The World of Yesterday
Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was a poet, novelist, and dramatist, but it was his biographies that expressed his full genius, recreating for his international audience the Elizabethan age, the French Revolution, the great days of voyages and discoveries. In this autobiography he holds the mirror up to his own age, telling the story of a generation that "was loaded down with a burden of fate as was hardly any other in the course of history." Zweig attracted to himself the best minds and loftiest souls of his era: Freud, Yeats, Borgese, Pirandello, Gorky, Ravel, Joyce, Toscanini, Jane Addams, Anatole France, and Romain Rolland are but a few of the friends he writes about.
Stats for nerds
16recommend
46mentions
23people
2008–2026years
52% recommend46% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- - I had the exact same thought as you: “No discussion of what books and why.” But while reading your comment, I realized that I am actually fine with that. I really do not want to think critically about why I read books. Over the years, I have come to feel that many of the things I find worthwhile are somewhat self-evidently worthwhile (appreciating art comes to mind). Do you really want to think critically about why you enjoy spending time with people you like? Also, part of the joy of reading, for me, is precisely that it helps me get outside my own head and avoid that kind of critical thinking.
- Regarding "The World of Yesterday", I should say that it was one of the most impressive books I have ever read. I still often remember particular passages and the emotions they evoked. There is also a certain irony in your saying that you cannot relate to it, because part of what makes the book so fascinating is that it describes a time that is chronologically quite close to our own, yet also profoundly different, beautiful, and completely gone. My two cents: please give it another try!
- I recommend you read the book World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig.
The experience of the world Jewry in (pre-)WW2 continental Europe was so shockingly brutal, the establishment of the state of Israel was an inevitability.
Jews were the scapegoat driven out from cities into the desert to amend for other's sins for millenia. Some would say they've gotten used to it.
The bestial conduct of Nazis was such that even the people for whom the experience of persecution was a fact of life and indeed their toleration of the condition almost stoic in nature, came to realize they had to have a place where they are not the Other and won't be scapegoated again. And so it happened.
To paint a picture with words...Stefan Zweig, model intellectual and model European, ended his life in 1942 at age 61 in Brazil, having lost his home of 20 years in Salzburg, his beloved Europe and, in his own words, a large part of himself.
The worst exponents of Europe in Nazi uniforms and their collaborators, the "decent people" of Germany, Austria and other countries, killed the best exponents of Europe and Europeanism, over insane paranoiac deluded hate. Killed them slowly, then quickly. Indirectly, by stripping them of everything they considered theirs, then very directly in extermination facilities. The people who suffered this horror established a state and Europe lost intelligentsia and human capital it could not afford to lose. Fin.
Just five years ago, saying that the state of Israel is the problem would have you branded an anti-semite and driven out of polite society and rightly so. As a non-Jew with no skin in the game, I find the reawakening of these sentiments horrifying.
- I read The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European by Stefan Zweig after a recommendation on HN. Gave an interesting if sad view into the Vienna of the past.
- The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Vienna in particular were an amazing place, a sort of proto-EU that really had a shot at creating lasting prosperity and peace in Europe. I highly recommend Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday", his memoirs of life before WW1. It reads disturbingly like an account of today's world, written just on the cusp of WW3.
- I have just finished “World of yesterday” by Stefan Zweig, probably one of the best books I have ever read, it gives you a picture how the world was at the beginning of 20th century and how despite of cultural and technological advances of the world, Europe turned to madness.
Now i am starting “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace.
- Thank you for sharing. I have read Zweig's The World of Yesterday, which I regard very highly, but never one of his creative works. I recommend it to everyone who wants to experience a slice of life/live vicariously with an engaged citizen of pre war Europe.
The la review website doesn't render on my smartphone (Firefox), but just reading the wiki plot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Game?wprov=sfla1), it sounds absolutely brilliant.
I can "relate" to the isolation and frantic labor on some project, which is unhealthy enough on its own. To do so under Nazi domination as a way to survive interegations with no other intellectual outlets possible, leading to project induced psychosis, is just frightening. And it's all portrayed in such a relatively light hearted, optimistic atmosphere of a transatlantic ship bringing bored passengers together for a nice game of chess. Good job, Zweig.
Anyways, time to check out the adaptions.
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