Wes Anderson’s ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ Promises to Make Am ericans Rediscover the Books of Stefan Zweig Whether you like his films or not, it’s difficult to deny that Wes Anderson has had an enormous
influence on our culture. There are the movies, the fact that he chooses to always work with Bill Murray (something I especially look forward to in his films), and the whimsical plots that have drawn comparisons to and borrowed from everybody from Orson Welles to Whit Stillman. Then there is Anderson’s influence on popular style and taste in general: think of the thousands of college kids in the ’00s who discovered t he thundering guitar intro to The Creation’s “Making the Band of Outsiders catalog, and Jason Schwartzman’s Time”because of its use in Rushmore , the Band
entire career. In terms of filmmakers, Wes Anderson is about as zeitgeist as they get. I’m not quite sure it was Anderson’s original intent to be Hollywood’s most erudite cultural influencer, but it happened somewhere along the way. People want to look like they’re or not),, and long before everything in your life could be Tenenbaums (whether it’s it’sHalloween or not) compared to a Portlandia skit, Wes Anderson films were the late-Gen X / early-Gen Y cliché of the day. Yet I’m of the mind that while w hile Anderson could abuse that influence, he continues to have impeccable taste. Beyond Schwartzman’s fame and bringing forgotten mod bands into the
limelight, his newest project promises to get Americans to read the Austrian author and playwright Stefan Zweig’s work. “It’s more or less plagiarism,” Anderson recently told the press about the huge influence Zweig’s work had on his latest film, Grand Budapest Hotel . Zweig, who Anderson pointed out was among the biggest writers in Europe in the 1920s and ’30s, never attained the sort of popularity in America that he did on his own continent. But hopefully because of Anderson — as well as
publishers likes Pushkin likes Pushkin Press and NYRB and NYRB Classics, which Classics, which have both put out beautiful reissues of his work — the time has come for Zweig to enter into America’s literary conversation. Zweig’s story, unfortunately, will never quite have the rosy glow of most Anderson films no matter how many of his books sell, considering the tragic way his life ended. Constantly in exile beginning in the early 1930s, the Jewish author and his wife, Lotte Altmann, escaped his home country of Austria to avoid Nazi persecution. As the couple roamed from England to America before finally ending up in Brazil, Zweig felt more and more hopeless about the course humanity was taking, as well as his own constant running. In his suicide note, he exp lained, “to start everything anew after a man’s 60th year requires special powers, and my own power has been expended afte r years of
wandering homeless. I thus prefer to end my life at the right time, upright, as a man for w hom cultural work has always been his purest happiness and personal freedom — the most precious of possessions on this earth.” Zweig and Lotte were found dead from a barbiturate overdose, holding
hands in their bed. “*I+f you read the Stefan Zweig books,” Anderson told Matt Zoller Seitz in his book, The Wes Anderson Collection Collection,, “practically every story he tells begins w ith somebody telling somebody else about it.” This was the first time I had noticed Anderson mentioning Zweig as an influence; most often, I see the director’s work compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald and (especially) J.D. Salinger. His
appreciation for literature is especially apparent in the old, albeit fictional, fictional, books that appear in all of his films. It films. It was obvious to me that the director had an interest in books, but the Zweig nod was a bit of a surprise. Although his influence wasn’t obvious to me, nothing would please me more t han a Zweig renaissance fueled by Anderson’s new movie. From his unforgettable stories (compiled in a beautifully presented Pushkin Press volume) to volume) to Chess Game, the haunting short novel that serves
as his only real commentary on Nazism and his own condition at the time of the book’s writing (it was sent off to his publisher days before he took his own life), his work deserves to find many new readers. And although exactly how Anderson translates Zweig’s influence to Grand Budapest Hotel remains Hotel remains to be seen, here’s hoping his own cultural capital pays off for this long overlooked
master. THE SOCIETY OF THE CROSSED KEYS Wes Anderson’s new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is “immensely charming” (Independent), “like a puppet show with human marionettes, or like an aesthete’s production of a Feydeau farce—with added ski chases” (Observer). It was also inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig, so we’re really excited to be publishing The Society of the Crossed Keys—containing an exclusive conversation with Wes Anderson about Stefan Zweig, and his personal selection from Zweig’s work. The UK release for the Grand Budapest Hotel is 7 th March. And we’re equally looking forward to attending one of the special screenings of the film, put on by the brilliant Secret Cinema. The Secret Cinema’s Grand Budapest Hotel is now open for bookings.
Meanwhile, aspiring members of the Society of the Crossed Keys are invited to submit their applications. Zweig fue hijo de una familia judía acomodada: su padre, Moritz Zweig, fue un acaudalado fabricante textil; y su madre, Ida Brettauer Zweig, hija de una familia de banqueros italianos. Estudió en la Universidad de Viena en la que obtuvo el título de doctor en filosofía. También realizó cursos sobre historia de la literatura, que le permitieron codearse con la vanguardia cultural vienesa de la época. En este ambiente, hacia 1901, publicó sus primeros poemas, una colección titulada Silberne Saiten ("Cuerdas de plata"), mostrando la influencia de Hugo von Hofmannsthal y Rainer Maria Rilke. En 1904, apareció su primera novela, género de especial frecuencia en su carrera. Zweig desarrolló un estilo literario muy particular, que aunaba una cuidadosa construcción psicológica con una brillante técnica narrativa. Además de sus propias creaciones en teatro, periodismo y ensayo, Zweig trabajó en traducciones de autores como Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire y Émile Verhaeren. En 1910, visitó La India y en 1912, Norteamérica. En 1913 se estableció en Salzburgo, donde habrá de vivir durante casi veinte años. Durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, y luego de haber servido en el ejército austríaco por algún tiempo (como empleado de la Oficina de Guerra, pues había sido declarado como no apto para el combate) se exilió a Zúrich gracias a sus convicciones antibelicistas influenciadas por Romain Rolland, entre otros. De este período es Jeremías, obra antibélica que escribió mientras estaba en el ejército, publicada durante su exilio en Suiza. Esta pieza teatral bíblica inspirada en la guerra europea fue exhibida en Nueva York hacia 1939. De inmediato se radicó en Suiza, donde trabajó como corresponsal para la prensa libre vienesa, y produjo algunos trabajos en diarios húngaros. Gracias a sus amistades, entre las que estaban
Eugen Relgis, Hermann Hesse y Pierre-Jean Jouve pudo publicar sus visiones apartidistas sobre la turbulenta realidad europea de aquellos días. Conoció a Thomas Mann y a Max Reinhardt. La solvencia económica de su familia le permitió su gran pasión: viajar; así adquirió la gran consciencia de tolerancia que ha quedado plasmada en sus obras, las primeras en protestar en contra de la intervención de Alemania en la guerra. Después del armisticio de 1918 pudo retornar a Austria: volvió a Salzburgo, donde en 1920 se casó con Friderike Maria Burger von Winternitz, una admiradora de su obra, a quien había conocido ocho años antes. Como intelectual comprometido, Zweig se enfrentó con vehemencia contra las doctrinas nacionalistas y el espíritu revanchista de la época. De todo eso escribió en una larga serie de novelas y dramas, en lo que fue el período más productivo de su vida. El relato histórico Momentos estelares de la humanidad, que publicó en 1927 se mantiene entre sus libros más exitosos. En 1928, Zweig viajó a la Unión Soviética. Dos años después visitó a Albert Einstein en su exilio en Princeton. Zweig cultivaría la amistad de personalidades como Máximo Gorki, Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, y Arturo Toscanini. En 1934, publicó su triple biografía Mental Healers, a la vez un ensayo sobre los orígenes de la Ciencia Cristiana (religión espiritualista fundada por Mary Baker Eddy) y el psicoanálisis. Tras el aumento de la influencia nacional socialista en Austria, Zweig se trasladó un tiempo a Londres; ya por entonces se vio en dificultades para publicar en Alemania, pese a lo cual pudo escribir el libreto para Die schweigsame Frau, ópera del compositor Richard Strauss. Definido como «no ario», fue defendido por Strauss, quien se negó a eliminar el nombre de Zweig como libretista del cartel de la obra Die Schweigsame Frau (La mujer silenciosa), estrenado en Dresde. Hitler rehusó ir al estreno, como estaba planeado, y poco tiempo después, tras sólo tres representaciones, la obra fue prohibida. La religión judía no fue parte de su educación. En una entrevista sostuvo: "Mi madre y mi padre eran judíos sólo por un accidente de nacimiento".
