Stefan Zweig at the Wikipedia: click here
馃憠Presentation, by Elisa Sola
Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881 and he died in Petr贸polis
(Brazil) in 1942, three years before the end of the Second World War. He was
born into a wealthy Jewish family: his father was a textile manufacturer and
his mother was a daughter of a Jewish banking family. The wealth of his family
allowed him to cultivate the great passion of his life: travelling. He studied
philosophy and history of literature. Zweig was a humanist and an intellectual
who spoke many languages (he translated Paul Verlaine, Ch. Baudelaire, 脡.
Verhaeren... Therefore, he believed in internationalism and Europeism. He met,
also, many intellectuals of his time: his friend and pacifist Romain Rolland,
Jules Romain, Sigmund Freud, Richard Strauss, Marcel Proust, D.H. Lawrence, M.
Gorki, R.M. Rilke, A. Rodin…, A little anecdote about the friendship with
Strauss: It is said that Zweig wrote the libretto for the Richard Strauss’s
opera The silent Woman, and Strauss
refused to remove the Zweig’s name from the programme, despite the orders of
the Nazi regime. As a result, Goebbels refused to attend this opera, as he
planned, and the opera was banned after three performances.
Stefan Zweig married Friederike Maria Von Wintermitz in 1920 and they
divorced in 1938, but in the late summer of 1939, Zweig married his secretary
Elisabet Charlotte, known as Lotte. They committed suicide in 1942 with an
overdose of barbiturates in their home in Petr贸polis (Brazil).
S. Zweig was a novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. He wrote
historical studies of famous literary figures, such as Honor茅 de Balzac, Charles
Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and wrote biographies, such as Joseph Fouch茅,
Mary Stuart and Marie Antoniette (adapted by Metro-Goldyn-Mayer), among others,
but Zweig is best known by his novellas: The
Royal Game, Amok and The Letter from an Unknown Woman (filmed in 1948 by
Max Ophulus). Zweig’s autobiography, The
World of Yesterday, was completed in 1942, one day before his suicide.
In a biopic film about Stefan Sweig, Adi贸s, Europa, a film directed by Maria Schrader the exile of Stefan Zweig is explained: the last years, when he and his second wife moved to New York and then, finally, to Brazil. It is explained, too, how he helps his first wife and other friends to run away from Germany. In the end, he couldn’t overcome the pessimism of seeing the decline of Europe and he and his wife committed suicide. He left a little farewell letter:
“By my own will and in full
lucidity
Every day I have learned to
love this country more, and I would not have rebuilt my life anywhere else
after the world of my own language collapsed and was lost to me, and my
spiritual homeland, Europe, destroyed itself.
But starting all over again
when you've turned sixty requires special forces, and my own strength has been
wasted after years of homeless wanderings. So I prefer to end my life at the appropriate time,
upright, like a man whose cultural work has always been his purest happiness
and his personal freedom, his most precious possession on this earth.
I send greetings to all my
friends. May they live to see the
sunrise after this long night. I, who I am very impatient, leave before them.
Stefan Zweig
Petr贸polis, 2/22/1942"
Forgotten
Dreams
The story begins as a fairy tale: a woman (the princess) is living (or
sleeping) surrounded by beauty and peace (“outside the sleeping house /
drowsy”), a locus amoenus, but it’s a false appearance, because there is no
happiness in this frame… Then the man (or the prince) comes and kisses her hand
and wakes the princess from her enchantment: she realizes her mistake and with
her confession the character progresses and matures.
In my opinion there are three characters in the story: the delicate
woman, the vigorous man, and the landscape. The landscape’s descriptions are
crucial to define the mood of the characters. Therefore, the frame is worth to
explain the story. One of the things I want to highlight in linguistic work
(and one I’ve liked the most) are personifications: the association of human
qualities to inanimate objects:
“the quiet avenues breathed out salty sea air”
“the waves lapped against the tiered terraces…”
“the Vistulian Pines standing close together, as if in intimate
conversation”.
Another thing I wanted to highlight is the large number of words about
the concept of brightness: houses gleamed/ bright, glaring colours/ veiled glow
/ dazzling torrent / her eyes sparkle…
Light, as in painting, is very important in the description. In fact, the
scene is like a delicate painting that begins with a very bright light and
fades at the end: “the glow in her eyes has become deep and menacing”... And in the
last sentence: “the smile on her dreaming lips dies away”. This “dies away” is
definitive to express the loss.
I would say another thing about the scene. There are two kinds of
silence expressed by the environment:
1.
The first silence, before the lover’s meeting, is full of hope: “there was silence
except for the never-tiring wind singing softly in the treetops, now full of
the heavy golden midday light”. This
golden midday light is full of hope and warmth.
2.
The silence after the lover’s conversation is full of
sexual or emotional tension “there is a profound silence, broken only by the
monotonous rhythmical song of the glittering
waves breaking on the tiers of the terrace bellow, as if casting itself on a
beloved breast”.
This movement, these waves, I think is the emotional tension between them.
I could continue, but surely you have a lot to say!
Two interesting links I’ve found:
A review to read and listening: https://www.insaneowl.com/forgotten-dreams-by-stefan-zweig-short-story-analysis/
A trailer of Maria Shrader’s film: https://youtu.be/RGGm8ny4zBM
(I saw it on Filmin for 2,95 EUR)
馃毄From Wikipedia: "Critical opinion of his oeuvre is strongly divided between those who praise his humanism, simplicity and effective style, and those who criticize his literary style as poor, lightweight and superficial: Zweig just tastes fake. He's the Pepsi of Austrian writing."
馃憠What's your opinion about Zweig's wtitings or Zweig's style?
Critical article "pro": click here
Critical article "against": click here
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Tasks / topics:
Summarize the story in 3 words or less
Summarize the story in a sentence
What were the woman's dreams?
What where the man's ideals?
Did the woman's dreams come true? How?
Did the man's dreams come true? How?
Hints in the first pages that something or somebody is going to come.
If the woman is the "careful construction of an artist", what's she like?
There's a change in the tense of the verbs when the man appears: why?
Hints that they felt sorry for the forgotten love.
Vocabulary:
Vistulian pine, obsequious, take in, recall, peal, humdrum, yearning, guess, sweeping dress, cramp
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