Stefan Zweig - biography, information, personal life. Stefan Zweig

On February 23, 1942, newspapers around the world carried a sensational front-page headline: “Famous Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his wife Charlotte committed suicide in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro.” Under the headline was a photograph that looked more like a still from a Hollywood melodrama: dead spouses in bed. Zweig's face is peaceful and calm. Lotte touchingly laid her head on her husband's shoulder and gently squeezed his hand in hers.

At a time when human carnage was raging in Europe and the Far East, claiming hundreds and thousands of lives every day, this message could not remain a sensation for long. Among his contemporaries, the writer’s act rather caused bewilderment, and among some (for example, Thomas Mann) it was simply indignation: “selfish contempt for his contemporaries.” Even more than half a century later, Zweig’s suicide still looks mysterious. He was considered one of the shoots of that suicidal harvest that the fascist regime collected from the fields of German-language literature. They compared it with similar and almost simultaneous actions of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Toller, Ernst Weiss, and Walter Hasenklever. But there is no similarity here (except, of course, for the fact that all of the above were German-speaking writers - emigrants, and the majority were Jews). Weiss cut his veins when Hitler's troops entered Paris. While in the internment camp, Hasenclever poisoned himself, fearing that he would be handed over to the German authorities. Benjamin took poison, fearing to fall into the hands of the Gestapo: the Spanish border where he found himself was closed. Abandoned by his wife and left penniless, Toller hanged himself in a New York hotel.

Zweig did not have any obvious, ordinary reasons for taking his own life. No creative crisis. No financial difficulties. No fatal disease. No problems in my personal life. Before the war, Zweig was the most successful German writer. His works were published all over the world, translated into either 30 or 40 languages. By the standards of the literary community of that time, he was considered a multimillionaire. Of course, from the mid-30s the German book market was closed to him, but there were still American publishers. The day before his death, Zweig sent one of them his last two works, neatly reprinted by Lotte: “The Chess Novella” and the book of memoirs “Yesterday’s World.” Unfinished manuscripts were later discovered in the writer’s desk: a biography of Balzac, an essay about Montaigne, an untitled novel.

Three years earlier, Zweig married his secretary, Charlotte Altmann, who was 27 years younger than him and devoted to him to death, as it turned out - in the literal, not figurative sense of the word. Finally, in 1940, he accepted British citizenship - a measure that freed him from the emigrant ordeals with documents and visas, vividly described in Remarque’s novels. Millions of people squeezed into the millstones of a giant European meat grinder could only envy the writer, who was comfortably settled in the paradise town of Petropolis and, together with his young wife, made forays into the famous carnival in Rio. A lethal dose of Veronal is not usually taken in such circumstances.

Of course, many versions have been expressed about the reasons for suicide. They talked about the writer’s loneliness in a foreign Brazil, longing for his native Austria, for a cozy house in Salzburg plundered by the Nazis, for the plunder of a famous collection of autographs, about fatigue and depression. They quoted letters to their ex-wife (“I continue my work; but only at 1/4 of my strength. It’s just an old habit without any creativity...”, “I’m tired of everything...”, “The best times have gone forever...”) They recalled the writer’s almost manic fear of the fatal figure of 60 (“I’m afraid of illness, old age and addiction”). It is believed that the last straw that broke the cup of patience was newspaper reports about the Japanese capture of Singapore and the offensive of Wehrmacht troops in Libya. There were rumors that a German invasion of England was being prepared. Perhaps Zweig feared that the war from which he fled, crossing oceans and continents (England - USA - Brazil - his flight route) would spread to the Western Hemisphere. The most famous explanation was given by Remarque: “People who had no roots were extremely unstable - chance played a decisive role in their lives. If that evening in Brazil, when Stefan Zweig and his wife committed suicide, they could have poured out their souls to someone, at least over the phone, the misfortune might not have happened. But Zweig found himself in a foreign land among strangers” (“Shadows in Paradise”).

The heroes of many of Zweig's works ended the same way as their author. Perhaps, before his death, the writer remembered his own essay about Kleist, who committed double suicide with Henriette Vogel. But Zweig himself was never a suicidal person.

There is a strange logic in the fact that this gesture of despair ended the life of a man who seemed to his contemporaries to be the darling of fate, the favorite of the gods, the lucky one, the lucky one, born “with a silver spoon in his mouth.” “Perhaps I was too spoiled before,” Zweig said at the end of his life. The word “maybe” is not very appropriate here. He was lucky always and everywhere. He was lucky with his parents: his father, Moritz Zweig, was a Viennese textile manufacturer, his mother, Ida Brettauer, belonged to the richest family of Jewish bankers, whose members settled all over the world. Wealthy, educated, assimilated Jews. He was lucky to be born as a second son: the eldest, Alfred, inherited his father's company, and the youngest was given the opportunity to study at the university to receive a university degree and support the family reputation with the title of Doctor of Science.

Lucky with time and place: Vienna at the end of the 19th century, the Austrian “Silver Age”: Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler and Rilke in literature; Mahler, Schoenberg, Webern and Alban Berg in music; Klimt and the Secession in painting; performances of the Burgtheater and the Royal Opera, Freud's psychoanalytic school... The air is saturated with high culture. “The Age of Reliability,” as the nostalgic Zweig dubbed it in his dying memoirs.

Lucky with school. True, Zweig hated the “training barracks” itself - the state gymnasium, but he found himself in a class “infected” with an interest in art: someone wrote poetry, someone painted, someone was going to become an actor, someone studied music and never missed a single concert, and some even published articles in magazines. Later, Zweig was lucky with the university: attending lectures at the Faculty of Philosophy was free, so he was not exhausted by classes and exams. It was possible to travel, live for a long time in Berlin and Paris, and meet celebrities.

He was lucky during the First World War: although Zweig was drafted into the army, he was sent only to easy work in the military archive. At the same time, the writer - a cosmopolitan and a convinced pacifist - could publish anti-war articles and dramas, and participate, together with Romain Rolland, in the creation of an international organization of cultural figures who opposed the war. In 1917, the Zurich theater began staging his play Jeremiah. This gave Zweig the opportunity to get a vacation and spend the end of the war in prosperous Switzerland.

Lucky with your appearance. In his youth, Zweig was handsome and a great success with the ladies. A long and passionate romance began with a “letter from a stranger” signed with the mysterious initials FMFV. Friederike Maria von Winternitz was also a writer, the wife of a major official. After the end of the First World War they got married. Twenty years of cloudless family happiness.

But most of all, of course, Zweig was lucky in literature. He began writing early, at the age of 16 he published his first aesthetically decadent poems, and at 19 he published a collection of poems, “Silver Strings,” at his own expense. Success came instantly: Rilke himself liked the poems, and the formidable editor of the most respectable Austrian newspaper, Neue Freie Presse, Theodor Herzl (the future founder of Zionism), took his articles for publication. But Zweig’s real fame came from the works written after the war: short stories, “novelized biographies,” a collection of historical miniatures “Humanity’s Finest Hours,” and biographical essays collected in the “Builders of the World” cycle.

