Most of Zweig's work was only translated from German to English around 2007-8. Although a famous and bestselling author in Europe, he was little known in the US, Canada, and Australia. For years I've read and written about Zweig's work, and to come across Six Stories, turned out to be a pleasant experience. What is most striking about these stories is Zweig's uncanny insight into the thoughts and behaviors of the human being. In one story, it's told from the perspective of a young boy at the beginning of adolescence. The boy's active imagination and frantic emotional extremes lift from the page, where this reader's early memories rose to the surface in a visceral way. In fact, most of these stories had a similar reader response.
In much of Zweig's work, he explores the consequences of war as experienced by the common man. In Buchmendel, a man enters a cafe/restaurant and recalls an old Jewish bookseller, that sat at a particular table, his books and catalogues around him, running his business. This was no ordinary bookseller, for he had an extraordinary memory and a vast knowledge of thousands of texts, so when a customer asked about a specific book, if certain editions remained in circulation or were out of print, and more often than not, could locate any book upon request. He came to Germany as a young migrant, and never formally organized his citizenship. As WWI was then raging, all correspondence was closely watched and censored. The bookseller would send his requests for certain texts and accounts to a person in France, then Germany's enemy. The man was so cloistered in his world of books, that the war was out of sight and mind. The authorities corner the bookseller at the restaurant, and discovered he is an illegal immigrant, and send him away to prison. After two years he appears again a broken man, and as the cafe is under new ownership, he is banned from the establishment. Now homeless, he disappears into poverty. The consequences of war.
In The Invisible Collection, the war has ended, and Germany's economy is in shambles. A dealer of antiques and valuable artifacts, hunts down a once renowned collector, to possibly purchase a few items. When he arrives at the collector's home, he finds the old man has gone blind. The man's wife and daughter had to sell all of his collection to merely survive. The old collector doesn't know this but has his beloved catalogues. The dealer goes along with the charade, to save the man from heartbreak, that his collection is now gone, The consequences of war.
Of course, Zweig experienced the consequences of war both physically and psychologically. As an exiled Austrian, ending up living in South America. The man was terrified of the Nazis and believed that Hitler would come to South America and destroy him. This psychological fear of the Nazis was so acute, that the writer and his young wife committed suicide.
Six Stories are all different in circumstances and characters, though the theme of war and its effects on the common person, runs through many of them.
A wonderful read.
No comments:
Post a Comment