Book Review: Triumph and Disaster
Sep. 5th, 2017 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI quite enjoyed Triumph and Disaster, which is a collection of - historical sketches, I guess you could call them, by Stefan Zweig, each on the theme of a great turning point in history and the small "for want of a nail..." details that led events to turn out the way they did.
Waterloo - which Napoleon lost because Marshall Grouchy followed his orders and continued to pursue the Prussians, rather than realize that he must disobey and turn back. The fall of Constantinople - which might have been avoided, except that a postern gate had been forgotten, and left open in the wall. Wilson - giving in to pressure to compromise on a realistic peace treaty, rather than holding firm in his dedication to the Fourteen Points.
I do wonder a bit if this last sketch doesn't suffer from wishful thinking on Zweig's part. He was writing a Jewish writer in interwar Austria, and I think must have yearned achingly for the Treaty of Versailles to turn out differently - for Wilson's dreams of endless peace to come true, rather than World War I slipping ineluctable toward World War II. I am not at all sure I share his belief that Wilson could have created a more lasting peace if he had refused to compromise. Might he not simply have ended up sidelined? The wider structural forces against a lasting peace may simply have been too strong for any one man to overcome.
But even if I don't agree with his historical conclusions - and even in translation, which I know probably mutes his voice - Zweig's writing is beautiful. As Wilson sails away, he says, concluding his sketch, he "will not let his eyes look back on our unfortunate continent, which has been longing for peace and unity for thousands of years and has never achieved it. And once again the eternal vision of a humane world recedes into mist and into the distance."
Waterloo - which Napoleon lost because Marshall Grouchy followed his orders and continued to pursue the Prussians, rather than realize that he must disobey and turn back. The fall of Constantinople - which might have been avoided, except that a postern gate had been forgotten, and left open in the wall. Wilson - giving in to pressure to compromise on a realistic peace treaty, rather than holding firm in his dedication to the Fourteen Points.
I do wonder a bit if this last sketch doesn't suffer from wishful thinking on Zweig's part. He was writing a Jewish writer in interwar Austria, and I think must have yearned achingly for the Treaty of Versailles to turn out differently - for Wilson's dreams of endless peace to come true, rather than World War I slipping ineluctable toward World War II. I am not at all sure I share his belief that Wilson could have created a more lasting peace if he had refused to compromise. Might he not simply have ended up sidelined? The wider structural forces against a lasting peace may simply have been too strong for any one man to overcome.
But even if I don't agree with his historical conclusions - and even in translation, which I know probably mutes his voice - Zweig's writing is beautiful. As Wilson sails away, he says, concluding his sketch, he "will not let his eyes look back on our unfortunate continent, which has been longing for peace and unity for thousands of years and has never achieved it. And once again the eternal vision of a humane world recedes into mist and into the distance."
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Date: 2017-09-05 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-07 12:59 am (UTC)However, I have been having a good time saying Marshall Grouchy. I'm sure it's pronounced differently in French, but nonetheless, Marshall Grouchy.
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Date: 2017-09-07 01:07 am (UTC)