He considered himself a citizen of the world. Traveled to all continents, visited Africa, India and both Americas, spoke several languages. Franz Werfel said that Zweig was better prepared than anyone else for life in exile. Among Zweig's acquaintances and friends were almost all European celebrities: writers, artists, politicians. However, he was demonstratively not interested in politics, believing that “in real life, in real life, in the field of action of political forces, it is not outstanding minds, not bearers of pure ideas, that are decisive, but a much baser, but also more dexterous breed - behind-the-scenes figures, people of dubious morality and small intelligence,” like Joseph Fouché, whose biography he wrote. The apolitical Zweig never even went to the polls.

While still a high school student, at the age of 15, Zweig began collecting autographs of writers and composers. Later this hobby became his passion, he owned one of the best collections of manuscripts in the world, including pages written by the hand of Leonardo, Napoleon, Balzac, Mozart, Bach, Nietzsche, personal belongings of Goethe and Beethoven. There were at least 4 thousand catalogs alone.

All this success and brilliance had, however, a downside. In the writing community they caused jealousy and envy. As John Fowles put it, “the silver spoon eventually began to turn into a crucifix.” Brecht, Musil, Canetti, Hesse, Kraus left openly hostile statements about Zweig. Hofmannsthal, one of the organizers of the Salzburg Festival, demanded that Zweig not appear at the festival. The writer bought a house in small, provincial Salzburg during the First World War, long before any festivals, but he respected this agreement and every summer, during the festival, he left the city. Others were not so forthcoming. Thomas Mann, considered the No. 1 German writer, was not too happy about the fact that someone had overtaken him in popularity and sales ratings. And although he wrote about Zweig: “His literary fame penetrated to the most remote corners of the earth. Perhaps, since the time of Erasmus, no writer has been as famous as Stefan Zweig,” among those close to him, Mann called him one of the worst modern German writers. True, Mann’s bar was not low: both Feuchtwanger and Remarque ended up in the same company along with Zweig.

"Non-Austrian Austrian, non-Jewish Jew." Zweig really did not feel like either an Austrian or a Jew. He recognized himself as a European and spent his whole life advocating for the creation of a united Europe - an insanely utopian idea in the interwar period, realized several decades after his death.

Zweig said of himself and his parents that they “were Jews only by accident of birth.” Like many successful, assimilated Western Jews, he had a slight disdain for the Ostjuden, the Yiddish-speaking, impoverished people of the Pale of Settlement who followed a traditional lifestyle. When Herzl tried to recruit Zweig to work in the Zionist movement, he flatly refused. In 1935, once in New York, he did not speak out about the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, fearing that this would only worsen their situation. Zweig was condemned for this refusal to use his influence in the fight against growing anti-Semitism. Hannah Arendt called him “a bourgeois writer who never cared about the fate of his own people.” In reality, everything was more complicated. Asking himself what nationality he would choose in a united Europe of the future, Zweig admitted that he would prefer to be a Jew, a person with a spiritual rather than a physical homeland.

It is difficult for Zweig's reader to believe the fact that he lived until 1942, survived two world wars, several revolutions and the onset of fascism, and that he traveled all over the world. It seems that his life stopped somewhere in the 20s, if not earlier, and that he had never been outside of Central Europe. The action of almost all of his short stories and novels takes place in the pre-war period, as a rule, in Vienna, less often in some European resorts. It seems that in his work Zweig was trying to escape into the past - into the blessed “golden age of reliability.”

Another way to escape into the past was to study history. Biographies, historical essays and miniatures, reviews and memoirs occupy much more space in Zweig’s creative heritage than the original works - a couple of dozen short stories and two novels. Zweig’s historical interests were not something unusual; all German literature of his time was gripped by a “thirst for history” (critic W. Schmidt-Dengler): Feuchtwanger, the Mann brothers, Emil Ludwig... The era of wars and revolutions required historical understanding. “When such great events take place in history, you don’t want to invent them in art,” said Zweig.

Zweig’s peculiarity is that for him history was reduced to individual, decisive, crisis moments - “finest hours”, “truly historical, great and unforgettable moments.” During such hours, the unknown captain of the engineering forces Rouget de Lisle creates the Marseillaise, the adventurer Vasco Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean, and because of the indecisiveness of Marshal Grouchy, the destinies of Europe change. Zweig celebrated such historical moments in his life. Thus, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for him was symbolized by the meeting on the Swiss border with the train of the last Emperor Charles, who was sending him into exile. He also collected autographs of celebrities for a reason, but looked for those manuscripts that would express a moment of inspiration, the creative insight of a genius, which would allow “to comprehend in the relic of a manuscript what made the immortals immortal for the world.”

Zweig’s short stories are also the stories of one “fantastic night,” “24 hours in the life”: a concentrated moment when the hidden possibilities of the individual, the abilities and passions dormant within him, burst out. Biographies of Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette are stories about how “an ordinary, everyday fate turns into a tragedy on an ancient scale,” the average person turns out to be worthy of greatness. Zweig believed that every person has a certain innate, “demonic” beginning that drives him beyond the boundaries of his own personality, “toward danger, to the unknown, to risk.” It was this breakthrough of the dangerous - or sublime - part of our soul that he loved to depict. He called one of his biographical trilogies “Fighting the Demon”: Hölderlin, Kleist and Nietzsche, “Dionysian” natures, completely subordinated to the “power of the demon” and contrasted with the harmonious Olympian Goethe.

Zweig's paradox is the uncertainty of which “literary class” he should be classified as. He considered himself a “serious writer,” but it is obvious that his works are rather high-quality mass literature: melodramatic plots, entertaining biographies of celebrities. According to Stephen Spender, Zweig's main readership was teenagers from middle-class European families - they avidly read stories about how, behind the respectable façade of bourgeois society, there were hidden "burning secrets" and passions: sexual desire, fears, mania and madness. Many of Zweig’s short stories seem to be illustrations of Freud’s research, which is not surprising: they moved in the same circles, described the same respectable and respectable Viennese, who hid a bunch of subconscious complexes under the guise of decency.

For all his brightness and external brilliance, there is something elusive and unclear in Zweig. He was rather a private person. His works cannot be called autobiographical. “Your things are only a third of your personality,” his first wife wrote to him. In Zweig's memoirs, the reader is struck by their strange impersonalism: this is more a biography of an era than of an individual person. Not much can be learned from them about the writer’s personal life. In Zweig's short stories, the figure of the narrator often appears, but he always keeps in the shadows, in the background, performing purely official functions. The writer, oddly enough, gave his own traits to those far from the most pleasant of his characters: the annoying collector of celebrities in “Impatience of the Heart” or the writer in “Letter from a Stranger.” All this rather resembles self-caricature - perhaps unconscious and not even noticed by Zweig himself.

