Thanks to Books by Stefan Zweig

[Published in The Saturday Review, 1958, with an editor’s note: “The following commentary by Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), German novelist and critic, first appeared in 1937 in a volume of occasional pieces entitled Begegnungen mit Menschen, Büchern, Städten. It was translated for SR by Harry Zohn, professor of German at Brandeis University.”]

They are there, waiting and silent. They neither urge, nor call, nor press their claims. Mutely they are ranged along the wall. They seem to be asleep and yet from each one a name looks at you like an open eye. If you direct your glances their way or move your hands over them, they do not call out to you in supplication, nor do they obtrude themselves upon you. They make no demands. They wait until you are receptive to them; only then do they open up. First, there has to be quiet about us, peace within us; then we are ready for them. Of an evening, on returning home from tiresome errands; some day at noon when one is weary of his fellow men; in the morning when one is cloudily half-awake after dream-laden sleep — only then is one ready for books. You would like to have a conversation and yet be alone. You would like to dream, but in music. With the agreeable anticipation of sweet sampling you step to the bookcase: a hundred eyes, a hundred names meet your searching glance silently and patiently, the way the slave women of a seraglio greet their master, humbly awaiting the call and yet blissful to be chosen, to be enjoyed. And then — as the finger gropes about on the piano to find the key for the inner melody, gently it nestles against the hand, this dumb white thing, this closed violin; in it all the voices of God are locked up. You open up a book, you read a line, a verse, but it does not ring clear at the moment. Disappointed, almost rudely, you put it back. Finally the right one is at hand, the book that is right for this hour — and suddenly you are gripped, your breath mingles with another’s breath, as though the warm, naked body of a woman were lying next to yours. And as you carry it away to your lamp, The Book, the happily chosen one, glows with an inner light. Magic has been done; from delicate dream clouds arises phantasmagoria. Broad vistas open up and your senses fade away into space.

Somewhere a clock ticks. But it does not penetrate into this time which has escaped from itself. Here the hours are measured by another unit. There are books which have traveled through many centuries before their words came to our lips; there are new books, born only yesterday, just yesterday begotten out of the confusion and distress of a beardless boy. But they speak with magic tongues, and one like the other soothes and quickens our breathing. And as they excite, they also comfort; as they seduce, they also soothe the open mind. Gradually you sink down into them; you experience repose and contemplation, a relaxed floating in their melody in a world beyond this world.

You pure leisure hours, transporting us away from the tumult of the day; you books, truest and most silent companions, how can we thank you for your ever-present readiness, for this eternally uplifting, infinitely elevating influence of your presence! What have you not been in the darkest days of the soul’s solitude! In military hospitals and army camps, in prisons and on beds of pain, in all places, you, the eternally wakeful, have given men dreams and a hand’s breadth of tranquility amidst unrest and torment. God’s gentle magnets, you have always been able to draw out the soul into its very own sphere when it was buried in everyday routine. In all periods of gloom you have always widened the expanse of our inner horizon.

Tiny fragments of eternity, mutely ranged along an unadorned wall, you stand there unpretentiously in our home. Yet when a hand frees you, when a heart touches you, you imperceptibly break through the workaday surroundings, and as in a fiery chariot your words lead us upward from narrowness into eternity.

From Richard Armour’s Our Presidents.

Abraham Lincoln, 1861–1865

Abe Lincoln was a tall man,
 A lanky six-feet-four.
He had to duck a little
 When coming through a door,
Yet never was he known to flee
Or duck responsibility.

Abe Lincoln was a strong man,
 A wrestler in his youth.
He wrestled with his conscience,
 He wrestled with the truth,
And won at splitting rails, at fairs,
When other men were splitting hairs.

Abe Lincoln was a man’s man,
 Yet women filled his life:
Nancy Hanks, Ann Rutledge,
 And Mary Todd, his wife.
(His face was lined, in part, by God,
In part, they say, by Mary Todd.)

They called him “Honest Abe”
 And “Father Abraham,”
“The Great Emancipator,”
 “Gorilla,” too, and “Sham,”
And whether it was praise or blame
He always took it much the same.

