My Life As German And Jew
Cód:
491_9781443726214
MY LIFE AS GERMAN AND JEW by JACOB WASSERMANN. Originally pblished in 1933. DISREGARDING my mental habit of moving among images and figures, impelled by an inner need and by the urgency of the times, I would render an account of the most perplexing side of my life, that which concerns my Jewishness and my existence as a Jew. Not as a Jew in the simple sense but as a German Jew a double concept which even to the disinterested lays bare copious misunderstandings, tragedies, conflicts, quarrels and sufferings. A delicate subject always, whether it was treated diffidently or freely or defiantly, one side seeking to extenuate, the other openly malicious. Today it is an incendiary focus. I am very anxious to present my point of view. Nor shall I take for granted anything that I previously regarded as demonstrated. Thus I shall depend on no proof, no vindication or in-dictment, nor any sort of constructive eloquence. I shall cite experience only. An imperative urge has driven me to seek a clear understanding of the nature of that discord which runs through all my activity and being, and of which the years have made me ever more painfully aware and conscious. While still im mature, man is much less susceptible to certain perplexities than in his maturity. Then, to the extent that he is devoted to a cause or an idea fundamentally the same thing he gradually escapes from that delirious state in which his ego possesses the magic of absoluteness and in which the world and humanity, by virtue of a pleasant and half - voluntary delusion, appear subservient to his dormant will in its condition of emotion born change. To the extent that ones own per son ceases to be a miracle and to constitute a purpose, until at last it becomes a scarcely per ceived intermediate element the shadow, so to speak, of a body unknown and unknowable to that extent does the difficulty and perilousness of life with and among men increase, as does the mystery of all that we call reality and ex perience.
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