Zweig is generally a writer with a double bottom: if you wish, in his most classic works you can find associations with Kafka - with whom he, it would seem, had nothing in common! Meanwhile, “The Decline of One Heart” is a story about the instantaneous and terrible disintegration of a family - the same as “Metamorphosis,” only without any phantasmagoria, and the discussions about the trial in “Fear” seem borrowed from “The Trial.” Critics have long noticed the similarity of the plot lines of “The Chess Novella” with Nabokov’s “Luzhin.” Well, the famous romantic “Letter from a Stranger” in the era of postmodernism is tempting to read in the spirit of Priestley’s “An Inspector’s Visit”: a hoax that created a great love story out of several random women.

Zweig's literary fate is a mirror version of the romantic legend about an unrecognized artist, whose talent remained unappreciated by his contemporaries and was recognized only after death. In the case of Zweig, everything turned out exactly the opposite: according to Fowles, “Stephan Zweig experienced, after his death in 1942, the most complete oblivion of any writer of our century.” Fowles, of course, exaggerates: Zweig, even during his lifetime, was not “the most read and translated serious writer in the world,” and his oblivion is far from complete. In at least two countries, Zweig's popularity never waned. These countries are France and, oddly enough, Russia. Why Zweig was so loved in the USSR (his collected works were published in 12 volumes in 1928-1932) is a mystery. The liberal and humanist Zweig had nothing in common with the communists and fellow travelers beloved by the Soviet regime.

Zweig was one of the first to feel the onset of fascism. By a strange coincidence, from the terrace of the writer’s Salzburg house, located near the German border, there was a view of Berchtesgaden, the Fuhrer’s favorite residence. In 1934, Zweig left Austria - four years before the Anschluss. The formal pretext was the desire to work in the British archives on the history of Mary Stuart, but deep down he knew that he would not return back.

During these years, he writes about individual idealists, Erasmus and Castellio, who opposed fanaticism and totalitarianism. In Zweig’s contemporary reality, such humanists and liberals could do little.

During the years of emigration, an impeccably happy marriage came to an end. Everything changed with the arrival of the secretary, Charlotte Elizabeth Altman. For several years, Zweig tossed around inside a love triangle, not knowing who to choose: an aging, but still beautiful and elegant wife, or a mistress - a young, but somehow plain-looking, sickly and unhappy girl. The feeling that Zweig felt for Lotte was pity rather than attraction: this pity he endowed with Anton Hofmiller, the hero of his only completed novel, Impatience of the Heart, written at that time. In 1938, the writer finally received a divorce. Once Friederike left her husband for Zweig, now he himself left her for another - this melodramatic plot could well form the basis of one of his short stories. “Internally,” Zweig never completely broke up with his ex-wife; he wrote to her that their breakup was purely external.

Loneliness approached the writer not only in family life. By the beginning of World War II, he was left without spiritual guidance. There is something feminine in Zweig’s talent and personality. The point is not only that the heroines of most of his works are women, but that he was probably one of the most subtle experts on female psychology in world literature. This femininity was manifested in the fact that Zweig was, by nature, more a follower than a leader: he constantly needed a “teacher” whom he could follow. Before the First World War, such a “teacher” for him was Verhaeren, whose poems Zweig translated into German and about whom he wrote memoirs; during the war - Romain Rolland, after it - to some extent Freud. Freud died in 1939. Emptiness surrounded the writer on all sides.

Having lost his homeland, Zweig felt like an Austrian for the first time. In the last years of his life, he writes memoirs - another escape into the past, to Austria at the beginning of the century. Another version of the “Habsburg myth” is nostalgia for the disappeared empire. A myth born of despair - as Joseph Roth said, “but you still have to admit that the Habsburgs are better than Hitler...” Unlike Roth, his close friend, Zweig became neither a Catholic nor a supporter of the imperial dynasty. And yet he created a panegyric full of painful melancholy for the “golden age of reliability”: “Everything in our almost thousand-year-old Austrian monarchy seemed to be designed for eternity, and the state is the highest guarantor of this constancy. Everything in this vast empire stood firmly and unshakably in its place, and above everything was the old Kaiser. The nineteenth century, in its liberal idealism, was sincerely convinced that it was on the straight and sure path to the “best of all worlds.”

Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia, called Zweig the embodiment of humanism. Franz Werfel said that Zweig's religion was humanistic optimism, faith in the liberal values of his youth. “The darkening of this spiritual sky was a shock for Zweig that he could not bear.” All this is true - it was easier for the writer to die than to come to terms with the collapse of the ideals of his youth. He ends his nostalgic passages dedicated to the liberal age of hope and progress with the characteristic phrase: “But even if it was an illusion, it was still wonderful and noble, more humane and life-giving than today’s ideals. And something deep down in my soul, despite all the experience and disappointment, prevents me from completely renouncing it. I cannot completely renounce the ideals of my youth, the belief that someday again, in spite of everything, a bright day will come.”

Zweig’s farewell letter said: “After sixty, special strength is required to start life anew. My strength is exhausted by years of wandering far from my homeland. In addition, I think that it is better now, with our heads raised, to put an end to an existence whose main joy was intellectual work, and whose highest value was personal freedom. I greet all my friends. Let them see the dawn after a long night! But I’m too impatient and leave before them.”

Gymnasium, Zweig entered the University of Vienna, where he studied philosophy and received his doctorate in 1904.

Already during his studies, he published his first collection of poems at his own expense (“Silberne Saiten”). The poems were written under the influence of Hofmannsthal, as well as Rilke, to whom Zweig risked sending his collection. Rilke sent his book in response. Thus began a friendship that lasted until Rilke’s death.

After graduating from the University of Vienna, Zweig went to London and Paris (), then traveled to Italy and Spain (), visited India, Indochina, the USA, Cuba, Panama (). During the last years of the First World War he lived in Switzerland (-), and after the war he settled near Salzburg.

In 1920, Zweig married Friederike Maria von Winternitz. They divorced in 1938. In 1939, Zweig married his new secretary, Charlotte Altmann.

In 1934, after Hitler came to power in Germany, Zweig left Austria and went to London. In 1940, Zweig and his wife moved to New York, and on August 22, 1940, to Petropolis, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Feeling severely disappointed and depressed, on February 23, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a lethal dose of barbiturates and were found dead in their home, holding hands.

Zweig's home in Brazil was later turned into a museum and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig. In 1981, an Austrian postage stamp was issued for the 100th anniversary of the writer.

Novels by Stefan Zweig. Novels and biographies

Zweig often wrote at the intersection of document and art, creating fascinating biographies of Magellan, Mary Stuart, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Joseph Foucher, Balzac ().

In historical novels, it is customary to conjecture a historical fact using the power of creative imagination. Where documents were lacking, the artist’s imagination began to work. Zweig, on the contrary, always masterfully worked with documents, discovering a psychological background in any letter or memoir of an eyewitness.

"Mary Stuart" (1935), "The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam" (1934)

The dramatic personality and fate of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots and France, will always excite the imagination of posterity. The author designated the genre of the book “Maria Stuart” as a novelized biography. The Scottish and English queens have never seen each other. That's what Elizabeth wished. But between them, for a quarter of a century, there was intense correspondence, outwardly correct, but full of hidden jabs and caustic insults. The letters form the basis of the book. Zweig also used the testimony of friends and enemies of both queens to render an impartial verdict on both.

