The World of Yesterday

by Stefan Zweig

  Of course I am well aware now of all the absurdity in our undiscriminating enthusiasm, of how much of it was merely mutual mimicry, how much no more than a sportsman’s instinct to come first, how much childish vanity there was in feeling arrogantly superior to the philistine environment of our families and our teachers in our high regard for the arts. But it still surprises me to think how much this close attention to our literary passions taught us boys at the time, how early our constant discussion and unravelling of the details of texts brought us the critical ability to discriminate. At seventeen, I had not only read all the poems of Baudelaire and Walt Whitman, I knew most of them by heart, and I think that in my entire later life I never read as intensively as I did in those years at school and university. It was taken for granted that names not honoured by the general public until a decade later were current among us, even the most ephemeral stayed in our minds because we fixed upon them so eagerly. Once I was telling my revered friend Paul Valéry how old my literary acquaintance with him really was. Thirty years ago, I said, I had already been reading his poems and loved them. The good-humoured Valéry merely smiled. “No pretence, please, my friend! My poems weren’t published until 1916.” He was astonished when I described in detail the colour and format of the small literary journal where, in 1898, we had found his first verses in Vienna. “But hardly anyone knew them even in Paris,” he said in amazement. “How can you have got hold of them in Vienna?” I replied: “In just the same way as when you were a schoolboy yourself, in your provincial town, you got hold of the poems of Mallarmé, who was no better known at the time, nor part of the accepted literary canon.” And he agreed with me: “Young people discover poets for themselves because they want to discover them.” And it is a fact that we could scent what was in the wind even before it crossed the border, because we lived with our nostrils always distended to catch it. We found what was new because that was what we wanted, because we were hungry for something that belonged to us alone—not to the world of our fathers, not our environment. Young people, like certain animals, have an excellent instinct for changes in the weather, and so our generation felt, before our teachers and the universities knew it, that with the old century some of the old artistic ideas were also coming to an end, that a revolution or at least a change of values was in preparation. The good, solid masters of our fathers’ time—in literature Gottfried Keller, in drama Ibsen, in music Johannes Brahms, in painting Leibl, in philosophy Eduard von Hartmann—had in them, as we saw it, all the measured deliberation of the world of security. In spite of their technical and intellectual mastery, they no longer interested us. Instinctively, we felt that their cold, temperate rhythm was not that of our own restless blood, was no longer in tune with the accelerating tempo of modernity. The most vigilant mind of the later German generation, Hermann Bahr, lived in Vienna. He struck out furiously, an intellectual marauder championing all that was on its way, all that was new, and with his aid the Secession movement‘s building was opened in Vienna, exhibiting, to the horror of the old school in Paris, the Impressionists and Pointillists, Munch from Norway, Rops from Belgium, all manner of extreme artists pointing to their predecessors Grünewald, Greco and Goya, who were out of favour at the time. We suddenly learnt to see with new eyes, and at the same time we learnt new rhythms and tonal colours in music through the works of Mussorgsky, Debussy, Strauss and Schönberg. In literature, realism dawned with Zola, Strindberg and Hauptmann, the daemonic Slav spirit with Dostoevsky, and a previously unknown sublimation and refinement of lyrical art in the works of Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarmé. Nietzsche revolutionised philosophy; in architecture plain, functional buildings were introduced instead of the overloaded style of neoclassicism. Suddenly the old, comfortable order had been disrupted, its norms of the “aesthetically beautiful” (as Hanslick3 would have put it) were questioned, and while the official critics of our solid bourgeois age often expressed horror at the experiments now being made, which were often bold, and sought to hold back the inexorable current by condemning such trends as ‘decadent’ or ‘anarchic’, we young people flung ourselves with gusto into the turbulent waves wherever they broke and foamed most wildly, We had a feeling that a time for us, our own time, was beginning, a time when youth would at last come into its own. So all at once our restlessly questing, enquiring passion had a point; we young people, still at school, could join the fray in these wild and often ferocious battles for the new art. Where an experiment was tried, perhaps a performance of a Wedekind play or a reading of modern poetry, we were sure to be there, lending our aid with the full force not only of our minds but also of our hands. I was a witness when, at the first performance of one of the atonal works of Arnold Schönberg’s youth, one gentleman began hissing and whistling vigorously, whereupon my friend Buschbeck dealt him an equally vigorous blow. We were the vanguard, the shock troops promoting every kind of new art just because it was new, just because it would change the world for us, and it was our turn to live our own lives in the world now. Nostra res agitur4, we felt.

