Before Stefan Zweig took his own life, he recorded-with the pitilessaccuracy that springs from the coldness of genuine despair-what the world had given him and then done to him. He records the pleasure of fame and the curse of humiliation. He tells of the paradise from which he had been banished-the paradise of cultured [gehildeten] enjoyment, of meetings with like-minded and equally famous people, of infinite interest in the dead geniusesof humanity; penetrating into their private lives and gathering their personalrelics was the most enjoyable pursuit of an inactive existence. And then hetells of how he suddenly found himself facing a reality in which there wasnothing left to enjoy, in which those as famous as himself either avoided himor pitied him, and in which cultured [gehildete] curiosity about the past wascontinuously and unbearably disturbed by the tumult of the present, the murderous thunder of bombardment, the infinite humiliations at the hands of the authorities.