Abe Lincoln’s sense of humor
 Was such a saving grace
It turned the dark to brightness,
 Transformed his homely face,
And brought to people, when he spoke,
Large wisdom in a little joke.

Abe Lincoln was a tall man,
 A lanky six-feet-four.
He had to duck a little
 When coming through a door,
And, strangely, everyone he knew
From knowing him, felt taller too.

Woodrow Wilson, 1913–1921

When Woodrow Wilson set his jaw,
Some looked with fear, some looked with awe,
For it was quite a jaw to set,
A sight you wouldn’t soon forget.
His spine, too, was unbending, stiff.
He was as cozy as a cliff.
Yet if not human, he inclined
To kindliness toward humankind.

Aristocratic democrat,
He often wore a tall silk hat
Upon his head, while in his head
Were books he’d written, books he’d read,
Containing vision, hope, and plan
Whereby to help the little man
Who had no shiny topper tall,
In fact who had no hat at all.

Head in the clouds, he’d sometimes go
A route that baffled men below:
He hated war, hoped wars would cease,
Yet fought a war to keep the peace,
Then having fought, at mortal cost,
Thought he had won when he had lost.
He first taught history, then wrought
More history than he had taught.

Schoolmaster President, his school
Was all the world, and with his rule
He rapped the knuckles of the Kaiser
And left him somewhat sadder, wiser.
But he himself, from things unplanned on,
Was left without a League to stand on,
And, stiffly stubborn to the end,
He broke because he wouldn’t bend.

on hearing french children speak french

Children — a well-known circumstance —
Speak French extremely well in France;
Their accent, to the wondering ear,
Is perfect, and their diction clear.

But when I watch them at their play,
They might be kids in Deal, N. J.
Like girls and boys one sees about
At home, they tumble, run, and shout;
Like others of their age and ilk,
They dote on sweets, they thrive on milk;
They are, their mothers sadly sigh,
Petits bébés, as here they’re styled,
Cry very like my neighbor’s child.

I, noting thus what’s said and done,
Judge the world is, or should be, one;
It is the planet’s blackest blot
That it should be — and that it’s not.

(From The New Yorker, October 29, 1949)

note on geriatrics

Few people know how to be old — La Rochefoucauld

Very few, so we are told,
Are skilled at all in being old,
And of those few, few will admit
To age, whatso they make of it,
And when they do admit it, sadly,
They act their years but do it badly.
Midnight, when they should be abed,
They’re mostly on the town instead;
Their passions, which should now be
Quiet,
Break out anew in ill-timed riot;
The elders they should drowse among
They snub, to gambol with the young.
An old man is not, as a rule,
Too old to be much less a fool.

But as one looks about, one fears
Few manage well their middle years,
Or are, in their pretended prime,
Clever with love or wealth or time.
How awkward, too, and how uncouth,
The young are in their use of youth,
And babes, as anyone can see,
Make shambles of their infancy.

The old mess up their day, but, oh,
They’re not alone, La Rochefoucauld!

(From The New Yorker, February 21, 1953)

From Richard Armour’s Golf Bawls.

did kilmer play golf?

I think that I shall never see
My ball beneath a spreading tree,
Whose roots give me a dreadful lie,
Whose branches strike me in the eye,
Whose leaves obliterate the view,
Whose trunk prevents a follow through —
I’ll never see a tree, I swear,
And not wish it were otherwhere.

pro and con

I took a lesson from the pro,
Who told me all I ought to know
About my grip, my shift of weight,
Just how to keep my left arm straight
And cock my wrists, and uncock too,
With head down on the follow through,
Besides some pointers on my pivot,
And how to take the proper divot.

However, now I have, I find,
So many things upon my mind
That if, perchance, I think of all,
I then forget to hit the ball.

lines on luck

A golfer’s luck is always tough,
 His good luck’s simply nil;
The bad bounce goes into the rough,
 The good bounce — hell, that’s skill!

bad moment

Heard is the distant, frenzied shout
Of “Fore!” as the ball goes sailing out,
Straight at the head, or other part,
Of some poor innocent, pure of heart,
Who, bent over double, head in hands,
Awaits the moment the stray ball lands,
Hoping the while, though hope is dim,
That the law of averages favors him.

two ways out

Some golfers blast their ball from traps
 With one adroit explosion,
But others, out in ten perhaps,
 Depend upon erosion.

not to mention yourself

The tee that’s not level,
 The ball that is dead,
The fellow who’s talking,
 The slowpokes ahead,

The fairway that’s soggy,
 The green that’s unmown,
The trap’s wrong location,
 The ground rule unknown,

The shaft that is crooked,
 The clubhead that’s loose —
It takes little looking
 To find an excuse.

one down

Weight distributed,
 Free from strain,
Divot replaced,
 Familiar terrain,
Straight left arm,
 Unmoving head —
Here lies the golfer,
 Cold and dead.

(From Academic Graffiti, 1972.)

St. Thomas Aquinas
Always regarded wine as
A medicinal juice
That helped him to deduce.

Martin Buber
Never said “Thou” to a tuber:
Despite his creed,
He did not feel the need.

Desiderius Erasmus
Always avoided chiasmus,
But grew addicted as time wore on
To oxymoron.

No one could ever inveigle
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Into offering the slightest apology
For his Phenomenology.

Henry James
Abhorred the word Dames,
And always wrote “Mommas“
With inverted commas.

When the young Kant
Was told to kiss his aunt,
He obeyed the Categorical Must,
But only just.

Karl Kraus
Always had some grouse
Among his bête noires
Were Viennese choirs.

When Karl Marx
Found the phrase “financial sharks,”
He sang a Te Deum
In the British Museum.

Nietzsche
Had the habit as a teacher
Of cracking his joints
To emphasise his points.

Whenever Xantippe
Wasn’t feeling too chippy,
She would bawl at Socrates:
“Why aren’t you Hippocrates?”

(From A Jacques Barzun Reader, 2002, Edited by Michael Murray.)

Margaret of Navarre,
Strummed on the guitar
While her bawdy friend Rabelais
Warbled cantabile.

William Butler Yeats,
In one of his states,
Swore: “The French say I’m no gentilhomme:
I’m sailing to Byzantium!”

El Greco
Took a long dekko
And put his sitter in place;
Then he said: “Now pull a long face.”

The young Napoleon
Hadn’t a simoleon
When he married Josephine.
Soon he hadn’t a bean.

Robert Frost
Turned and tossed.
His nightmare was, What to do
If the road branched into more than two?

Arthur Conan Doyle
Burned the midnight oil
To create a sinister party
Named Moriarty.

Jonathan Swift
Was visibly miffed:
His horse had implied it was new in him
To be kind to a Houyhnhnm.

René Descartes
Murmured: “For my part,
If I cogitate, it must be clear
That I am here.”

G. W. F. Hegel
Invented the bagel.
He liked its peculiar density.
(His prose has the same propensity.)

Henry James
Named no names,
But The Bostonians knew
Who was Who.

Feodor Dostoyevsky
While skating on the Nevsky
Cried: “Think of me as of
Another brother Karamazov.”

Wise old Lao-Tse
Knew he knew The Way.
Had it been wiser to walk with the Buddha,
He woudda.

New at IWP Books: Samuel Hoffenstein, 1928, Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing.

From Songs About Life and Brighter Things Yet

xxii

I do respect that noble man
Who, when he’s full of trouble can
Preserve a bright and cheerful mien
As if his life were all serene;
But I prefer the fellow, who
Is lively as a kangaroo
And beams and shouts with pure delight
When everything is going right.

xxvii

The camel has a hump, but he
Looks just as curiously at me.

xxxi

The dinosaur and icthyosaur
Are not among the things that are,
Though once the beasts were features;
Ah, sad it is to contemplate
How Nature can eliminate
Unnecessary creatures!
Perhaps she will, at last, extend
The process to another end —
To man, and even woman,
And turn the final hose of Fate
And give the biologic gate
To the obnoxious human!

New at IWP Books: Ethel Jacobson, 1952, Larks in My Hair. From the Preface by Richard Armour: “Light verse is so sharp and swift and streamlined that it has a modern look. Yet it is an ancient and honorable kind of poetry. It has been written by Chaucer and Shakespeare and Herrick and Pope and Byron, in fact by every poet who has had moments of playfulness and has not taken himself too seriously. At its best, light verse is a widely appealing and highly civilized form of writing. And here, certainly, is light verse at its best.”

The Unbent Twig

When Susie came to bless our home,
My full heart fashioned a joyful pome
Till Reason rasped, with an ugly leer,
“O.K., but where do we go from here?”

For I’d been taught, as a young girl is,
The principal exports of far Cadiz,
And French subjunctives and Saxon rimes
And all about Homer his life and times,
And Avogadro and Alcibiades,
But nothing of infantile diets and diades;
So, full of impatience and mother love,
I set out to master these last above.

There were books in rows, there were books in stacks,
On library shelves and reference racks,
And I read each expert and conned each system
And carefully set out to check and list ’em
From Dr. Watson to Dr. Holt
And the Mustn’t-Spank-ers, in one stiff jolt;
From cod-liver oil to Constructive Play,
From Z-is-for-Zebra to Vitamin A.

Yet, hard though I struggled to weigh and weed ’em,
New books came faster than I could read ’em,
Each blandly discrediting all the lore
I’d painfully managed to grasp before.
Oh, I studied madly till wan and woozy,
But I couldn’t decide how to bring up Susie.
 But while I grew groggy
 At Wisdom’s cup,
 What do you think?
 Susie grew up.

The Spitball Crowd

Surveys reveal large percentages of pupils in modern
grade and high schools who are ignorant of history,
sentence structure, simple addition, the months of the
year, and how to tell time. — News item.

Modern education
Has been dandy, has been ducky.
The current generation
Is deliriously lucky.
Its members have been spared the blight
Of bothering to read and write.

McGuffey’s Third
Got the bird,
And — long division?
How absurd.
They don’t study, they don’t mind,
But no one’s ever left behind.
They learn no lessons, thumb no books,
And they give Teacher dirty looks.

How virgin their mentalities,
Their wants uncurbed and candid,
And, my! their personalities
Are only too expanded.
Their social attitudes are dillies,
But syntax gives them the howling willies.

For Teacher was the damp-eared kind
Whose pedagogic frills
Left rude discipline behind
And all the prosy skills
The times demand of lass and lad
Who now must haply learn to add,
And ponder over 3 x 3,
Penmanship, and C-A-T.

From Richard Armour’s Writing Light Verse: “There is no end to the humorous and satirical verses that can be written by men about women, by women about men, or by the writer about his or her own sex, always pointing up the special foibles that make a comparison of the sexes so fascinating to writer and reader alike. The male light verse writers, such as Samuel Hoffenstein and Arthur Guiterman, have done very well. But the women, notably Dorothy Parker, Phyllis McGinley, Margaret Fishback, and Ethel Jacobson, have done even better. They seem to have a sharper eye — as well as a sharper pen.”

New at IWP Books: Margaret Fishback, 1937, One to a Customer

River, Stay ‘way from My Door

The world is crammed with superior souls,
 Embodying every virtue.
All of them aim at lofty goals,
 And nary a one would hurt you.
All of their ilk are good and kind,
 Magnanimous, noble people,
Who turn the thoughts of the mundane mind
 To the peak of a high church steeple.
Thousands of these exist who are
Honest and bright, and better by far
Than you and I. But the fact remains
That often they give us shooting pains.

Many’s the person I do not
 Hanker to see, although I
Am quick to acknowledge they have got
 Characters pure and snowy.
Many’s the mortal I admire
 But do not prefer to be with.
Many’s the man whom I aspire
 Not to live in a tree with.
I like so many, and yet it’s true
The ones that I want for pals are few —
A half a dozen or so, not more,
To slide with me down my cellar door.

The rest — well, I wish them luck and health
 And flagons of fine old brandy.
I wish them joy and I wish them wealth
 And the best assorted candy.
But what I wish the most to achieve,
 And what I persist in hoping,
Is that at length the herd may leave
 Me to my misanthroping.
For I am a hermit mean as mud.
My heart was nipped in the well-known bud.
And I want the people I want. And never
The rest, no matter how fine and clever.