  However, something else about this new art interested and fascinated us inordinately: it was almost exclusively the work of young people. In our fathers’ generation a poet or musician was esteemed only when he had ‘proved himself’, adjusting to the worthy tastes of bourgeois society. All the men whom we had been taught to respect bore themselves and behaved like people truly worthy of that respect. They had fine beards, sprinkled with grey, above poetical velvet jackets—Wilbrandt, Ebers, Felix Dahn, Paul Heyse, Lenbach, those now long-forgotten darlings of their time. They had themselves photographed with a pensive gaze, always in ‘dignified’ and ‘poetic’ attitudes, they behaved like the bearers of official titles, excellencies and councillors, and like them were awarded honours. Young poets or painters or musicians, however, were regarded at the most as promising; outright recognition was kept on ice for the time being. The age of caution did not like to bestow its favours ahead of time, before an artist had shown his merit through long years of solid achievement. The new poets, musicians, and painters, however, were all young: Gerhart Hauptmann, suddenly emerging from complete anonymity, dominated the German stage at the age of thirty; Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke had won literary fame and a fanatical following at twenty-three—before by Austrian law they had reached the age of adult responsibility. In our own city, the ‘Young Vienna’ group emerged overnight, with members like Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Bahr, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Peter Altenberg—men in whom specifically Austrian culture found European expression for the first time by the refinement of all artistic means. But one figure above all fascinated us, seduced, intoxicated and inspired us—that wonderful and unique phenomenon Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in whom our youth saw not only its highest ambitions, but also absolute literary perfection, and in the shape of a man who was almost our contemporary.

