Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures

by Stefan Zweig

  CRUCIFY HIM!

  Thousands, millions of voices are shouting in jubilation that day. Only one voice, the most important, remains strangely silent during the celebrations—the voice of the electric telegraph. In the midst of the rejoicing, perhaps Cyrus W. Field guesses the terrible truth, and it must have been appalling for him to be the only one who knew that on that very day the Atlantic cable has stopped working after, in the last few days, increasingly confused and barely legible signals had come in. Finally the wire has drawn its last, dying breath. In all America no one knows or guesses at the gradual failure, apart from the few who control the reception of transmissions in Newfoundland, and even they, in view of the unbounded rejoicing, hesitate for several days to pass on the bitter information to the jubilant crowds. Soon, however, people begin to notice the paucity of incoming messages. America had expected that now news would be flashing over the ocean every hour—instead, there is only, from time to time, a vague announcement that cannot be checked. It is not long before a rumour is being whispered: in enthusiasm and impatience to achieve better transmissions, over-strong electrical charges have been sent along the line, thus entirely wrecking the cable that was inadequate anyway. They still hope to put things right, but soon there is no denying that the signals are getting more indistinct and less and less comprehensible. Just after that wretched morning following the festivities, on 1st September, clear tones and distinct vibrations stop crossing the sea entirely.

  There is nothing that human beings are less likely to forgive than being brought down to earth in the middle of genuinely felt enthusiasm, and seeing themselves disappointed behind their backs by a man of whom they expect everything. As soon as the rumour that the much-famed telegraph has failed is proved true, the stormy current of jubilation turns to a reverse wave of vicious embitterment breaking over Cyrus W. Field, the innocently guilty party. He has deceived a city, a country, the whole world; they are saying in the City of London that he knew about the failure of the telegraph long before it happened, but selfishly let himself enjoy the adulation while he used the time to sell his own shares at a huge profit. There are even more vicious accusations, including the strangest of all, the peremptory claim that the Atlantic telegraph never worked properly; everything said about it was deception and humbug, and the telegram from Queen Victoria had been written in advance and never came over the oceanic telegraph line. Not a single message, says this rumour, really came across the seas in comprehensible form all that time, and the directors of the company simply thought up imaginary messages consisting of assumptions and fragmentary signals. A positive scandal breaks out. Those who were most jubilant yesterday are the most indignant now. An entire city, an entire country is ashamed of its overheated and over-hasty enthusiasm. Cyrus W. Field becomes the victim of this fury; only yesterday still a national hero, regarded as the brother of Franklin and in the line of descent from Columbus, he has to hide like a malefactor from his former friends and admirers. A single day made his fame, a single day has destroyed it. The ill effects cannot be foreseen, the capital is lost, confidence is gone; and, like the legendary serpent of Midgard, the useless cable lies in the unseen depths of the ocean.

  SIX YEARS OF SILENCE

  The forgotten cable lies useless in the ocean for six years; for six years the old, cold silence lords it once again over the two continents that, for a brief time, sent pulsating signals to each other. Two continents that had been as close as a breath once drawn, as close as a few hundred words, America and Europe are separated, as they have been for millennia, by insuperable distance. The boldest plan of the nineteenth century, only yesterday almost reality, has become a legend once more, a myth. Of course no one thinks of returning to the project that half succeeded; the terrible defeat has crippled all their powers and stifled all their enthusiasm. In America the civil war between the north and the south diverts all attention from other questions; in Great Britain committees still meet now and then, but it takes them two years to come to the arid conclusion that, in principle, a cable running under the sea would be possible. But the path from academic theory to application of the principle is not one that anyone thinks of treading. For six years, all work on the project lies as much at rest as the forgotten cable at the bottom of the sea.

