Messages From a Lost World: Europe on the Brink

by Stefan Zweig

  A new order—for the sleepless fever, the restlessness, the hope and the waiting, which now consume the repose of our days and nights, surely cannot last. Even though mass destruction appears omnipresent today, monstrously spreading across a terrorized world, it is in the end nothing compared to the more powerful energy of life, which, after each interval of anguish, instills a period of recovery to ensure existence becomes stronger and still more beautiful. A new peace—oh how its light wings seem so distant today, beating through the dust and gun smoke!—will one day return and reconstruct the old order of life, labour in the day and rest at night; in thousands of living rooms now on permanent watch, in a state of nervousness and anxiety, silence will return at the moment of restful sleep regained and the stars, reassured, will once more rest their gaze on a Nature breathing easefully and returned to a state of contentment. What now wears the mask of horror already conceals the grandeur of a noble transformation; with regret and almost with a certain wistfulness we will recall those interminable nights when, through some miraculous transformation in our self, we sensed a new destiny forming in our blood and time’s warm breath upon our waking lids. Only he who has lived through sickness knows the joy of the man in good health, only the insomniac knows the relief of sleep regained. Those who have returned and those who have stayed behind will be more content with life than those who have passed on: they will be able to weigh its true value and inherent beauty more precisely and accurately, and we might almost talk of a sense of anticipation for the new order, were it not for the fact that today, as in ancient times, the tiles of the temple of peace are splashed with sacrificial blood and this new blessed sleep of the world has only been bought with the death of millions of its noblest creations.

  THE TOWER OF BABEL

  THE MOST ANCIENT legends of humanity tend to be inspired by our earliest origins. The symbols of these origins harbour a wonderful poetic force, announcing as they do the great moments of a later history in which peoples renew themselves and the most significant epochs have their roots. In the books of the Bible, from the very opening pages, just after the chaos of creation, one of the most impressive myths of humanity is told. In that time, only just emerging from the unknown, still enveloped by the dark shadows of the unconscious, men were brought together by a communal work. They found themselves in a foreign place, with no means of escape, a place that seemed to them uncertain and filled with dangers, but high above them they saw the sky, clear and pure, eternal mirror of the infinite, and a yearning was born in them. So they came together and said: “Come, let us build a city and a tower whose summit will reach the sky so that our name will remain for all eternity.” And they joined forces, moulded the clay and fired the bricks and began to construct a tower which would extend to the domain of God above, his stars and the pale shell of the moon.

  From on high God saw their puny efforts and smiled, perhaps imagining that these men of such small stature, like tiny insects, were forming still smaller things from moulded earth and sculpted stone. Below him these men were rising to the task, driven on by their desire for eternity, yet to him it seemed but an innocent game devoid of danger. But soon he saw the foundations of their tower begin to grow, because these men were united and in accord, because they never paused in their work and came to each other’s assistance in a spirit of mutual harmony. So he said to himself: “They will never let that tower alone until they have finished it.” For the first time he saw the greatness of the spirit which he had bestowed on men. But it dawned on him that this was not like his own spirit, which rested after seven days of labour, but quite another, both impressive and dangerous, with an indefatigable fervour which would never cease until the work was realized. And for the first time God became fearful that these men might become like him, a unity. So he began pondering ways he might slow down their labour and he knew there was nothing more effective to break their unity than sowing discord amongst them. He said to himself: “I shall disrupt them by ensuring they do not understand each other’s languages.” And for the first time God showed his cruelty towards mankind.

  And God’s dark resolution was made. He directed his hand against the men who down below worked in a spirit of unity and dedication, and smote that spirit. The bitterest hour of humanity had come. Suddenly, overnight, in the midst of their labours, men could no longer understand each other. They cried out, but had no concept of each other’s speech, and so they became enraged with each other. They threw down their bricks, picks and trowels, they argued and quarrelled until finally they abandoned the communal work, each returning to his own home in his own land. They dispersed into the fields and forests of the earth and there each built his own house which did not reach the clouds, nor God, but merely sheltered his own head and his nightly slumber. The Tower of Babel, that colossal edifice, remained abandoned; the wind and rain gradually tore away the parapets, which were already approaching the sky, and little by little the whole structure crumbled away, subsided and was laid to ruin. Soon it was just a legend that appeared in the canticles and humanity completely forgot the monumental work of its youth.

