Re: Trove of Letters Spotlights Stefan Zweig's Take on Judai
Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 8:18 pmZweig's Suicide Letter
by gizra.github.io
Accessed: 4/27/18
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Having escaped the horrors of the war in Europe, Zweig and his wife looked for a refuge where they could resume their lives. Disappointed with London and New-York, they had hoped to make a fresh start in Brazil. However, being constantly on the run, the encounter with multitudes of Jewish refugees like him, and the feeling that his cultural world was lost, filled him with great despair. He could not find the strength to begin a new life.
Zweig's suicide was criticized by many. But he was not the only one: two other Jewish intellectuals who were war refugees, the author Ernest Toller in New-York, and the philosopher Walter Benjamin in Portbou, had committed suicide before him.
Zweig's suicide letter, written in German, was found by local police officers. They called in Fritz Weil, a German-Jewish manufacturer from Petropolis, to help them translate the letter to Portuguese. Having provided them with a translation of the letter, Fritz asked to purchase it, but was refused. In 1972 Weil finally managed to buy the letter from a retired police officer; in 1992 he donated the letter to the National Library of Israel in memory of his wife's parents who died in the Holocaust.
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The Letter
Declaration
Of my own will and in clear mind
Every day I learned to love this country more, and I would not have asked to rebuild my life in any other place after the world of my own language sank and was lost to me and my spiritual homeland, Europe, destroyed itself.
But to start everything anew after a man’s 60th year requires special powers, and my own power has been expended after years of wandering homeless. I thus prefer to end my life at the right time, upright, as a man for whom cultural work has always been his purest happiness and personal freedom – the most precious of possessions on this earth.
I send greetings to all of my friends: May they live to see the dawn after this long night. I, who am most impatient, go before them.
Stefan Zweig, Petropolis, 22.2.1942.
Stefan Zweig's suicide letter, Petropolis, 22.2.1942, NLI
by gizra.github.io
Accessed: 4/27/18
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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Having escaped the horrors of the war in Europe, Zweig and his wife looked for a refuge where they could resume their lives. Disappointed with London and New-York, they had hoped to make a fresh start in Brazil. However, being constantly on the run, the encounter with multitudes of Jewish refugees like him, and the feeling that his cultural world was lost, filled him with great despair. He could not find the strength to begin a new life.
Zweig's suicide was criticized by many. But he was not the only one: two other Jewish intellectuals who were war refugees, the author Ernest Toller in New-York, and the philosopher Walter Benjamin in Portbou, had committed suicide before him.
Zweig's suicide letter, written in German, was found by local police officers. They called in Fritz Weil, a German-Jewish manufacturer from Petropolis, to help them translate the letter to Portuguese. Having provided them with a translation of the letter, Fritz asked to purchase it, but was refused. In 1972 Weil finally managed to buy the letter from a retired police officer; in 1992 he donated the letter to the National Library of Israel in memory of his wife's parents who died in the Holocaust.
**********************************
The Letter
Declaration
Of my own will and in clear mind
Every day I learned to love this country more, and I would not have asked to rebuild my life in any other place after the world of my own language sank and was lost to me and my spiritual homeland, Europe, destroyed itself.
But to start everything anew after a man’s 60th year requires special powers, and my own power has been expended after years of wandering homeless. I thus prefer to end my life at the right time, upright, as a man for whom cultural work has always been his purest happiness and personal freedom – the most precious of possessions on this earth.
I send greetings to all of my friends: May they live to see the dawn after this long night. I, who am most impatient, go before them.
Stefan Zweig, Petropolis, 22.2.1942.
Stefan Zweig's suicide letter, Petropolis, 22.2.1942, NLI
"You feel like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, don't you?" he finally said, staring at me.
That was exactly the way I felt. He seemed to empathize with me. He said that my mood reminded him of a song and began to sing in a low tone; his singing voice was very pleasing and the lyrics carried me away: "I'm so far away from the sky where I was born. Immense nostalgia invades my thoughts. Now that I am so alone and sad like a leaf in the wind, sometimes I want to weep, sometimes I want to laugh with longing." (Que lejos estoy del cielo donde he nacido. Immensa nostalgia invade mi pensamiento. Ahora que estoy tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento, quisiera llorar, quisiera reir de sentimiento.)
We did not speak for a long while. He finally broke the silence.
"Since the day you were born, one way or another, someone has been doing something to you," he said.
"That's correct," I said.
"And they have been doing something to you against your will."
"True."
"And by now you're helpless, like a leaf in the wind."
"That's correct. That's the way it is."
I said that the circumstances of my life had sometimes been devastating. He listened attentively but I could not figure out whether he was just being agreeable or genuinely concerned until I noticed that he was trying to hide a smile.
"No matter how much you like to feel sorry for yourself, you have to change that," he said in a soft tone. "It doesn't jibe with the life of a warrior."
He laughed and sang the song again but contorted the intonation of certain words; the result was a ludicrous lament. He pointed out that the reason I had liked the song was because in my own life I had done nothing else but find flaws with everything and lament. I could not argue with him. He was correct. Yet I believed I had sufficient reasons to justify my feeling of being like a leaf in the wind.
"The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior," he said. "It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
"You are here, with me, because you want to be here. You should have assumed full responsibility by now, so the idea that you are at the mercy of the wind would be inadmissible."
He stood up and began to disassemble the cage. He scooped the dirt back to where he had gotten it from and carefully scattered all the sticks in the chaparral. Then he covered the clean circle with debris, leaving the area as if nothing had ever touched it.
I commented on his proficiency. He said that a good hunter would know that we had been there no matter how careful he had been, because the tracks of men could not be completely erased.
He sat cross-legged and told me to sit down as comfortably as possible, facing the spot where he had buried me, and stay put until my mood of sadness had dissipated.
"A warrior buries himself in order to find power, not to weep with self-pity," he said.
I attempted to explain but he made me stop with an impatient movement of his head. He said that he had to pull me out of the cage in a hurry because my mood was intolerable and he was afraid that the place would resent my softness and injure me.
"Self-pity doesn't jibe with power," he said. "The mood of a warrior calls for control over himself and at the same time it calls for abandoning himself."
"How can that be?" I asked. "How can he control and abandon himself at the same time?"
"It is a difficult technique," he said.
He seemed to deliberate whether or not to continue talking. Twice he was on the verge of saying something but he checked himself and smiled.
"You're not over your sadness yet," he said. "You still feel weak and there is no point in talking about the mood of a warrior now."
-- Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan, by Carlos Castaneda