Having completed the life story of the beheaded queen, Zweig indulges in final thoughts: “Morals and politics have their own different paths. Events are assessed differently depending on whether we judge them from the point of view of humanity or from the point of view of political advantages.” For the writer in the early 30s. the conflict between morality and politics is no longer speculative, but quite tangible in nature, affecting him personally.

Heritage

A private charitable organization “Casa Stefan Zweig” was created, with its ultimate goal being the creation of the Stefan Zweig Museum in Petropolis - in the house where he and his wife lived in their last months and passed away.

Materials from the book “Foreign Writers. Biobibliographic Dictionary" (Moscow, "Prosveshcheniye" ("Educational Literature"), 1997)

Selected bibliography

Poetry collections

"Silver strings" ()
"Early wreaths" ()

Dramas, tragedies

"House by the Sea" (tragedy)
"Jeremiah" ( Jeremias, , dramatic chronicle)

Cycles

"First experiences: 4 short stories from the land of childhood (At dusk, The Governess, A burning secret, A summer short story) ( Erstes Erlebnis.Vier Geschichten aus Kinderland, 1911)
"Three Masters: Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky" ( Drei Meister: Dickens, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, )
“The fight against madness: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche” ( Der Kampf mit dem Dämon: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, )
“Three singers of their lives: Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy” ( Drei Dichter ihres Lebens, )
“Psyche and healing: Mesmer, Becker-Eddie, Freud” ()

Novels

"Conscience against violence: Castellio against Calvin" ( Castellio gegen Calvin oder. Ein Gewissen gegen die Gewalt, 1936)
"Amok" (Der Amokläufer, 1922)
"Letter from a Stranger" ( Brief einer Unbekannten, 1922)
"Invisible Collection" ()
"Confusion of feelings" ( Verwirrung der Gefühle, )
"Twenty-four hours in the life of a woman" ()
“The Finest Hours of Humanity” (in the first Russian translation - Fatal Moments) (cycle of short stories)
"Mendel the Bookseller" ()
"The Burning Secret" (Brennendes Geheimnis, 1911)
"At Twilight"
"Woman and Nature"
"One Heart's Sunset"
"Fantastic Night"
"Street in the Moonlight"
"Summer Novella"
"The Last Holiday"
"Fear"
"Leporella"
"Irreversible moment"
"Stolen Manuscripts"
"The Governess" (Die Gouvernante, 1911)
"Compulsion"
"An Incident on Lake Geneva"
"Byron's Mystery"
“An unexpected acquaintance with a new profession”
"Arturo Toscanini"
"Christine" (Rausch der Verwandlung, 1982)
"Clarissa" (unfinished)

Legends

"The Legend of the Twin Sisters"
"Lyon Legend"
"The Legend of the Third Dove"
"Eyes of the Eternal Brother" ()

Novels

"Impatience of the Heart" ( Ungeduld des Herzens, )
"Frenzy of Transfiguration" ( Rausch der Verwandlung, , in Russian lane () - "Christina Hoflener")

Fictionalized biographies, biographies

"France Maserel" ( Frans Masereel, ; with Arthur Holicher)
"Marie Antoinette: a portrait of an ordinary character" ( Marie Antoinette, )
"The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam" ()
"Mary Stuart" ( Maria Stuart, )
"Conscience against violence: Castellio against Calvin" ()
"The Feat of Magellan" ("Magellan. Man and His Deeds") ()
"Balzac" ( Balzac, published posthumously)
“Amerigo. The Tale of a Historical Mistake"
"Joseph Fouche. Portrait of a politician"

Autobiography

"Yesterday's World: Memoirs of a European" ( Die Welt von gestern, published posthumously)

Articles, essays

"Fire"
"Dickens"
"Dante"
"Speech for Romain Rolland's sixtieth birthday"
“Speech on the sixtieth birthday of Maxim Gorky”
“The meaning and beauty of manuscripts (Speech at a book exhibition in London)”
“A book is a gateway to the world”
"Nietzsche"

Film adaptations

24 hours in the life of a woman (Germany) - a film adaptation of the short story of the same name, directed by Robert Land.
The Burning Secret (Germany) - a film adaptation of the short story of the same name, directed by Robert Siodmak.
Amok (France) - film adaptation of the short story of the same name, directed by Fyodor Otsep.
Beware of Pity () - film adaptation of the novel “Impatience of the Heart”, directed by Maurice Elway.
Letter from a Stranger () - based on the short story of the same name, directed by Max Ophüls.
Chess novella () - based on the novella of the same name, by German director Gerd Oswald.
Dangerous Pity () - a two-part film by French film director Edouard Molinaro, an adaptation of the novel “Impatience of the Heart.”
Confusion of Feelings () - a film by Belgian director Etienne Perrier based on Zweig's novel of the same name.
Burning Secret () - a film directed by Andrew Birkin, which received prizes at the Brussels and Venice Film Festivals.
Hop of Transfiguration (film, 1989) - a two-part film based on the unfinished work “Christine Hoflener”, directed by Edouard Molinaro,.
The Last Holiday is a film based on the short story of the same name.
Clarissa () - television film, film adaptation of the short story of the same name, directed by Jacques Deray.
Letter from a Stranger () - the latest film by French film director Jacques Deray
24 hours in the life of a woman () - a film by French director Laurent Bunic, a film adaptation of the short story of the same name.
Love for love () - a film directed by Sergei Ashkenazy based on the novel “Impatience of the Heart”
The Promise () is a melodrama directed by Patrice Lecomte, a film adaptation of the short story “Journey to the Past.”
The film “The Grand Budapest Hotel” was filmed based on the works. In the final credits of the film it is indicated that its plot is inspired by the works of the author (the filmmakers mention such works as “Impatience of the Heart”, “Yesterday’s World. Notes of a European”, “Twenty-four hours in the life of a woman”).