  The appearance of young Hofmannsthal is and will remain remarkable as one of the great miracles of early perfection. I know no other example in world literature, except in Keats and Rimbaud, of similar infallibility in the mastery of language at such a young age, of such a breadth of inspired ideas, such a mind, full of poetic substance even in the least of his lines, as in that great genius, who had written his way into the eternal annals of the German language in his sixteenth and seventeenth year with imperishable verse and prose that is still unrivalled today. His sudden emergence and instant achievement of perfection were a phenomenon of a kind unlikely to recur in the same generation. The outcome was that all who first heard of it were astonished by the improbability of what he represented. Hermann Bahr often told me about his amazement when he was sent an article for his magazine from Vienna written by one ‘Loris’, a pseudonym unknown to him—the educational authorities would not allow a schoolboy to publish under his own name. Never, among contributions coming in to him from all over the world, had he received an article like this, setting out such a wealth of ideas as if with the greatest ease, and in such lively, elevated language. “Who
is ‘Loris’?” he asked himself. “Who is this unknown? An old man, surely, who has distilled his discoveries in silence over the years, and in mysterious seclusion has cultivated the sublime essence of language to create an almost sensuous magic.” To think that such a wise man, such a gifted writer lived in the same city, and he had never heard of him! Bahr wrote at once to the anonymous Loris and arranged to meet him for discussion at a coffee house—the famous Café Griensteidl, the haunt of the young literary lions. Suddenly a slender, still-beardless grammar-school boy, still in a boy’s short trousers, entered, walking fast and lightly, went up to his table, bowed and said merely, in a high voice, still not completely broken, but with a firm note in it: “Hofmannsthal! I’m Loris.” Years later, when Bahr spoke of his astonishment, excitement still overcame him. At first he couldn’t believe it. A schoolboy who had acquired such artistry, such breadth and depth of vision, such a stupendous knowledge of life even before his life had really begun! Arthur Schnitzler told me almost the same. Schnitzler was still practising as a doctor at the time, since his first successful literary works seemed far from guaranteeing security, although he was already regarded as the leader of the Young Vienna group, and those who were even younger liked to turn to him for advice and his opinion. Visiting casual acquaintances, he had met the tall young schoolboy, whose quick intelligence impressed him, and when the schoolboy asked as a favour whether he could read him a short theatrical piece in verse, Schnitzler gladly invited him to his bachelor apartment, although without any great expectations—well, he thought, a schoolboy effort, it will be either sentimental or pseudo-classical. He invited some friends: Hofmannsthal turned up in his short trousers, rather nervous and awkward, and began to read. “After a few minutes,” Schnitzler told me, “we suddenly pricked up our ears and exchanged surprised, almost alarmed glances. We had never before heard from any living soul verse of such perfection, so flawlessly graphic and with such musical feeling. In fact, we had thought it hardly possible since Goethe. But even more wonderful than this unique mastery of form (which has not been achieved by anyone writing in German since Hofmannsthal), was the knowledge of the world that could come only from some magical intuition in a boy who spent his days at school.” When Hofmannsthal came to the end of his piece, they were all silent. “I had a feeling,” Schnitzler told me, “that for the first time in my life I had met a born genius, and in all my life I have never again felt that with such force.” A man who began like that at the age of sixteen—or rather did not begin but was already perfect when he began—must become a brother of Goethe and Shakespeare. And indeed, perfection seemed to become even more perfected: after that first piece in verse, Yesterday, came the grand fragment The Death of Titian, in which the German language rose to the melodious sound of Italian, and the poems, every one of which was an event to us, and which I still know by heart years later. Then came the short dramas, and those essays that combined a wealth of knowledge, a perfect understanding of art and a width of vision, all crowding into the wonderfully small space of a few dozen pages. Everything that he wrote as a schoolboy and then a university student was like a crystal illuminated from within, dark and glittering at the same time. The verse and prose were like fragrant beeswax from Hymettus in his hands; by some unique miracle every work he wrote had its right measure, there was never too little and never too much of anything, one always felt that something unconscious and impossible to grasp must be guiding him along these paths to places hitherto untrodden.

  I can hardly say how such a phenomenon fascinated those of us who had taught ourselves to take note of artistic values. What can be more intoxicating for a young generation than to know that there is a pure, sublime writer near them, among them in the flesh, just as they previously imagined him in the legendary figures of Hölderlin, Keats and Leopardi, but out of reach, half a dream and a vision? That is why I also remember so clearly the day when I first saw Hofmannsthal in person. I was sixteen years old, and as we were all avidly following what this ideal mentor of ours did, a small note hidden away in the newspaper excited me immensely. It announced a lecture on Goethe that he was to deliver at the Scientific Club (we could hardly imagine such a genius speaking in so modest a setting; in our schoolboy devotion, we would have expected the largest hall available to be crammed when a figure like Hofmannsthal stated publicly that he would be there). But on this occasion I found out how far in advance of the general public and the established critics we insignificant schoolboys were in our instinct for what would endure (an instinct which proved sound). An audience of about ten to twelve dozen had assembled in the small room, so I need not have set out half-an-hour too early, just to be sure of a seat. We waited for some time, and then a slender young man, inconspicuous in himself, walked past our ranks to the lectern and began speaking so suddenly that I hardly had time to study him properly. With his soft moustache, not yet fully mature, and his supple figure, Hofmannsthal looked even younger than I had expected. His face, with its keen profile and dark, rather Italianate complexion, seemed to show nervous tension, and the restlessness of his very dark, velvety, but extremely short-sighted eyes added to that impression. As if with a sudden single movement, he plunged into his lecture like a swimmer diving into a familiar torrent, and the longer he went on speaking, the more freely he gestured and the more confident was his manner. Once his initial awkwardness was over and he was in his intellectual element he was swept away—as I often noticed later in private conversation—by the wonderful ease and vitality of a man inspired. Only in the first few sentences did I notice that his voice was unattractive, sometimes very close to a falsetto and with a slight tendency to fall over itself, but soon his lecture was carrying us up to such heights of freedom that we no longer noticed his voice, hardly even his face. He spoke without a manuscript text, without notes, perhaps even without careful preparation, but his natural and magical sense of form left every sentence perfectly rounded. The most daring antitheses unfolded, dazzling us and resolving themselves in clear yet unexpected formulations. We had an irresistible feeling that what we were hearing was merely scattered before us out of much greater wealth, and that elated as he was, rising to higher spheres, he could go on for hours and hours without running short of ideas or sinking to a lower level. I still felt the magical force of “this creator’s rolling song and sparkling, confident dialogue”, as Stefan George said in praise of him, in later years and in private conversation. He was restless, agitated, sensitive, reacting to every change in the atmosphere, often morose and nervous in private, and it was not easy to get close to him. But once a problem interested him he caught fire like a rocket, and in a single glittering, glowing flight he carried every discussion up into the sphere peculiar to him, truly accessible only to him. I have never known conversations on such an intellectual level with anyone else apart, sometimes, from Valéry, whose thinking was more measured and more crystalline, and from the impetuous Keyserling. At these truly inspired moments, everything vividly came back to his daemonically keen memory, every book he had read, every picture he had seen, every landscape; metaphor was linked to metaphor as naturally as hand to hand, perspectives rose like sudden backdrops beyond the horizon that had seemed to be finite. In that lecture, for the first time, and later in personal encounters, I truly felt the flatus comprehended by reason alone.