Sin embargo, una de sus novelas, El Candelabro Enterrado narra la historia de un judío, que hizo del objetivo de su vida el preservar la menorá. Si bien sus ensayos en política fueron publicados por la casa Neue Freie Presse, cuyo editor literario era el líder sionista Theodor Herzl, Zweig nunca se sintió atraído por ese movimiento. En 1934, inició viajes por Sudamérica. En 1936, sus libros fueron prohibidos en Alemania por el régimen nazi. En 1938, se divorció de su primera esposa. Al año siguiente se casó con Charlotte Elisabeth Altmann y, tras el inicio de la guerra, Zweig se trasladó a París. Poco después, viajó a Inglaterra, en donde obtuvo la ciudadanía. Vivió en Bath y Londres antes de viajar a los Estados Unidos, República Dominicana, Argentina y Paraguay, con motivo de un ciclo de conferencias.
En Argentina, recibió especial atención del periodista Bernardo Verbitsky, quien escribirá un ensayo acerca del visitante: Significación de Stefan Zweig (1942). Después de la publicación de su Novela de ajedrez en 1941 se mudó a Brasil, donde escribió La tierra del futuro (1941). En esta obra, examina la historia, economía y cultura del país. Citando a Américo Vespucio, describe cómo los primeros navegantes europeos vieron al Nuevo Mundo: "Si el paraíso existe en algún lado del planeta, ¡no podría estar muy lejos de aquí!" En Petrópolis, junto a su esposa, desesperados ante el futuro de Europa y su cultura (después de la caída de Singapur), pues creían en verdad que el nazismo se extendería a todo el planeta, un 22 de febrero, se suicidaron. Zweig había escrito: "Creo que es mejor finalizar en un buen momento y de pie una vida en la cual la labor intelectual significó el gozo más puro y la libertad personal el bien más preciado sobre la Tierra." Su autobiografía El mundo de ayer, con publicación póstuma hacia 1944, es un panegírico a la cultura europea que consideraba para siempre perdida. Obra
Trabajó durante más de veinte años en su Momentos estelares de la humanidad que retrata los 14 acontecimientos de la historia mundial más importantes desde su punto de vista. Concedía particular importancia al ritmo del relato; en sus propias palabras: "... el inesperado éxito de mis libros proviene, según creo, en última instancia de un vicio personal, a saber: que soy un lector impaciente y de mucho temperamento. Me irrita toda facundia, todo lo difuso y vagamente exaltado, lo ambiguo, lo innecesariamente morboso de una novela, de una biografía, de una exposición intelectual. Sólo un libro que se mantiene siempre, página tras página sobre su nivel y que arrastra al lector hasta la última línea sin dejarle tomar aliento, me proporciona un perfecto deleite. Nueve de cada diez libros que caen en mis manos, los encuentro sobrecargados de descripciones superfluas, diálogos extensos y figuras secundarias inútiles, que les quitan tensión y les restan dinamismo." Si bien fue uno de los más conocidos y reputados escritores entre 1930 y 1940, desde su muerte y a pesar de la importancia de su obra, ha sido gradualmente olvidado. Existen importantes colecciones de Zweig en la Biblioteca Británica y en la Universidad Estatal de Nueva York en Fredonia. La primera es el resultado de una donación de sus apoderados en mayo de 1986 e incluye una gran variedad de elementos de sorprendente rareza, entre ellos el catálogo de las obras mozartianas de propio puño y letra del compositor (Verzeichnis). Zweig escribió novelas, historias cortas, ensayos (políticos o literarios), dramas y varias biografías, de las cuales la más famosa es la de María Estuardo. Fue publicada en alemán como Maria Stuart y en inglés como (The) Queen of Scots or Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. En algún momento, sus trabajos fueron publicados en los países anglosajones bajo el seudónimo de "Stephen Branch" (traducción literal de su apellido), en tiempos donde el sentimiento antigermánico estaba en su apogeo. Su biografía de la reina María Antonieta fue luego adaptada a
una película de Hollywood protagonizada por la actriz de la Metro Goldwyn Mayer Norma Shearer en el papel principal. Cabe destacar su especial aportación al estudio de Dostoievski, al que admiraba profundamente hasta considerarlo como uno de los más grandes escritores de la historia. Títulos publicados Teatro
Thersite, 1907 Les Guirlandes précoces, 1907 Jeremias, 1916 La casa al borde del mar, 1911 Poemas
Cuerdas de plata, 1901 Las primeras coronas, 1906 Ficción
Ardiente secreto Caleidoscopio, conjunto de relatos breves. La estrella bajo el bosque, 1903 Los prodigios de la vida, 1903 En la nieve, 1904 El amor de Erika Ewald, 1904 La Marcha, 1904 La Cruz Leporella Amok o el loco de Malasia, 1922 Los ojos del hermano eterno, 1922 La confusión de los sentimientos, 1926 Carta de una desconocida, 1927 Buchmendel, 1929 Veinticuatro horas en la vida de una mujer, 1929
La piedad peligrosa o La impaciencia del corazón 1939 Novela de ajedrez, 1941 (Schachnovelle), su novela más famosa, sobre la neurosis obsesiva que un hombre desarrolla por el ajedrez durante su cautiverio en manos de la Gestapo. Biografías
Émile Verhaeren, 1910 Fouché, el genio tenebroso, 1929 La curación por el Espíritu, 1931 (en alemán: Heilung durch den Geist, 1931; en inglés "Mental Healers"). Es un corto trabajo en el que relaciona, y a la vez trata en forma individual, las biografías de Franz Mesmer, hipnotista del siglo XVIII, Mary Baker Eddy, fundadora de la Ciencia Cristiana, y Sigmund Freud, padre del psicoanálisis. María Antonieta, 1932 María Estuardo, 1934 Erasmo de Rotterdam, 1934 Conquistador de los mares: la historia de Magallanes, 1938 Romain Rolland: el hombre y su obra, 1921 Paul Verlaine Balzac: La novela de una vida, 1920, publicado en forma individual o incluido en el libro en tres partes Tres Maestros: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoievski. Castellio contra Calvino, Conciencia contra Violencia Confusión: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D Momentos estelares de la humanidad (1927) La lucha contra el demonio, Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche Montaigne, libro póstumo inconcluso previo al suicidio. Tres poetas de su vida: Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoi Autobiografía
El mundo de ayer, publicado tras su muerte. No ficción
Brasil: Un país de futuro Momentos estelares de la humanidad Magallanes: La aventura más audaz de la humanidad
El gran biógrafo intelectual, el hombre que cifró la historia de la humanidad en un puñado de momentos estelares no pudo haber dejado este mundo sin una buena declaración de intenciones. Según se ha podido saber con motivo del setenta aniversario de su suicidio, el novelista austríaco Stefan Zweig tomó la decisión "en el momento apropiado", tras haber visto a Europa, su "patria espiritual", entonces inmersa en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, "destruirse a si misma", según una nota de que ve la luz ahora. El manuscrito, redactado en alemán, fue publicado el miércoles en Internet por la Biblioteca Nacional de Israel. Zweig huyó a Brasil en 1936, tres años después de que los nazis hubiesen tomado el poder en Alemania y dos antes de que invadiesen su país natal. El escritor ingirió un veneno letal con su mujer, Lotte, en la ciudad de Petrópolis, a 66 kilómetros de Río de Janeiro. En la nota, encabezada con el portugués "declaraçao" (declaración) y luego desarrollada en alemán, Zweig explica que dice adiós a este mundo "de propia voluntad y con la mente clara" y agradece a Brasil su hospitalidad. "Cada día he aprendido a amar más este país, y no habría reconstruido mi vida en ningún otro lugar después de que el mundo de mi propio lenguaje se hundiese y se perdiese para mí, y mi patria espiritual, Europa, se destruyese a si misma", escribió. Pero, continua, rehacer una vida pasados los sesenta años de edad requiere "poderes especiales", cuando "su propio poder se ha gastado tras años de errar sin hogar". Prefiero, pues, poner fin a mi vida en el momento apropiado, erguido "Prefiero, pues, poner fin a mi vida en el momento apropiado, erguido, como un hombre cuyo trabajo cultural siempre ha sido su felicidad más pura y su libertad personal. Su más preciada posesión en esta tierra", argumenta antes de desear a todos sus amigos que "vivan para ver el amanecer tras esta larga noche". La nota fue recogida por la policía brasileña, que tuvo que recurrir a un doctor judío local para traducirla del alemán. El médico pidió entonces quedarse con el original por su significado histórico, pero la policía se negó, porque lo necesitaba como evidencia en el caso.El mismo doctor compró la nota veinte años después a un policía jubilado y en los noventa la donó a la Biblioteca Nacional de Israel, ubicada en Jerusalén. Stefan Zweig es sin duda, uno de los grandes escritores del siglo XX, y su obra ha sido traducida a más de cincuenta idiomas. La cultivada Viena donde nació Zweig, de acomodada familia judía, oriunda de Moravia, era una ciudad única en el mundo. En este ambiente supercivilizado se forma Zweig, que ha sido uno de los más populares escritores de este curioso período comprendido entre las dos guerras mundiales. Su vocación literaria es muy temprana. En la gramática latina, siendo estudiante, esconde versos de Rilke. El primer ensayo en prosa, que remite al periódico más prestigioso de Viena es aceptado. No tarda en traducir poemas de Verhaeren para las revistas y publicar sus primeros versos de bachiller: Cuerdas de plata.
