The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig
And he was worth a look. Between two powerful sergeants, who made his thin, weedy figure look even more grotesque, stood a poor devil, rather shabby and wearing no collar. He had a small, drooping moustache and a sad, visibly half-starved, mouse-like face. Evidently he was not much of a thief, as witness his error of judgement in failing to make off with the trunk early in the morning. He stood there with his eyes cast down, trembling slightly as if he were freezing in front of the power of the law, and to my shame be it said that not only did he arouse my pity, I even felt a kind of sympathy for him. And my sympathetic interest increased when a police officer solemnly laid out on a large board all the items that had been found on him when he was searched. A stranger collection can hardly be imagined—a very dirty, torn handkerchief; a dozen duplicate and skeleton keys of all shapes and sizes, jingling musically against each other on a keying; a shabby wallet, but fortunately no weapon, which at least showed that this thief went about his job in a fairly knowledgeable but non-violent way.
First the wallet was investigated before our eyes. The result was surprising. It did not contain thousand-franc or hundred-franc notes, or indeed a single banknote of any denomination—no, it held no less than twenty-seven photographs of dancers and actresses in low-cut dresses, as well as three or four nude photographs, evidence of nothing criminal, only of the fact that this thin, melancholy character was a passionate devotee of feminine beauty. Far beyond his reach as these stars of the Parisian theatre were, he wanted at least their pictures resting against his heart. Although the sous-préfet examined the nudes and the risqué photographs with a severe expression, I realised that this strange collector’s passion in a delinquent like our thief amused him as much as it amused me. My own sympathy for this poor wrongdoer had been considerably increased by his love of the aesthetically beautiful, and when the official, solemnly picking up his pen, asked me if I wished to porter plainte, meaning to lay a complaint against the thief, I replied with a quick “No”, as if that reply were to be taken for granted.
A little parenthesis may be useful here for an understanding of the situation. While in Austria and many other countries a complaint follows ex officio when a crime has been committed, that is to say the state imperiously takes justice into its own hands, in France the injured party can choose whether or not to bring charges. Personally I see this concept of justice as more evenhanded than the severity of inflexible justice, since it offers you a chance of forgiving the person who has wronged you, while in Germany, for instance, if a woman fires a revolver at her lover in a fit of jealousy and wounds him, no begging and pleading from the injured party can protect her from the rigours of the law. The state steps in to tear the woman forcibly away from the man she has wounded in a moment of agitation, and who perhaps loves her all the more for her passion, and throws her into prison, while in France, once the man has forgiven her, the couple can go home arm-in-arm and consider the case settled between themselves.
As soon as I had said my decided ‘no’ three things happened. The thin man between the two policemen suddenly straightened up and gave me an extraordinary glance of gratitude, one I shall never forget. The sous-préfet, satisfied, laid his pen down again, and he too was visibly pleased that my decision not to prosecute the thief further saved him any more paperwork. My landlord, however, did not take it in the same way at all. He went scarlet in the face and began shouting angrily at me, saying I couldn’t do that, such scum—cette vermine—had to be exterminated. I had no idea, he told me, of the harm characters of that kind did. A decent man must be on his guard day and night against such rogues, and if you let one of them go it would only encourage a hundred others. His was an explosion of all the upright principles and honesty of a petit bourgeois disturbed while minding his own business, and at the same time showed his pettiness; in view of all the trouble the matter had given him, he said, roughly and even menacingly, he insisted on my withdrawing my decision not to prosecute. But I stuck to my guns. I had my trunk back, I told him firmly, so I could not complain of suffering any damage, and that settled the matter so far as I was concerned. I had never in my life, I added, brought legal proceedings against another human being, and I would enjoy a good beefsteak at lunch today with a far easier mind if I knew that no one else was obliged to subsist on a prison diet on my account. My landlord answered back, more agitated than ever, and when the officer of the law explained that the decision had been not his but mine, and that once I refrained from laying charges the case was closed, he suddenly turned on his heel, left the room in a rage, and slammed the door after him with a loud bang. The sous-préfet got to his feet, smiled as he watched the infuriated man storming out, and shook hands with me in silent concord. With that the official business was over, and I reached for my trunk to carry it back. But then an odd thing happened; the thief approached with an air of humility. “Ah non, monsieur,” he said. “I’ll carry it back for you.” And so I marched along the four streets back to my hotel, with the grateful thief carrying my trunk behind me.