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Excerpt characterizing Zweig, Stefan

– Voila un veritable ami! – said the beaming Helen, once again touching Bilibip’s sleeve with her hand. – Mais c"est que j"aime l"un et l"autre, je ne voudrais pas leur faire de chagrin. Je donnerais ma vie pour leur bonheur a tous deux, [Here is a true friend! But I love both of them and I wouldn’t want to upset anyone. For the happiness of both, I would be ready to sacrifice my life.] - she said.
Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, expressing that even he could no longer help such grief.
“Une maitresse femme! Voila ce qui s"appelle poser carrement la question. Elle voudrait epouser tous les trois a la fois", ["Well done woman! That's what is called firmly asking the question. She would like to be the wife of all three at the same time."] - thought Bilibin.
- But tell me, how will your husband look at this matter? - he said, due to the strength of his reputation, not afraid to undermine himself with such a naive question. – Will he agree?
- Ah! “Il m"aime tant! - said Helen, who for some reason thought that Pierre loved her too. - Il fera tout pour moi. [Ah! he loves me so much! He is ready for anything for me.]
Bilibin picked up the skin to represent the mot being prepared.
“Meme le divorce, [Even for a divorce.],” he said.
Helen laughed.
Among the people who allowed themselves to doubt the legality of the marriage being undertaken was Helen’s mother, Princess Kuragina. She was constantly tormented by envy of her daughter, and now, when the object of envy was closest to the princess’s heart, she could not come to terms with this thought. She consulted with a Russian priest about the extent to which divorce and marriage was possible while her husband was alive, and the priest told her that this was impossible, and, to her joy, pointed her to the Gospel text, which (it seemed to the priest) directly rejected the possibility of marriage from a living husband.
Armed with these arguments, which seemed irrefutable to her, the princess went to see her daughter early in the morning, in order to find her alone.
After listening to her mother's objections, Helen smiled meekly and mockingly.
“But it’s directly said: whoever marries a divorced wife...” said the old princess.
- Ah, maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma position j"ai des devoirs, [Ah, mamma, don’t talk nonsense. You don’t understand anything. My position has responsibilities.] - Helen spoke, translating the conversation into French from Russian, in which she always seemed to have some kind of ambiguity in her case.
- But, my friend...
– Ah, maman, comment est ce que vous ne comprenez pas que le Saint Pere, qui a le droit de donner des dispenses... [Ah, mamma, how don’t you understand that the Holy Father, who has the power of absolution...]
At this time, the lady companion who lived with Helen came in to report to her that His Highness was in the hall and wanted to see her.
- Non, dites lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre lui, parce qu"il m"a manque parole. [No, tell him that I don’t want to see him, that I’m furious against him because he didn’t keep his word to me.]
“Comtesse a tout peche misericorde, [Countess, mercy for every sin.],” said a young blond man with a long face and nose as he entered.
The old princess stood up respectfully and sat down. The young man who entered did not pay attention to her. The princess nodded her head to her daughter and floated towards the door.
“No, she’s right,” thought the old princess, all her convictions were destroyed before the appearance of His Highness. - She is right; but how is it that we didn’t know this in our irrevocable youth? And it was so simple,” the old princess thought as she got into the carriage.

At the beginning of August, Helen's matter was completely determined, and she wrote a letter to her husband (who loved her very much, as she thought) in which she informed him of her intention to marry NN and that she had joined the one true religion and that she asks him to complete all the formalities necessary for divorce, which the bearer of this letter will convey to him.
“Sur ce je prie Dieu, mon ami, de vous avoir sous sa sainte et puissante garde. Votre amie Helene.”
[“Then I pray to God that you, my friend, will be under his holy, strong protection. Your friend Elena"]
This letter was brought to Pierre's house while he was on the Borodino field.

The second time, already at the end of the Battle of Borodino, having escaped from Raevsky’s battery, Pierre with crowds of soldiers headed along the ravine to Knyazkov, reached the dressing station and, seeing blood and hearing screams and groans, hastily moved on, getting mixed up in the crowds of soldiers.
One thing that Pierre now wanted with all the strength of his soul was to quickly get out of those terrible impressions in which he lived that day, return to normal living conditions and fall asleep peacefully in his room on his bed. Only under ordinary conditions of life did he feel that he would be able to understand himself and all that he had seen and experienced. But these ordinary living conditions were nowhere to be found.
Although cannonballs and bullets did not whistle here along the road along which he walked, on all sides there was the same thing that was there on the battlefield. There were the same suffering, exhausted and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers' greatcoats, the same sounds of shooting, although distant, but still terrifying; In addition, it was stuffy and dusty.
Having walked about three miles along the big Mozhaisk road, Pierre sat down on the edge of it.
Dusk fell on the ground, and the roar of the guns died down. Pierre, leaning on his arm, lay down and lay there for a long time, looking at the shadows moving past him in the darkness. It constantly seemed to him that a cannonball was flying at him with a terrible whistle; he shuddered and stood up. He didn't remember how long he had been here. In the middle of the night, three soldiers, having brought branches, placed themselves next to him and began to make a fire.
The soldiers, looking sideways at Pierre, lit a fire, put a pot on it, crumbled crackers into it and put lard in it. The pleasant smell of edible and fatty food merged with the smell of smoke. Pierre stood up and sighed. The soldiers (there were three of them) ate, not paying attention to Pierre, and talked among themselves.
- What kind of person will you be? - one of the soldiers suddenly turned to Pierre, obviously, by this question meaning what Pierre was thinking, namely: if you want something, we will give it to you, just tell me, are you an honest person?
- I? me?.. - said Pierre, feeling the need to belittle his social position as much as possible in order to be closer and more understandable to the soldiers. “I am truly a militia officer, only my squad is not here; I came to the battle and lost my own.
- Look! - said one of the soldiers.
The other soldier shook his head.
- Well, eat the mess if you want! - said the first and gave Pierre, licking it, a wooden spoon.
Pierre sat down by the fire and began to eat the mess, the food that was in the pot and which seemed to him the most delicious of all the foods that he had ever eaten. While he greedily bent over the pot, picking up large spoons, chewing one after another and his face was visible in the light of the fire, the soldiers silently looked at him.
-Where do you want it? You tell me! – one of them asked again.
– I’m going to Mozhaisk.
- Are you now a master?
- Yes.
- What’s your name?
- Pyotr Kirillovich.
- Well, Pyotr Kirillovich, let’s go, we’ll take you. In complete darkness, the soldiers, together with Pierre, went to Mozhaisk.
The roosters were already crowing when they reached Mozhaisk and began to climb the steep city mountain. Pierre walked along with the soldiers, completely forgetting that his inn was below the mountain and that he had already passed it. He would not have remembered this (he was in such a state of loss) if his guard, who went to look for him around the city and returned back to his inn, had not encountered him halfway up the mountain. The bereitor recognized Pierre by his hat, which was turning white in the darkness.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “we are already desperate.” Why are you walking? Where are you going, please?
“Oh yes,” said Pierre.
The soldiers paused.
- Well, have you found yours? - said one of them.
- Well, goodbye! Pyotr Kirillovich, I think? Farewell, Pyotr Kirillovich! - said other voices.
“Goodbye,” said Pierre and headed with his driver to the inn.
“We have to give it to them!” - Pierre thought, taking his pocket. “No, don’t,” a voice told him.
There was no room in the upper rooms of the inn: everyone was busy. Pierre went into the yard and, covering his head, lay down in his carriage.