Tras obtener el título de doctor en Filosofía, reside un año en París. Luego va a Londres y se siente fascinado por la obra del poeta William Blake. Viaja por España, Italia y Holanda. De vuelta conoce en Leipzig a Kippenberg, el director de la prestigiosa editorial Insel, y traba con él una amistad que nunca declina. La primera novela corta de Zweig, escrita en los años 1910 y 1911, es Ardiente secreto. Visita la India, Norteamérica y Panamá. En 1917, la editorial Insel publica Jeremías. En 1919 vuelve a Austria. Publica Tres maestros. En 1921 aparecen Los ojos del hermano eterno y Amok. Durante la primera guerra mundial tuvo que exiliarse a Zurich a causa de sus ideas pacifistas. Desde 1919 a 1935 Zweig fija su residencia en Salzburgo. En 1928 se casa con su secretaria. En 1935 se establece como exiliado en Inglaterra. A poco de estallar la segunda guerra mundial busca refugio al otro lado del Atlántico y se establece en Brasil. Convencido de la definitiva destrucción de los valores culturales y espirituales europeos bajo la bota totalitaria del nazismo de Hitler, se quita la vida, junto a su esposa el 22 de febrero de 1942. El trágico fin de su vida ocurrió en Petrópolis, estado de Río de Janeiro. Su entierro, celebrado en Río con honores de jefe de estado, fue un acto multitudinario. Los centenares de miles de ejemplares de sus obras que se han vendido en todo el mundo atestiguan que Stefan Zweig es uno de los autores más leídos del siglo XX. Zweig se ha labrado una fama de escritor completo y se ha destacado en todos los géneros. Como novelista refleja la lucha de los hombres bajo el dominio de las pasiones con un estilo liberado de todo tinte folletinesco. Sus tensas narraciones reflejan la vida en los momentos de crisis, a cuyo resplandor se revelan los caracteres; sus biografías, basadas en la más rigurosa investigación de las fuentes históricas, ocultan hábilmente su fondo erudito tras una equilibrada composición y un admirable estilo, que confieren a estos libros categoría de obra de arte. En sus biografías es el atrevido pero devoto admirador del genio, cuyo misterio ha desvelado para comprenderlo y amarlo con un afecto íntimo y profundo. En sus ensayos analiza problemas culturales, políticos y sociológicos del pasado o del presente con hondura psicológica, filosófica y literaria. Pero, ¿por qué han tenido tanta resonancia y tanto éxito sus obras? El mismo Zweig nos da la clave en su Autobiografía: " ... el inesperado éxito de mis libros proviene, según creo, en última instancia de un vicio personal, a saber: que soy un lector impaciente y de mucho temperamento. Me irrita toda facundia, todo lo difuso y vagamente exaltado, lo ambiguo, lo innecesariamente morboso de una novela, de una biografía, de una exposición intelectual. Sólo un libro que se mantiene siempre, página tras página sobre su nivel y que arrastra al lector hasta la última linea sin dejarle tomar aliento, me proporciona un perfecto deleite. Nueve de cada diez libros que caen en mis manos, los encuentro sobrecargados de descripciones superfluas, diálogos extensos y figuras secundarias inútiles, que les quitan tensión y les restan dinamismo". Toda una época de guerras y de esplendor a un mismo tiempo encuentra un fiel reflejo en la obra polifacética, brillante y en cierto sentido única de Stefan Zweig. Leaving the apartment of her young lover, the wife of a wealthy lawyer is seized by a sudden sense of foreboding. At the bottom of the stairs a woman is waiting, a woman who will stalk, blackmail and intimidate her into a state of suicidal despair. “Fear”, a 1920 novella which charts every fluctuation of its heroine’s inner turmoil and ends with an ingenious twist, is typical of Stefan Zweig’s fiction, which intently examines a single obsession in a narrow social milieu. Whether
enacting the delirium of a compulsive gambler or the even more dangerous game of sexual grooming, the narrative has a propulsive force that’s impossible to resist—the cerebral equivalent of being plunged into a vortex of derangement by an Atlantic roller. Like many Zweig admirers I first encountered this Austro-Hungarian author (1881-1942) through his novel “Beware of Pity”. His work was out of print in Britain, but I was lent a tatty American
paperback by John Gielgud, whose partner was Hungarian and mad about Zweig. An unremittingly tense parable about emotional blackmail, this is a book, like Ford Madox Ford’s “The Good Soldier”, which turns every reader into a fanatic. (As I write, the friend of a friend is rationing himself to a page a day because he can’t bear to reach the end.) The fan club has some high-
profile members, including the authors Flora Fraser and Antony Beevor, the actor Colin Firth and the singer Neil Tennant. Firth says he experienced “the thrill of feeling you have this forgotten masterpiece in your hand that no one else has discovered. I was riveted by it —the way the strange pathology of the story takes the lid off what might just look like romantic love.” Zweig’s readability—one blogger calls it “moreishness”—made him one of the most popular
writers of the early 20th century all over the world, with translations into 30 languages. His lives of Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette were international bestsellers, and there were English editions of his poems, travel books, translations and studies of authors including Balzac, Dickens, Stendhal and Tolstoy. In France, where he still has a large, avid circle of readers, there are Livre de Poche editions of all the major works, but in Britain, apart from a small flurry of reprints around his centenary in 1981, Zweig long ago vanished from view. Since 2000, however, Pushkin Press, which specialises in foreign classics, has been slowly reintroducing him in stylish, palm-size editions, while its American equivalent, New York Review Books, has published three works. The latest of these is “The Post Office Girl”, a posthumous, unnamed and unfinished novel which came out in 1982 in Germany and France with a phrase from the text as its title, “Intoxication of Metamorphosis”. Just out in Britain from Sort of Books, it’s a flawed but fascinating fable about the power of money —“mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don’t”—with obvious topical appeal. It was recently Radio 4’s “Book at Bedtime”, and with its promotional tag of “Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde” has strong film potential (there’s even a “Pretty Woman” makeover scene). In March Pushkin are publishing “Compulsion”, a trilogy of stories, which may seem disappointingly minor to the non -fan but has striking biographical interest for the aficionado. Later this ye ar Pushkin will reissue Zweig’s searing memoir “The World of Yesterday”, and their translator, the splendid Anthea Bell, is also at work on an English edition of a rediscovered love story, “Resistance to Reality”. Hailed as “un événement” when it was published in France last winter, it’s one more reason to predict a Zweig resurgence.
The second son of a millionaire textile manufacturer and a socialite, Stefan Zweig grew up in Vienna’s golden age. He belonged to a liberal Jewish elite which included Mahler, Schoenberg, Max Reinhardt and Arthur Schnitzler. Zweig and Schnitzler have much in common, from their portrayal of neurosis in the novella form (they were friends and disciples of Freud) to their studies of the faux-polymath Casanova. But unlike the aimless, amoral Schnitzler, Zweig was driven by a missionary zeal to make the world a better place. He is “The Incarnation of Humanism” of Clive James’s essay in “Cultural Amnesia”, one of the thinkers and artists who helped to define the 20th
century. As a young aesthete follower of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Zweig published his first book of poems by the age of 19. He then switched allegiance to the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren, a
Whitmanesque idealist, but after moving to Paris he made a more enduring guru of the French writer Romain Rolland, who consolidated Zweig’s faith in a united Europe. (He wrote biographies of both.) However, it was Freud—“the exemplar of a young man’s dreams”—who most influenced
his writing. Zweig himself acknowledged that his fascination for psychological problems was the source of both his fiction and biographies; and as well as inventing stories that part-resemble Freudian case histories, he often used the device of a frame narrator, a sympathetic ear to whom the protagonist confesses his or her secrets. Zweig was in Vienna when the Great War began, but joined Rolland and a group of pacifists and humanists in Switzerland striving for a new order —what he called “intellectual internationalism”. (His ethical arguments for peace are voiced in conversations between a painter and his wife in “Compulsion”, which also expresses the patriotic guilt and isolation casting shadows on the healing landscape of Zweig’s own Swiss refuge.) The deprivations of po st-war Vienna disgusted
him, and in 1919 he installed himself in a house in Salzburg, and married Frederika von Winternitz, a young writer with two daughters, who had left her husband to be with him. The 1920s saw Zweig’s sales and standing soar with a string of classic novellas: “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, “Amok”, “Fear”, “Confusion of Sentiments” and “Twenty -Four Hours in the Life of a Woman”, a mini-masterpiece about the fever of addiction and of middle-aged infatuation.