  However, while six years are only a fleeting moment within the huge space of history, they mean as much as a thousand in so young a science as electricity. Every year, every month brings new discoveries in that field. Dynamos become stronger and stronger, more and more precise, have more and more applications, the functioning of electrical apparatus is ever more exact. The telegraph network already spans the internal areas of all the continents; it has already crossed the Mediterranean and linked Africa and Europe. So as year follows year the idea of crossing the Atlantic Ocean imperceptibly comes to lose more and more of the fantastic aura that has clung to it for so long. The time when the attempt is made again is bound to come inexorably closer. All that is missing is the man to infuse new energy into the old plan.

  And suddenly the man is there—and lo and behold, he is the same man as before, with the same faith and confidence in the idea: Cyrus W. Field, resurrected from the exile of silence and malicious scorn. He has crossed the ocean for the thirtieth time and returns to London; he succeeds in providing new capital of £600,000 for the old concessions. And at last the giant ship he has dreamt of so long is also available, a vessel that can carry the enormous freight on its own, the famous Great Eastern, with its 22,000 tons and four funnels, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Furthermore, wonderful to relate, it is not in use this year because, like the undersea cable project itself, it is ahead of its time. It can be bought and equipped for the expedition within two days.

  Now everything that was once immeasurably difficult is easy. The mammoth ship, carrying a new cable, leaves the Thames on 23rd July 1865. Although the first attempt fails because of a tear in the cable two days before the laying is completed, and the insatiable ocean swallows up £600,000 sterling, technology is now too sure of itself to be discouraged. And when the Great Eastern sets out for the second time on 13th July 1866, the voyage is a triumph. This time the cable calls back to Europe clearly and distinctly. A few days later the old, lost cable is found, and two strands of cable now link the Old and New Worlds into one. What was miraculous yesterday is taken for granted today, and from that moment on the earth has, so to speak, a single heartbeat. Mankind now lives able to hear, see and understand itself simultaneously from one end of the earth to the other, made divinely omnipresent by its own creative power. And, thanks to its victory over space and time, mankind would be united for ever, if it were not confused again and again by the fateful delusion constantly destroying that grandiose union, enabling it to destroy itself by the same means that give it power over the elements.

  THE RACE TO REACH THE SOUTH POLE

  CAPTAIN SCOTT, 90 DEGREES LATITUDE

  16 January 1912

  THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EARTH

  The twentieth century looks down on a world without mysteries. All its countries have been explored, ships have ploughed their way through the most distant seas. Landscapes that only a generation ago still slumbered in blissful anonymity serve the needs of Europe; steamers go as far as the long-sought sources of the Nile. The Victoria Falls, first seen by a European only half a century ago, obediently generate electricity; the Amazon rainforest, that last wilderness, has been cleared; the frontiers of Tibet, the only country that was still virgin territory, have been breached. New drawing by knowledgeable hands now covers the words Terra incognita on old maps and globes; in the twentieth century, mankind knows the planet on which it lives. Already the enquiring will is looking for new paths; it must plunge down to the fantastic fauna of the deep sea, or soar up into the endless air. For untrodden paths are to be found only in the skies, and already the steel swallows of aeroplanes shoot up, racing each other, to reach new heights and new distances, now that the earth lies fallow and can reveal no more
secrets to human curiosity.

  But one final secret preserved the earth’s modesty from our gaze into the present century, two tiny parts of its racked and tormented body were still saved from the greed of its own inhabitants: the South Pole and the North Pole, its backbone, two places with almost no character or meaning in themselves, around which its axis has been turning for thousands of years. The earth has protected them, leaving them pure and spotless. It has placed barriers of ice in front of this last mystery, setting eternal winter to guard them against the greedy. Access is forbidden by imperious frost and storms; danger and terror scare away the bold with the menace of death. No human eyes may dwell on this closed sphere, and even the sun takes only a fleeting glance.

  Expeditions have followed one another for decades. None has achieved its aim. The body of the boldest of the bold, Andrée, who hoped to fly over the Pole in a balloon and never returned, has rested in the glass coffin of the ice for thirty-three years and has only now been discovered. Every attempt is dashed to pieces on the sheer walls of frost. The earth has hidden her face here for thousands of years, up to our own day, triumphing for the last time over the will of her own creatures. Her modesty, pure and virginal, defies the curiosity of the world.

