Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics)

by Stefan Zweig

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.

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.

The very moment, it is true, that I was seized by this strange inhibition, I realized that to mortify oneself in this way was stupid and useless. 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. I realized that all the time one was laughing and cracking silly jokes, somewhere in the world someone was lying at the point of death; that misery was lurking, people starving, behind a thousand windows; that there were such things as hospitals, quarries and coal-mines; that in factories, in offices, in prisons countless thousands toiled and moiled at every hour of the day, and that it would not relieve the distress of a single human being if yet another were to torment himself needlessly.

For the first time in my life I had received an assurance that I had been of use to someone on this earth, and my astonishment at the thought that I, a commonplace, unsophisticated young officer, should really have the power to make someone else so happy knew no bounds. I ought perhaps, in order to explain the intoxication that lay for me in this sudden discovery, to stress the fact that nothing had so weighed on me from childhood up as the conviction that I was an utterly superfluous individual, uninteresting to other people and at most an object of indifference.

Long protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid, but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged endlessly. Edith’s father and Ilona certainly shared to the full the sufferings of the poor impatient invalid, but by now their capacity for suffering was to some extent spent, they had become resigned to it. They regarded the invalid as an invalid, her lameness as a fact; they now waited with downcast eyes until the brief nerve-storms had played themselves out. But they were no longer appalled as I was appalled each time afresh, and because I was the only one to whom her suffering was a continually fresh source of consternation, I came to be the only one in whose presence she was ashamed of her lack of control.

All of a sudden, too, I found I could no longer stand the ribald jokes in the officers’ mess at the expense of clumsy or awkward comrades; ever since I had realized in the person of the weak, defenceless Edith the torture of helplessness, I was revolted by any act of brutality and moved to pity by any form of helplessness.

But you, all of you, you always think you’ve got to spare my feelings with your false sense of delicacy, and you fancy you’re being kind to me with your beastly consideration … But do you think I haven’t eyes in my head? Do you think I can’t detect behind your chatter, your stuttering and stammering, the same horror and discomfiture as was felt by that good woman, that one honest person? Do you imagine I don’t see your embarrassed, dismayed looks when I pick up my crutches, don’t see how you hurriedly make conversation so that I shan’t notice?

No, better to live unpretentiously, to have security and not have to worry. You think that when you’ve got an estate like this it’s something worth having, but in reality you’re at the mercy of everyone, you never get a moment’s peace. In itself it would be marvellous, this house, this lovely old property, marvellous … but to run it you need nerves of steel and an iron fist, or it’s never anything but a burden to you.’

No envy is more mean than that of small-minded beings when they see a neighbour lifted, as though borne aloft by angels, out of the dull drudgery of their common existence; petty spirits are more ready to forgive a prince the most fabulous wealth rather than a fellow-sufferer beneath the same yoke the smallest degree of freedom. The staff of Kekesfalva had been unable to suppress their fury at the fact that this North German woman of all people, who, as they clearly remembered, had often had comb and brush thrown at her head when she was doing the irascible old Princess’s hair, should now suddenly have become the owner of Kekesfalva and thus their mistress.

Twelve years of slavery in the service of the Princess had long since inured her to this waiting; it neither depressed nor humiliated her, and she waited, waited, her hands motionless in her lap, lowering the gaze of her blue eyes whenever anyone passed.

The notary also gazed with interest from behind his glasses at Fräulein Dietzenhof; he had, of course, read in the newspapers of the struggle over Princess Orosvár’s inheritance, and he was somewhat suspicious of this hasty resale of the estate. Poor creature, he thought, you’ve fallen into evil hands! But it is not the duty of a notary to warn either seller or purchaser when witnessing the signatures to a deed of sale. It is his job to stamp the deed, to fill it up, and to see that the fees are duly paid. And so the good man merely bowed his head — he had had to witness many a shady transaction and set the seal of the imperial eagle upon it — neatly unfolded the agreement and politely invited Fräulein Dietzenhof to sign first.