Taking Maupassant as his model, Zweig gave his stories the substance of full-length novels, often condensing a manuscript of 100,000 words by half to charge the atmosphere further. I can’t think of a writer who is more successful at depicting amour fou—what one critic describes as “sex and madness breaking through the lacquered screen of upper- bourgeois society”—nowhere more grippingly than in “Amok” in which a doctor, a Conradesque loner, is tipped into “a sort of human rabies” by an unattainable colonial wife who comes to him for an abortion.
In January 1933, as Hitler rose to power, Zweig was working on a collaboration with Richard Strauss, who had appointed him as his librettist after the death of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. An order had been issued to German theatres not to produce any works in which a Jew had participated, but Hitler, whose esteem for Strauss was enough to dent his anti-Semitism, sanctioned the partnership. “The Silent Woman”, based on Zweig’s translation of Ben Jonson’s
play, was staged in Salzburg two years later, but banned after only two performances, along with the rest of his work. Zweig had been harshly criticised at the t ime for not using his celebrity to take a stand against Nazism, but for all his humanitarianism he had always removed himself from politics, even to the point of not using his vote. When the Nazis searched his Salzburg house Zweig was outraged, seeing it as a violation of the rights he held sacred. In 1934 he left Germany for good, choosing a life for himself in the “civil, courteous, unexcited, hateless atmosphere” of London. It was here that Zweig wrote “Beware of Pity”. He had left his wife for his secretary, Lotte Altmann, a German Jewish refugee 27 years his junior —which may explain why guilt is portrayed with such heartfelt immediacy in the novel. What shaped this story —that of a paralysed 17-yearold girl who ensnares an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer by appealing to his sense of duty—were Zweig’s weekly meetings with the 83-year-old Freud, also exiled in London. Human compassion
has been examined over the centuries by philosophers and psychologists (most recently by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor in “On Kindness”). But only Zweig could have turned an abstract
analysis of emotion with symbolic political undertones and autobiographical resonance into a sustained drama. It took genius to make Edith, the object of pity, extremely unendearing—a spoilt, self-dramatising, manipulative hysteric. In her introduction to the American edition, Joan Acocella
expresses wonder at the originality of the scenes between the maimed, sexually aroused girl and her unwilling cavalier, torn between pity and recoil. “The great psychologists of love (Stendhal, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Turgenev) never went further than this.”
Having persuaded Frederika to give him a divorce, Zweig was living in Bath and about to make Lotte his second wife when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. To him, this was the end: “Europe is finished, our world destroyed.” The couple married a week later, and took British citizenship, but
the fall of France brought peril even closer, and in July 1940 the Zweigs sailed for the United States, abandoning everything, even vital notes for future books. In hotels and rented houses in and around New York, Zweig wrote his autobiography “The World of Yesterday”— yesterday being the “world of security” represented by the Austro-Hungary of his childhood, on which he could not give up. Exile was agony to Zweig—“no longer a thing of choice but a flight from the hounds”— and hoping to regain peace of mind in a place he loved, he and Lotte sailed to Brazil, which he had discovered on a lecture tour. The voyage inspired a brilliant story about monomania, “The Royal Game”, and
once settled in a house at Petrópolis, Zweig resumed a decade-long project, his biography of Balzac. But even productivity could not assuage his sense of irreversible catastrophe. Manuscripts of “The World of Yesterday” and “The Royal Game”, typed by his wife, were sent with a last letter
to his New York publisher and then, on February 23rd 1942, he and Lotte took massive doses of veronal, and were found dead in bed, lying hand-in-hand. ¿Por qué se suicidó Stefan Zweig en Brasil en febrero de 1942? L a segunda guerra mundial, la cruel persecución de los judíos, la pérdida de la patria austríaca anexionada por Hitler contribuyeron sin duda a su decisión, pero no fueron los únicos motivos. Jean-Jacques Lafaye ha tratado de reconstruir del interior, el itinerario psicológico del rico vienés, coleccionista refinado, autor de éxito, pacifista convencido, progresista naïf, que encarnaba para la élite de los intelectuales las mejores características de la vieja Europa. Bajo el título Una vida de Stefan Zweig, Jean-Jacques Lafaye propone una atractiva obra. No ha hecho una biografía, no es una novela, ha intentado la experiencia de escribir un ensayo a la manera de Zweig, deslizándose dentro de sus personajes por parcelas hasta llegar a la identificación con ellos. El autor analiza certeramente los motivos del éxito del gran biógrafo. Sólo relata los hechos importantes, resume lo que es secundario y relata lo que le parece decisivo. No esconde Stefan Zweig, tan rico por dentro y con tantas cualidades, tiene limitaciones en su talento creador y debilidades en momentos difíciles de su vida afectiva. Esta obra nos acerca a Zweig, a la Viena del imperio, el imperio de la nostalgia, la nostalgia de Stefan Zweig, y desvela los misterios que había en torno a él. Escritor y pacifista austriaco, famoso sobre todo por sus biografías. Nació en Viena, en cuya Universidad estudió. A raíz del estallido de la I Guerra Mundial, Zweig se convirtió en un ardiente pacifista y se trasladó a Zurich, donde podía expresar sus opiniones. En su primera obra importante, el poema dramático Jeremías (1917), denunciaba apasionadamente lo que él consideraba como la locura suprema de la guerra. Después de la guerra Zweig se estableció en Salzburgo y escribió biografías, por las que se hizo famoso, narraciones y novelas cortas y ensayos.
Entre estas obras destacan: Tres maestros (1920), estudios sobre Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens y Fedor Dostoievski y La curación por el espíritu (1931), donde da cuenta de las ideas de Franz Anton Mesmer, Sigmund Freud y Mary Baker Eddy. El ascenso del nazismo y el antisemitismo en Alemania llevó a Zweig, que era judío, a huir a Gran Bretaña en 1934. Emigró a los Estados Unidos en 1940 y después a Brasil en 1941, donde se suicidó llevado por un sentimiento de soledad y fatiga espiritual. Como escritor, Zweig se distinguió por su introspección psicológica. Omitiendo detalles no esenciales, fue capaz de hacer sus biografías tan entretenidas como una novela. Los últimos escritos importantes de Zweig incluyen las biografías Erasmus de Rotterdam (1934) y María Estuardo (1935), la novela El juego real (publicada póstumamente en 1944), y su autobiografía El mundo de ayer (1941). Stefan Zweig nació en Viena, Austria, el 28 de noviembre de 1881, y falleció en Petrópolis, Brasil, el 22 de febrero de 1942. Criado en una familia judía acomodada, se licenció en la Universidad de Viena, doctorándose en Filosofía. Su origen judío lo obligó a alejarse de su hogar al comenzar la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pero nunca fue particularmente religioso ni era simpatizante del movimiento sionísta. De mentalidad pacifista, su postura anti-belicista queda explícita en su obra Jeremías, una pieza teatral que denunciaba la Primera Guerra Mundial. Además del teatro, Zweig escribió novela, poesía y ensayo, aunque posiblemente sea más conocido por sus biografías, especialmente las de María Estuardo y Erasmo de Rotterdam. Escribió también una autobiografía en 1941, El mundo de ayer. Se le considera uno de los escritores más significativos del periodo de entreguerras. Tras su exilio en 1934 debido a la ocupación nazi, buscó una nueva residencia en Gran Bretaña, Estados Unidos y finalmente Brasil, donde falleció. Su frustración ante lo que consideraba el fracaso de la cultura europea lo empujaron a la desesperación, suicidándose junto con su segunda esposa Lotte (Charlotte Elisabeth Altmann) en Petrópolis. (Viena, 1881 - Petrópolis, Brasil, 1942) Escritor austríaco. Miembro de una acomodada familia judía, inició su carrera literaria traduciendo a Ch. Baudelaire y a E. Verhaeren. Ante la I Guerra Mundial, abrazó el pacifismo y estrechó lazos de amistad con R. Rolland. Se instaló en Salzburgo (1918) y, tras huir de Austria en 1934, se refugió en Londres. La hegemonía alcanzada por las fuerzas hitlerianas en Europa le llevó a quitarse la vida junto con su mujer durante un viaje a Brasil. En 1924 se publicaron sus poesías reunidas, marcadas por el influjo de Rilke y Verhaeren. Compuso obras teatrales, como Tersites (1907), La casa junto al mar (1911), Jeremías (1917) y La oveja del pobre (1939). Escribió asimismo novelas y narraciones: Primera experiencia (1911), Amok (1923), Confusión de sentimientos (1926) -conjunto formado por tres relatos largos, el más conocido de los cuales es Veinticuatro horas de la vida de una mujer, publicado primero en inglés-, Impaciencia del corazón (1938). Su obra incluye también historias noveladas (Erasmo de Rotterdam, 1934; María Estuardo, 1935; Américo Vespuccio, 1942), y una serie de ensayos históricos y literarios, que constituyen sus obras más populares: Verlaine (1905), Verhaeren (1910), Romain Rolland (1920), Tres maestros (Balzac, Dickens, Dostoievski) (1920), La lucha contra el demonio (1925) y La curación por el espíritu (1931). Zweig was born in Vienna, the son of Moritz Zweig (1845 –1926), a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer, and Ida Brettauer (1854 –1938), from a Jewish banking family.[2] Joseph Brettauer
