Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (13 page)

Although every stage of the trip had been carefully planned and they were able to make their way around the country without much difficulty (albeit in very uncomfortable carriages) thanks to the good local rail connections, this was certainly no pleasure trip. At this time there were very few tourists in India, and neither the railway carriages nor the majority of hotels offered even a modicum of comfort. Those who came here came for a good reason, usually associated with military or commercial interests. And so for better or for worse the writer from faraway Europe got to see the people and the towns largely as they really were. In one of the feature articles that Zweig later published about his Indian travels, along with a poem about the Taj Mahal, the dominant theme seems to be the country’s rich and colourful diversity:

Resplendent in his turban of saffron yellow or turquoise blue, the goldsmith sits cross-legged on his outspread carpet, beside him the gold-painted chest filled with its treasures, in his hand the little balance with a pair of small shiny necklaces jittering in the pans, the women are draped in coloured muslins, [ … ] the little teacher, holding forth on the street to his class of two dozen adolescent boys, is robed in red. Weaving their way through the throng are various conveyances, the little pony traps, the zebu carts, the horsemen, lots of horsemen, and suddenly an elephant appears, making the houses shake with his heavy tread. Two days spent in one of these Indian towns teach one everything about the outward life of this people, because everything is so open and on display.
⁶

But what impressed and moved him quite as much as this colourful backdrop, described here in almost fairy-tale-like terms, was the appalling
poverty, which afflicted not just isolated individuals but whole masses of people. For a European, and especially for the scion of an urban middle-class family, the sight of so many beggars and so many sick and dying people just sitting or crouching or lying by the side of the road, ignored by passers-by, must have been unimaginable, however much he had prepared for the journey.

They travelled on via Rangoon to Madras and from there to Ceylon. Halfway through their tour Bessemer went his own way, which did not bother Zweig in the least, since his travelling companion, whom he would later guardedly describe as not being altogether of blameless character, had in the meantime thoroughly got on his nerves. Bessemer had planned for a longer stay in India. On the way home he wanted to stop over in Egypt, and from there take a trip down south. At all events he returned to Europe himself at some stage in 1909, and by the end of the year had published
Sumpffieber
[
Swamp Fever
], a novella set in Central Africa which was populated by all manner of swashbuckling brawlers and drunkards.

During the passage from Calcutta to Indochina Zweig made the acquaintance of the geographer Karl Haushofer, who had been seconded from the Bavarian General Staff to study the Japanese army, and was taking in India, Korea, Manchuria and northern China en route. As his journey progressed Haushofer spent a great deal of time familiarising himself with the language and culture of these countries, and often sat talking with Zweig late into the night.

The two men remained in loose contact after Haushofer’s return to Europe, where he later took up a professorship in geography in Munich. What Zweig did not know at the time was that Haushofer had become a friend and father figure to one of his students, a certain Rudolf Hess. Through Hess Haushofer then got to meet Adolf Hitler, who expressed keen interest in the professor’s “
Lebensraum
theory”, even if it had to undergo a few reinterpretations yet before it could serve the purposes of the National Socialists. Zweig only learnt about all this much later. He was horrified; but what is not clear is whether he also knew that the professor’s rise had come to an abrupt end when Hess flew his plane to Britain in 1941. Thereafter Haushofer, who was suspected—rightly—of having been privy to Hess’s plans, was kept under surveillance by the Gestapo. And since his wife Martha was moreover classed as a “half-Jew” under the Nazi racial laws, they now lived under constant threat. The couple’s situation became even more perilous when their son Albrecht was executed for his
involvement in the resistance movement, and the rest of the family was deported to the Dachau concentration camp in 1944. Karl and Martha Haushofer both survived the camp, but under pressure from the foreign press, which accused him after the war of being partly responsible for Germany’s policy of aggressive expansionism, he and his wife took their own lives in 1946.

Back in Vienna again, Zweig published just a handful of feature articles about his grand tour, plus the poem already referred to. Despite the welter of new impressions he evidently did not feel the need to add a further book to the existing literature on India. Years later the legend
Die Augen des ewigen Bruders
would be one of the few works of his that drew on this experience. On the other hand his curiosity about Asia was not yet satisfied. He planned a second trip for the coming years, which would take him to Russia, China and possibly even Japan; but in the end nothing came of it.

Back at his desk, Zweig now turned again to the themes and subjects that had long preoccupied him. In 1910 a monograph on Émile Verhaeren appeared, along with two companion volumes containing translations of his
Selected Poems
and
Three Plays
. In a late echo of his stay in England, Zweig also wrote an essay on Charles Dickens as the introduction to an edition of Dickens’s works published by Insel Verlag; and finally he published “Four Stories from the Land of Childhood” under the title
Erstes Erlebnis
. These were his first new pieces of original prose fiction after an interval of several years. Given this level of productivity, the
cri de coeur
we read in a letter to his publisher—“I’m getting quite confused with all this proofreading”
⁷
—is readily understandable.