  Centuries and millennia passed and men lived in the isolation of their languages. They erected boundaries between their fields and territories, between their customs and beliefs, and when they crossed them it was only in order to rob. For centuries and millennia there was no unity amongst them, only their own pride, and egocentric works prospered. However, of their communal youth some vestige remained in them, a vague dream of the great work, which gradually over the years grew in them and unconsciously they began to reflect deep within on their lost community. A handful of audacious men made the first move: they visited foreign kingdoms, carried messages; little by little people established friendships, one learnt something from the other; they exchanged their knowledge, their values, their precious metals and they gradually realized that their national languages only distanced themselves from each other and their frontiers were not in fact a chasm between peoples. Their sages came to realize that a science practised by one people could never hope to reach towards the infinite and the scholars soon saw that if they exchanged their knowledge humanity would progress at a faster rate; the poets translated the words of their brothers into their own languages and music, the only art not subjected to the narrow confines of language, served as the common language of emotions. Men loved life more when they knew that, in spite of the obstacle of languages, unity was possible. They thanked God for the punishment he had dealt them and thanked him too for having divided them in such a radical manner, because it gave them the opportunity to relish their world in different ways and to love more consciously their unity with all its many differences.

  So the Tower of Babel once more began to rise gradually from the soil of Europe, the monument to communal brotherhood, mankind’s solidarity. But it was no longer raw materials which went into this tower’s construction, no longer bricks and clay, mortar and earth that they used to reach the heavens and fraternize with God and the world. The new tower was built with a more delicate and yet more indestructible substance which they discovered on earth, that of spirituality and experience, the most sublime material of the soul. Wide and deep were its foundations; Eastern wisdom lent depth, Christian doctrine gave balance, and the humanity of antiquity its building blocks of bronze. Everything humanity had achieved, all that the terrestrial spirit had accomplished was put into this tower, and so it rose up. Each nation contributed to this monument of Europe; the young people rushed in to learn all they could alongside the old, offering their untainted strength to experience and wisdom. They built the tower by hand and the fact that each worked in a different way only fed their communal fervour, for if one achieved more, it encouraged his neighbour to do likewise, and the discord which often threatens nations en masse was powerless to halt the realization of the communal work.

  Thus it grew, the new Tower of Babel, and never had its summit reached so high as in our epoch. Never had nations had such ease of access to the
spirits of their neighbours, never had their knowledge been so intimately linked, never had commercial relations been so close in forming a formidable network and never had Europeans loved both their homeland and the rest of the world. In this rapture of community, they could already almost touch the sky, for the poets of all languages began in the last few years to celebrate through hymns the beauty of being and creating; and they felt like the builders of that other tower and even like God because they were about to accomplish their work. The monument was growing, the whole of humanity counted on assembling there for the consecration and music resounded around the edifice like a gathering storm.

  But God on high, who is immortal like humanity itself, saw with horror that the tower he had destroyed was rising once more, and furthermore he knew that in order to remain more powerful than this humanity he would have to sow discord anew and ensure that men ceased to understand each other. Once more he was cruel, causing confusion to break out amongst them; and so, after thousands of years, this horrific moment appears again in our lives. Overnight men ceased to understand each other, the very same who were peacefully creating together. Because they didn’t understand each other they became enraged with one another. Once again they threw down their tools only to use them as weapons instead; the scholars hoarded their own knowledge, the technicians their discoveries, the poets their words, the priests their faith; all that previously had enriched the communal work was transformed into mortal combat.

  This is the monstrous moment we are living through today. The new Tower of Babel, the great monument to the spiritual unity of Europe, lies in decay, its workers have lost their way. Still its battlements stand, still its invisible blocks loom over a world in disarray, but without the communal effort to keep the work going it will be entirely forgotten, just like the other in the time of myths. Numberless are the people today who, indifferent to its collapse, believe that their contribution can be withdrawn from the magnificent construction, so that they will reach the sky and eternity through their individual national strength. But some exist who believe that never can a single people, a single nation achieve what a collective of European nations has not through centuries of heroic endeavour, men who ardently believe that this monument must be brought to completion in our Europe, here where it was started, and not in foreign continents like America or Asia. The hour of communal action is not yet upon us, the discord that God has sown amongst us is still too great and years may pass before the conception of a work destined for eternity can be born through peaceful rivalry. But we need to return to the construction site, each to the position he was in when the work was abandoned, when confusion struck. Perhaps we will never see it come to pass, or even hear of it spoken of amongst people; but if we place ourselves there now, each in his allotted spot, expressing the same ardour as in times past, the tower will surely rise again and ultimately all nations will find themselves upon its summit. For this call to work should not come from the pride of individual nations, ever more self-fulfilled in race and language, but rather from the old ancestor, our spirit, which remains the same in all forms, all legends, that nameless builder of Babel, the genius of mankind, whose meaning and salvation it is to strive against his Creator.