So an affair that had begun badly seemed to have concluded in the best and happiest way. But two epilogues followed in rapid succession—incidents which made some illuminating contributions to my understanding of the French mind. When I went to see Verhaeren next day, he welcomed me with a mischievous smile. “You certainly have some strange adventures here in Paris,” he said jovially. “I never knew that you were such a rich man!” At first I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he handed me the newspaper, and lo and behold, there was a long account of yesterday’s events, except that I hardly recognised the real facts in this romanticised version. The reporter, with great journalistic skill, described the theft from a distinguished foreigner—I had been made ‘distinguished’ so as to sound more interesting—who was staying at a hotel in the city centre, of a case containing a number of objects of great value, including a letter of credit for twenty thousand francs—the two thousand had multiplied by ten overnight—as well as other irreplaceable items (in fact consisting exclusively of shirts and ties). At first, said the report, it had seemed impossible to find any clues, since the thief had committed his crime with the utmost dexterity and was apparently closely acquainted with the neighbourhood. But the sous-préfet of the arrondissement, Monsieur So-and-so, with his “well-known energy” and “grande perspicacité”, had immediately taken all the proper steps. On his instructions, conveyed by telephone, all the hotels and boarding houses in Paris had been thoroughly searched within the hour, and these inquiries, carried out with the usual meticulous precision of the police, had very quickly led to the arrest of the miscreant. The head of the police force had immediately expressed his particular appreciation of the outstanding achievement of the excellent sous-préfet, whose vigorous and far-sighted actions had, yet again, provided a shining example of the model organisation of the Parisian police.
Of course none of this story was true; the excellent sous-préfet had not had to make the effort of leaving his desk for so much as a minute, and we had delivered the thief and the trunk to him ourselves. However, he had taken this good opportunity to make capital for himself in the press.
The whole episode might have turned out well for both the thief and the high-ranking police, but not for me. From then on my once-jovial landlord did all he could to spoil my pleasure in staying at his hotel any longer. I would walk downstairs and give his wife a civil greeting as she sat in the porter’s lodge; she did not answer, but with an injured expression turned away her face—the face of a good citizen. The servant no longer cleaned and tidied my room properly; letters mysteriously disappeared. Even in the nearby shops and the tobacconist’s, where I was usually welcomed as a true copain because of my large consumption of tobacco, I suddenly encountered frosty faces. The injured petit bourgeois morale not only of the household but of the whole street and even the arrondissement closed ranks against me because I had ‘helped’ the thief. In the end there was nothing for it but for me to move out, with the trunk I had
After Paris, the effect of London on me was like stepping suddenly into shade on a day that is rather too hot—at first you instinctively shiver, but your eyes and senses soon get used to the change. I had planned to spend two or three months in England as a kind of duty—for how was I to understand and evaluate our world without knowing the country that had kept the wheels of that world on the rails for centuries? I also hoped to improve my rusty English—which has never become really fluent—by working hard at conversation and keeping lively company. My plan did not work; like all of us Continentals, I had few literary contacts on that side of the Channel, and I felt miserably inadequate in all the breakfast conversations and small talk at my little boarding house about the court and racing and parties. When people discussed politics I couldn’t follow them; they talked about ‘Joe’ and I didn’t know that they meant Joseph Chamberlain. Similarly I was unaware that a knight is called only by his first name after the honorific ‘Sir’, and for a long time my ears, closed as if by wax, could make no sense of the cabbies’ cockney accent. So I did not improve my English as quickly as I had hoped. I did try to study good diction by listening to preachers in the churches, two or three times I watched proceedings in the law courts; I went to the theatre to hear English well spoken—but I always had difficulty in finding company, camaraderie and cheerfulness, all of which came flowing towards a visitor to Paris. I found no one with whom to discuss the things that mattered most to me, and to those of the English who were well disposed to me I, in turn, probably seemed rather uncouth, tedious company with my boundless indifference to sport, gambling, politics and the other subjects that interested them. I did not manage to forge close links with any group or circle, so I spent nine-tenths of my time in London working in my room or in the British Museum.
At first I did try walking. In my first week I walked all over London until I was footsore. With a student sense of duty, I saw all the sights listed in Baedeker, from Madame Tussaud’s to the Houses of Parliament. I learnt to drink ale, I smoked a pipe in the manner of the country instead of the cigarettes of Paris; I tried to adapt in a hundred little details, but I never made any real contacts in society or literature, and those who know England only from the outside miss the essential part of it—they miss, for instance, the wealthy City companies which show you nothing on the outside but the usual well-polished brass plate. When I was introduced to a club I didn’t know what to do there; the mere sight of the deep leather armchairs, like the atmosphere in general, induced a kind of intellectual drowsiness in me because I had not earnt such relaxation, like the others there, by concentrated activity or sport. An idler, a mere observer, unless he was worth millions and knew how to raise idling to the level of a high convivial art, was rejected by this city as a foreign body, while Paris happily accepted him into its congenial activities. My mistake, as I realised too late, had been not to spend my two months in London in some kind of occupation, as a volunteer in a business or a secretary on a newspaper, and then at least I would have dipped my finger a little way into English life. As just an outside observer I learnt little, and only many years later, during the war, did I come to know something about the real Britain.