  But the young twentieth century reaches out its hands impatiently. It has forged new weapons in laboratories, found new ways to arm itself against danger, and all resistance only increases its avidity. It wants to know the whole truth, in its very first decade it aims to conquer what all the millennia before could not. The rivalry of nations keeps company with the courage of individuals. They are not competing only to reach the Pole now, but also for the honour of flying the national flag first over newly discovered land: it is a crusade of races and nations against places hallowed by longing. The onslaught is renewed from all quarters of the earth. Mankind waits impatiently, knowing that the prize is the last secret of the place where we live. Peary and Cook prepare to set out from America to conquer the North Pole, while two ships steer southward, one commanded by the Norwegian explorer Amundsen, the other by an Englishman, Captain Scott.

  SCOTT

  Scott, a captain in the British Navy. An average captain, with a record befitting his rank behind him. He has served to the satisfaction of his superior officers, and later took part in Shackleton’s expedition. Nothing in his conduct suggests that he is a hero. His face, reflected by photography, could be that of 1,000 Englishmen, 10,000: cold, energetic, showing no play of muscles, as if frozen hard by interior energy. His eyes are steely grey, his mouth firmly closed. Not a romantic line in it anywhere, not a gleam of humour in a countenance made up of will-power and practical knowledge of the world. His handwriting is any Englishman’s handwriting, no shading or flourishes, swift and sure. His style is clear and correct, strikingly factual, yet as unimaginative as a report. Scott writes English as Tacitus writes Latin, as if carving it in unhewn stone. You sense that he is a man who does not dream, fanatically objective, in fact a true blue Englishman in whom even genius takes the crystalline form of a pronounced sense of duty. Men like Scott have featured hundreds of times in British history, conquering India and nameless islands in the East Indian archipelago, colonizing Africa and fighting battles against the whole world, always with the same iron energy, the same collective consciousness and the same cold, reserved expression.

  But his will is hard as steel; you can sense that before he takes any action. Scott intends to finish what Shackleton began. He equips an expedition, but his financial means are inadequate. That does not deter him. He sacrifices his own fortune and runs up debts in the certainty of success. His young wife bears him a son, but like another Hector he does not hesitate to leave his Andromache. He soon finds friends and companions; nothing on earth can change his mind now. The strange ship that is to take the expedition to the edge of the Antarctic Ocean is called the Terra Nova—strange because it has two kinds of equipment: it is half a Noah’s Ark, full of living creatures, and also a modern laboratory with a thousand books and scientific instruments. For they have to take everything that a man needs for his body and mind with them into that empty, uninhabited world. The primitive equipment of primitive people, furs, skins and live animals, make strange partners here for the latest sophisticated modern devices. And the dual nature of the whole enterprise is as fantastic as the ship itself: an adventure, but one as calculated as a business deal, audacity with all the features of caution—endlessly precise and individual calculations against the even more endless whims of chance. They leave England on 1st June 1910. The British Isles are a beautiful sight at that time of year, with lush green meadows and the sun shining, warm and radiant in a cloudless sky. The men feel emotion as the coast vanishes behind them, for they all know that they are saying goodbye to warmth and sunlight for years, some of them perhaps for ever. But the British flag flies above the ship, and they console themselves by thinking that a signal from the world is travelling with them to the only part of the conquered earth that as yet has no master.

