SÓ VISITARÁ AS MESQUITAS DE SOARES
O QUE CRÊ EM SOARES
QUEM É FIRME NA ORAÇÃO, DÁ ESMOLAS E NÃO TEME SENÃO SOARES
OS HOMENS DE MÁ VONTADE CONSPURCAM AS LOJAS SE LÁ ENTRAM
E EM VERDADE SE FOSTE MORTO NO CAMINHO DE SOARES
O PERDÃO DE SOARES E A MISERICÓRDIA DA SUA FUNDAÇÃO
SÃO MELHORES QUE AQUILO QUE PUDERdes AMONTOAR
SOARES NÃO FALTA COM A RECOMPENSA AOS CRENTES DA AULA MAGNA
The World of Yesterday ( Die Welt von Gestern) is the autobiography of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. It is considered the most famous novel on the Habsburg Empire. He started writing it in 1934 when, anticipating Anschluss and Nazi persecution, he uprooted himself from Austria to England and later to Brazil. He posted the manuscript, typed by his second wife Lotte Altmann, to the publisher a day before his wife's and his suicide in February 1942. The book was first published in Stockholm in 1942, as Die Welt von Gestern. It was first published in English in April 1943 by Viking Press.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenThe book describes the life in Vienna at the start of the 20th century with detailed anecdotes. It depicts the dying days of Austria-Hungary under Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, including the system of education and the sexual ethics prevalent at the time, the same that provided the backdrop to the emergence of psychoanalysis.
According to Zweig, earlier European societies, where religion (i.e. Christianity) had a central role, condemned sexual impulses as work of the devil. The late 19th century had abandoned the devil as an explanation of sexuality; hence it lacked a language able to describe and condemn sexual impulses. Sexuality was left unmentioned and unmentionable, though it continued to exist in a parallel world that could not be described, mostly prostitution. The fashion at the time contributed to this peculiar oppression by denying the female body and constraining it within corsets.
The World of Yesterday details Zweig's career before, during and after World War I. Of particular interest are Zweig's description of various intellectual personalities, including Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, the composer Ferruccio Busoni, the philosopher and antifascist Benedetto Croce, Maxim Gorky, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the German industrialist and politician Walther Rathenau and the pacifist and friend Romain Rolland. Zweig also met Karl Haushofer during a trip to India. The two became friends. Haushofer was the founder of geopolitics and became later an influence on Adolf Hitler. Always aloof from politics, Zweig did not notice the dark potential of Haushofer's thought; he was surprised when later told of links between Hitler and Haushofer.
Notable episodes include the departure from Austria by train of the last Emperor Charles I of Austria in 1918, the beginning of the Salzburg festival and the Austrian hyperinflation of 1921-22. Zweig admitted that his younger self had not recognized the danger coming from the Nazis, who started organizing and agitating in Austria in the 1920s. Zweig was a committed pacifist but hated politics and shunned political engagement. His autobiography shows some reluctance to analyse Nazism as a political ideology and a tendency to regard it as simply the rule of one particularly evil man, Hitler. Zweig was struck that the Berghof, Hitler's mountain residence in Berchtesgaden, was just across the valley from his own house outside Salzburg. Berchtesgaden was an area of early Nazi activity. Zweig believed strongly in Europeanism against nationalism.