more from Zweig
From: Deborah
Date: Sat Apr 3, 2004 6:25 am
Subject: more from Zweig
Stefan Zweig. The World of Yesterday. Lincoln,
Ne.: University of Nebraska Press, 1964. Originally published
by Viking, 1943.
from page 115 (during Zweig's time in Berlin,
supposedly attending university, but according to his own account
he never appeared at any lectures)
"...for the first time
since Theodor Herzl I approached a man to whom destiny had given
the mission of guiding millions of people. Personally he was
not so much of a leader as Herzl had been, but he was more engaging.
A hypnotic power lay in his dark eyes and I listened to him better
and more critically when not looking at him, for his ascetic,
thin face, carved by spiritual suffering, was well disposed to
be convincing -- and not only to women. At that time Rudolf Steiner
had not yet formulated his theories, he was still seeking and
learning. On occasion he recited for us commentaries on the color-theories
of Goethe, whose portrait, as he drew it, became more Faustian,
more Paracelsian. It was exciting to listen to him, for his education
was stupendous and quite different from our own, which was confined
to literature alone. I always returned home from his lectures,
and from many good, private conversations, both enraptured and
somewhat depressed. However, if I ask myself today whether I
would have foretold for that young man his great philosophical
and ethical effect upon the masses, I must admit, to my shame,
that I would not. I had expected great things from his questing
intellect, and I would not have been in the least astonished
to hear of some important biological discovery which his intuitive
spirit had accomplished; but when many years later I saw the
grandiose Goetheanum in Dornach, this "school of wisdom"
which his pupils had founded as a platonic academy of anthroposophy,
I was rather disappointed that his power had run to material
and sometimes even into the commonplace. I do not claim any judgment
of anthroposophy, for even today I am not quite clear as to what
it seeks or means, and I believe that on the whole its seductive
power is bound up not with an idea, but with the fascinating
personality of Rudolf Steiner. Nevertheless, meeting a man of
such a magnetic personality at so early a stage, when he yielded
himself to the younger people around him in friendship and without
dogmatizing, was an incalculable gain for me. In his fantastic
and at the same time profound knowledge I realized that true
universality, which we, with the overweening pride of high school
boys, thought we had already mastered, was not to be gained by
flighty reading and discussion, but only by years of burning
endeavor."
Some biographical info on Stefan Zweig:
Who's Who in the Twentieth
Century
Zweig, Stefan (1881-1942) Austrian biographer, essayist, and
playwright. Born in Vienna into a well-to-do Jewish family, Zweig
studied at the universities of Berlin and Vienna, travelled extensively,
and during his lifetime cultivated a wide friendship with fellow
artists and intellectuals (including Gorki, Rilke, Romain Rolland,
Rodin, Toscanini, Freud, and Richard Strauss). He served in World
War I and emerged from it a pacifist. Between the wars he lived
mainly in Salzburg; in 1934 he went into exile, living briefly
in England and New York before moving to Brazil. A humanist,
Zweig lived long enough to see the world he knew utterly destroyed.
In despair he and his wife committed suicide near Rio de Janeiro
in 1942.
Zweig's writing covers a wide
range of genres. His early work includes translations of Verlaine,
Baudelaire, and Émile Verhaeren and collections of his
own romantic poetry (1901, 1906), which was indebted to von Hofmannsthal.
The influence of Freud's work can be seen in his short-story
collections: Erstes Erlebnis (1911), Amok (1922), and Verwirrung
(1927; translated as Conflicts, 1927). He wrote several plays,
the earliest, an antiwar play entitled Jeremias (1917), while
still in uniform. He translated Jonson's Volpone (1925) and Epicoene
( Die schweigsame Frau, 1935, which provided the libretto of
the opera by Richard Strauss). His main work of fiction and also
his last creative work was Schachnovelle (1942; translated as
The Royal Game), in which the chess game is a metaphor for the
disintegration of an intellectual being interrogated by the Gestapo.
But Zweig's reputation finally
rests on his biographical essays and full-length biographies,
which are among the best literary examples of Freud's influence,
especially in penetrating the workings of the creative process.
The shorter essays, first published in groups, were collected
as Die Baumeister der Welt (1934; translated as Master Builders,
1939) and include the lives of Balzac, Dickens, Dostoievsky,
Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, Casanova, Stendhal, and Tolstoy.