As soon as Pierre laid his head on the pillow, he felt that he was falling asleep; but suddenly, with the clarity of almost reality, a boom, boom, boom of shots was heard, groans, screams, the splashing of shells were heard, the smell of blood and gunpowder, and a feeling of horror, the fear of death, overwhelmed him. He opened his eyes in fear and raised his head from under his overcoat. Everything was quiet in the yard. Only at the gate, talking to the janitor and splashing through the mud, was some orderly walking. Above Pierre's head, under the dark underside of the plank canopy, doves fluttered from the movement he made while rising. Throughout the yard there was a peaceful, joyful for Pierre at that moment, strong smell of an inn, the smell of hay, manure and tar. Between two black canopies a clear starry sky was visible.
“Thank God this isn’t happening anymore,” thought Pierre, covering his head again. - Oh, how terrible fear is and how shamefully I surrendered to it! And they... they were firm and calm all the time, until the end... - he thought. In Pierre's concept, they were soldiers - those who were at the battery, and those who fed him, and those who prayed to the icon. They - these strange ones, hitherto unknown to him, were clearly and sharply separated in his thoughts from all other people.
“To be a soldier, just a soldier! - thought Pierre, falling asleep. – Enter into this common life with your whole being, imbued with what makes them so. But how can one throw off all this unnecessary, devilish, all the burden of this external man? At one time I could have been this. I could run away from my father as much as I wanted. Even after the duel with Dolokhov, I could have been sent as a soldier.” And in Pierre’s imagination flashed a dinner at a club, at which he called Dolokhov, and a benefactor in Torzhok. And now Pierre is presented with a ceremonial dining room. This lodge takes place in the English Club. And someone familiar, close, dear, sits at the end of the table. Yes it is! This is a benefactor. “But he died? - thought Pierre. - Yes, he died; but I didn't know he was alive. And how sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!” On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitsky, Denisov and others like him (the category of these people was as clearly defined in Pierre’s soul in the dream as the category of those people whom he called them), and these people, Anatole, Dolokhov they shouted and sang loudly; but from behind their shout the voice of the benefactor could be heard, speaking incessantly, and the sound of his words was as significant and continuous as the roar of the battlefield, but it was pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what the benefactor was saying, but he knew (the category of thoughts was just as clear in the dream) that the benefactor was talking about goodness, about the possibility of being what they were. And they surrounded the benefactor on all sides, with their simple, kind, firm faces. But although they were kind, they did not look at Pierre, did not know him. Pierre wanted to attract their attention and say. He stood up, but at the same moment his legs became cold and exposed.
He felt ashamed, and he covered his legs with his hand, from which the greatcoat actually fell off. For a moment, Pierre, straightening his overcoat, opened his eyes and saw the same awnings, pillars, courtyard, but all this was now bluish, light and covered with sparkles of dew or frost.
“It’s dawning,” thought Pierre. - But that’s not it. I need to listen to the end and understand the words of the benefactor.” He covered himself with his overcoat again, but neither the dining box nor the benefactor were there. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that someone said or Pierre himself thought about.
Pierre, later recalling these thoughts, despite the fact that they were caused by the impressions of that day, was convinced that someone outside himself was telling them to him. Never, it seemed to him, had he been able to think and express his thoughts like that in reality.
“War is the most difficult task of subordinating human freedom to the laws of God,” said the voice. – Simplicity is submission to God; you can't escape him. And they are simple. They don't say it, but they do it. The spoken word is silver, and the unspoken word is golden. A person cannot own anything while he is afraid of death. And whoever is not afraid of her belongs to him everything. If there were no suffering, a person would not know his own boundaries, would not know himself. The most difficult thing (Pierre continued to think or hear in his sleep) is to be able to unite in his soul the meaning of everything. Connect everything? - Pierre said to himself. - No, don't connect. You can’t connect thoughts, but connecting all these thoughts is what you need! Yes, we need to pair, we need to pair! - Pierre repeated to himself with inner delight, feeling that with these words, and only with these words, what he wants to express is expressed, and the whole question tormenting him is resolved.
- Yes, we need to mate, it’s time to mate.
- We need to harness, it’s time to harness, your Excellency! Your Excellency,” a voice repeated, “we need to harness, it’s time to harness...
It was the voice of the bereitor waking Pierre. The sun hit Pierre's face directly. He looked at the dirty inn, in the middle of which, near a well, soldiers were watering thin horses, from which carts were driving through the gate. Pierre turned away in disgust and, closing his eyes, hastily fell back onto the seat of the carriage. “No, I don’t want this, I don’t want to see and understand this, I want to understand what was revealed to me during my sleep. One more second and I would have understood everything. So what should I do? Pair, but how to combine everything?” And Pierre felt with horror that the entire meaning of what he saw and thought in his dream was destroyed.
The driver, the coachman and the janitor told Pierre that an officer had arrived with the news that the French had moved towards Mozhaisk and that ours were leaving.
Pierre got up and, ordering them to lay down and catch up with him, went on foot through the city.
The troops left and left about ten thousand wounded. These wounded were visible in the courtyards and windows of houses and crowded in the streets. On the streets near the carts that were supposed to take away the wounded, screams, curses and blows were heard. Pierre gave the carriage that had overtaken him to a wounded general he knew and went with him to Moscow. Dear Pierre learned about the death of his brother-in-law and about the death of Prince Andrei.

X
On the 30th, Pierre returned to Moscow. Almost at the outpost he met Count Rastopchin's adjutant.
“And we are looking for you everywhere,” said the adjutant. “The Count definitely needs to see you.” He asks you to come to him now on a very important matter.
Pierre, without stopping home, took a cab and went to the commander-in-chief.
Count Rastopchin had just arrived in the city that morning from his country dacha in Sokolniki. The hallway and reception room in the count's house were full of officials who appeared at his request or for orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already met with the count and explained to him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it would be surrendered. Although this news was hidden from the residents, officials and heads of various departments knew that Moscow would be in the hands of the enemy, just as Count Rostopchin knew it; and all of them, in order to relinquish responsibility, came to the commander-in-chief with questions about how to deal with the units entrusted to them.
While Pierre was entering the reception room, a courier coming from the army was leaving the count.
The courier hopelessly waved his hand at the questions addressed to him and walked through the hall.
While waiting in the reception area, Pierre looked with tired eyes at the various officials, old and young, military and civilian, important and unimportant, who were in the room. Everyone seemed unhappy and restless. Pierre approached one group of officials, in which one was his acquaintance. After greeting Pierre, they continued their conversation.
- How to deport and return again, there will be no trouble; and in such a situation one cannot be held accountable for anything.
“Why, here he is writing,” said another, pointing to the printed paper he was holding in his hand.
- That's another matter. This is necessary for the people,” said the first.
- What is this? asked Pierre.
- Here's a new poster.
Pierre took it in his hands and began to read:
“The Most Serene Prince, in order to quickly unite with the troops that were coming to him, crossed Mozhaisk and stood in a strong place where the enemy would not suddenly attack him. Forty-eight cannons with shells were sent to him from here, and His Serene Highness says that he will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is ready to fight even in the streets. You, brothers, don’t look at the fact that public offices have been closed: things need to be tidied up, and we will deal with the villain in our court! When it comes down to it, I need young people from both towns and villages. I’ll call the cry in two days, but now there’s no need, I’m silent. Good with an axe, not bad with a spear, but best of all is a three-piece pitchfork: a Frenchman is not heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow, after lunch, I’m taking Iverskaya to the Catherine Hospital, to see the wounded. We will consecrate the water there: they will recover sooner; and now I’m healthy: my eye hurt, but now I can see both.”

