Zweig – 24 Hours in the Life of a Woman –Comment.

 

After finishing this brief novella, I was again struck by Zweig's astounding insight into the human psyche. We can live our lives and never truly understand what drives us, emotionally or otherwise, to do the things we do. Suddenly out of the blue, something in our environment ignites a deep response, intense feelings, and our rationality simply disappears. Indeed, we can experience these profound urges, but many never act on them. This novella explores acting on impulse, doing something so out of character, that one's inner and outer circle of friends and family are shocked and now their world irrevocably changes. Obsession can be a dangerous thing. 

Our narrator is a gentleman visiting a European resort who witnesses, along with the other guests, a surprising scandal. A married woman with children meets a stranger at the resort, and ends up leaving the resort with him, abandoning her husband and family, with no word to anybody. Of course, the husband is devastated, but the response from the many guests at the resort becomes quite heated. Our narrator seems to defend the woman, having a different take on human nature. Among those debating the issue is a dignified woman in her seventies, who takes our narrator aside and requests his company to relay an incident in her past that she has never confessed to anyone. This incident that transpired over a 24-hour period, has tormented the woman for many years. 

Our distinguished woman at this stage is a widow, wearing only the color of mourning, and has never really moved on since her husband's death. She finds herself in the gaming room of a casino, observing the patrons in the throes of gambling, a past time that she shared with her husband. She explains that to gain greater insight into the gambler, one must watch their hands rather than their faces, to truly grasp their emotions and intent. She watches the hands of a young man making bets on the wheel. At first, he is winning, but later is all in on a certain number, losing everything. The man is in utter ruin, and the desolation in his demeanor reflects a movement towards self-destruction. The noble woman cannot help herself and follows the young man out of the casino. It is raining and she knows he will suicide before the sun rises in the morning. Totally out of character, she intervenes, in an attempt to save the man from himself. 

Zweig's storytelling touches deeply into the nature of the soul. The psychological realism is really quite astounding. The reader can feel the young gambler's desolation, and the woman's concern for the young man's welfare. The woman's actions are so out of character that she is shocked yet continues down this emotional unknown path. 

In 1927 when 24 Hours in the Life of a Woman was published, it was praised by many in Europe as an absolute masterpiece for its lyrical intensity and psychological power representing the human condition at its most vulnerable. 

Excellent read.

Stefan Zweig – Nietzsche – Comment.

 

Stefan Zweig penned several biographical miniatures who he believed shaped his writing and European culture overall, including Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevski, Casanova, Tolstoy, Stendhal, and Nietzsche. In Nietzsche, rather than focusing on the philosopher's physical timeline of dates and events, Zweig presents us with his insight into the man’s psyche, his spirit, and the gruesome suffering of the man’s creative process. 

Where the great German minds of philosophy (Hegel, Goethe, and Schopenhauer) preferred order, a tendency to discipline the spirit, creating an architecture of ‘truth’, a grand narrative, Nietzsche followed the opposite path, abolishing these grand stories of the soul, listening to his demons, he revealed the big lies, and taught us a different way of viewing reality, tearing apart staid perceptions of ourselves, and existence. His approach to knowledge, “...born from an altogether different temperament, from a virtually antipodal universe of the spirit...wholly of the demonic kind; a hot breathed, nerve quivering, inquisitorial passion which never satisfies itself and is never exhausted...never does he allow himself a knowledge set in stone...” (P.28)

Nietzsche physically was a very sick man. Moments of respite from his suffering were few and far between. The man’s diet was strict, and sticking to this eating regimen was paramount to his continued existence. The philosopher constantly plunged himself into the abyss of uncertainty, deconstructing contemporary knowledge, always alone, but pushing forward anyway. Any human being both sick physically and mentally stretched must have a place to escape this suffering, and for Nietzsche it was music. But this was not the music of his youth, Wagner, the loud, bombastic and stimulating dramatic, though now a refuge of escape, ...a kind of psychic bromide, an interior sedative. (P.70)

Art and nothing but art – we have art so that we might not die of truth. (P.70)

Nietzsche’s last years before his mental breakdown was the most productive and inspired. It is reported that many if not of all his friends and colleagues, abandoned him, claiming that the man had finally gone completely insane. In the end, no publisher considered publishing his books. Thus, he had to resort to self-publishing, spending his last savings, only to be read by no one. 

In a moment of despair, the philosopher writes: After a call like my Zarathustra, from the very innermost recesses of my being, to not hear a single word of response, nothing, nothing, only immutable solitude multiplied, there is an inconceivable horror in this and even the strongest would perish before it. (P.75)

Close to his last mental breakdown he wrote a prophetic line: They will understand me after the next European war. (P.87) Of course without question this turned out to be true. And his work continues to be studied and debated in the present time. 

Zweig’s Nietzsche is a masterpiece of psychological and spiritual erudition of one of our great western philosophers. 

 

Stefan Zweig – Journey into the Past – Comment.

Zweig is a master of the psychological, interior thought, and intentions of his characters. In his novella, Confusion, we enter the mind of a young student enthralled by his professor, and the deep attraction for the professor’s wife. The reader comes to discover the obsessions of another party that is fairly taboo in nature. For the time, a scandalous sexual orientation, that today, is hardly worth the attention. In Journey into the Past, Zweig takes us into the thoughts and feelings of two individuals whose deep love for each other must remain unspoken. 

Our protagonist, Ludwig, comes from a working-class family, though due to his intelligence and dogged perseverance; he attains his qualifications in chemistry. He lands a job in a large company owned by a wealthy, German industrialist. The young man works hard, surpassing the expectations of the owner, and is asked to move into his boss's home, to take on the duties of assistant, personal secretary and liaison. It is here we see one of Ludwig’s personal complexes. As he came from humble beginnings, he sees the wealthy as almost a personal affront to himself. That he will always be looked down upon, no matter his achievements, in that world of money and power. At first, he declines the new job offer, believing the job will further cement him in ‘peasant status’, but later changes his mind. It is here that he meets the boss’s young wife. 

As it turns out, the woman is sensitive to all of Ludwig’s needs. He will tell her he admires a particular painting, to later find a framed print of it on his desk. The intense unspoken attraction over time reaches an unbearable pitch, where only the occasional kiss occurs in the shadows of the house’s back hallways. Zweig writes in such a way that we see that this love between them is real, though truly innocent and pure. At this stage, their love is never consummated. 

Ludwig is called by the company to travel overseas to Mexico and oversee mineral exploration. At first, he is hesitant but is assured the assignment will only last two years, though lasts nine years. WWI breaks out and all their correspondence stops between the two lovers. After almost a decade, Ludwig reaches out and contacts her again. 

She is a widow, and Ludwig is married with children, so will they have the same feelings for each other as they did in the past? 

Ludwig desires their relationship not to have changed, but has it really ended? 

Both seem to be connected in a different way. For certain they are in a purgatory between the feelings of their past and what they’re experiencing now, One can say, lost in the emotional shadows of time and space. Can there be renewal, or should the past remain a fading memory? 

This short tale I found sensitive and tender, written with psychological accuracy, touching the depths and fragility of the human heart.