New at IWP Books: The Buried Candelabrum (1937) by Stefan Zweig.
Miseducating the American Mind by William Deresiewicz.
New at IWP Books: The Right to Heresy: Castellio against Calvin (1936) by Stefan Zweig.
“One must judge men, not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.” Lichtenberg
From Erasmus of Rotterdam by Stefan Zweig:
Only when the impulse to violence is inspired with an idea, or is made to serve an idea, do genuine “tumulti” occur. Then come the bloody and destructive revolutions, then the bands of ragamuffins get formed into a party hastening to obey the rallying-cry, then by organization is an army created, then does a dogma help to promote a movement. All the great and vehement conflicts that have arisen among men are more rightly described as the outcome of certain ideologies than as being due to the violence and bloodthirstiness of the human animal; for an idea may let loose the will to violence and drive it to the attack. Fanaticism, the bastard begotten out of brain and power, fancies itself dictator in the realm of thought, so that only what it thinks is acceptable and must be forced upon the whole universe; it thus splits the human community into friends or foes, adherents or opponents, heroes or criminals, believers or heretics; since it recognizes no other system than its own and no other truth than its own, it needs must resort to violence in order to curb and bridle the divine multiplicity of phenomena and to bring everything under one yoke. The forcible curtailment of mental latitude, of freedom of opinions, every kind of inquisition and censorship, of scaffold and stake – these evils were not brought into the world by blind violence, but by rigidly staring fanaticism, that genius of one-sidedness, that hereditary enemy of universality, that captive of a single idea which would shut the whole world up in a cage.
From Erasmus of Rotterdam by Stefan Zweig:
Erasmus loved books, not merely for their contents, but also for their material selves, he being the first thoroughgoing bibliophile. He worshipped their form, he liked handling them, he admired their artistic presentation. His moments of sheerest happiness were those passed at Aldus’s printing-house in Venice, or with Frobenius in Basle, standing among the workers in the low-ceilinged room, receiving the galleys still damp from the press, setting up with the masters the delicate and beautiful initial letters, running to earth like an expert huntsman with swift and finely pointed quill the most elusive of printer’s errors, deftly rounding off a clumsy phrase; to be with books, dealing with them, working at them – this seemed to him the most natural form of existence. Thus Erasmus never lived among the peoples whose lands he travelled through, never shared in their life and activities; he dwelt above them, in the clear, still ether, in the ivory tower of the artist and academician. But from this tower, which was built entirely of books and labour, he gazed forth, keen of sight like another Lynceus, in order to see and to understand clearly and correctly the living life below.
From Erasmus of Rotterdam by Stefan Zweig:
But lo, like a belated swallow, someone came knocking at his window already frosted by the cold of approaching winter. A message flew in to greet him with reverence and love. “Everything that I do, all that I am, I owe to you; and, were I to fail in acknowledging my debt, I should prove the most ungrateful man alive. Salve itaque etiam atque etiam, pater amantissime, pater desusque patriae, literarum assertor, veritatis propugnator invictissime.” (Greeting and yet again greeting, dearest father and honour of the land which gave you birth, champion of the arts, invincible fighter for truth.) The name of the man who wrote these words, and one which was destined to outshine even the name of Erasmus, was Rabelais, who in the dawn of his youthful glory thus acclaimed the dying master whose sun was about to set.
New at IWP Books: Erasmus of Rotterdam (1934) by Stefan Zweig.
Currently Reading: Nonrequired Reading by Wislawa Szymborska 📚
I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. Homo Ludens dances, sings, produces meaningful gestures, strikes poses, dresses up, revels, and performs elaborate rituals. I don’t wish to diminish the significance of these distractions—without them human life would pass in unimaginable monotony and, possibly, dispersion and defeat. But these are group activities, above which drifts a more or less perceptible whiff of collective gymnastics. Homo Ludens with a book is free. At least as free as he’s capable of being. He himself makes up the rules of the game, which are subject only to his own curiosity. He’s permitted to read intelligent books, from which he will benefit, as well as stupid ones, from which he may also learn something. He can stop before finishing one book, if he wishes, while starting another at the end and working his way back to the beginning. He may laugh in the wrong places or stop short at words that he’ll keep for a lifetime. And, finally, he’s free – and no other hobby can promise this – to eavesdrop on Montaigne’s arguments or take a quick dip in the Mesozoic.