  HISTORY AS POETESS

  OUR VERY FIRST CONTACT with History dates from school. It is there children are taught for the first time that it is not with us that the world begins or began, but like all organic life it is in a state of constant transformation; the world existed before us and before that world there was still another. This then is how History leads us, by our inquisitive child’s hand, guiding us ever further back into the colourful gallery of times past. She teaches us that there was an epoch where humanity too was in its infancy, where our ancestors lived without fire, without light, in caves, like salamanders. But she also shows before our marvelling gaze how these scattered, brutal hordes at the beginning gradually gave birth to peoples, nations, how they crystallized into states, how from east to west, like a gathering flame, culture spread from one nation to another and illuminated the world—step by step, the long road of humanity began its ascent. Egyptians to Greeks, Greeks to Romans and from the Romans, across a thousand wars and reconciliations, we arrive at the threshold of our modern world. History accomplished her primary task, her eternal task, that which we all faced in our school years: to illustrate to the young person, the nascent adult, the origin and development of mankind and thereby link him into an immense line of ancestors whose work and achievement he must complete in a worthy manner.

  As the great governess of world creation—that is how History was presented to us in our youth. But the educators and teachers always wore a severe countenance. For us History was a pitiless judge who, with impassive face, without hate and without love, without judgement and without prejudice, merely engraved with lead pencil, methodically, figures and words, so it seemed to us history was nothing more than an orderly treatment of vast chaos, and we cared little for it. First we had to—and I think this was the same for everyone—learn history by rote, as a duty, before we sought it out for ourselves and began to love it. Most of it was a real bore, very little of this world chronicle appealed, and even then, during our schooldays, our attitude was not altogether devoid of prejudgements and personal predilections. We should remind ourselves that we were not always reading the chronicle, the unfurling story, with the same love and the same interest as now. There were long passages and periods in these history books which we were obliged to learn by heart, without the slightest interest, without joy, without love, without passion, learn them as an obligation, a “school subject”, without the participation of our imagination. But then came other episodes which we adored, like so many adventures, chapters where we could not turn the pages fast enough, where our most inward being, our most secret energies were inflamed, where our own fantasy glided into those admired figures, and so we imagined ourselves Conradin, Alexander, Caesar or Alcibiades. I must point out that in this respect at least a communal experience exists, that for the young of every country there is a spontaneous choice of preferred period and figure, and that in every nation and all generations passion and enthusiasm tend to be directed to the same episodes and characters. Everywhere it is the great conquerors like Caesar and Scipio who excite youthful admiration and on the other hand the vanquished heroes like Hannibal and Charles XII who excite the ardent compassion with which our youth is so admirably endowed. From north to south, from east to west, the same dramatic passages tend to have the same effect on boys of twelve, thirteen, fifteen, and certain crucial epochs for humanity, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolution, seem to implant themselves in the intellect with a distinct corporeality and vital imagery. However, it is not by chance that certain figures and certain passages have, since the days of Plutarch, caused such unanimous inflaming of the imagination. This secret law, this reason—I see there that this History we view first as a mistress, an inflexible chronicler, can also sometimes be a poetess. I must emphasize the word sometimes. I say this because it is not so all the time, twenty-four uninterrupted hours a day, just as is the case with an artist or poet. Weeks and months can pass, the required fallow period for all community-building peoples, ordinary citizens and workers, even the most unproductive lives; all need time for preparation, the gathering-in. The gradual warm-up to the poetic craft is just like any other; they must rest and gather strength, marshal their forces before bursting forth in triumph. For an individual as much as for a nation the visionary state can never be habitual and permanent; and it would be absurd to demand of history, that “mysterious workshop of God”, as Goethe called it, that it continuously turn out great, stirring, shocking, gripping events and fascinating personalities. No, history’s story cannot simply tell of an endless procession of geniuses, of larger-than-life superhuman characters. It has its remission from tension, its remission from art, and who anyway would wish to read it as one reads a pulp detective novel, where every chapter is laden with gun-toting t
ension? Surely this would be an offence to the elevated spirit which necessarily permeates it. Let us be firm on this: History cannot be a poetess all the time; she can only, most of the time, play the role of simple chronicler, the clear speaker of facts. It is only on rare occasions that she has her sublime moments, namely those places and personalities which arouse the imagination of youth—in most cases it’s mere facts, unfinished material, sober sequential logic, established events. Then sometimes, at the heart of nature, without the interference of man, she forges a pure crystal—and presents in episodes or individuals, or epochs, such a level of tension, such a dramatic perfection that they appear like unsurpassed works of art; and History as poetess of world spirit puts to shame all earthbound poets and mortal spirits.