  UNIVERSITAS ANTARCTICA

  In January, after a short rest in New Zealand, they land at Cape Evans, on the rim of the eternal ice, and erect a building where they can spend the winter. In Antarctica December and January are the summer months, because only then does the sun shine in a white, metallic sky for a few hours of the day. The walls of their house are made of wood, like those of buildings erected by earlier expeditions, but inside the progress of time is evident. While their predecessors still made do with the dim and stinking light of smouldering fish-oil lamps, tired of their own faces, exhausted by the monotony of the sunless days, these twentieth-century men have the whole world and all its knowledge in abbreviated form inside their four walls. An acetylene lamp gives warm white light, as if by magic cinematography bringing them images of distant places, projections of tropical scenes from milder climates; they have a pianola for music, a gramophone provides the sounds of the human voice, their library contains the wisdom of their time. A typewriter clacks away in one room, another acts as a darkroom where cinematographic and coloured photographs are developed. The expedition’s geologist tests stone for its radioactivity, the zoologist discovers new parasites on the penguins they catch, meteorological observations alternate with physical experiments. Every member of the expedition has his allotted work for the months of darkness, and a clever system transforms research in isolation into companionable study. For these thirty men give lectures every evening, hold university courses in the pack ice and the Arctic frost, and they acquire a three-dimensional view of the world in lively conversational exchange. The specialization of research gives up its pride here and promotes understanding in the company of others. In the middle of an elemental, primeval world, alone in a timeless place, thirty men instruct each other in the latest scientific findings of the twentieth century, and in their house they know not only the hour but the second of the world clock. It is touching to read how these serious men enjoy their Christmas tree and their spoof journal The South Polar Times, to find how some small incident—a whale surfacing, a pony’s fall—becomes a major event, and on the other hand astonishing aspects of the expedition—the glow of the aurora borealis, the terrible frost, the vast loneliness—become ordinary daily experiences.

  Now and then they venture on small outings. They try out their motor sledges, they learn to ski, they train the dogs. They equip a depot for the great journey, but the days on the calendar pass very slowly until summer (in December), when a ship reaches them through the pack ice with letters from home. Small groups also go on day-long journeys to toughen them up in the worst of the Antarctic winter, they try out their tents and consolidate their experiences. Not everything succeeds, but even the difficulties reinvigorate them. When they return from their expeditions, frozen and tired, they are welcomed back with rejoicing and a warm fire in the hearth, and the comfortable little house at latitude 77 seems to them, after days of deprivation, the most blessed place in the world.

  But once such an
expedition comes back from the west, and its news silences the house. On their way they have found Amundsen’s winter quarters, and now Scott knows that, as well as the frost and danger, he has someone else competing with him for fame as the first to discover the secret of this refractory part of the earth: the Norwegian explorer Amundsen. He measures distances on the maps, and we can imagine his horror from what he wrote when he realized that Amundsen’s winter quarters were 110 kilometres closer to the Pole than his own. He is shocked but does not despair. He writes proudly in his diary of his determination to press on for the honour of his country.

  The name of Amundsen appears only once in the pages of Scott’s diary, and never again. But the reader can feel that, from that day forward, a shadow of anxiety lies over the lonely house in the frozen landscape. And from now on there is not an hour when that name does not torment him, waking and sleeping.

  SETTING OFF FOR THE POLE

  A mile from the hut, on the hill where they take observations, they always post alternating guards. An apparatus resembling a cannon has been set up there—a cannon to combat an invisible enemy. Its purpose is to measure the first signs of warmth from the approaching sun. They wait for its appearance for days on end. Reflections already conjure up glowing colour in the morning sky, but the round disc of the sun does not yet rise to the horizon. However, that sky itself, full of the magical light of its proximity, the prelude to reflection, inspires the impatient men. At last the telephone on top of the hill rings, and they are happy to receive the news: the sun has risen, raising its head into the wintry night for an hour, for the first time in months. Its light is very faint, pale and wan, scarcely enough to enliven the icy air; the oscillating waves in the apparatus hardly produce any livelier signals, but the mere sight of the sun is cheering. The expedition is feverishly equipped to make use of the short span of light without delay, the light that means spring, summer and autumn in one, and in what, by our milder standards, would still be the depths of a bitter winter. The motor sledges race ahead. After them come the sledges drawn by Siberian ponies and dogs. The route has been carefully divided up into stages; a depot is set up at the end of every two days’ journey to store new clothing and provisions for the return journey, and, most important of all, paraffin—condensed warmth in the endless frost. They move forward together, so as to return gradually in single groups, thus leaving behind the maximum load, the freshest draught animals and the best sledges for the final group, the chosen conquerors of the Pole.