"The World of Yesterday" by S. Zweig: A Manual of the Future

THE BOOK

• Full Title: The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European

• Author: Stefan Zweig

• Number of Pages: 491

• Year: 1942

• Genre: Memoir

• Topics: Europe; European History; World Wars

• Useful Links: Goodreads, Blackwell's

THE BOOK Stefan Zweig is not a man of our world. He was born in the late 1800s and lived through 1942. His life was initially filled with optimism and lust for joy and creativity, until the entire system was shattered by the First World War. Later came recovery, and he fought himself safe. And yet, he couldn't imagine that even greater destruction was on the way, and that he wasn't going to survive it. The World of Yesterday is a biography, a narration of one's life; but it's also a portrait of Europe, of its slow but inexorable transformation from a land of possibility to a land of sorrow.

THE AUTHOR Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was an Austrian poet, writer, and translator. Born in a still-imperial Austria, and in a relatively well-off Jewish bourgeois family, he witnessed a dramatic shift in the world order, going from his young years as a prolific and successful writer, to his last years as an expatriate forced into exile in South America to escape Nazist deportation. Among his works are novels, historical studies, essays, and memoirs. After a fertile career, he died by suicide in 1942 in Brazil, unable to sustain the pain of seeing the world destroyed by yet another war and having to live countryless.

CAN THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY BE OUR FUTURE?

Let's start with an important premise: do not read this book if you are emotionally unstable.

A book published in 1942, I told myself, what harm can it do to me? It's probably just an alternative to regular history books about the early 20th century. But The World of Yesterday turned out to be something else. And it hurt, it hurt tremendously.

First, a shout-out to its late author, Stefan Zweig, who must have been an incredibly intelligent man, with wit and an enviable clarity of thought. His writing is pleasant, and he had the rare ability to put complex feelings, even mere sensations, into words.

Zweig begins his narration from the last years of the 19th century, then follows the dramatic failure of the European system, engulfed in a whirlwind of hatred and anger that the optimistic and progress-oriented mind of the 1800s wasn't able to stop. The similarities with the current events, the slow shift from the pre-COVID world - relatively stable - to the violent present are painful when they hit you.

If one asks why Europe went to war in 1914, neither reasonable ground nor even provocation can be found. [...] I cannot explain it otherwise than by this surplus of force [...]. Every State suddenly had the feeling of being strong and forgot that every other State had the same feeling, each wanted more and more and wanted something from the other*.

The blindness of Zweig himself, his circle, and all the good men is something he likes to underscore. And when he tells you how they never believed it possible for people who grew up free and safe to turn to war and disdain for the other, you need to blink a few times to make sure you're not reading an essay describing the world you are living in.

We young people, completely wrapped up in our literary ambitions, noticed little enough of these dangerous changes in our homeland [...]. We did not have the slightest interest in politics and social problems [...]. The city was aroused at the elections, and we went to the library. [...] And only decades later, when roof and walls feel in upon us, did we realize that the foundations had long since been undermined and that together with the new century the decline of individual freedom in Europe had begun.

Zweig recounts how he and all the good men around him ignored all the hints at a changing world. That piece of news, that event, that small escalation, that killing, that diplomatic debacle. All tiny and harmless if considered alone, an unyielding erosion of peace if seen in perspective. Does this scenario remind you of our times?

One could not escape the impression that some sort of action was being prepared in the newspapers, but no one thought of war. [...] We could see the faces of those who bought copies [n.d. of a newspaper] grow gloomy, but only for a minute. After all, we had been familiar with these diplomatic conflicts for years; they were always happily settled at the last minute, before things grew too serious. Why not this time as well?

The need to escape, to live despite bombings and killings, to survive by ignoring. Zweig expresses his own indecision, his hopelessness in the face of ongoing events, the immobility of all the good men who weren't at war, and didn't know what to do for those who were. How to express dissent? How to make an impact? This will perhaps resonate with you as well.

Retirement in itself proved useless. [...] I became aware that mere passive non-participation in this wild derogation of the enemy was not conclusive. [...] The only right path for a writer to take in such times: not to participate in destruction and murder but [...] to be active in works of assistance and humanity.

Then, the Second World War. After the unimaginable carnage that had been the First, Zweig thought war had been erased from the European mind, but, as we all know, it wasn't, not even close - the worst had yet to come. You'll read about how the author felt depleted after decades of uncertainty, of how he saw his home and properties destroyed or confiscated, how his whole identity was taken away from him, and how he was forced away. And this, too, may call a few current events to mind.

By a stroke of a pen the meaning of a whole life had been transformed into a paradox.

There's also a touch of hope in Zweig's words, but we cannot blame him for not being able to lift us from our worries - he had seen too much to believe still. In this, I find myself strong enough to disagree with him. He saw the world crumbling down like never before, but we know already that it recovered from the most unimaginable wounds. Thus, we have a foresight he didn't have and can be hopeful like he couldn't. This, however, imposes an additional burden: if we know how pointless the wars Zweig endured were, we shouldn't allow more to come.

WHY READ "THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY"

We could mention infinite reasons why it could be a good idea to read The World of Yesterday, but I'll focus on two.

The first one is that it is not common to find someone who writes with such effortless elegance, and who can close the distance between a much older generation and ourselves. Normally, reading a book published some 80+ years ago may be intimidating, as we may expect different sentence construction, word choice, and a writing style intended for people with a higher attention span. When it comes to Zweig's book, this is not an issue, since the author could well be in our 2025 room, and we would perceive him as our peer.

The second reason to read this book is its significance. Its historical value, for it represents an alternative yet contemporary point of view on one of the most disastrous epochs in history. Its relevance, which, thanks to a spontaneous sense of credibility inspired by its author, makes it a useful device to understand our present before it fully unfolds in a new future.

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*This post, including all quotes, is based on the ebook version of Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European, Pushkin Press, 2024.