Currently Reading: Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser 📚
More by Nicolás Gómez Dávila:
No esperemos que la civilización renazca, mientras el hombre no vuelva a sentirse humillado de consagrarse a tareas económicas.
Uno a uno, talvez los hombres sean nuestros prójimos, pero amontonados seguramente no lo son.
Aun cuando la desigualdad no fuera imborrable, deberíamos preferirla a la igualdad por amor a la policromía.
La democracia sólo tolera dos partidos: el vocero de las ideas estúpidas, el protector de las codicias sórdidas.
Generalizar extiende nuestro poder y empobrece nuestro espíritu.
Los tres enemigos del hombre son: el demonio, el estado y la técnica.
La difusión de la cultura tuvo por efecto capacitar al tonto a parlotear de lo que ignora.
Al que anda a caza de una explicación cabal del mundo aconsejémosle que la invente. Para que corra menos riesgo de creer en ella.
Los especialistas no pueden comunicarse mutuamente las particularidades que verdaderamente saben, sino las generalidades que erróneamente creen saber.
Donde es posible decir lo que se quiere, nadie se da el trabajo de decir solamente lo que importa.
El historiador debe atenerse a lo probable, sin cerrarse a lo imposible.
Los conservadores actuales no son más que liberales maltratados por la democracia.
Los medios actuales de comunicación le permiten al ciudadano moderno enterarse de todo sin entender nada.
Two Articles on Nicolás Gómez Dávila: Nicolás Gómez Dávila: The Nietzsche From the Andes (2019), Nicolás Gómez Dávila and the Authentic Reactionary(2022).
When Charles Lamb was little more than a toddler, his sister, Mary, took him for a walk in the graveyard. The precocious little boy read the laudatory epitaphs on the tombstones, commemorating the deceased as “virtuous,” “charitable,” “beloved,” and so on. As they came away, he asked, “Mary, where are all the naughty people buried?” (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)
Every book worth reading at all should immediately be read twice, partly because we understand things better in their context the second time and only really understand the beginning when we know the end, and partly because we bring a different spirit and mood to every passage the second time around, which makes for a different impression and is as if we view an object in another light. (Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena)
How is “real book” defined? Quite simply: it is a book one wants to reread. It can stand rereading because it is very full – of ideas and feelings, of scenes and persons real or imagined, of strange accidents and situations and judgments of behavior: it is a world in itself, like and unlike the world already in our head. For this reason, this fullness, it may well be “hard to get into.” But it somehow compels one to keep turning the page, and at the end the wish to reread is clear and strong: one senses that the work contains more than met the eye the first time around. (Jacques Barzun, Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning)
In the république des instituteurs, Emile-Auguste Chartier was sovereign. He signed himself “Alain.” His was, unquestionably, a commanding presence in European moral and intellectual history. His influence permeated French education and significant elements in French politics from 1906, the year of Dreyfus’s rehabilitation, to the late 1940s. Alain’s prose possesses unsurpassed economy and clarity. His stoic integrity held generations of pupils and disciples spellbound. Comparison with Socrates became routine. Alain was “the sage in the city,” the Maître des maîtres. In addition to philosophical and political writings, in addition to essays on the arts and on poetry, such as his elucidation of Valéry’s La Jeune Parque, Alain published autobiographical reflections. L’Histoire de mes pensées of 1936 is a jewel. As are his meditations on war in Mars.
Yet the very name of Alain is virtually unknown in the Anglo-American world. Hardly any of his writings have been translated. Why should this be? I have no good answer. There is, no doubt, a problem of context. Alain’s Propos, the succinct but often highly wrought memoranda of which he published some five thousand in the daily or weekly press from 1906 to 1936 – there is a hiatus between 1914 and 1921 – touch on “universals”; but they do so with incisive reference to the immediate, to the political, social, ideological, or artistic occasion of the day. Alain’s brevities assume shared knowledge. For any outsider, for French readers after the second world war and the young today, the informing circumstance has faded. Alain’s texts, moreover, were resonant with his teaching voice. With the distancing, with the disappearance of the man, the life-giving force may have drained from the page. Nevertheless, so much wisdom and warmth of feeling endures. Again: why the blank in British and American awareness? (Lessons of the Masters, George Steiner)
Heine died in poverty, deserted by his friends. The sole person to attend his deathbed in his squalid Parisian garret was the composer Berlioz. “I always thought you were an original, Berlioz,” observed the dying man. (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)
During the winter of 1894–95 Hamsun visited Paris for the first time. On his return home someone asked him, “At the beginning, didn’t you have trouble with your French?”