  In a certain sense, Hofmannsthal never again surpassed the unique marvel that he represented from his sixteenth to about his twenty-fourth year. I admire many of his later works no less, his wonderful essays, the fragment Andreas, that torso of what might have been the finest novel in the German language, and certain parts of his dramatic output, but with his increasing links to the theatre of the day and the interests of his time, once he became clearly conscious of his ambitious plans some of the instinctive, apt certainty, the pure inspiration of those first youthful works was gone, and with it something of the intoxication and ecstasy of our own youth. With the magical knowledge that is peculiar to those not yet of age, we were
aware in advance that this miracle of our youth was unique, and would not return to our own lives.

  Balzac, in his own incomparable way, described how the example of Napoleon electrified an entire generation in France. To him, the dazzling rise of little Lieutenant Bonaparte to become emperor of the world meant not just the triumph of a man, but the victory of the idea of youth. The fact that you need not be born a prince to achieve power at an early age, that you could come from any insignificant, even poor family, yet still be a general before you were twenty-four, master of France at the age of thirty, and soon of the whole world—that unprecedented success drove hundreds to abandon their little careers and their provincial towns. Lieutenant Bonaparte went to the heads of a whole generation of young people. He urged them on to higher ambitions; he created the generals of the Grande Armée and the heroes and arrivistes of the Comédie Humaine. A single young man who reached hitherto unattainable heights at the first bold attempt always, merely by dint of his success, encourages all the young people around him and following him. In this sense we younger boys, whose energies were still developing, were spurred on to an enormous degree by Hofmannsthal and Rilke. Without hoping that any of us could ever emulate the miracle of Hofmannsthal, we were invigorated merely by his physical existence. It was visible evidence that there could still be a writer of distinction in our own time, our own environment. After all, his father, a bank manager, came from the same Jewish middle class as the rest of us; the genius had grown up in a home like ours, with the same furnishings and the same moral principles as other people of our social class. He had attended an equally tedious grammar school; he had learnt from the same textbooks and spent eight years wearing the seat of his trousers out on the same wooden benches; he was as impatient as we were, as passionately devoted to all intellectual values. And lo and behold, even when he was still sitting on those benches and having to trot around the gymnasium, he had succeeded surmounting the constraints of school, family and the city by virtue of that rise to the boundless heights. Hofmannsthal could be said to have demonstrated before our eyes that even at our age, even in the dungeon atmosphere of an Austrian grammar school, it was possible in principle to create a work of literature, indeed a perfect work of literature. It was even possible—what a tempting inducement to a boy’s mind—to be published, discussed and famous, although at home and at school you might still be regarded as an insignificant adolescent.