did business for twenty years in Ancona, Italy, where his second daughter Ida was born and grew up, too. Zweig was related to the Czech writer Egon Hostovský, who described Zweig as "a very distant relative";[3] some sources describe them as cousins. Zweig studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and in 1904 earned a doctoral degree with a thesis on "The Philosophy of Hippolyte Taine". Religion did not play a central role in his education. "My mother and father were Jewish only through accident of birth", Zweig said later in an interview. Yet he did not renounce his Jewish faith and wrote repeatedly on Jews and Jewish themes, as in his story Buchmendel. Zweig had a warm relationship with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, whom he met when Herzl was still literary editor of the Neue Freie Presse, then Vienna's main newspaper; Herzl accepted for publication some of Zweig's early essays. Zweig believed in internationalism and in europeanism; Herzl's Jewish nationalism could not therefore have had much attraction, as The World of Yesterday, his autobiography, makes clear. The Neue Freie Presse did not review Herzl's Der Judenstaat.[4] Zweig himself called Herzl's book an "obtuse text, [a] piece of nonsense".[4] At the beginning of World War I, patriotic sentiment was widespread, and extended to many German and Austrian Jews: Zweig, as well as Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen, all showed support.[5] Zweig, although patriotic, refused to pick up a rifle; instead, he served in the Archives of the Ministry of War, and soon acquired a pacifist stand like his friend Romain Rolland, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1915. Rolland soon moved to Switzerland until the end of the war. Zweig remained a pacifist all his life and advocated the unification of Europe. Like Rolland, he wrote many biographies. His Erasmus of Rotterdam he called a “concealed self -portrayal” in The World of Yesterday. Zweig married Friderike Maria von Winternitz (born Burger) in 1920; they divorced in 1938. As Friderike Zweig she published a book on her former husband after his death.[6] She later also published a picture book on Zweig.[7] In 1939 Zweig married his secretary Lotte Altmann. In 1934, following Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Zweig left Austria. He lived in England (in London first, then from 1939 in Bath). Because of the swift advance of Hitler's troops westwards, Zweig and his second wife crossed the Atlantic Ocean and traveled to the United States, where they settled in 1940 in New York City, and traveled. On August 22, 1940, they moved again to Petrópolis, a town in the conurbation of Rio de Janeiro.[8] Feeling more and more depressed by the growth of intolerance, authoritarianism, and Nazism, and feeling hopeless for the future for humanity, Zweig wrote a note about his feelings of desperation. Then, in February 23, 1942, the Zweigs were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in the city of Petrópolis, holding hands.[9][10] He had been despairing at the future of Europe and its culture. "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth", he wrote. The Zweigs' house in Brazil was later turned into a museum and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig. Work
Zweig was a prominent writer in the 1920s and 1930s, befriending Arthur Schnitzler and Sigmund Freud.[11] He was extremely popular in the United States, South America and Europe, and
remains so in continental Europe;[1] however, he was largely ignored by the British public,[12] and his fame in America has since dwindled. Since the 1990s there has been an effort on the part of several publishers (notably Pushkin Press and The New York Review of Books) to get Zweig back into print in English.[13] Plunkett Lake Press Ebooks has begun to publish electronic versions of his non-fiction as well. Criticism over his oeuvre is severely divided between some English-speaking critics, who despise his literary style as poor, lightweight and superficial,[12] and some of those more attached to the European tradition, who praise his humanism, simplicity and effective style.[14] Zweig is best known for his novellas (notably The Royal Game, Amok, Letter from an Unknown Woman – filmed in 1948 by Max Ophüls), novels (Beware of Pity, Confusion of Feelings, and the posthumously published The Post Office Girl) and biographies (notably Erasmus of Rotterdam, Conqueror of the Seas: The Story of Magellan, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles and also posthumously published, Balzac). At one time his works were published without his consent in English under the pseudonym 'Stephen Branch' (a translation of his real name) when anti-German sentiment was running high. His biography of Queen Marie-Antoinette was later adapted for a Hollywood movie, starring the actress Norma Shearer in the title role. Zweig enjoyed a close association with Richard Strauss, and provided the libretto for Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman). Strauss famously defied the Nazi regime by refusing to sanction the removal of Zweig's name from the program[15] for the work's première on June 24, 1935 in Dresden. As a result, Goebbels refused to attend as planned, and the opera was banned after three performances. Zweig later collaborated with Joseph Gregor, to provide Strauss with the libretto for one other opera, Daphne, in 1937. At least[16] one other work by Zweig received a musical setting: the pianist and composer Henry Jolles, who like Zweig had fled to Brazil to escape the Nazis, composed a song, "Último poema de Stefan Zweig",[17] based on "Letztes Gedicht", which Zweig wrote on the occasion of his 60th birthday in November 1941.[18] During his stay in Brazil, Zweig wrote Brasilien, Ein Land der Zukunft (Brazil, Land of the Future) which was an accurate analysis of his newly adopted country and in his book he managed to demonstrate a fair understanding of the Brazilian culture that surrounded him. Zweig was a passionate collector of manuscripts. There are important Zweig collections at the British Library and at the State University of New York at Fredonia. The British Library's Stefan Zweig Collection was donated to the library by his heirs in May 1986. It specialises in autograph music manuscripts, including works by Bach, Haydn, Wagner, and Mahler. It has been described as "one of the world's greatest collections of autograph manuscripts".[19] One particularly precious item is Mozart's "Verzeichnüß aller meiner Werke"[20] – that is, the composer's own handwritten thematic catalogue of his works. The 1993 –1994 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour. Wes Anderson cites Stefan Zweig as inspiration for ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’
In various interviews, as well as in the closing credits of the film, Wes Anderson cites the works of Austrian novelist, poet, and translator Stefan Zweig (1881 –1942) as the inspiration for his latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. In the Hollywood Reporter article, Anderson was quoted joking that the film is “more or less plagiarism” of Zweig’s work, and saying, “I think people in Europe are surprised *Americans+ don’t know this writer.”
Stefan Zweig On the 130th anniversary of Stefan Zweig‘s birth, we would like to pay tribute to this great
Austrian writer and draw your attention to the four books we published in the NYRB Classics series: Chess Story, Journey into the Past, The Post-Office Girl, and Beware of Pity. In spring 2012 we will publish Zweig’s novella C onfusion. During the 1930s, Zweig was one of the best-selling writers in Europe and was among the most translated German-language writers before the Second World War. With the rise of Nazism, he moved from Salzburg to London (taking British citizenship), to New York, and finally to Brazil, where, in 1942, he committed suicide with his wife. In Chess Story, a mysterious stranger advises travelers on a ship from New York to Buenos Aires on how to beat the arrogant and unfriendly world champion of chess at what is quite literally his own game; in Journey into the Past, a man tries to rekindle a love that time and distance had snuffed out; in The Post-Office Girl, a young woman is introduced to and cast out of a world of wealth, only to find that she is driven by the desire to make meaning out of meaninglessness; and, in Beware of Pity, a minor blunder ruins a man’s life as he succumbs to guilt and, ultimately, tragedy.
In each of these works, Zweig writes tales that are as harrow ing and haunting as they are thrillingly compelling. “In Zweig’s fiction, someone in the story, in a way everyone, has a terrible secret. Secrets are
integral to adventure stories [and] the experience of reading Zweig is not so much of entering the world of the story as of plunging inward and dreaming the story.”— Rachel Cohen, Bookforum “Admired by readers as diverse as Freud, Einstein, Toscanini, Thomas Mann and Herman Goering.” — Edwin McDowell, The New York Times “Zweig belongs with three very different masters who each perfected the challenging art of the short story and the novella: Maupassant, Turgenev and Chekhov.” — Paul Bailey Citas
"El amor es como el vino, y como el vino también, a unos reconforta y a otros destroza." "No hay dicha para aquel que no ha recorrido el camino del dolor." (de El amor de Erika Ewald) "En el dolor uno se hace cada vez más sensible; es el sufrimiento quien prepara y labra el terreno para el alma, y el dolor que produce el arado al desgarrar el interior, prepara todo fruto espiritual." "La historia no tiene tiempo para ser justa. Como frío cronista no toma en cuenta más que los resultados." "La medicina más segura de toda fuerza es la resistencia que vence." "Ya no se trataba de dos rivales que quisieran medir en el juego sus propias fuerzas, eran ahora dos enemigos que se habían jurado aniquilarse mutuamente.." (Sobre el ajedrez) "Por mi vida han galopado todos los corceles amarillentos del Apocalipsis, la revolución y el hambre, la inflación y el terror, las epidemias y la emigración; he visto nacer y expandirse ante mis
propios ojos las grandes ideologías de masas: el fascismo en Italia, el nacionalsocialismo en Alemania, el bolchevismo en Rusia y, sobre todo, la peor de todas las pestes: el nacionalismo, que envenena la flor de nuestra cultura europea". (Prefacio de "El mundo de ayer"). "Lo que denominamos el mal es la inestabilidad inherente a la humanidad entera que lleva al hombre fuera de sí, más allá de sí, hacia un algo insondable, exactamente igual que si la Naturaleza hubiese infundido en nuestra alma una irremediable porción de inestabilidad, procedente de sus restos de antiguo caos". "Pero llamarle juego, ¿no es limitarle injuriosamente? ¿No es también una ciencia, un arte algo sutil que está suspendido entre uno y otro jugador? *…+ Es un pensamiento que no conduce a
nada, una matemática que no establece nada, un arte que no deja obra, una arquitectura sin materia… Pero ha demostrado, sin embargo, ser más perdurable, a su modo, que los libros o que
cualquier otro monumento este juego único, que pertenece a todos los pueblos y a todos los tiempos, y del que nadie sabe cuál de los dioses hizo don a la tierra para matar el tedio, para aguzar el ingenio y estimular el alma." "Sobre el ajedrez". Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel screened for the press here in Berlin this afternoon before officially opening the event tonight in competition. Reactions were greatly positive — one journalist at the film’s press conference looked about to cry over its beauty — although official reviews won’t appear until later this 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' Press Conference - 64th Berlinale
International Film Festivalevening. Stars Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan and Tilda Swinton attended the press conference to talk about the movie that follows the adventures of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The nostalgic Euro caper involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune. budapest stillThere’s a nod to Austrian author Stefan Zweig at the end of the pic, once one of the best-known writers in the world, but who’s now more familiar on the Continent than in the U.S. Anderson acknowledged, “People in Europe are surprised we don’t know this writer.” The helmer said that Grand Budapest is “not based on any of his stories, but there are devices and an atmosphere and my intention was to do our own version of a Zweig story.” Other inspiration came from an extensive library of older films including 1932′s Grand Hotel and Love Me Tonight, Ernst Lubitsch’ To Be Or Not To Be and The Shop Around The Corner, William Wyler’s The Good Fairy, Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence, and The Mortal Storm with Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullavan and
Frank Morgan. As to why he shot in Germany, rather than Hungary, Anderson said the film required a spa town, not a big city. But in a nod to Lubitsch, he noted, “I always thought our Budapest is as connected as Budapest is in The Shop Around The Corner which was probably in Culver City or Burbank.”
'The Grand Budapest Hotel' Press Conference - 64th Berlinale International Film FestivalAnderson has worked with much of the large cast before, including Murray, Swinton and Norton, and some who were not in attendance. Asked why they keep coming back, Murray deadpanned, “We are promised very long hours and low wages, and stale bread. You lose money on the job, but you get to see the world and we’re allowed to let Wes live this wonderful, magical life where his dreamscape comes true and if we show up he gets to have all the fun. I guess we like him.” Their relationship is something akin to father-son. “I’m a grizzled veteran… I think sometimes I represent
something like that… Maybe I’m the father he never had or the one he wants to be.” Anderson
approved of the sentiment. Working with Fiennes for the first time, Anderson said he had actually written the lead part of Monsieur Gustave for the classical actor. But when he gave the script to Fiennes, he offered him a choice of roles. Fie nnes cozied up to Gustave immediately and Anderson joked, “One of the best ways to get an actor to not want to be in your film is to offer them a part. They often say ‘I like all the other roles’.” Fiennes praised the working environment on an Anderson set, “To be in a film where the filmmaker is allowed to make the film they want to make is v ery rare.” tildaSwinton is back in Berlin with Grand Budpest and Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer. She’s also a former jury president here and called Berlin her cinematic “battery charger.” Grand Budapest was, “the best fancy dress party I can imagine.” To a journalist who asked about her taking small roles of late, she said “Size is not everything.”
In one of the more contested, if silly moments during the panel, a question was asked as to why Grand Budapest has no characters sporting sleepwear – a staple of Anderson films. The cast and the director were quick to point out that indeed there were. Anderson: “I don’t want to fight about it, but there were pajamas.”
Stefan Zweig más cerca Dos libros sobre el fructífero periodo cultural de la Europa de antes y durante la II Guerra. A menudo es cierto que "detrás de un gran hombre hay una gran mujer". En el caso del escritor austriaco Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), su primera esposa, Friderike von Winternitz (1882-1971), desempeñó ese papel durante los treinta años en los que convivieron. Se conocieron en 1913, ella tenía dos hijas, fruto de un matrimonio fracasado. Una súbita atracción mutua los unió, alquilaron una magnífica casa en el Kapuzinerberg de Salzburgo y allí vivieron años felices; en 1920 se casaron. Zweig se bastaba solo para crear su obra, su mujer no influía de manera directa en su actividad, pero ejercía de factótum cuidando de que no le faltase de nada: ante todo, la tranquilidad necesaria para su trabajo, el cual Zweig amaba sobre todo lo demás. También Friderike era autora de novelas y traducciones, trabajos que acometía con energía y suficiencia mientras soportaba las crisis de "pesimismo" que asediaban a su célebre marido, más frágil en sus emociones que ella. Gozaron juntos de años de éxitos y cambios; sin embargo, cuando hacia 1937 la situación política en Austria se complicó y Zweig vio que tendría que emigrar a París o Londres, Friderike pasó a un segundo plano y optó por separarse de ella, empujado, al parecer, por la insistente dependencia de su joven secretaria —treinta años menor que él— y que estaba "loca de amor": Lotte Altmann, la mujer con la que contrajo matrimonio apenas se divorció de Friderike y que lo acompañaría a la muerte, puesto que ambos se suicidaron en Brasil, en 1942. Friderike, valiente y serena, continuó su existencia recordando al famoso autor, a quien intentó comprender. Dejó varias obras testimoniales, tales como su Zweig, tal como yo lo conocí y una biografía en imágenes del escritor, así como este Destellos de vida que aparece ahora en notable traducción castellana. Antes que otra biografía, es una remembranza de la vida de Frederike junto a Zweig y después de él. Recuerda a su esposo con cariño, aunque más que describir su carácter o sus costumbres se centra en la descripción a grandes rasgos del mundo que los rodeaba. Como "buenos europeos" y cosmopolitas, los Zweig pasaban temporadas en Italia, Francia o Suiza;
conocieron a las personalidades intelectuales de su tiempo: Romain Rolland, Albert Schweitzer, Arturo Toscanini o Joseph Roth eran amigos muy queridos. Terminado el relato de la época de convivencia, Friderike deja entrever las razones de la separación; recuerda los últimos meses de vida de Zweig, un hombre acosado por confusiones interiores y hasta con cierto trastorno bipolar, e insinúa más de lo que dice. A Zweig lo mató su pesimismo, junto al poco arrojo de su segunda mujer, por lo visto víctima a su vez de una enfermedad incurable; pero también su muerte fue un último gesto de libertad: así prefirió verla Friderike. Ella, luchadora incansable, salió de Europa en compañía de sus hijas y rehizo su vida en Norteamérica. Coincidiendo con la publicación de estas memorias se publica ahora en una excelente edición la correspondencia de Zweig con Hermann Hesse, otro osado pacifista y "gran europeo", cuya personalidad artística se forjó asimismo a comienzos del siglo XX. Iniciaron su relación en 1903, cuando Hesse escribió a Zweig, cuatro años más joven que él, para pedirle un libro de poemas de Verlaine traducidos por aquél, ya que era demasiado "pobre" para comprarlo. El intercambio epistolar, de mayor o menor intensidad según qué épocas, duraría 35 años. El respeto y la admiración mutuas fraguaron una amistad que se fortaleció a pesar de las mutuas diferencias: Hesse se refugiaba en apacibles localidades rurales mientras Zweig recorría el mundo y amaba las grandes ciudades. Pero siempre tuvieron algo que decirse y los libros que ambos publicaban eran fuente de alegría compartida. Un extraño goce acompaña a la lectura de este epistolario, el que brota de constatar que dos personas que han llegado hasta una elevada altura moral consideran obvias las mismas cosas. En suma ambos libros son imprescindibles para los admiradores de Zweig y Hesse, también, para quienes se sientan atraídos por aquel fructífero periodo cultural que floreció en Europa a comienzos y mediados del siglo XX, la misma época en que se confabulaban las ominosas fuerzas que pugnaban por devastarla. Death in Petrópolis Viennese-born Jewish author Stefan Zweig and his second wife, Lotte Altmann, committed suicide together as refugees in Brazil in February 1942, but Zweig’s works, whether fiction, biographies or
letters, have never seemed more alive. Seventy years on, the former home in Petrópolis where he died, now known as Casa Stefan Zweig, is scheduled to open in July as a museum. It will boast a library and conference hall, with performances and exhibits forthcoming. A billboard next to the museum recently proclaimed, “He’s Coming Back to Petrópolis: Here Soon,” which suggests something between a superstar’s personal appearance and a ghost returning to haunt the living. This is an apt characterization of Zweig’s continued presence on the world literary scene, dashingly
elegant yet spookily posthumous. It may seem paradoxical that though Zweig termed Brazil the “land of the future,” he also chose
that country as a place to kill himself. In 1942, his suicide seemed to some harsh critics, such as philosopher Hannah Arendt, the petulant act of an “ivory tower esthete” who saw Nazism mainly as an “affront to his personal dignity and privileged way of life.” Yet Jean Améry (born Hanns
Chaim Mayer), Austrian concentration camp survivor and philosopher of torture, proclaimed that Zweig’s suicide was his “greatest masterpiece.” Between these extreme and contradictory views remains the fact that voluntary death is a major theme of Zweig’s fiction dating back to the 1920s,
in such works as “Letter From an Unknown Woman,” the novella “Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman” and many others. This theme was doubtless an expression of Zweig’s own highly nervous, emotionally complex temperament. In “I Loved France Like a Second Homeland: New Studies on Stefan Zweig,” a
December 2011 volume from Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, literary scholar Catherine Delattre notes that art historian Benno Geiger, in a book of memoirs first published in 1958, revealed that his friend Zweig was a tormented sexual exhibitionist. Novelist Thomas Mann echoed this diagnosis in his diary in 1954, adding that although Zweig never admitted this psycho-sexual problem to him personally, “privately it was known and it could have caused him serious problems.”