Stefan Zweig is an Austrian writer who became famous mainly as the author of short stories and fictional biographies; literary critic. He was born in Vienna on November 28, 1881 in the family of a Jewish manufacturer, the owner of a textile factory. Zweig did not talk about his childhood and adolescence, speaking about the typicality of this period of life for representatives of his environment.

Having received his education at the gymnasium, Stefan became a student at the University of Vienna in 1900, where he studied German studies and novels in depth at the Faculty of Philology. While still a student, his debut poetry collection “Silver Strings” was published. The aspiring writer sent his book to Rilke, under the influence of whose creative style it was written, and the consequence of this act was their friendship, interrupted only by the death of the second. During these same years, literary critical activity also began: Berlin and Vienna magazines published articles by the young Zweig. After graduating from university and receiving his doctorate in 1904, Zweig published a collection of short stories, “The Love of Erica Ewald,” as well as poetic translations.

1905-1906 open a period of active travel in Zweig’s life. Starting from Paris and London, he subsequently traveled to Spain, Italy, then his travels went beyond the continent, he visited North and South America, India, and Indochina. During the First World War, Zweig was an employee of the archives of the Ministry of Defense, had access to documents and, not without the influence of his good friend R. Rolland, turned into a pacifist, wrote articles, plays, and short stories of an anti-war orientation. He called Rolland himself “the conscience of Europe.” During these same years, he created a number of essays, the main characters of which were M. Proust, T. Mann, M. Gorky and others. Throughout 1917-1918. Zweig lived in Switzerland, and in the post-war years Salzburg became his place of residence.

In the 20-30s. Zweig continues to write actively. During 1920-1928. biographies of famous people are published, united under the title “Builders of the World” (Balzac, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Stendhal, etc.). At the same time, S. Zweig worked on short stories, and works of this particular genre turned him into a popular writer not only in his country and on the continent, but throughout the world. His short stories were built according to his own model, which distinguished Zweig's creative style from other works of this genre. Biographical works also enjoyed considerable success. This was especially true of “The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam” written in 1934 and “Mary Stuart” published in 1935. The writer tried his hand at the novel genre only twice, because he understood that his calling was short stories, and attempts to write a large-scale canvas turned into failure. Only “Impatience of the Heart” and the unfinished “Frenzy of Transfiguration” came out of his pen, which was published four decades after the author’s death.

The last period of Zweig’s life was associated with a constant change of residence. Being a Jew, he could not remain living in Austria after the Nazis came to power. In 1935, the writer moved to London, but did not feel completely safe in the capital of Great Britain, so he left the continent and in 1940 found himself in Latin America. In 1941, he temporarily moved to the United States, but then returned to Brazil, where he settled in the not very large city of Petropolis.

Literary activity continues, Zweig publishes literary criticism, essays, a collection of speeches, memoirs, works of art, but his state of mind is very far from calm. In his imagination, he painted a picture of the victory of Hitler’s troops and the death of Europe, and this led the writer to despair, he plunged into severe depression. Being in another part of the world, he did not have the opportunity to communicate with friends, and experienced an acute feeling of loneliness, although he lived in Petropolis with his wife. On February 22, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a huge dose of sleeping pills and voluntarily died.

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Stefan Zweig is an Austrian writer, author of the short stories “24 Hours in the Life of a Woman” and “Letter from a Stranger.” The owner of a textile factory in Vienna, Moritz Zweig, gave birth to an heir in November 1881, who was named Stefan. The child was raised by a mother named Ida Brettauer. The woman came from a family of bankers. The period of childhood is practically not studied by biographers of Stefan Zweig.

After this, a new stage in Zweig’s life began. The talented young man ended up at the University of Vienna. Philosophy captured Stefan, so the writer received a doctorate after 4 years of study.

At the same time, the young talent created a collection of poems, which he called “Silver Strings.” Stefan Zweig's work during this period was influenced by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke. Stefan began a friendly correspondence with the poet Rilke. The men exchanged their own essays and wrote reviews of the works.

Studying at the University of Vienna has come to an end, Stefan Zweig’s great journey has begun. For 13 years, the author of “Letter from a Stranger” visited London and Paris, Italy and Spain, the USA and Cuba, India and Indochina, Panama and Switzerland. The young poet chose Salzburg as his permanent place of residence.

After graduating from the University of Vienna, Zweig went to London and Paris (1905), then traveled to Italy and Spain (1906), visited India, Indochina, the USA, Cuba, Panama (1912). During the last years of the First World War he lived in Switzerland (1917-1918), and after the war he settled near Salzburg.

Literature

After moving to Salzburg, Stefan Zweig sat down to create a short story called “Letter from a Stranger.” This work impressed readers and critics of the time. The author tells an amazing story about a stranger and a writer. The girl sent a letter in which she told about all-consuming love and the vicissitudes of fate, the intersections of the paths of the main characters.

The first meeting of the writer and the stranger occurred when the girl turned 13 years old. The novelist lived next door. Soon there was a move, because of which the teenage girl had to suffer in splendid isolation, without seeing her loved one. The long-awaited return to Vienna allowed the stranger to plunge back into the romantic world.

Unexpectedly, the lady learns about pregnancy, but the child’s father is unaware of this important event. The next meeting with his lover took place 11 years later, but the writer never recognized the woman as the only one with whom the affair lasted three days. The stranger decided to write a letter to the only man whom the lady had thought about all her life, after the death of the child. A heartfelt story that touches the soul of the most callous person formed the basis of the films.

Zweig has incredible skill, which is revealed gradually. But the peak of his career came with the release of the short stories “Amok”, “Confusion of Feelings”, “Mendel the Bookseller”, “Chess Short Story”, “Humanity’s Finest Hours”, that is, for the period from 1922 to 1941. What is it about the author’s words and sentences that made thousands of people in pre-war times happily leaf through volumes of Zweig’s works?

Everyone, without exception, believed that the unusual nature of the plots provided an opportunity to reflect, to think about what was happening, about how unfair fate can sometimes be in relation to ordinary people. Stefan believed that the human heart cannot be protected, but it can force one to perform great deeds.

Zweig's short stories were strikingly different from the works of his contemporaries. For many years Stefan worked on his own model of the work. The author took as a basis travel that became either tedious, sometimes adventurous, sometimes dangerous.

The incidents with Zweig’s heroes did not occur on the road, but during stops. According to Stefan, a life-changing moment does not require days or months, just a few minutes or hours.

Zweig did not like to write novels, since he did not understand the genre and was not able to fit an event into a spatial narrative. But among the writer’s works there are books made in this style. These are “Impatience of the Heart” and “Frenzy of Transfiguration”. The author did not finish his last novel due to death. This creation was first published in 1982, and was translated into Russian only in 1985.

