Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics)

by Stefan Zweig

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;

Weak, defensive, knee-jerk reaction

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.

Strong, with an intention to ameliorate, creative

‘To him that hath, to him shall be given.’

In reality he need only, instead of setting out to find, let himself be found by, characters and happenings, which, in so far as he has preserved the heightened capacity for observing and listening, unceasingly seek him out as their instrument of communication.

Let himself to be found - passive or active?

It would be untrue to say that this importunate gentleman was in himself an impossible or unpleasant fellow; he was merely one of those embarrassingly convivial souls who collect acquaintances as assiduously as children collect postage-stamps and are therefore peculiarly proud of every fresh addition to their collection.

To this good-natured eccentric — in his spare time an erudite and competent archivist — the whole meaning of existence lay in the modest satisfaction derived from being able to remark with airy nonchalance at the mention of any name that received mention from time to time in the Press:

We both had some difficulty in suppressing a faint smile, that significant smile that passes between two people who, in a fairly large group of people, share a closely guarded secret.

one sometimes had a feeling that it was not the people themselves who were working off their fears in conjectures and hopes, but, so to speak, the very air, the storm-laden atmosphere of the times, which, charged with latent suspense, was endeavouring to unburden itself in speech.

Unburdening the tense atmosphere in speech

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.

mass courage, the courage that comes of being one of a herd, and anyone who examines this phenomenon more closely will find it to be compounded of some very strange elements: a great deal of vanity, a great deal of recklessness and even boredom, but, above all, a great deal of fear

courage is often nothing but inverted weakness.

From that point onwards the thread of life spins itself out mechanically, there’s no need to do any more lubricating.

But just as flowers grow in more tropical luxuriance in a hothouse, so do wild and frenzied ideas flourish in the darkness. Confused and fantastic, they shoot up out of the sultry soil into garish lianas which choke the breath out of one’s body, and with the swiftness of dreams the most fantastic hallucinations take shape and chase hither and thither round the overheated brain.

‘I am — alas! — always at home.’ It would be impossible to grant forgiveness more tastefully.

I was haunted by the desire to know that my guilt was once and for all wiped out, to put as speedy an end as possible to the disquietude aroused in me by the uncertainty of the situation.

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.

Not for one moment were her features in repose; now she looked to the left, now to the right, now she leaned back as though exhausted; and she spoke as nervily as she moved in jerky, staccato tones, without pausing for breath. Perhaps, I thought to myself, this lack of restraint, this restlessness, is a compensation for the enforced immobility of her legs; perhaps, too, the ...

‘No, stay with Papa while I march off.’ Those last words, ‘march off’, were as sharp and staccato as a threat.

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.

Out of vindictiveness

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.

But it was never the suffering that one pictured to oneself, that one imagined, that stunned and devastated one; it was only what one had seen in the flesh with eyes of compassion, that stirred and shattered one.

It all began with that sudden pull at the reins, which was, so to speak, the first symptom of the strange poisoning of my spirit by pity.

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 this? Could it be that an ordinary young fellow like me had power over other people? That I, who had not fifty crowns to call my own, was able to give a rich man more happiness than all his friends?

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.

and just as our excellent military band despite its exemplary rhythm and swing, nevertheless remained a brass band, its music therefore harsh, blaring, depending solely for its effect on rhythm, because it lacked the delicately sensuous tones of stringed instruments, so did even our jolliest times in barracks lack that element of subtlety which the presence or even the mere proximity of women invisibly adds to all social intercourse.

inevitably, in the secret chemistry of the emotions the feeling of pity for a sick person is imperceptibly bound up with tenderness.

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.

As soon as I discovered that my ability to feel pity was a force that not only stirred me myself positively pleasurably, but extended its beneficent influence beyond my own personality, a strange metamorphosis began to take place within me.

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.

And I said to myself: from now on, help anyone and everyone so far as in you lies. Cease to be apathetic, indifferent! Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone’s destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity.

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.

Do you really go there only out of pity, out of sympathy for these rich people? I kept asking myself. Are you not actuated to a certain extent by vanity, a desire for a good time?

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.

It is a most wonderful thing to be close, to be near to the sick during their sleep, when all their feverish thoughts are held captive, when they are so completely oblivious of their infirmity that sometimes a smile lights upon their parted lips as a butterfly upon a delicate leaf, a smile foreign to them, a smile which does not belong to them, and which, moreover, is scared away on the very moment of awaking.

‘Better to be ridiculous when asleep,’ I said, ‘than ridiculous when awake.’

But I, I liked it, the woman’s horror did me good, because, after all, it is honest, it is human, to be horrified at seeing such a sight all of a sudden.

I can’t, of course, uneducated as I am, affirm that Dr Condor is a better doctor than other doctors. I only know that he is a better man. I got to know him first when my wife was ill, and I saw how he fought for her life. He was the only one who refused to give up hope until the very last, and I realized then that here was a man who lived and died with every one of his patients.

Always when the tears rushed to his eyes he would turn away abruptly like this. He too refused to be pitied — how like her he was!

… I have a feeling that he wouldn’t lie to you. He has no need to spare your feelings, he need not scruple to tell you the truth.

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.

again and again we fall hopelessly into the foolish error of thinking that Nature sets a special stamp on outstanding individuals so that they may be recognized at a glance.

imponderabilia.

To us, vigorous and even frantic resistance on the part of a patient can only be welcome, for, strangely enough, these apparently unreasonable reactions sometimes have more effect than our most miraculous nostrums.

For one’s emotional state is always determined by the most odd and accidental things, and it is precisely the most superficial factors that often fortify or diminish our courage.

They all behave as though their patient were the only person on earth who was ill and as though one ought to give all one’s attention to him, to him alone.

But real fortunes are only made as the result of a special relation between receipts and expenditure, between earnings and out-goings.

It seemed to him to be more important and more sensible to become rich than to be regarded as rich (one might have thought he had read Schopenhauer’s wise paralipomena with regard to what one is or merely represents oneself to be).