Delattre suggests that a complement of this sexual hang-up is the focus on voyeurism in Zweig’s fiction, such as “Fear” and “Burning Secret.” If it is true that Zweig suffered from this sort of sexual
aberration, then his longtime habit of sending each of his new books to his friend Sigmund Freud might be seen less as an amicable gesture and more as a kind of invitation to diagnose and cure. That Zweig was also psychologically vulnerable in terms of his sexual identity seems clear from his friendship with German lawyer, author and Nazi sympathizer Erich Ebermayer. In his autobiography, “Before I Forget,” published 35 years after his death in 1970, Ebermayer describes how as a young aspiring writer he sought out the famous writer Zweig’s company. Ebermayer, whose career boomed under the Nazis in the 1930s and ’40s, saw no contradiction in also enjoying
a flirtatious prewar friendship with Zweig, and with considerable nerve even quoted Freud in his memoir to justify himself: “As we know from Sigmund Freud, every male f riendship resonates with mostly unconscious Eros. Naturally not with sex, but with Eros.” Describing himself as a “fresh and healthy, worshipful blond youth” at the time, Ebermayer
explains that to calm his nerves on the first night of a play that Ebermayer wrote, Zweig literally held his hand during the performance. Ebermayer adds that after he published novellas in the 1920s on the theme of homosexuality, Zweig followed suit in 1927 with “A Confusion of Feelings,” which has been translated as “Confusion,” examining the ambiguous friendship between a
professor and a privy counselor. If Zweig was exploited in his relationship with Ebermayer, his friendships in the Jewish literary world of his day were more securely rewarding and lastingly genuine, for Zweig was fascinated by Yiddishkeit. Zweig’s 1929 tale, “Buchmendel,” tells of a book peddler named Jakob Mendel who
sells his wares at Vienna coffeehouses around the time of World War I. As an inveterate bibliophile and collector, Zweig evidently sympathized with this protagonist, who was down on his luck like so many of Zweig’s literary friends. Earlier, in 1916, Zweig’s essay “The Tower of Babel” drew inspiration from the Old Testament to urge war-torn Europe to unite as a “heroic community” to build a project exemplifying common understanding “after the chaos of Creation.” Zweig’s friends included some of the most notable Jews of his era, from Freud to Austrian novelist
Joseph Roth. Yiddish authors such as Sholem Asch admired him, and Yiddish readers clamored for his works. “Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman,” which appeared in Germany in 1927, was promptly published in the Forverts in a translation credited to Chaim Brakartz years before any English translation appeared. In 1929, Zweig’s biography of hi s friend, Nobel Prize-winning French author Romain Rolland, was published in Warsaw in a Yiddish translation by Isaac Bashevis Singer as “Romen Rolan: Der Mentsh un dos Verk.”
Given these close associations, the destruction of European Jewry during World War II took a permanent toll on Zweig’s spirit. “To Me All Friendships Are Perishable: The Joseph Roth -Stefan Zweig Correspondence,” out last October from Wallstein Verlag, notes that the day before he took his own life, the refugee Zweig said of the torments of expatriation for Roth — who died of alcoholism in 1939 — and Erwin Rieger, a translator who died in 1940, “How glad I always was for them, that they had not to go through those ordeals.”
Zweig was fully aware of his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and the limits of the psychic suffering he was prepared to accept. For this reason, perhaps, he was a preternaturally understanding friend, as many mutual acquaintances noted after Roth’s death. Zweig had
published a sympathetic short study of French poet Paul Verlaine, a helpless alcoholic entirely dependent on friends for support and survival, and Zweig considered Roth to be “the quintessential poet,” both in literary talent and in this inability to cope with day -to-day life. After
Roth died, Benjamin Huebsch, head of the New York publisher The Viking Press, wrote to Zweig on June 6, 1939: “It must afford you satisfaction to remember your fraternal attitude to *Roth+, for you were generous in your assistance and tolerant when others would have been irritated.” The following day, Hermann Kesten, a devoted friend of Roth’s who would edit the first collection of Roth’s letters in German, wrote along the same lines, praising Zweig for “so many acts of friendship for *Roth+.” Zweig’s own obituary for Roth, published in The Sunday Times of London on
May 28, 1939, is balanced between admiration for the writer and grief over the loss of a friend, with a kind of selflessness that is quintessential Zweig: Joseph Roth was one of the really great writers of our day; his German prose has always been a model of perfect style. He wrote every page of his books with the fervor of a true poet; like a goldsmith he polished and repolished every sentence till the rhythm was perfect and the color brilliant. His artistic conscience was as inexorable as his heart was passionate and tender. A whole generation loses with him a great example, and his friends a wonderful friend. In parts, this eulogy might have been applied to Zweig himself only three years later, instead of the captious critiques by those contemporaries such as Arendt, who saw his death as a petulantly privileged cop-out. The world’s tributes today, from Brazil to Europe to America, are reflections of appreciation for his human and artistic ideals. Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures, by Stefan Zweig – review A translation of the Austrian writer's essays shows his virtues and vices are two sides of the same coin Is Stefan Zweig a) "the incarnation of humanism"(Clive James), or b) a "professional adorer, schmoozer, inheritor and collector", whose work "just tastes fake" (Michael Hofmann)? The publication of Zweig's Sternstunden der Menschheit (1927/1940) in a new English translation by Anthea Bell may help answer the question, even if for certain readers the English title makes one think of the television comedy panel show hosted by Vic and Bob. ("Shooting Stars" is perhaps preferable though to a more literal translation – "Great Moments for Humanity" is the gist of the German – which sounds like the platitudinous title card of a newsreel.) Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures
Shooting Stars forms part of an ambitious project by Pushkin Press to bring Zweig's work to the attention of the English-reading public, an enterprise that has been entirely successful. Zweigmania seems to break out with the publication of each book, with readers discovering his work by word-of-mouth and by accident. For anyone who has not yet embarked on their own journey of discovery – their own little abzweig – it is probably worth noting that Zweig was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna in 1881, left Austria for obvious reasons in 1934 to go and live in Britain and America, before going to Brazil, where he killed himself in 1942. He wrote novels, plays, biographies, short stories and essays – dozens of books, translated into many languages and adored by many, not just disgraced Tory politicians (Jeffrey Archer) and philosophical football managers (Roy Hodgson). He was a writer undoubtedly possessed of great facility, with a style th at might be considered either the essence of civility or the epitome of bland. Shooting Stars shows the grand, smooth style to great effect. The book is a collection of essays about historical events: the discovery of El Dorado, the race to reach the south pole, Lenin on the sealed train and so on. The prologue sets the tone: "In this book I am aiming to remember the hours of … shooting stars – I call them that because they outshine the past as brilliantly and steadfastly as stars outshine the night … For in those sublime moments when they emerge, fully formed, history needs no helping hand. Where the muse of history is truly a poet and a dramatist, no mortal writer may try to outdo her." If this sounds humourless, dull and old-fashioned, so it is. If it also sounds ambitious and highminded, so it is also. The essays are perhaps most pleasing when Zweig uses his skills as a novelist. In the chapter on Handel, for example, there is this fine little portrait: "So the servant was seeking diversion from his boredom by puffing not elegant rings of blue smoke from his short clay pipe, but soap bubbles. He had mixed a little bowl of soapsuds and was amusing himself by blowing the brightly coloured bubbles out of the window and into the street." This is Zweig at his best – observing the servants blowing bubbles. And this is Zweig at his worst, writing in praise of great men: "Destiny makes its urgent way to the mighty and those who do violent deeds. It will be subservient for years on end to a single man – Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon – for it loves those elemental characters that resemble destiny itself, an element that is so hard to comprehend." Fans and foes alike can perhaps agree on this: a writer's virtues are often exactly the same as their vices. Zweig's great virtue was that he sought to please. There are worse vices. Producido por TV Brasil del libro Brasil, país del futuro , el documental paraíso utópico muestra la vida y la obra de Stefan Zweig , uno de los escritores más importantes de Europa del siglo XX. Viajar a Argentina en 1936, Zweig hace una parada 8 días en Brasil. Está encantado con las bellezas del país, especialmente con la de Río de Janeiro. Todo el viaje se registra en un diario, en el que describe su impresión de cada lugar visitado. En el viaje viene la promesa de escribir un libro sobre el país. El libro narra su visión de las maravillas del país, presentes en Río de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Ouro Preto, Mariana, Congonhas do Campo, Salvador, Recife, Olinda y Belén El documental es conducido por las entrevistas con el periodista Alberto Dines , psicoanalista Paul Blank , el traductor Kristina Michaelles , profesor de historia en la USP, Karen Lisboa , un profesor de cine de la UFF, Tunico Amancio y novelista Deonísio Silva. Las entrevistas, imágenes de archivo, fragmentos de película y un grupo de teatro lleva el documental. Y poco a poco, para revelar una utopía humanista, refugiado de guerra, que creía que