In 1911 Zweig set off for the second destination recommended by Rathenau. To ensure that his correspondence and business affairs did not grind to a complete halt during his absence he left a stack of printed reply cards in his office, to be sent in response to incoming mail. He asked his correspondents to be patient: “Stefan Zweig apologises for the fact that it may take him several weeks to deal with letters, books and other printed matter addressed to him, as he is presently travelling overseas and only receives his mail after a month’s delay.”
⁸
He spent several weeks on various steamers that took him across the Atlantic to the USA and then to Canada, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Panama. The literary fallout from these travels consisted of a series of newspaper articles in which he wrote about ‘The French in Canada’ and told his readers about ‘The Hour between Two Oceans’ that he had spent at the Panama Canal, which was then nearing
completion. “A strange feeling like nothing else, to be walking about down there on the still-dry bed of a new river about to be born, [ … ] to be a privileged witness to the reshaping of the world! There was something solemn about the moment, to be touching the earth that unites North and South America shortly before the waters divide them for all eternity.”
⁹

In the USA he visited Philadelphia (where he was astounded to discover one of his own books in the window of a bookshop) and Boston. But the biggest impression, not surprisingly, was left by ‘The Rhythm of New York’, whose pulsating life he fancied he could feel in every street and on every bridge, and which he tried to capture in an essay published under that title. At that time New York had the world’s third-largest German-speaking community of any city after Berlin and Vienna—yet a starker contrast than with these two cities it would be hard to imagine. Although New York remained perhaps one of America’s most “European” cities, the fascinating mix of nationalities and the ceaseless energy of the place engendered such a different culture that Zweig had a few lessons to learn first. When, on his arrival in Manhattan, he asked the porter of his hotel in the time-honoured fashion where he could find the grave of the poet Walt Whitman, whom he had revered since his schooldays, the poor Italian on reception became extremely flustered, never having heard the name before or been confronted with such a request.

After a few days of walking around the city and riding around in cabs and on the subway, he had basically seen the sights of New York. In order to make good use of his time and see a very different side of America, Zweig decided to undertake an unusual experiment. He imagined he was one of the countless immigrants who came to the USA without means and without knowing anyone there, and tried to find work. So he registered with a number of employment agencies and within a short time had several job offers to choose from. Even though he never took any of the jobs, the exercise proved to him that America really was the land of endless opportunities for all, especially as nobody had enquired where he came from or asked to see his passport.

Having completed this brief sociological survey, he planned to end his stay with a visit to the Metropolitan Opera House. On the evening in question Richard Wagner’s
Parsifal
was being performed. This particular production had had over sixty performances since 1903, and it was apparent that the conductor, singers and orchestra were to some extent going through the motions. Zweig later wrote about the evening in an essay for 
the music and theatre journal
Der Merker
. As he was no music critic, and for certain had not planned to write about a production that was several years old, it seems likely that the idea for writing such a piece came to him as he watched the opera-goers arriving for the performance “in reverent mood (and with chewing gum in mouth)”. In the event his description of the evening at the opera effectively sums up the various impressions that he had formed of America:

A buzz of conversation and chatter on all sides. Then sudden darkness and applause. A fat conductor (should a good conductor put on weight, I ask myself) heaves himself with great difficulty—he really is very fat—onto his stool. Mr Hertz, according to the playbill. Now it is pitch black in the house. All you can see are a few flickering candles by the emergency exits, and the bald pate of Mr Hertz.

Music, a torrent of solemn and hymn-like melody, and then at last a very faded set, the worse for wear from being carted around so much. The threadbare costumes are draped around fine voices. But the real drama is happening elsewhere, in the audience. They don’t care for the darkness [ … ] and are determined to do something about it. Having purchased their libretti for fifty cents, they want to read them. And suddenly, to the right and to the left, little flashes of light appear accompanied by a soft click, as the provident switch on the electric torches they have brought along with them. To the right and to the left one can see the little quivering cones of light dancing on the open pages of the libretti. Sacred festival drama in the land of the practical!

Something is happening up on the stage (I think a swan is being shot), and down below they are brewing up music. [ … ] The curtain falls. Applause from all sides. [ … ] A delightful battle of contending enthusiasms.

A second battle is then fought in the foyer—over ice cream, which is really the best thing to be had in America. I make do with snatches of overheard conversation. This mostly consists of ecstatic interjections such as “grand”, “wonderful”, “astonishing”, but all uttered in such a blasé tone of voice, so cold and indifferent, that I always think they are talking about the ice cream.
¹⁰

Soon afterwards it was time to return to Europe. The steamer trunks were packed, and the ship set sail for the Old World with some illustrious passengers on board. During the voyage Zweig spent a good deal of time with the composer Ferruccio Busoni, and in the years that followed they continued to keep in touch by letter. The American antiquarian bookshops
had yielded very little in the way of new manuscripts for his collection, but now Zweig, having talked at length about his passion and emphasised how seriously he took it, was given a three-page piano score by Busoni entitled
Indianisches Erntelied
[
Indian Harvest Song]
, which the composer dedicated to his travelling companion on 12th April 1911 with the following words: “This sketch was specially transcribed for Mr Stephan Zweig, in memory of America and of Ferruccio Busoni”.
¹¹

On board the steamer there was every reason to be of good cheer: “Early spring was in the air, and we had a smooth crossing on a blue, rippling sea”, Zweig later recalls. But the bright mood was constantly being overshadowed, because everyone knew that they had another illustrious passenger on board, who was returning to his native country an incurably sick man—Gustav Mahler. The shipping company had made special arrangements for his crossing, cordoning off a separate area on the sun deck that could not be overlooked by other passengers. Here Mahler, assisted by his wife Alma and his mother-in-law, was able to take a few steps in the fresh air each day—as far as his condition allowed—safe from the prying eyes of others. Busoni was one of the select few who were permitted to visit the Mahlers in their cabins. He did his best to cheer the family up with letters and amusing musical compositions. Back on deck, he would be pumped relentlessly by his inquisitive fellow passengers for information on Mahler’s condition.

As someone who had experienced the great conductor and composer in his youth as an emblematic figure of the Viennese
Moderne
, and who had often enough seen him on the street or in the opera house, Zweig felt an obligation as a writer to record his observations and feelings in this situation. In an article that appeared after the composer’s death under the title ‘Gustav Mahlers Wiederkehr’ [‘Gustav Mahler’s Return’] he manages to invest the crossing (a motif already sufficiently replete with symbolic meaning) with a special kind of dramatic pathos—which of course called for a very different style of writing from the one used in the above-quoted article about the night at the opera: