Beware of Pity

by Stefan Zweig

The outcasts of the world “desire with a more passionate, far more dangerous avidity than the happy,” Hofmiller says. “They love with a fanatical, a baleful, a black love.”

A visit to the studio of Rodin bestowed on one “the Eternal secret of all great art, yes, of every mortal achievement, ... that ecstasis, that being-out-of-the-world of every artist.”

Zweig, like many bold writers, posed himself problems that he could not always solve. In such cases, one has to ask oneself what feels true, what feels false, on the page.

There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another’s unhappiness ...; and the other, the only kind that counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.

One should not always let the wish be father to the thought, I protested with some firmness.

On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.

It always demands a far greater degree of courage for an individual to oppose an organized movement than to let himself be carried along with the stream — individual courage, that is, a variety of courage that is dying out in these times of progressive organization and mechanization.

At that moment of folly it seemed to me a hundred times easier to give one quick pull on the trigger of my revolver than to live through the hellish torments of the next few days, the impotent waiting to discover whether my comrades already knew of my disgrace and whether the secret whispering and sniggering were not already going on behind my back. Oh, I knew myself only too well! I knew that I should never have the strength to hold out once the mocking and sneering and gossiping got under way.

All that was left of my month’s pay went on this magnificent purchase; at the end of the month I should have either to go without my evening meal and my visits to the café or else to borrow money. But at this moment that was a matter of indifference to me; if anything, I was actually glad that my foolishness was going to cost me dear, for all the time I felt a kind of malicious desire to punish myself thoroughly, blunderer that I was, to make myself pay through the nose for my twofold doltishness.

But in the army no one pays much attention if a lieutenant comes on duty in the morning with a bit of a hang-over. How many there are who come back, after a riotous night in Vienna, so tired out that they can scarcely keep their eyes open, and fall asleep while trotting briskly along!

A load fell from my mind. I felt like a prisoner in the dock who has fully expected to be sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, when the judge rises and announces, ‘Discharged.’

Gradually I even ventured to take occasional sidelong looks at the two girls. The one was completely different from the other: Ilona, already a woman, full-blooded, well-developed, voluptuous, healthy; beside her, Edith, half child, half young woman, about seventeen or eighteen, still appeared somehow immature. Curious contrast: one would have liked to dance with the one, to kiss her; the other one wanted to spoil as an invalid, to pet and make a fuss of, to protect and, above all, to soothe.

My heart was constricted as by an icy grip during this forced march, for I immediately realized why she had so demonstratively refused to be helped or to be wheeled out in her invalid chair: she wanted to show me, me in particular, to show all of us, that she was a cripple. She wanted, out of a kind of mysterious vindictiveness born of despair, to torture us with her torture, to arraign us, the hale and hearty, in the place of God.

But it was this very challenge, this frightful challenge, that made me feel — and a thousand times more acutely than on the occasion of her outburst of despair when I had asked her to dance — how immeasurably she must suffer from her helplessness.

I realized that there was no point in denying oneself a pleasure because it was denied another, in refusing to allow oneself to be happy because someone else was unhappy.

It was of no use my now saying to myself: what good does your riding along at a stupid trot instead of at a tempestuous, exhilarating gallop do anyone? For a blow had been struck at some place or other in my heart in the neighbourhood of my conscience; I no longer had the courage to experience, in all the freedom of vigour and health, the joys of the body.

I realized that I had stepped outside the fixed circle of the conventions within which I had hitherto lived securely and had entered a new sphere, which, like all that is novel, was at once exciting and disquieting: for the first time I saw an emotional abyss opening out before me, to survey which, to hurl myself down into which, seemed in some inexplicable way alluring.

What was it I had done, after all? I had merely shown a little sympathy, had spent two evenings, two delightful, jolly, exhilarating evenings, at the house — and that had been enough! How stupid, then, to idle away one’s leisure time day after day at the café, playing boring games of cards with dull-witted companions, or strolling up and down the promenade! No, from now on no more of this torpid existence, this beastly lounging about! And so, as I strode more and more rapidly through the soft night, I, a young man suddenly awakened to life, resolved with real fervour that from now on I would change my way of life.

It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one’s own existence.

For, despite the most resolute efforts, it is never possible for a relationship between a healthy person and an invalid, a free person and a prisoner, to hang fire for ever. Unhappiness makes people vulnerable, incessant suffering unjust. Just as in the relations between creditor and debtor there is always an element of the disagreeable that can never be overcome, for the very reason that the one is irrevocably committed to the role of giver and the other to that of receiver, so in a sick person a latent feeling of resentment at every obvious sign of consideration is always ready to burst forth.

But it is the way of young people that each fresh piece of knowledge of life should go to their heads, and that once uplifted by an emotion they can never have enough of it.

And my heart, astonished at its own workings, quivered with gratitude towards the sick girl whom I had unwittingly hurt and who, through her suffering, had taught me the creative magic of pity.

the world of duty, in which I had to keep my place, in which I was a poor devil who felt himself lucky if the month had thirty instead of thirty-one days.

They really hadn’t meant it unkindly, the good chaps; all the same, their idiotic gaping and whispering had destroyed something in me that could never be restored: my confidence.

For the first time in my life I had felt myself to be someone who gave, who helped; and now I had been made to realize how others regarded this relationship, or rather, how it was bound to be regarded from outside by those ignorant of the underlying circumstances.

For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone who identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.

He has — I don’t know if I’m expressing myself properly — he has a kind of passion to get the better of an illness. He’s not actuated, like other doctors, by ambition to make money and a name for himself. He doesn’t think of himself, but of others, of those who are suffering. Oh, he’s a wonderful man!’

I know I’m not able to express myself very well, but it seems as though he feels guilty whenever he’s unable to do anything — personally guilty — and for that reason — you won’t believe it, but I swear to you it’s the truth — on one occasion when he failed to do what he’d set out to do — he had promised a woman who was going blind that he’d put her right — and then, when she really did go blind, he married her. Just fancy, a young man marrying a blind woman seven years older than himself, not beautiful and without any money, an hysterical creature, who is now a burden to him and is not the least bit grateful! ... That shows, doesn’t it, what kind of man he is, and you’ll understand how happy I am to have found such a man, who looks after my child as I do myself.

There is nothing that so raises a young man’s self-esteem, that so contributes to the formation of his character, as for him to find himself unexpectedly confronted with a task which he has to accomplish entirely on his own initiative and by his own efforts.

But the people who make life so unendurable for us are the relatives, the friends who, so to speak, interpose themselves between doctor and patient and are always clamouring to know the “truth”.

Things half done and hints half given are always bad; all the evil in the world comes from half-measures.

The fact that a man who is at once hard-working, clever and thrifty will sooner or later make money seems to me to be so obvious as to require no particular philosophical meditation; and there does not seem to be anything particularly admirable in his doing so; after all, we doctors know better than anyone that at decisive moments a man’s banking account is of very little use.

The thing that really impressed me about friend Kanitz from the start was his positively daemonic determination to add to his knowledge at the same time as his fortune. Whole nights in trains, every free moment while travelling, in hotels, on expeditions, he read and studied.

Yes, you’ve got to be born under a lucky star; the Lord bestows His gifts on the biggest scoundrels in their sleep!

Kanitz. I have already told you that Kekesfalva related this story to me during the saddest night of his life, the night on which his wife died, at one of those moments, therefore, which a man lives through perhaps only twice or three times in his life — one of those moments when even the most reserved man feels a need to bare his soul to another man as to God.

It was Napoleonic in its audacity, its perilousness, this plan to take the besieged fortress of Kekesfalva by storm before the relieving army approached.

But chance is a willing accomplice of the man who is ready to venture all.

For when one does another person an injustice, in some mysterious way it does one good to discover (or to persuade oneself) that the injured party has also behaved badly or unfairly in some little matter or other; it is always a relief to the conscience if one can apportion some measure of guilt to the person one has betrayed.

Never yet had anyone looked at him like that, with such a human, such a grateful expression. Never yet had anyone spoken to him like that. That ‘thank you very, very much’ still rang in his ears. And this was the person he had plundered, betrayed!

Yes, that was the kind of person one ought to be, a person who’d rather be betrayed than betray — a decent, guileless person. That’s the only kind that’s blessed by God. All my wiles, he thought, haven’t made me happy. I’m still a lost soul who knows no peace.

The union of opposites, in so far as they are really complementary, always results in the most perfect harmony; and the seemingly incongruous is often the most natural.

The first reaction of this couple, so suddenly united, was, of course, to be afraid of each other.

You were not so far wrong, perhaps, to call him aristocratic and generous-hearted, since for years now he has been inspired by a quite unusual indifference towards profit and loss; ever since he discovered that all his millions could not bring him back his wife, he has learned to despise money.

means. No, no pity for the sick — the sick person places himself outside the law, he offends against law and order, and in order to restore law and order, to restore the sick person himself, one must, as in the case of every revolt, attack ruthlessly, employ every weapon at one’s command, for goodness and truth have never yet succeeded in curing humanity or even a single human being.

For just as my words intoxicated my avid listener, so did his blissful hanging on my words rouse in me a lust to promise him more and yet more.

After experiencing profound emotions one sleeps profoundly.

Now states of profound happiness, like all other forms of intoxication, are apt to befuddle the wits; intensive enjoyment of the present always makes one forget the past.

Even if I had gone further than in all honesty I should have done, my lies, those lies born of pity, had made her happy; and to make a person happy could never be a crime.

But why shouldn’t one be foolish once in a while? Why not for once let oneself be thoroughly taken in?’

They all pressed me to stay to dinner. But I did not want to; I felt that I had had enough, too much, for one day. I had been perfectly happy the whole of this long golden summer day; anything more could only diminish my happiness.