His longer biographies are Romain Rolland (1921), Marie Antoinette
(1932), Maria Stuart (1935), and, perhaps his greatest, Triumph
und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam (1935; translated as Right
to Heresy, 1951). A book of 'historical miniatures`, Sternstunden
der Menschheit (1927; translated as The Tide of Fortune, 1955),
is concerned with moments that changed history. His autobiography,
Die Welt von Gestern (1942; translated as The World of Yesterday,
1943), focuses on Europe before World War I.
How to cite this entry:
"Zweig, Stefan" Who's Who in the Twentieth Century.
Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford
University Press. McGill University (Nylink). 3 April 2004
<http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t47.e1758>
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Sat Apr 3, 2004 4:18 pm
Subject: Re: more from Zweig
Deborah
A humanist, Zweig lived
long enough to see the world he knew utterly destroyed. In despair
he and his wife committed suicide near Rio de Janeiro in 1942.
Zweig:
Nevertheless, meeting a
man of such a magnetic personality at so early a stage, when
he yielded himself to the younger people around him in friendship
and without dogmatizing, was an incalculable gain for me. In
his fantastic and at the same time profound knowledge I realized
that true universality, which we, with the overweening pride
of high school boys, thought we had already mastered, was not
to be gained by flighty reading and discussion, but only by years
of burning endeavor."
Bradford comments;
What do we see and what details do we pick
up when someone offers such a profound insight, as Deborah did?
On one hand most of us are profound humanists. Most of us have
entered Post Modern and Politically Correct Ideas that have changed
since Steiner's days. 19th century ideas that Peter Staudenmaier
is still embraces. Most of us are working on digesting the century
difference of language and insight that has wrought Civil Rights
and Ghandi's work, Woodstock, as well as thousands of other voices
raised for the progress of terminology from the early Michael
School depictions. Most of us have encountered directly full
blown Racism.
But we also see a very sad, not exactly for
me a romantic, ending to the above souls who met Rudolf Steiner
and underestimated him. We have heard of the Ahasver experience.
Peter Staudenmaier often spouts his ignorance of the Ahasver
experience, which he knows nothing of how deep this was meant.
The Ahasver experience is the one where either
Christ or a great Initiate speaks some truth and for a time,
certain souls continue to ever and again reject that truth no
matter how it is spoken. Who does it hurt? It certainly doesn't
hurt the Christ or the Initiate, except that each individual
human being carries a piece and fragment of the great puzzle
of creation and cannot be excluded. It hurts Peter Staudenmaier
more than it hurts Steiner.
Where under real experience would Diana get
the idea that those connected to the Michael School support anything
to do with racism or that they cannot distinguish a justification
for aspects of Political Correct behavior? What could prompt
Diana to think that the rest of us haven't shared in the very
generations ideas that she has? Next;
When Diana says, even the children know the
difference, and places, what every lazy and ill served parent
does, places the adult maturity of insight against the child
and places the child as loftier in maturity than conscious human
insight, it is a subtle negating betrayal. It is bad, bad Parenting,
yet all of us have witnessed that Children come in wiser and
leave stupider. Why?
It is not because as young adults they balk
at entering into deep waters like the coward that Diana confesses
to be. Rather the parents compromise their opinions to materialism
and if they have had the opportunity to encounter spiritual science,
deny it. They fail to maintain guardian ship of ethical vision
that extends beyond Kindergarten. Even though Waldorf Kindergarten's
capture the most sacred and encompassing aspects of the child
as she has come from the spiritual world, parents think somehow
this arose like a mushroom after the rain. It was adults stupid!
It was adults with vision!
But is Cowardly parents who use the excuse
that Children are wiser. Children did not make Waldorf Education.
Waldorf Education was made by wise Adults for educating our children.
Zweig, as most of us here on this list, have met with Steiner's
Works and heard in his voice and his answers mature and deep
vision that allows us to not only carry our childhood wonder
but ripen in vision and wisdom freely.
