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Messages from a Lost World

Europe on the Brink

Steerforth Press

THE SLEEPLESS WORLD

There is less sleep in the world today; longer are the nights and longer the days. In each land of this limitless Europe, in every city, every street, every house, every apartment, the reposeful breath of sleep is now clipped and feverish; like an oppressive and stifling summer night, this inferno of an epoch glows over us, throwing the senses into confusion. Numberless are those who, on whichever side, would otherwise drift through the nocturnal hours in the dark skiff of sleep — gilded with colourful and gently fluttering dreams — but nightly now hear the clocks march, march, march along the hellish path from daylight to daylight, enduring the burrowing beetle of anxieties and dark thoughts relentlessly gnawing and devouring, until the heart is left raw and ailing. From now on all humanity is in thrall to this fever both night and day, a state of terrible and all-consuming watchfulness, sending its shower of sparks across the heightened senses of millions, fate entering, invisibly, by thousands of windows and doors, chasing out sleep, chasing forgetfulness from every couch. There is less sleep in the world today; longer are the nights and longer the days.

Today no one can be alone with himself and his destiny, each peers out furtively into the far distance. At night, at the hour when he lies awake in his safely locked, guarded house, thoughts turn to friends and those far away: perhaps, at the same hour, a measure of his destiny is fulfilled, a cavalry charge in a Galician village, a naval attack, everything that has happened at every second across thousands and thousands of miles, all that relates to his one single life. And the soul knows, she extends and feels the intimation of a yearning to grasp it all, the burning air of all those desires and prayers, which wing back and forth from one side of the world to the other. A thousand thoughts restlessly on the move, from the silent towns to the military campfires, from the lone sentry on his watch and back again, from the nearest to the most distant, those invisible gliding threads of love and tribulation, a weft of feelings, a limitless network now covering the world, for all days and all nights. How many words they whisper now, how many prayers they send up into the indifferent ether, how much lucid love pulses through each hour of the night! Unremittingly the air quivers with secret waves for which science has no name and whose amplitude no seismograph can measure: but who can judge if they are futile, these desires, if this colossal will, burning from the depths of the soul, can overshoot distances like the vibrations of sound or the convulsions of electricity? Where there was once sleep, unsubstantial rest, there is now a desire for images: always the soul struggles to perceive through the dark night those beings far away, those held close to the heart, and via the imagination each now lives with a range of destinies. A thousand thoughts burrow into sleep, ever and again its swaying edifice topples and the image-rich darkness inclines vacantly over the solitary. Watchers of the nights, men are now also watchers of the days: at this hour, in the most ordinary people one encounters, lies living proof of the power of the orator, the poet, the prophet, for what is most secret in man is, through the diabolical pressure of daily events, forced to the exterior, so that each individual experiences a sudden burgeoning of his vitality. In the same way as elsewhere, in the exterior world, on the field of battle, plain peasants who have spent a lifetime calmly tilling their land in silence and peace are suddenly seized at the emotive hour by the heroic, and some visionary force rises like a lithe flame in people ordinarily taciturn and prone to grumbling; each and every one steps outside the communal circle of existence; those normally only concerned with the working day now sense in every message inspired reality and a compelling image. Today the people endlessly haul their plough of anxieties and visions across the barren soil of night, and, when they finally sink into sleep, surrender themselves to outlandish dreams. Then the blood runs hotter in their veins, and in this sultriness bloom tropical plants of horrors and nervousness, the dreams come, and one's only salvation is to wake and shrug them off as nothing but useless nightmares, the appalling realities of mankind's most terrible truth: the war of everyone against everyone.

Even the most peace-loving today dream of battles, columns rising for the assault and rushing across sleep, the dark blood roaring in the reverberation of the cannon. And if you suddenly awake terror-stricken you hear, with eyes wide open, the thunder of the wagons, the clatter of boots. You listen, lean from the window: and yes it's true, they're coming now in long procession, carts and horses along the deserted streets. Some soldiers lead a troop of horses by the reins, steeds that trot obediently with their heavy, deafening tread on the echoing cobbles. And they too, who normally would be resting through the night from their labours in their warm stables, these placid teams are forced apart, their benign brotherhood broken. In the stations you hear cows bellow from the cattle trucks; these patient beasts, wrenched from the warm, soft summer pastures and led into the unknown, even for them in their stupor, sleep is troubled. And the trains force a path through slumbering Nature: she too is startled by the clamour of humanity; flocks of riders gallop at night over fields which for eternity had rested peacefully in the darkness, and above the black expanse of the sea the light pools of the searchlights gleam in a thousand places, brighter than moonlight and more dazzling than the sun, while even below the darkness of the waters is disturbed by submariners seeking their prey. Shots ring out across the mountains, echoing, chasing the birds from their nests, no sleep can be assured, and even the ether, that eternally pristine space, is streaked with the murderous velocity of the aeroplane, those ill-omened comets of our time. Nothing, nothing can bring calm or rest in these days; humanity has dragged animals and nature into its murderous struggle. There is less sleep in the world today; longer are the nights and longer the days.