“No,” he replied, “but the French did.” (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)
My long pupilship with Jacques Barzun began when I was a sophomore at Columbia College and he was an instructor teaching a course entitled “The Historical Background of English Literature.” We students were asked to read a long series of excerpts from notable authors, together with Trevelyan’s History of England, but the class discussions took an unexpected turn. At the first meeting, as I remember it, Mr. Barzun introduced Byron’s irregular sonnet beginning “She walks in beauty like the night” to illustrate the method of relating a literary work to the historical setting in which it was produced. The class flung itself upon this example with avidity and, with the instructor’s encouragement, found so much to consider in the piece that its eighteen lines and their historical background remained our topic for most of the term. The lesson I still retain from that course is that the close, patient and unhurried reading of a single text is more profitable than the hasty reading of many. (Theodore Caplow, in Dora B. Weiner and William R. Keylor, eds., From Parnassus: Essays in Honor of Jacques Barzun)
Pour mon goût, voyager c’est faire à la fois un mètre ou deux, s’arrêter et regarder de nouveau un nouvel aspect des mêmes choses. Souvent, aller s’asseoir un peu à droite ou à gauche, cela change tout, et bien mieux que si je fais cent kilomètres. (Propos Sur le Bonheur, Alain)
Carneades used to say that the sons of princes learned nothing rightly but how to manage horses, since in every other exercise everyone gives way to them and lets them win; but a horse, who is neither a flatterer nor a courtier, will throw the son of a king just as he would the son of a porter. (Essays, Montaigne, tr. Donald Frame)
Qui voudrait jouer aux cartes sans risquer jamais de perdre? Voici un vieux roi qui joue avec des courtisans; quand il perd, il se met en colère, et les courtisans le savent bien; depuis que les courtisans ont bien appris à jouer, le roi ne perd jamais. Aussi voyez comme il repousse les cartes. Il se lève, il monte à cheval; il part pour la chasse; mais c’est une chasse de roi, le gibier lui vient dans les jambes; les chevreuils aussi sont courtisans. (22 Janvier 1908, Propos Sur le Bonheur, Alain)
Some months after the end of his term as president, Eisenhower was asked if leaving the White House had affected his golf game. “Yes,” he replied, “a lot more people beat me now.” (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)
During the Peloponnesian War an eclipse occurred when Pericles was about to set out to sea. As the pilot was too terrified to perform his duties, Pericles stepped forward and covered the man’s head with his cloak. “does this frighten you?” he asked. “No,” said the pilot. “Then what difference is there between the two events,” inquired Pericles, “except that the sun is covered by a larger object than my cloak?” (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)
Shortly before Austria went fascist, in 1938, Schuschnigg is reported to have said that 25 per cent of the population were for him, 25 per cent for Hitler, and that the rest would go the way the cat jumped. This principle deserves the name of Schuschnigg’s Constant. The only doubt is whether he did not grossly exaggerate the number of those having opinions. (Jacques Barzun, Of Human Freedom)
After Einstein had gone into exile, a hundred Nazi professors published a book condemning his theory of relativity. Einstein was unconcerned. “If I were wrong,” he said, “one professor would have been enough.” (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)
A Thessalian brought an exceptionally beautiful horse, named Bucephalus, to the Macedonian court, offering to sell it to King Philip. However, when the royal grooms tried to test its paces it proved wild and unmanageable. The young Alexander asked his father for permission to try his skill. Philip reluctantly agreed, saying that if the prince failed to ride Bucephalus he was to pay his father a forfeit equal to its price. Alexander walked quickly to the horse’s head and turned it to face into the sun, for he had noticed that the horse’s own shadow was upsetting it. He calmed it, then mounted it, and Bucephalus obediently showed off his paces.
The court, which had feared for the prince’s safety, broke into loud applause. Philip was overjoyed. He kissed his son, saying, “Seek another kingdom that may be worthy of your abilities, for Macedonia is too small for you.” (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)