From time to time, Stefan Zweig preferred to devote himself entirely to creating biographies of contemporaries and historical heroes. Among them is Joseph Fouche, . These works were of interest to writers, since Zweig took official papers for the plot, but sometimes the author had to include fantasy and psychological thinking.

In the work entitled “The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam,” the writer showed feelings and emotions close to his own self. The author liked Erasmus's position on the citizen of the world. The described scientist preferred to live an ordinary life. High positions and other privileges turned out to be alien to the man. Rotterdam didn't like social life. The main goal of the scientist’s life turned out to be independence.

Stefan Zweig showed Erasmus as a condemner of the ignorant and fanatics. The representative of the Renaissance opposed instigators of discord between people. Europe turned into a bloody massacre against the backdrop of growing interethnic and interclass hatred. But Zweig chose to show events from the other side.

Stephen's concept included the idea that Erasmus felt an inner tragedy due to his inability to prevent what was happening. Zweig supported Rotterdam and believed that the First World War was just a misunderstanding that would never happen again. Stefan and tried to achieve this, but his friends failed to save the world from war. During the creation of the book about Erasmus, the writer’s house was searched by the German authorities.

Stephen described the book "Mary Stuart", which was written in 1935, as a novelized biography. Zweig studied numerous letters written by Mary Stuart to the Queen of England. Hatred at a distance - this is how one can describe the relationship between the two crowned heads.

The short story “24 Hours in the Life of a Woman” appeared in 1927. Four years later, the book was filmed by director Robert Land. Modern filmmakers appreciated the novel and presented their version. The new film was released in 2002.

Stefan Zweig became acquainted with Russian literature at the gymnasium. The writer fell in love at first sight with the works of the classics. The author of short stories and novels considers the translation of the collection of essays into Russian to be his main achievement.

He considered Zweig to be a first-class artist, among whose talents there is the gift of a thinker. The Russian writer stated that Stefan could convey the whole gamut of experiences of an ordinary person.

Zweig first visited the Soviet Union in 1928. The visit was associated with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth. In Russia, Stefan met Vladimir Lidin and Konstantin Fedin. Zweig's opinion about the Soviet Union soon changed. The writer Romain Rolland expressed his dissatisfaction. The author of the short stories compared the executed Revolutionary veterans with rabid dogs. According to Stefan, such treatment of people is unacceptable.

Personal life

The first wife of Stefan Zweig was Friederike Maria von Winternitz. The marriage of young people took place in 1920.

After 18 years of marriage, Friederike and Stefan filed for divorce. A year passed and a new stamp appeared in the writer’s passport about the conclusion of an alliance with secretary Charlotte Altman.

Death

Back in 1934, Zweig was forced to leave Austria due to Hitler's rise to power. Stefan set up a new home in London. After 6 years, Zweig and his wife went to New York. The writer did not plan to stay in the city of skyscrapers for a long time. The young people went to Petropolis, which is located in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro.

Living far from his homeland and the lack of world peace plunged Stefan Zweig into depression. Disappointment led the writer to suicide. The author of the short stories and his wife took a lethal dose of drugs. The couple were found dead. They held hands.

Later, a museum was organized in the house where Stefan Zweig died. And in Austria, for the centenary anniversary, a postage stamp appeared in honor of the writer.

Quotes

There is nothing more terrible than loneliness among people.

A person feels the meaning and purpose of his own life only when he realizes that he is needed by others.

The heart knows how to forget easily and quickly if it wants to forget.

If we all knew everything that is said about all of us, no one would talk to anyone.

Whoever has once found himself cannot lose anything in this world. And whoever once understands the person in himself understands all people.

Bibliography

1901 – “Silver Strings”
1911 – “The Governess”
1912 – “House by the Sea”
1919 – “Three Masters: Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky”
1922 – “Amok”
1922 – “Letter from a Stranger”
1926 – “The Invisible Collection”
1927 – “24 hours in the life of a woman”
1942 – “Chess novella”

The name of Stefan Zweig is firmly associated in the minds of the mass reader with the short story genre. It was in him that the writer found his true calling, and it was in them that Zweig was especially successful, despite the fact that the author also worked in other genres...

Biography of Stefan Zweig

The future writer was born on November 28, 1881 in Vienna, into a wealthy family, and could equally consider himself a German, an Austrian, and a Jew. Nationality did not have any noticeable influence on his work. The first serious ideological upheaval was associated with the events. However, Zweig did not go to the front; he was assigned to one of the offices of the military department.

Before the war, he traveled a lot to various countries of the world, also managing to graduate from the University of Vienna with a doctorate. Zweig's life was not replete with a large number of external events - he remained primarily a writer, moving in the circles of literary bohemia. In 1928 he visited the Soviet Union.

However, his position in literature was special; Zweig did not join any group, remaining a kind of “lone wolf.” The last years of his life were continuous attempts to hide from Nazi persecution, and perhaps to escape from himself. First England, then Latin America, the USA, and finally Brazil.

In the midst of this, in 1942, Zweig and his wife commit suicide, the reasons for which can only be guessed at...

The works of Stefan Zweig

Fate favored the young writer initially: his poems were noticed and approved by the famous R.M. Rilke, the famous composer Richard Strauss wrote romances for several of Zweig’s poems, our Maxim Gorky spoke positively about his work, Zweig was actively published and translated. Zweig truly found himself in the short story genre, developing, in fact, a new model of this short genre.

Zweig's novella tells about a journey, during which a dramatic adventure, an extraordinary event, occurs with the hero. As a rule, the central part of each short story is a character’s monologue, often pronounced by him for an imaginary interlocutor or for the reader, in a state of passion. Classic examples of Zweig's short stories are “Amok”, “Letter from a Stranger”, “Fear”. Passion, as interpreted by the writer, can work miracles, but it is also a source of crime.

Zweig's novels did not work out, as did Anton Chekhov, who also remained the author of a short story. Only one example of this genre - “Impatience of the Heart” - was able to be brought to its logical conclusion by Zweig. His turn to the genre of artistic biography turned out to be much more interesting and productive.

Zweig wrote biographies of such historical figures as Mary Stuart, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Magellan and others. Zweig was not the pioneer of this genre, but was able to worthily continue the tradition, the foundations of which were laid by Andre Maurois and Romain Rolland. Like Yuri Tynyanov, he boldly turned to artistic fiction in cases where there were not enough historical documents or reliable evidence from contemporaries.

Zweig was extremely attentive to the experience of his colleagues and singled out Tolstoy. He was interested in the philosophy of F. Nietzsche and the theory of psychoanalysis of S. Freud. Many of Zweig's works on classics and contemporaries formed the basis of the World Builders series. In the last years of his life, Zweig worked on a book of memoirs, “Yesterday's World,” published posthumously. One cannot help but feel an elegiac flavor in it: for the former, pre-war life had already become the property of history, and the future was unclear, inspiring serious fears for the fate of all human civilization.

At the turn of the 20-30s. last century, a 12-volume collected works of Zweig was published in the Soviet Union. Few foreign authors received such an honor during their lifetime.