But let us reflect, over and again, on the vastness of time and the fact that what is occurring now has no equal in history, reflect on what it means to be only awake, unceasingly awake. Never since it came into being has the whole world been so communally seized by nervous energy. Until now a war was only an isolated flare-up in the immense organism that is humanity, a suppurating limb which could be cauterized and thus healed, whilst all the remaining limbs were free to perform their normal functions without the least hindrance. There were always places that remained untouched, villages which no message from the restless activity ever reached, villages which calmly continued to divide their life between day and night, between labour and rest. Somewhere there was still sleep and silence, people who awoke at daybreak amidst gentle laughter and whose sleep was untrammelled by disturbing dreams. But due to its steady conquest of the globe, humanity forged ever-closer links, so today a fever quivers within its whole organism; horrors easily traverse the entire cosmos. There is not a workshop, not an isolated farm, not a hamlet deep in a forest from which they have not torn a man so that he might launch himself into the fray, and each of these beings is intimately connected to others by myriad threads of feeling; even the most insignificant among them has breathed so much of the feverish heat, his sudden disappearance makes those that remain that much colder, more alone and empty Each fate leads inexorably to another fate, little circles which grow and expand in the vast sea of feeling; in this profound connection, in this mutual reinforcement of experience, no one goes into his death as into a vacuum, each takes something from others along with him. Each is pierced through by the gaze of those behind him, and this constant looking and seeing, magnified millionfold and woven into the destiny of whole nations, has created the world's current state of nervous agitation. All humanity listens keenly, and through the miracle of technology even responds at the same moment. Ships transmit messages across boundless waves, whilst the radio transmitters of Nauen and Paris fire off a message in minutes to the West African colonies and the shores of Lake Chad, as at the same moment the Indians receive it on their scrolls of hemp and lace, then the Chinese on their silk, and so on to the farthest reaches of humanity, the same feverish anxiety arrives and stifles the peaceable course of life. Each keeps watch, each remains at the open window of his senses to receive the slightest message, swallowing reassuringly the word of the heroes and dreading the doubts of the despairing. Prophets, both the genuine and the false, have assumed power over the masses, who now obey and obey again, advancing resolutely into the fever, day and night, the interminably long days and nights of this epoch which demands that each remain in perpetual wakefulness.

These days had scant respect for those who stood apart, and even those remotest from the battlefield could not disengage from it. Without exception our lives were shaken to the core, and no one, whoever he was, had the right to unmolested sleep in this monstrous excess of agitation. We were all dragged through this enforced migration of nations and peoples, which we either affirmed or denied according to our will. Each became gradually enmeshed in the great event; no one could remain cool in the fiery delirium of the world. Constancy is helpless when realities are utterly transformed; none could stand aloof, secure on his rock above the waves, looking down and smiling knowingly at a world wracked with fever. Whether aware of what was happening or not, all were borne on the current, with no idea where it was leading. No one could cut himself adrift, for our blood and spirit made us part of the river of the nation and each quickening of the current merely drew us farther on, each change in the pulse disrupted further the rhythm of our own life. What new values will exist when this fever has finally dissipated and all that appeared to remain the same will be so entirely different? The German cities, what feelings will they experience when they reflect on themselves after the war? And how different and strange will Paris seem to our new sensitivity! I know myself that from now on, in Liege say, in the same old guest house, I shall hardly be in a position to sit alongside my European friends indulging in the usual sentiments now that a load of German bombs has rained down on the citadel; for between so many friends, from whichever side of the conflict, the shadows of the fallen will be stood and their icy breath will kill any warmth of the spoken word. We will all need to relearn how to proceed from yesterday to tomorrow by way of this indecipherable today, whose violence we only perceive through still more horror, learn how to heal ourselves by finding a new structure of life beyond this ferment which turns our days white-hot and makes our nights so stiflingly oppressive. Another generation are rising undaunted behind us whose feelings have been emboldened by this inferno; they will be quite different, those who saw victories in these years where we only saw retreats, hesitation and lassitude. The pandemonium of these times will give rise to a new order, and our primary concern must be to assist in vigorously shaping it for the better.

