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Hochroterd
May 8, 1932
Dear Arnold Zweig
Where am I writing from? From a farm cottage on the side of a hill, forty-five minutes by car from the Berggasse, which my daughter and her American friend1 (she owns the car) have acquired and furnished for their week ends. We had expected that your return home from Palestine would take you through Vienna, and then we would have insisted on your seeing it.
You have been very generous by giving me your picture, which admittedly doesn't show me much more than your forehead, with the photograph of your author's cage2 which I shall not get to see, with the news that your eyes have improved, and with those few drops from your cauldron in which at the moment so many new and interesting stories are simmering, all of which I should like to read although my days are beginning to be numbered.
You are right, I have just celebrated my birthday and at this moment I am laboriously defending myself against the obligations ensuing from it. But to return to you: how strange this tragic and fantastic country you have just visited must have appeared to you! To think that this strip of our native earth is associated with no other progress, no discovery or invention-the Phoenicians are said to have invented glass and the alphabet (both doubtful!), the island of Crete is said to have given us Minoan art, Pergamon reminds us of parchment, Magnesia of the magnet, and so on ad infinitum- but Palestine has produced nothing but religions, sacred frenzies, presumptuous attempts to conquer the outer world of