Hans Sahl: Memoirs of a Moralist

Hans Sahl (1902-1993) masterfully balances the personal and the historical. “If not you,” runs the question that spurred his Memoirs of a Moralist (1989), “who else is still alive who can report how Brecht spat and Thomas Mann cleared his throat? If not you, who, then, can claim he was present before Nineveh fell, and…

Oh, how familiar, these encouragements, these appeals to the conscience, that you should write something you no longer wish to write; the flattering comment intended to persuade, dropped between the appetizer and the main course, in which you stretch and luxuriate as in a champagne bath: If you don’t, who will?  Yes, if not you,…