52 pages • 1 hour read
The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography
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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Universitas Vitae”
Zweig recalls his early days at university. There was at that time a romanticism surrounding academic life that he no longer sees in contemporary society, and he recalls how exciting it was to finally be pursuing a doctoral degree. As the second son of an affluent family, he was not required to take over the family business and was free to pursue whichever course of study he found most interesting. He admits to not being drawn to any one field in particular, so sure was he that real learning happened outside of organized educational systems. This belief, rooted in his childhood in Vienna, still strikes him as true, and he posits that reading and discussion can produce, in many cases, thinkers with a better understanding of a particular text than university professors.
It was during these years that Zweig began to publish his poetry. His poems first appeared singly in various periodicals, but when he was 19 his first collection was released, and he was proud to have an entire book in print. It was well received, and Rilke not only wrote a positive review but also sent Zweig a volume of his own work. He wonders where that slim volume is now, and realizes that it has been 40 years since he published this book. Richard Strauss also asked if he could set a few of the poems to music, and Zweig enjoyed hearing these pieces in concert over the years.
Zweig also developed an interest in literary criticism, and he submitted an essay on poetry to the Neue Freie Presse. He recalls the editor Theodor Herzl as “the first man of international stature” whom he had ever met (126). Herzl had been a darling of Vienna’s journalistic community until a poorly received pamphlet on Zionism drew the ire of the Jewish bourgeoisie. The prevailing sentiment was that Jewish citizens, being thoroughly Viennese in cultural identification, had no reason to move “to Palestine” where their people had no recent history. Zweig was among those not won over by Herzl’s Zionism, although he had a great deal of respect for him as a writer and thinker. Herzl did publish Zweig’s first work of literary criticism, and many thereafter. Zweig now credits these publications as the source of the professional respect he was beginning to build in Vienna. After his parents became aware of his rising prominence, they granted him permission to study abroad in Berlin.
He arrived in 1901. “Studying” in Berlin meant checking in to the university only very rarely. Instead of formal education, he immersed himself in the intellectual world of the city. He was struck by its differences from Vienna. It was full of young thinkers who congregated in dirty, crowded cabarets. He met people from all walks of life there, and realized how stifling his social world had been in Vienna, where the majority of his friends had grown up, like him, in the comfortable sphere of the Jewish bourgeoisie. As fascinating as he found Berlin, he was not inspired to write there. Quite the opposite, he realized that he still had much to learn about the world and didn’t want to begin publishing work that would run the risk of seeming unpolished or immature. He turned to translation and spent time translating the works of Emile Verhaeren and other poets. At last, he knew he had to return home to finish his doctorate. He was able to pass his exams with distinction, and then he was “free.”
Chapter 5 Summary: “Paris the City of Eternal Youth”
Zweig’s reflections of the time he spent in Paris after the completion of his degree are colored by the present-day horror he feels watching Nazi troops march into his beloved city. He realizes that Paris is not alone in its troubles, and that Europe as a whole had not entirely recovered from the great rupture of World War I. Although he would characterize the years since the war as a period of great progress, he thinks that lingering bitterness and resentments rooted in the war years outweigh the gains that society has made. They certainly contributed to this new war, and he grieves for a continent forever changed by hatred and division.
The Paris of his youth was characterized by “lightness.” One could eat relatively well for very little money, “you could dress as you liked” (151), there was a remarkable atmosphere of freedom on the streets, and different races lived in harmony.