Of poets writing in English, I visited only Arthur Symons. He in turn got me an invitation to visit W B Yeats, whose poetry I loved, and whose exquisite verse drama The Shadowy Waters I had translated purely for the pleasure of it. I didn’t know that it was to be an evening of reading; a small and select party had been invited; we sat crowded together in a rather small room, some of us even on stools or on the floor. At last Yeats began, having first lit two thick, huge altar candles standing beside a black or black-covered lectern. All the other lights in the room were put out, so his energetic head with its black locks emerged from the candlelight like a sculpture. Yeats read slowly, in a deep and melodious voice, without ever lapsing into a declamatory tone, but giving every line its full, metallic weight. It was beautiful, and truly solemn. The only thing that disturbed my pleasure was the stagy setting, the black cassock-like garment that gave Yeats a rather priestly look, the burning of the fat wax candles that, I think, had a slightly aromatic perfume. All this lent the literary event—which itself gave me a new kind of pleasure—more of the flavour of a celebration of poetry than a spontaneous reading. I couldn’t help comparing this occasion with my memory of Verhaeren reading his own poems in his shirtsleeves, so that his sinewy arms could keep time with the rhythm better, and without any pompous stage-setting—or with Rilke now and then reciting a couple of verses from a book, speaking simply and clearly in the quiet service of language. This was the first ‘staged’ reading I ever attended, and if despite my love for the work of Yeats I thought there was something rather suspect about the cult-like presentation, he had a grateful guest on that occasion all the same.
However, the real poetic discovery I made in London was not of a living artist but of one almost forgotten at the time—William Blake, that lonely and difficult genius, who fascinates me to this day with his mixture of awkwardness and sublime perfection. A friend had advised me to go to the print room of the British Museum, which was in the care of Lawrence Binyon at this time, and get them to show me Blake’s colourfully illustrated books Europe, America and The Book of Job. Today they are great rarities in second-hand bookshops, and I was captivated. Here, for the first time, I saw one of those magical natures that, without any very clear idea of their path, are borne up by visions as if on the wings of angels as they pass through every wilderness of the imagination. I spent days and weeks trying to make my way deeper into the labyrinth of Blake’s naive yet daemonic mind, and translated some of his poems into German. I became almost avidly ambitious to own a sheet of paper from his own hand, but that at first seemed impossible except in my dreams. Then one day my friend Archibald G B Russell, even then the leading expert on Blake, told me that one of the ‘visionary portraits’, included in the Blake exhibition he was about to arrange, was for sale, in his—and my—opinion the finest of the master’s pencil drawings, his King John. “You’ll never get tired of it,” he assured me, and he was right. Of all my books and pictures, that single sheet of paper was my companion for thirty years, and the magically inspired face of the mad king has looked at me again and again from my wall. It is this drawing that, in my wanderings, I miss more than any other of my possessions now lost and far away. I had tried in vain to recognise the genius of England in its streets and cities; suddenly it was revealed to me in the truly astral figure of Blake. And to the many things I loved in the world, I had added another.
NOTES
1 Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 1786-1859, French poet of the Romantic period, was also a singer and actress.
2 Franz von Lenbach, 1836-1904, German Painter.
3 Romain Rolland, 1865-1944, French novelist whose best-known work was probably his cycle of ten novels unified by the character Jean-Christophe, alluded to here. He was also a musicologist, and prominent as a pacifist. He and Zweig, as will be seen, became close friends.
4 Stefan George, 1868-1933, prominent German poet who did indeed promote mystic and messianic ideas. He was also an influence on Schönberg and Webern in music. Zweig has already mentioned the Blätter für die Kunst, the journal of the Georgekreis (George Circle). Interesting as George was, few would doubt that Zweig is right in considering Rilke the greater poet.
5 Béguines—women who form a lay community living in a convent, as distinct from nuns who have taken vows.
DETOURS ON THE WAY TO MYSELF
PARIS, ENGLAND, ITALY, SPAIN, Belgium, Holland—this wandering gypsy life to satisfy my curiosity had been enjoyable in itself, and rewarding in many ways. But ultimately one needs a fixed point, a place to set out from and return to again and again. No one knows that better than I do today, when I no longer wander from country to country of my own free will. In the years since I left school I had acquire