"Through sympathy to knowledge," sings the mystical chorus of Parsifal.
This "suffering with others" (sympathy, Mitleid), this "pain which unites," overflows from the work of Andreas Latzko.
November 15, 1917.
"Les Tablettes," Geneva, December, 1917.
XIX
VOX CLAMANTIS....[43]
AFTER the glacial torpor of the early days of the war, mutilated art begins to bloom anew. The irrepressible song of the soul wells up out of suffering. Man is not merely, as he is apt to boast, a reasoning animal (he might, with better ground, term himself an unreasoning one); he is a singing animal; he can no more get on without singing than without bread. We learn it amid the very trials through which we are passing to-day. Although the general suppression of liberty in Europe has doubtless deprived us of the deeper music, of the most intimate confessions, we nevertheless hear great voices rising from every land. Some of these, coming from the armies, sing in sad and epic strains. See, for example, Under Fire by Henri Barbusse, and the heart-rending tales issued by Andreas Latzko under the collective title of Men in Battle. Others express the pain and horror of those who, remaining at home, look on at the butchery without taking part in it, and who, being inactive, suffer all the more from the torments of thought. To this category belong the impassioned poems of Marcel Martinet[44] and P. J. Jouve.[45] Paying less attention to suffering and more concerned with understanding, the English novelists, H. G. Wells[46] and Douglas Goldring,[47] give a faithful analysis of the distressing errors amid which they move and which they themselves by no means escape. Yet others, finally, taking refuge in the contemplation of the past, rediscover there the same circle of misfortunes and of hopes—rediscover the "eternal cycle." They cloak their grief in the fashions of other days, thus ennobling it and despoiling it of its poisoned dart. From the lofty eyrie of the ages, set free by art, the soul contemplates suffering as in a vision, no longer aware whether that suffering belongs to the present or to the past. Stefan Zweig's Jeremias is the finest contemporary specimen known to me of this august melancholy which, looking beyond the bloody drama of to-day, is able to see in it the eternal tragedy of mankind.
Not without struggle can such serene regions be attained. A friend of Zweig before the war, his friend to-day, I have witnessed all that was endured by this free European spirit whom the war robbed of that which he had held most dear; robbed him of his artistic and humanist faith, thereby depriving him of any reason for existence. The letters he wrote me during the first year of the war reveal his agonising torments in all their tragical beauty. By degrees, however, the immensity of the catastrophe, communion with the universal sorrow, restored to him the calm which resigns itself to destiny; for he came to see that destiny leads to God, who is the union of souls. Of the Hebrew race, he has drawn his inspiration from the Bible. It was easy to find there analogous instances of national madness, of the fall of empires, and of heroic patience. One figure, above all, attracted him, that of the great forerunner, Jeremiah the persecuted prophet, foretelling the woeful peace which was to flourish upon the ruins.
Zweig devotes to Jeremiah a dramatic poem, which I propose to analyse, making extensive quotations. The work consists of nine scenes. It is written in prose mingled with verse, sometimes free, sometimes rhymed, the transition from prose to verse occurring when emotion breaks from control. The form is ample and rhetorical. There is a majestic balance in the exposition of the thought; but the poem would perhaps have been better for condensation, for this would have left more to the reader's imagination. The common people play a leading part in the action. Their sallies and counter-sallies jostle one another; but at the close their voices unite in measured choruses, breathing the thoughts of the prophet, the guardian of Israel. Zweig has steered his course skilfully between the dangers of archaism and anachronism. We rediscover our preoccupations of the moment in this epic of the fall of Jerusalem; but we find them as the faithful of recent centuries found day by day in their Bible the light which lightened their road in hours of difficulty—sub specie aeternitatis.
"Jeremiah is our prophet," Stefan Zweig said to me. "He has spoken for us, for our Europe. The other prophets came at their due time. Moses spoke and acted. Jesus died and acted. Jeremiah spoke in vain. His people failed to understand him. The times were not ripe. He could only prophesy, and bewail the approaching doom. He could do nothing to prevent what was to happen. Ours is a like fate."