The Ritual Master Hello friends, and welcome to the last book review of our Austrian Advent Calendar.
For the past 22 days, I have shared with you books of fiction and history, essays or art, pieces that have composed a very personal image of Austrian culture. I could not have imagined a better finale for this marathon of reading, than Stefan Zweig’s memoir, The world of yesterday.
Considered the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire, The world of yesterday is appropriately subtitled Memoirs of a European, and does situate Austrian life in the heart of European culture, with both its unique traits and its undeniable connections with the rest of the continent.
I would say that reading about life in the olden days is what enchanted me, but you would think me conservative and overly nostalgic. Instead I will say this : Zweig’s attachment to values and passions that people had at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, is something I share. Young students eager to read their contemporaries and not just stick to the teacher’s mandatory reading, people being so used to going to the theater and debate what they saw that they became even more fierce than the press critics, these were not just exceptions. We spoke just two days ago about the rise of the middle class in Viennese culture at the beginning of the 19th century. This was the result, a society where being cultivated was not reserved for the few and thus, was not seen as snobbish. Being interested in art and ideas, having a circle of friends who shared those same ideals, was something everyone aspired to. Reading about that world is a pleasure for me.
You do feel that the trail of memories is punctuated by a deep regret of what the world had become in the early 1940’s when Zweig wrote this. And it’s only understandable, the rise of Hitler to power pushed him into exile, nationalism became the norm in most of Europe, all the values he held so dear were disappearing. Yet, that was not enough to bring me down. I didn’t perceive the book as a « here’s what’s wrong with the world » situation, but more of a « look what the alternative could be ».
That is what I kept in mind while wondering the streets of Vienna. Many Europeans see Austria today as a closed society, obsessed with preserving the lifestyle of the olden days. I cannot tell you what it’s like to live there, but I can tell you that as a tourist, I felt welcomed, I sensed the joy the Austrians have in sharing their most precious symbols, many related to an Empire that, in its imperfect ways, uplifted a country and its people.
“Live and let live” was the famous Viennese motto, which today still seems to me to be more humane than all the categorical imperatives, and it maintained itself throughout all classes.
― Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday
See you tomorrow, for our last Austrian stroll of the season !
