror, maybe they'll think it's a negative mirror, but you don't get
a stronger version of that view anywhere else, I think, than here.
Robin
And it's a modern version. I mean, I'm sure in the year 1500 to 1600, there
are lovers of the arts who would celebrate the arts and humanities, but they
would be different from today's activists, and Zweig is more like today's
activists in a world of rapid change of culture, still celebrating the
humanities.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin
Alright. I guess that's enough for tonight.
Agnes:
Okay.
