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A review by schgro
Messages from a Lost World: Europe on the Brink by Stefan Zweig
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
What Zweig lacks in detail he makes up for in empathy, which, as a fiction writer and humanist, is probably more important. He describes and counters the rise of nationalism in his own time with utter heartbreak, and it is with the same heartbreak we can recognise our own lived experience of it now. 'I believe we all feel everywhere today that electric crackle caused by the collision of antagonisms' (p109).
In his view, nationalism has more immediate appeal because it is visibly lodged in material things which give rise to exultant mass behaviour. He argues that the cosmopolitan cause must likewise strive to stir with rhetoric and action, since 'patient reflection' never brought about change. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism share the same drive towards unification, a drive which has sometimes surpassed national borders by finding a common language--scholarly Latin, the Roman Catholic church, music, and (already 100 years ago) 'the wholly impersonal...spirit of the technological century' (p107).
Zweig returns to his school history books and finds he was primed for war with texts telling a history of battles. He imagines a complementary cultural history that would reveal that our positive achievements were the result of collaboration and not competition.
The theme of opposing forces runs through the essays, most memorably: 'In a work of drama or a novel, it is never enough when the poet introduces only one major figure: a complete work of art must, if it is to excite interest, employ an opposing figure, for each needs the power to develop fully and reveal his true dimensions, which comes from a creative tension' (p67). Aesthetically, the tension we experience in the world might in this sense give us hope.
Zweig's observations on Vienna might be wishfully rosy, but it's hard not to be rosy about Vindobona, a cosmopolitan bastion since its Roman inception.
In his view, nationalism has more immediate appeal because it is visibly lodged in material things which give rise to exultant mass behaviour. He argues that the cosmopolitan cause must likewise strive to stir with rhetoric and action, since 'patient reflection' never brought about change. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism share the same drive towards unification, a drive which has sometimes surpassed national borders by finding a common language--scholarly Latin, the Roman Catholic church, music, and (already 100 years ago) 'the wholly impersonal...spirit of the technological century' (p107).
Zweig returns to his school history books and finds he was primed for war with texts telling a history of battles. He imagines a complementary cultural history that would reveal that our positive achievements were the result of collaboration and not competition.
The theme of opposing forces runs through the essays, most memorably: 'In a work of drama or a novel, it is never enough when the poet introduces only one major figure: a complete work of art must, if it is to excite interest, employ an opposing figure, for each needs the power to develop fully and reveal his true dimensions, which comes from a creative tension' (p67). Aesthetically, the tension we experience in the world might in this sense give us hope.
Zweig's observations on Vienna might be wishfully rosy, but it's hard not to be rosy about Vindobona, a cosmopolitan bastion since its Roman inception.