A new order — for the sleepless fever, the restlessness, the hope and the waiting, which now consume the repose of our days and nights, surely cannot last. Even though mass destruction appears omnipresent today, monstrously spreading across a terrorized world, it is in the end nothing compared to the more powerful energy of life, which, after each interval of anguish, instills a period of recovery to ensure existence becomes stronger and still more beautiful. A new peace — oh how its light wings seem so distant today, beating through the dust and gun smoke! — will one day return and reconstruct the old order of life, labour in the day and rest at night; in thousands of living rooms now on permanent watch, in a state of nervousness and anxiety, silence will return at the moment of restful sleep regained and the stars, reassured, will once more rest their gaze on a Nature breathing easefully and returned to a state of contentment. What now wears the mask of horror already conceals the grandeur of a noble transformation; with regret and almost with a certain wistfulness we will recall those interminable nights when, through some miraculous transformation in our self, we sensed a new destiny forming in our blood and time's warm breath upon our waking lids. Only he who has lived through sickness knows the joy of the man in good health, only the insomniac knows the relief of sleep regained. Those who have returned and those who have stayed behind will be more content with life than those who have passed on: they will be able to weigh its true value and inherent beauty more precisely and accurately, and we might almost talk of a sense of anticipation for the new order, were it not for the fact that today, as in ancient times, the tiles of the temple of peace are splashed with sacrificial blood and this new blessed sleep of the world has only been bought with the death of millions of its noblest creations.

THE TOWER OF BABEL

The most ancient legends of humanity tend to be inspired by our earliest origins. The symbols of these origins harbour a wonderful poetic force, announcing as they do the great moments of a later history in which peoples renew themselves and the most significant epochs have their roots. In the books of the Bible, from the very opening pages, just after the chaos of creation, one of the most impressive myths of humanity is told. In that time, only just emerging from the unknown, still enveloped by the dark shadows of the unconscious, men were brought together by a communal work. They found themselves in a foreign place, with no means of escape, a place that seemed to them uncertain and filled with dangers, but high above them they saw the sky, clear and pure, eternal mirror of the infinite, and a yearning was born in them. So they came together and said: "Come, let us build a city and a tower whose summit will reach the sky so that our name will remain for all eternity." And they joined forces, moulded the clay and fired the bricks and began to construct a tower which would extend to the domain of God above, his stars and the pale shell of the moon.

From on high God saw their puny efforts and smiled, perhaps imagining that these men of such small stature, like tiny insects, were forming still smaller things from moulded earth and sculpted stone. Below him these men were rising to the task, driven on by their desire for eternity, yet to him it seemed but an innocent game devoid of danger. But soon he saw the foundations of their tower begin to grow, because these men were united and in accord, because they never paused in their work and came to each other's assistance in a spirit of mutual harmony. So he said to himself: "They will never let that tower alone until they have finished it." For the first time he saw the greatness of the spirit which he had bestowed on men. But it dawned on him that this was not like his own spirit, which rested after seven days of labour, but quite another, both impressive and dangerous, with an indefatigable fervour which would never cease until the work was realized. And for the first time God became fearful that these men might become like him, a unity. So he began pondering ways he might slow down their labour and he knew there was nothing more effective to break their unity than sowing discord amongst them. He said to himself: "I shall disrupt them by ensuring they do not understand each other's languages." And for the first time God showed his cruelty towards mankind.

And God's dark resolution was made. He directed his hand against the men who down below worked in a spirit of unity and dedication, and smote that spirit. The bitterest hour of humanity had come. Suddenly, overnight, in the midst of their labours, men could no longer understand each other. They cried out, but had no concept of each other's speech, and so they became enraged with each other. They threw down their bricks, picks and trowels, they argued and quarrelled until finally they abandoned the communal work, each returning to his own home in his own land. They dispersed into the fields and forests of the earth and there each built his own house which did not reach the clouds, nor God, but merely sheltered his own head and his nightly slumber. The Tower of Babel, that colossal edifice, remained abandoned; the wind and rain gradually tore away the parapets, which were already approaching the sky, and little by little the whole structure crumbled away, subsided and was laid to ruin. Soon it was just a legend that appeared in the canticles and humanity completely forgot the monumental work of its youth.

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Excerpted from Messages from a Lost World by Stefan Zweig, Will Stone. Copyright © 2016 Atrium Press Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Steerforth Press.
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