Stefan Zweig - The Society of the Crossed Keys

There was no panic yet, but there was a constant sense of smouldering uneasiness; we still felt only slightly uncomfortable when shots rang out from the Balkans. Was war really going to descend on us, when we had no idea why? Slowly—but too slowly, too hesitantly, as we now know—the forces rejecting war came together. There was the Socialist Party, millions of people on all sides, with a programme opposing war; there were powerful Catholic groups under the leadership of the Pope and several international groups of companies; there were a few reasonable politicians who spoke out against any undercover dealings. We writers also ranged ourselves against war, although as usual we spoke in isolation, expressing ourselves as individuals rather than closing ranks to speak firmly as an organisation. Most intellectuals, unfortunately, adopted an indifferent and passive stance, for our optimism meant that the problem of war, with all its moral consequences, had not yet entered our personal field of vision—you will not find a single discussion of the principles involved, or a single passionate warning, in the major works of the prominent writers of that time. We thought we were doing enough if we thought in European terms and forged fraternal links internationally, stating in our own sphere—which had only indirect influence on current events—that we were in favour of the ideal of peaceful understanding and intellectual brotherhood crossing linguistic and national borders. And the younger generation was more strongly attached than anyone to this European ideal. In Paris, I found my friend Bazalgette surrounded by a group of young people who, in contrast to the older generation, had abjured all kinds of narrow-minded nationalism and imperialist aggression. Jules Romains, who was to write a great work on Europe at war, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Durtain, René Arcos, [3] René Arcos, 1881-1959, French poet and novelist. Jean-Richard Bloch, meeting first in the Abbaye and then in the Effort Libre groups, were passionate in their pioneering work for the future unity of Europe, and when put to the crucial test of war, were implacable in their abhorrence of every kind of militarism. These were young people of such courage, talent and moral determination as France has not often produced. In Germany, it was Franz Werfel with his collection of poems entitled Der Weltfreund —Friend of the World—who promoted international fraternity most strongly. René Schickele, an Alsatian whose fate it therefore was to stand between the two opposing nations, worked passionately for understanding; G A Borgese sent us comradely greetings from Italy, and encouragement came from the Scandinavian and Slavonic countries. “Come and visit us!” one great Russian author wrote to me. “Show the pan-Slavists who urge us to go to war that you are against it in Austria!” How we all loved our time, a time that carried us forward on its wings; how we all loved Europe! But that overconfident faith in the future which, we were sure, would avert madness at the last minute, was also our own fault. We had certainly failed to look at the writing on the wall with enough distrust, but should not right-minded young people be trusting rather than suspicious? We trusted Jaurès and the Socialist International, we thought railway workers would blow up the tracks rather than let their comrades be loaded into trains to be sent to the front as cannon fodder; we relied on women to refuse to see their children and husbands sacrificed to the idol Moloch; we were convinced that the intellectual and moral power of Europe would assert itself triumphantly at the critical last moment. Our common idealism, the optimism that had come from progress, meant that we failed to see and speak out strongly enough against our common danger.

Moreover, what we lacked was an organiser who could bring the forces latent in us together effectively. We had only one prophet among us, a single man who looked ahead and saw what was to come, and the curious thing about it was that he lived among us, and it was a long time before we knew anything about him, although he had been sent by Fate as a leader. To me, finding him in the nick of time was a crucial stroke of luck, and it was hard to find him too, since he lived in the middle of Paris far from the hurly-burly of la foire sur la place . [4] The Market in the Square , the subtitle of the first of Romain Rolland’s ten novels in the Jean-Christophe series. It was published in 1908. Anyone who sets out to write an honest history of French literature in the twentieth century will be unable to ignore a remarkable phenomenon—the names of all kinds of writers were lauded to the skies in the Parisian newspapers of the time, except for the three most important of them, who were either disregarded or mentioned in the wrong context. From 1900 to 1914 I never saw the name of Paul Valéry mentioned as a poet in Le Figaro or Le Matin ; Marcel Proust was considered a mere dandy who frequented the Paris salons, and Romain Rolland was thought of as a knowledgeable musicologist. They were almost fifty before the first faint light of fame touched their names, and their great work was hidden in darkness in the most enquiring city in the world.

It was pure chance that I discovered Romain Rolland at the right time. A Russian woman sculptor living in Florence had invited me to tea, to show me her work and try her hand at a sketch of me. I arrived punctually at four, forgetting that she was, after all, a Russian, so time and punctuality meant nothing to her. An old babushka who, I discovered, had been her mother’s nurse, took me into the studio—the most picturesque thing about it was its disorder—and asked me to wait. In all there were four small sculptures standing around, and I had seen them all within two minutes. So as not to waste time, I picked up a book, or rather a couple of brown-covered journals lying about the studio. These were entitled Cahiers de la Quinzaine , [5] The magazine in which Rolland’s Jean-Christophe novels were first published in serial form. and I remembered having heard that title in Paris before. But who could keep track of the many little magazines that sprang up all over the country, short-lived idealistic flowers, and then disappeared again? I leafed through one of them, containing L’Aube , by Romain Rolland, and began to read, feeling more astonished and interested as I went on. Who was this Frenchman who knew Germany so well? Soon I was feeling grateful to my Russian friend for her unpunctuality. When she finally arrived, my first question was, “Who is this Romain Rolland?” She couldn’t give me any very clear information, and only when I had acquired other issues of the magazine (the next was still in production) did I know that here at last was a work serving not just one European nation, but all of them and the fraternal connection between them. Here was the man, here was the writer who brought all the moral forces into play—affectionate understanding and an honest desire to find out more. He showed a sense of justice based on experience, and an inspiring faith in the unifying power of art. While the rest of us were squandering our efforts on small declarations of faith, he had set to work quietly and patiently to show the nations to one another through their most appealing individual qualities. This was the first consciously European novel being written at the time, the first vital call for fraternity, and it would be more effective in reaching a wider readership than Verhaeren’s hymns, and in being more cogent than all the pamphlets and protests. What we had all unconsciously been hoping and longing for was being quietly written here.

The first thing I did in Paris was to ask about him, bearing in mind what Goethe had said: “He has learnt, he can teach us.” I asked my friends about him. Verhaeren thought he remembered a play called The Wolves that had been staged at the socialist Théâtre du Peuple. Bazalgette had heard that Rolland was a musicologist and had written a short book on Beethoven. In the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale I found a dozen works of his about old and modern music, and seven or eight plays, all of which had appeared under the imprint of small publishing houses or in the Cahiers de la Quinzaine . Finally, by way of a first approach to him, I sent him a book of my own. A letter soon arrived inviting me to visit him, and thus began a friendship that, together with my relationships with Freud and Verhaeren, was one of the most fruitful and often crucial of my life.