And, strange as it may sound, nothing oppressed our friend more at this moment of speedy victory than the fact that his victim had made his victory too easy for him. 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. But Kanitz could not accuse this victim of anything, even the slightest thing; she had yielded herself up with bound hands and had never ceased, moreover, to cast unsuspecting, grateful looks at him out of her cornflower-blue eyes.

Our friend’s footsteps faltered, his heart stopped beating. This was too much! He had not been prepared for this. He was assailed by the kind of disagreeable feeling one has when one has beaten a dog in anger and the poor creature comes crawling along upon its belly, looks up at one imploringly and licks the hand that has administered the cruel punishment.

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.

But right up to the very day of the wedding he lived in a state of constant fear that today, tomorrow, or the day after, she might, in horror, withdraw her confidence from him. Whereas she, for her part, who day in, day out, for twelve years, had been accused of incompetence, stupidity, malice and narrow-mindedness, by that old monster her former mistress, whose devilish tyranny had shattered what self-confidence she had ever had, expected to be stormed at incessantly, sneered at, scolded, humiliated by her new lord and master. From the very outset she resigned herself to a life of slavery, as though to an inevitable fate. But lo and behold! Everything she now did was right; the man into whose keeping she had given her life thanked her every day afresh, treated her always with the same shy reverence. The young woman was astounded; she could not comprehend so much tenderness.

But, as I have said, let us dispense with all recriminations — we have both of us gossiped, I to you, and you in your turn pretty freely to the others. It was my duty to be more cautious with you. After all, it’s not your job to treat the sick. How should you know that invalids and their relatives have a quite different vocabulary from normal people, that they immediately translate every “perhaps” into a “certainly” and that one can only measure out hope to them in carefully distilled drops, or their optimism goes to their heads and makes them quite mad?

But 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, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one’s own soul against the sufferings of another; 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.

For the first time in my life I began to realize that it is not evil and brutality, but nearly always weakness, that is to blame for the worst things that happen in this world.

And now I could no longer restrain my indignation. For this was a point on which I was highly sensitive. I believe I have already said what a torture it was to me to be one of the officers without private means and to be dependent merely on my pay and the wretched little allowance made me by my aunt. Even in my own circle it always caught me on the raw to hear money spoken of contemptuously in my presence just as if it grew like thistles. This was my sore spot. In this respect I was lame, I walked on crutches. It was solely for this reason that I was so immoderately upset by the fact that this spoiled, pampered creature, who herself suffered all the pangs of hell at being at such a physical disadvantage, should not understand my feelings. In spite of myself I was almost rude.

‘That your feeling of horror was not aroused by the fact itself, but the thought of the consequences … I mean, that it is not so much that you are appalled at this poor child’s falling in love with you as that you’re afraid that other people may hear of it and sneer … In my opinion your exaggerated distress is nothing but a kind of fear — if I may say so — of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of others, of your fellow-officers.’

‘How splendid,’ he said, patting me on the shoulder, ‘that you came to me and we have been able to talk the matter over! Just think what would have happened had you simply run away from the problem without reflecting! It would have been on your mind for the rest of your life, for one can run away from anything except oneself.

His eyes sparkled, and filled with tears of gratitude. So must Lazarus have looked when he rose dazed from the grave and once more beheld the sky and the blessed light of day.

Our decisions are to a much greater extent dependent on our desire to conform to the standards of our class and environment than we are inclined to admit. A considerable proportion of our reasoning is merely an automatic function, so to speak, of influences and impressions which have become part of us, and anyone who has been brought up from childhood in the stern school of military discipline is particularly apt to succumb to the hypnotic and compulsive force exercised by an order or word of command; a force which is logically entirely incomprehensible and which irresistibly undermines his will.

everything that had happened before the war had become as trivial, as valueless as the former Austrian currency. There was no one to accuse me, no one to judge me. I felt like a murderer who has buried the corpse of his victim in a wood: the snow begins to fall in thick, white, dense flakes; for months, he knows, this concealing coverlet will hide his crime, and afterwards all trace of it will have vanished for ever.

But ever since that moment I have realized afresh that no guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.