The sacredness of Childhood and Childhoods
wisdom is a wonder to behold, but to delegate the maturity of
the generous humanistic and deepened human vision, back onto
the backs of our children is a betrayal. They looked and in colleges
they look today the world over for any sign of those who still
carry the inner torch of real thinking that illuminates the fading
light they had as children. The failure to find the language,
thinking and illumination of "complex ideas" leads
to Columbine or some woman on trial again, again in the U.S.
for stoning her children because God told her to do it. Or George
Bush, and god told him to invade Iraq and that God was on our
side in a Pat Robertson idiocy. Therefore we never argued against
nationalistic and patriotic bullshit. We never warned our children
that that was not the direction of the future, but take it if
it is you way.
Steiner was a wonderful warm and inspiring
human being, who could really speak with humor and strength,
deep into immense troubling issues. That certaintly partly describes
Dr. Steiner and that is certainly what a goodly portion of the
Michael School is all about. Given, that I have fully encountered
problems in specific Waldorf Schools, with personalities, I understand
how one can be burned about it. But, the difference is that before
I knew anything of Waldorf, I was stunned that the universe allowed
Steiner to get away with all the answers to questions that I
had in my own heart. Therefore I met Steiner and knew that the
rest had to be as good or better. And many times I have been
disappointed.
Have I been disappointed in Waldorf and Antrho's
indeed yes. My understanding of Steiner's deed for the 20th century
and into the 21st century is as solid as the Foundation Stone
it rests upon. The Michael School was offered as a gift to Europe
and Europe was too busy descending into the racists doctrines
of Peter Staudenmaier to pay attention to the subtle shift. Steiner
cracks all Nobel Prize ideals into shattered fragments. I AM
research and history rings out from every page. And as Peter
has finally agreed. I Am research of that magnitude can have
nothing racist about it.
So yes, we in mature insight from having lived
through the Sixties in America, have a very clear vision of What
Racism is. Children love to point out the differnt skin color,
or the red hair, or the freckles of some other child. And the
answers from Waldorf Teachers have always been warm, rich, wholesome
and humanist, in line with the Rainbow.
However are there reasons behind red hair,
freckles, blonds, dark hair, pigments, eye colors and various
differences. Those profound studies reveal the depth of how the
I AM chose the sulphur or Iron content needed in the blood. But
warmth, carrot top cockiness, sulphur and other aspects are profound
Star wisdom and Diana only hopes that such things can't be understood.
Oh they can. They can be included as either footnotes to the
individual, or in the case of RedNecks... you're White and thats
all that matters. Yes we understand racism.
Peter should go back to the sixties and see
what most of us experienced as we met and marched and rebelled
against dogmatic and fifties style prejudice that had locked
down the world after those dreadful wars.. What Peter says people
would laugh at about Steiner theories, and mock, is exactly why
Spiritual Science is so cool.
Because it is transparent who needs to be
laughed at. It isn't, wasn't and ain't Dr. Steiner. It is the
run with the pack, educational freaks who promote Big Bang idiocy
and dialectical materialism or promote George Bush and their
sons and daughters to Stone their Children cause god told them
to do it.. or as they lie in pieces on Iraqi streets because
not enough greatess of soul as yet trickled out into the wide
ranges of general cultural thinking.
And in regards to Greens and Ecology, Steiner
was right, first and well ahead of everyone and if Peter wants
to take an eco stand, Steiner is one of the greatest, with his
astonishing Agricultural Course lectures. Nothing compares to
them. Here is what we learned about Racism.
"Then it's the blue ones
who can't accept
The green ones for living with
The black ones tryin' to be a skinny one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby
Ooh sha sha
We gotta live together
I am no better and neither
are you
We're all the same whatever we do
You love me you hate me
You know me and then
Still can't figure out the scene I'm in
I am everyday people
Then it's the new man
That doesn't like the short man
For being such a rich one
That will not help the poor one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on scooby dooby dooby
Ooh sha sha
We got to live together
There is a yellow one that
won't
Accept the black one
That won't accept the red one
That won't accept the white one
Different strokes for different
folks
And so on and so on and
Scooby dooby dooby
Ooh sha sha
I am everyday people"
...................................................................................................................................