Although there was an active, often raucous group of public intellectuals who spent time in Paris’s many cafes and cabarets, Zweig also met, through his friend Verhaeren, a group of quieter artists and writers, including Renoir, who lived simply and often worked ordinary jobs in addition to making art or writing. Within this group, he developed a particular friendship with the writer Leon Bazalgette, whom he feels has been unjustly forgotten by contemporary readers and writers. He also spent a great deal of time with Rilke during this period, and although they had met previously in Vienna, Zweig still associates Rilke more with the time that he spent in Paris. From Paris, he moved on to London, where he visited the poet William Butler Yeats and discovered the work of William Blake in the print room at the British Museum.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Detours on the Way to Myself”
After leaving Paris and spending time in London, Zweig traveled to Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Holland. Although he loved this cosmopolitan, peripatetic lifestyle, he ultimately rented a small apartment in Vienna to house his collection of art, manuscripts, books, and his growing catalogue of his own work. He was particularly interested in collecting manuscripts at that age, and enjoyed seeing the artistic process. One of his prized possessions was a manuscript of one of his favorite poems by Goethe.
It was during this time that he found the Viennese publishing house that would print his work for the next 30 years, Insel Verlag. At that time he had not been comfortable creating longer works, and had limited himself to short pieces, novellas, and dramas such as his play Der Verwandelte Komödiant (1912), the production of which of which was interrupted by the untimely death of principle actors from the cast. When a subsequent production of a Pirandello play translated by Zweig was interrupted by another death, Zweig became convinced that his dramatic endeavors were cursed.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Although The Rise and Fall of Cosmopolitanism is a theme that runs through the entirety of Zweig’s memoir, it is particularly on display in this set of chapters that focus on his university years. Both Zweig’s travels and his first few long-term friendships evidence his commitment to cosmopolitanism, and he truly comes into being as a pan-European intellectual during this time. Zweig also expands on the difference between what he sees as a fundamentally dry, backward-looking formal educational system and the cosmopolitan, forward-looking spirit of inquiry that characterized his own pursuit of knowledge.
Zweig studies formally in Vienna and Berlin, and then spends time in Paris before traveling more widely throughout Europe. This desire to see all of Europe’s cultural capitals and to spend time amongst the intelligentsia of multiple places speaks to Zweig’s cosmopolitanism and shows Europe to have been a world of possibility for (affluent) young men during this era. Although as Zweig has noted in multiple places, nationalism is taking root all over Europe, what is most evident to Zweig and his cohort is the spirit of pan-European unity and cooperation that drove Europeans from all over the continent to seek out, learn from, and discuss ideas with one another. He sees less social stratification outside of Vienna and is interested to meet Russians and Scandinavians abroad. Although he finds the cafes and cabarets of Paris cacophonous, he is introduced to a quieter, more contemplative set of artists and thinkers and in figures like Renoir sees true exemplars of meaningful artistic production.
Zweig himself grows as an artist during his travels through Europe, and the motifs of youth and intellect and the arts are again on display. He begins to publish poetry and works of literary criticism, and much of the narrative that focuses on his personal development details his enthusiasm for literature and his deep commitment to the artistic process. He is interested in the very idea of artistic production, and part of his educational project is learning from other artists, writers, and philosophers more about how and why they create their works of art.
This interest in the artistic process, coupled with his belief in cosmopolitanism, leads him to strike up friendships with like-minded thinkers across the continent. These friendships, which are founded on pan-European unity rather than shared nationality or cultural background, will be a constant source of solace to Zweig during his lifetime. In these chapters he befriends first the journalist Herzl and then the poet Verhaeren. In each of these men he finds a kindred spirit whose commitment to pan-European intellectualism solidifies his own. Artistic collaboration is an important part of these relationships and he first encounters Verhaeren because he translated some of his poetry.
Although Zweig is known mostly to contemporary readers for his novels, novellas, and this memoir, it is important to remember that in his day he was also a translator, literary critic, and biographer. It is interesting to note that he works on translations in Paris because he does not feel himself “ready” to publish more broadly. He thinks himself too youthful to produce mature writing and in this attitude can be seen some of Austria’s prejudice against youth. Although Zweig belongs to a set of young intellectuals who embrace their youth, he also wants to produce the best possible writing, and during his formative years this means holding off until he has seen more of the world and formulated his ideas more thoroughly.
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