La historia de una utopía fallida: proyectando una Europa cosmopolita y sin fronteras en "El mundo de ayer: memorias de un europeo" de Stefan Zweig

Abstract

Seventy years after his death, and having fallen for some decades into an almost total oblivion, the works of Stefan Zweig enjoy a great success among the reading public; his skills as narrator and poet are praised by critics and readers alike. However, the academy has often –albeit recognizing his appalling success– branded Zweig an ingenuous and superfluous writer, an uncommitted poet hidden within the walls of the Ivory Tower. We must not forget the fact that Stefan Zweig is, after all, a man of his time; a time of change, conflict, and exile; a time which demands responsibility from those who are committed to humanity and its well-being. This M.A. thesis invites to reread and rethink Stefan Zweig’s works from the standpoint of his engagement, that is to say, from a perspective that allows his individual positioning before H/history to emerge. Taking his memoirs –"The World of Yesterday"- as the centrepiece of our discourse, we defend the existence of a project –both ethical and ideological– underlying the whole text. Bearing these premises in mind, this dissertation is divided into three parts. Firstly, we explore the writer’s context during his formative years, the fin-de-siècle Vienna, so as to later develop a brief biographical account. Secondly, and having attested the birth and development of an 'engaged' consciousness in Zweig, we examine the grounds upon which his project was based: its humanistic roots, the safeguarding of liberty, the opposition to nationalism and the cosmopolitan notion of 'the citizen of the world'. These bases throw light onto the particularities of both the historical discourse–according to which the memoires unfold as the story of a failed utopia- and the identity narrative of the text –whereby the notion of the 'citizen of the world' builds up as a sort of resistance identity. All in all, Zweig's memoires become the ultimate and most personal legacy of their author, delivering a 'truth' that must not be forgotten, a necessary warning for future generations. From this perspective, the third part engages in the critical assessment of Zweig's project, exploring its limitations and possibilities regarding the current debates on cosmopolitanism, universalism and the construction of Europe. Thus, we attempt to bring Zweig closer to the present: a voice opposed to violence and committed to difference, liberty and mutual understanding.