From: Deborah
Date: Sun Apr 4, 2004 2:03 pm
Subject: Re: more from Zweig
Bradford,
I have a problem with what I perceive to be
your interpretation of Zweig's encounter with Rudolf Steiner
and the subsequent course of his life. I don't think, from the
story we have available, that we can assume that Zweig went astray
from his destiny path. He became a brilliant playwright and novelist,
knew many of the leading figures of his time and so on. Anthroposophy
may not have been his destiny. We can't know.
I've been sharing the Zweig quotes because
it gives a fuller picture of the pre World War I European culture
than that provided by what's his name (to put it mildly).
[Deborah]
Deborah
A humanist, Zweig lived
long enough to see the world he knew utterly destroyed. In despair
he and his wife committed suicide near Rio de Janeiro in 1942.
Zweig:
Nevertheless, meeting a
man of such a magnetic personality at so early a stage, when
he yielded himself to the younger people around him in friendship
and without dogmatizing, was an incalculable gain for me. In
his fantastic and at the same time profound knowledge I realized
that true universality, which we, with the overweening pride
of high school boys, thought we had already mastered, was not
to be gained by flighty reading and discussion, but only by years
of burning endeavor."
[Bradford]
But we also see a very sad, not exactly
for me a romantic, ending to the above souls who met Rudolf Steiner
and underestimated him.
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Sun Apr 4, 2004 11:17 pm
Subject: Retardation and hypocrisy
holderlin wrote:
The failure to find the language, thinking
and illumination of "complex ideas" leads to Columbine
or some woman on trial again, again in the U.S. for stoning her
children because God told her to do it. Or George Bush, and god
told him to invade Iraq and that God was on our side in a Pat
Robertson idiocy.
Lets add these sound bytes for Fundamentalism
to the list of Fraud and deception.
http://mitchcohen.crimsonzine.com/20040403-12255.html
"Whatever the cause,
this stance would be laughable, were the stakes not so high.
First, the hypocrisy: Bush has quoted directly from Deuteronomy
in a speech on the Middle East Crisis, Isaiah in marking the
loss of the space shuttle Columbia, and on the first anniversary
of September 11th, the president used the Gospel of John to draw
a parallel between Christ and the USA.
But Bush reaches extra-Biblically
as well. In last year's State of the Union speech, he proclaimed
"there's power, wonder working power, in the goodness and
idealism and faith of the American people," drawing on a
well-known Communion hymn. The phrasing is by no means accidental.
That the hymn itself grants that "power, wonder working
power" to the Blood of the Lamb, and not the American people,
is of little concern to his speechwriter, it seems.
Most troubling to this writer,
however, is his extra-extra-Biblical pronouncements, weaving
a Biblical, and at times Apocalyptic language into the majority
of his speeches and scheduled remarks, whether below the radar
or on open display.
He often speaks of America,
and by extension himself, in messianic terms. In a conversation
with former Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas, Bush claimed God
instructed him to strike Saddam. He spoke of a Crusade to defeat
the Evildoers. He has cast the fight against terrorism as a battle
of Good versus Evil and nothing less. He, of course, leads the
forces of Good. On September 14, 2001, he said "our responsibility
before history is already clear: to answer these attacks and
rid the world of evil." Rid the world of evil?"
Bradford concludes;
Yes we all dislike hypocrisy and it depends
on what brand of hypocrisy you are used to. If our Michael School
research smells like Satan's farts to you, fundamentalistic generalizations
sounds like the dinner bell for Christian cockroaches to me.
Millions of them clamor out of the woodwork with nothing in their
noxious souls but a hunger for cognition which they totally lack.
They mill around and nod their heads as racism, antisemitism
and anti-brotherhood that would shame Angels, fills them up like
a gas tanker truck fills helium balloons from Rush Limbaugh's
talk show.
Fighting hypocrisy is not believing in the
Big Bang theory. Fighting hypocrisy is grasping the I AM that
appeared on Golgotha as a Master of the Devachan and the atomic
table. Fighting hypocrisy is not allowing dialectical materialism
to suffocate the soul. Fighting hypocrisy means understanding
the astral body, and higher development regions of the soul and
spirit. Fighting hypocrisy is looking at the community of creation
from Seraphim to Stones and seeing the logical pattern as portrayed
in "Outline of Occult Science". Fighting hypocrisy,
a good start, is to throw these hypocrites out of office the
first chance we get.
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