82. Ahasver

One of my fellow students, an energetic, determined Jewish student, said to me - it was about twenty years ago in Vienna - when we were discussing anti-Semitism: "Not so long ago, I would almost have taken it for granted that we liberal Jews would express our affiliation to the peoples among whom we live and with whom we feel one by joining a Christian denomination. But today, in the face of anti-Semitism, I would rather have two fingers of my hands cut off than take such a step."

There has never been a Jewish question for me. My development was also such that when part of the Austrian national student body became anti-Semitic, it seemed to me to be a mockery of all the educational achievements of the new era. I have never been able to judge people by anything other than the individual, personal character traits that I get to know in them. Whether someone was Jewish or not: I was always completely indifferent. I may well say that this sentiment has remained with me to this day. And I have never been able to see anything in anti-Semitism other than a view that points to inferiority of spirit, poor ethical judgment and distastefulness in its bearers.

The cultural historian of the last decades of the nineteenth century - or the first decades of the twentieth? will have to investigate how it was possible that in the age of scientific thought a current could emerge that flies in the face of every healthy way of thinking. We, who live and have lived in the midst of these struggles, can only look back with horror at a number of experiences that anti-Semitism has given us.

I have often come to know him, the type of modern Jew with the mood expressed in the words of my aforementioned fellow student. Robert Jaffé has now portrayed this type in Emil Zlotnicki, the hero of his novel "Ahasver". He has portrayed him with all the warmth and unity that springs from the bitterest life experiences, from gloomy disappointments. On every page of the novel, one senses the deep inner truth of the characterization and the description of typical facts. A piece of contemporary history unfolds before our souls, portrayed by someone who was there with his whole soul as this story unfolded. This means that an individually perceived psychology gives the novel a highly interesting coloration.

"Ahasver" is therefore a novel about contemporary social life. Social trends are portrayed in rich colors, trends that have a deep impact on the lives of individuals. The fate of an interesting individual appears in a characteristic way on the background of contemporary culture. Jaffé's art reads in the drawing of the individual life, which receives its pleasure and pain from the great opposites of humanity like an innate gift. In this sense, he is a psychologist. He is a psychologist in the good sense that he portrays full human beings of the present, who at the same time contain something typical in their existence.

Anyone who wants to delve deeper into the subtle ramifications of the life of the soul, as it appears as the result of often unpleasant, deplorable, but all the more noteworthy features of contemporary culture, will have to follow the novel with the greatest interest.

Perhaps anti-Semitism cannot be condemned more harshly, but more convincingly because of the meaningful artistic evidence, than it is here.

However, Jaffé's artistic sense of individually experienced, inwardly true psychology is not yet backed up by any significant artistic ability. Characters and situations are unplastic, and the composition of the novel leaves much to be desired. I think it would be reckless to draw conclusions about the author's artistic future from this book. In the highest sense of the word, the great intention must be appealing. However, the work betrays the beginner on every page. People appear and disappear, situations come and go without much \probability, without deeper motivation. Friends who have not seen each other for a long time meet because the author has to bring them together to show the clash of social opposites. But then they immediately talk about socio-political, philosophical theories of life without sharing anything individual.

Don't misunderstand me. I am the last person who wants to ban such conversations from literature. I even believe that serious people should enjoy works of art that portray people whose interests go beyond the circle of even the more mundane. We share our views in life too, if we are not exactly beer philistines or members of coffee parties. So why shouldn't this happen in works of art? But it doesn't happen as suddenly as Jaffé does in life. For example, it takes me, who am not exactly a non-theoretical person, at least fifteen minutes to ask a friend I haven't seen for a long time how his philosophical or socio-political beliefs have changed.

But when Robert Jaffé comes to descriptions that demand psychological subtlety, lyrical feeling, then he becomes highly attractive. Then the poet reveals himself in every line.

All in all: in "Ahasver" we have a psychological contemporary novel which, despite all its weaknesses, despite the author's novice status, can only be read with the greatest interest.