Brasil era el lugar perfecto para vivir. Paradójicamente, es el país donde Zweig decide poner fin a su propia vida después de un pacto de muerte selló con su esposa en la ciudad de Petrópolis, en el Carnaval 1942. It’s been said that Stefan Zweig is either loved or unknown. Up until recently I’d never heard of the Austrian writer but after reading Confusion, Zweig’s novella published in 1927, I moved swiftly into
the former. After The Post-Office Girl, his unfinished novel published posthumously in 1982, I was a committed evangelist. Zweig was born in Austria in 1881 to Jewish parents and came of age during World War I. While patriotism and jingoism were the mode of the day, he chose pacifism. During Hitler’s rise to power, Zweig’s Jewish heritage, although he was not a religious person, became problematic and
forced him and his second wife to flee Austria in 1934. They first went to London, then New York City, and ultimately Brazil. Rio was their final destination and the place where they tragically took their lives together by way of barbituate overdose. The common theme that runs through Confusion and The Post-Office Girl is denial –pretending to be something one is not, denying one’s true nature or status in life. In the former it’s sexuality, in the latter it’s class. Zweig’s writing on these topics–questioningly, poignant, and counterculturally –makes him feel ahead of his time. One can’t help but wonder what he would write if he
were alive today. Confusion, written from a reflective point of view 40 years later, begins with the protagonist, Roland, found in a compromising situation with a woman by his father a short time after heading to university. The incident left him “agitated and confused” and leads him to overthrow “the
whole grandiose house of cards [he] had built during the last three months, a house constructed out of masculinity, student debauchery and bragging.” With his father’s approval he leaves the city of Berlin where his “sense of liberation was so powerfully intoxicating that *he+ could not endure even the brief seclusion of the lecture hall” for a college in a sm all provincial town in central
Germany. Hoping to enroll in an English language and literature course, he walks in on a professor giving a lecture to a small gathering. Unnoticed, Roland observes this “animated discourse” and experiences “what Latin scholars call a raptus, where one is taken right out of oneself.” “I had never before known language as ecstasy, the passion of discourse as an elemental act, and the unexpected shock drew me closer,” he continues. This initial meeting marks the beginning of an intense, and often confused (as the novella’s title alludes to), relationship between Roland and
the professor. Without a place to live, Roland accepts from his new teacher the empty apartment –a small room – just upstairs from where he and his wife reside. In addition to their physical closeness, and their daily interaction at school, the two are further entwined by a project: the writing of a second volume to the professors unfinished work, The Globe Theatre: History, Production, Poets. However, a turbulently mannered man, it doesn’t take long before the professor’s moods affect the admiring student. Verging on emotional abuse, the teacher withholds praise, fluxuates between love and irritation, and, in the most extreme case, leaves town for days without explanation or information as to his whereabouts.
How I suffered from this man who moved from hot to cold like a bright flash of lightning, who unknowingly inflamed me, only to poor frosty water over me all of a sudden, whose exuberant mind spurred on my own, only to lash me with irony –I had a terrible feeling that the closer I tried to come to him, the more harshly, even fearfully, he repelled me. To the modern reader, the homoerotic undertones reveal themselves early on and what would be considered commonplace in literature today, possibly even outdated –a man struggling with his sexuality in the face of a young student –is quite extraordinary when placed within the context of 1927 when it was first published. As with Confusion, The Post-Office Girl draws us into the inner life of a tormented character. Here we’re introduced to Christine Hoeflehner, a 20-something post-office worker in a post-World War I Austria. She’s is a simple, honest young woman scraping by as she cares for her sick mother. One
day the family receives a telegram from a rich aunt, currently vacationing in a resort in the Swiss Alps, inviting Christine for a visit. At the behest of her mother, Christine prepares for the short vacation. From the moment she gets off the train and enters the car that will take her to the resort with other passengers, she’s aware of her shabby clothing, her unstylish hair, and her cheap luggage. “Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether
you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it,” says the narrator, offering the reader a window into Christine’s agony.
After an extensive makeover, an effort that takes nearly a full day, courtesy of her aunt, Christine embraces the affluence that surrounds her, as if she’s known no other way– or, more importantly, as if she never wants to return to her former life. Soon, she has the attention of many vacationing bachelors. Early in her stay, an innocent mix-up regarding her name completes the transformation. From the unknown “Hoeflehner” to the respectable “von Boolen,” she is no longer a village girl but a debutante. At first this gives her a “twinge” but soon she settles into it as if it’s always been hers.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for jealousies to fester and just as quickly as Christine ascended this previously foreign world, her reputation is destroyed. Unbeknownst to her, rumors spread of intentional deceit. Her aunt, also once a poor village girl, to save her own reputation, sends her niece back from whence she came without so much as an explanation –or at least not one that makes much sense. Christine, having gotten a taste of the riches available to this small segment of the population, can no longer return to her former life as a desk clerk. Distraught and wholly unsatisfied, she’s convinced of a scheme that promises to return her to a world of wealth. Because the The Post Office Girl was left unfinished at the time of Zweig’s death, the reader is left
guessing as to the fate of this desperate character. However, one should not fear the openendedness –it is of no consequence to the enjoyment of the novel. As with Confusion, and as I am sure is true of all Zweig’s writing, the philosophical insights into human natu re is what lends to the richness of the reading experience. If Stefan Zweig is currently unknown to you, pick up one of these two books and join the ranks of the converted.
February 22, 1942, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his second wife went to the bedroom of a rented house in Petrópolis, Brazil. They lay down—she in a kimono, he in a shirt and tie—after taking an enormous dose of barbiturates. When news of their suicides broke, it was reported as a matter of worldwide significance. The New York Times carried the news on its front page, alongside reports of the rout of Japanese forces in Bali and of a broadcast address by President Roosevelt. An editorial the next day, titled “One of the Dispossessed,” saw in Zweig’s final act “the problems of the exile for conscience sake.” Zweig, a Jew, had left Austria in 1934, living in England
and New York before the final move to Brazil, and his work had been banned and vilified across the German-speaking world. In his suicide note, he spoke of “my own language having disappeared from me and my spiritual home, Europe, having destroyed itself.” He concluded, “I
salute all my friends! May it be granted them yet to see the dawn after the long night! I, all too impatient, go on before.” Zweig’s death arguably marked the high point of his literary standing: to most English-speaking
readers, he is now little more than a name. Yet, for a time, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, he was the most translated writer in Europe. Along with the fiction and the biographies on which his reputation chiefly rests, he produced a seemingly effortless stream of plays, translations, poems, travelogues, and essays—on subjects ranging from manuscripts to Moscow theatre. An energetic literary spokesman and pen member, he lectured, in several languages, around the world. He also championed many other writers, helping them financially and with glowing appraisals of their work
