Zweig: Zweig's shorter works.

Discuss Zweig's shorter works in this thread. Below will be a listing of what works are currently being discussed. Titles will be added as the year goes by.

Works under discussion:
Twenty-four hours in the life of a woman
Amok
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Moonbeam Alley
The Royal Game
La femme et le paysage (Woman and the Landscape?)
The two twins
Rachel disputes God
Twilight
Chess Story
La confusion des sentiments (Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. von D.)

Twenty Four Hours in the Life of a Woman was my first Stefan Zweig experience - polished off in less than twenty four hours. And the experience wasn't too bad at all and has whetted my appetite for more. I don't read many short stories (though maybe this qualifies as a novella; I'm not sure of the precise definitions). It was nevertheless a diverting - nay an absorbing read. One was very quickly sucked into the world of the story and intrigued to find out what happened next. I was conscious much of the time of the enormous debt a reader bears to the translator. Zweig obviously loves language and is keen to communicate just the right nuance in his carefully chosen words. I think this must put an added pressure on the translator to capture those sometimes ephemeral nuances between languages. In this instance Anthea Bell was the translator and has received awards for her work. Did you know she translated Asterix the comic for us? No wonder I like her work!!

There were a couple of things that grabbed me about this story. I liked the idea of someone trying to amuse themselves when they were bored witless by changing the way they viewed the world i.e. by looking at the gambler's hands rather than their faces. I will never forget that and may now employ the technique in other fields! Secondly, I liked the account of how a person changes in the grip of an addiction. Zweig impressively managed to capture the hurt/insult that our heroine suffered at the hands of the man she tried to save from ruin. I have only been to a casino once with my husband - never again !!! It was truly appalling witnessing a very smart man thinking he could possibly beat the system. There was no reasoning with him - well in hindsight there must have been because we did emerge from that truly tacky establishment eventually - but it was one of the loneliest and scariest experiences I have ever had the misfortune to experience. Zweig captures it beautifully.

A lovely post alex! This novella also rewhetted my appetite for Zweig considering I read his first novel about 8 years of so ago.

I wrote the following (sort of a mini-review) after reading the novel:
Can a woman forget all her values and morals and throw herself into an affair without guilt or remorse? Can she go against her character and do something so incredibly spontaneous to which others question her actions and she questions her actions as well? It's the story of what can happen in 24 hours in the life of a woman.

Zweig takes us through an incredible and emotional journey in this novella. We are the ones debating in the hotel garden, we are the ones walking through the casino observing the hand movements of players, we are the ones under the rain. Because Zweig manages to make of us a character; the observer.

Truly marvelous and a great way to come back to Zweig after enjoying Pitie dangereuse (Beware of Pity) so long ago. I will not again let so much time pass before I read another Zweig.

To continue with what you wrote though Alex, you mentioned how Zweig sucks you in. I very much agree. I feel he is the master of the confession and master of those emotions that I feel some authors are afraid to touch. You finish a chapter and can't help but keep going. The scene at the casino with the hands was so quite enthralling. Since then I've compared the hands to the faces of the guys across me on poker night and on other occasions. Really changes how you view people.

As for the translator, I read Zweig in French so I cannot comment on the translations in English.

I have this story in an anthology where each story is preceded with a prefix. I will have to look at it and comment here. Last I checked it made some references to Freud and Dostoevsky.

Thanks again for the lovely first post!

I read Amok last year and this was my reaction:

I knew that if I went back to Zweig my reading rut would end. I just started and finished Amok. As always, Zweig never ceases to amaze me. Short but powerful. Master of the confessional monologue and extreme but raw emotion. I mean, how can you not fall in love with a man who can write sentences such as this:

"J'etais comme dans un bain, ou de l'eau chaude tombe d'en haut sur vous, avec cette difference qu'ici c'etait de la lumiere qui coulait, blanche et tiede, sur mes mains, qui m'enveloppait doucement les epaules et la tete et qui, en quelque sorte, paraissait vouloir penetrer dans mon etre, car toute torpeur s'etait brusquement eloignee de moi." (pg. 20)

My translation:
"I was as if in a bath, where hot water falls from above you, with the difference being that here it was light that ran, white and warm, on my hands, that sweetly enveloped my shoulders and head and that, in some sort, seemed to want to penetrate my being, as all torpor suddenly distanced itself from me."

Two men find themselves on a ship at midnight, trying to escape the weight of the night. One sits, listening, while the other describes the reason why he is there, avoiding the eyes of other passengers, in mourning. It is a story about duty and to what reaches we go to to accomplish our duty. The man reveals the secret he carries from his encounter with a woman in the tropics. And through Zweig's masterful ability to describe human emotion at its extreme through a compassionate and gripping confession, we come to learn why this man is on a ship, at midnight, hiding from the others.

Included with Amok were two short stories and these were the few things I wrote:

"Lettre d'une inconnue" (Letter from an Unknown Woman) was very interesting and touching. Highly recommended. A man receives a letter from a woman he doesn't know as she tells a poignant love story. Quite gripping.

"La ruelle au clair de lune" (Moonbeam Alley) was typical Zweig but was so-so. It didn't add much to the book as a whole. Interesting but the other short story and Amok were better.

If someone else reads these I'll have to comment more. :)

Hi lilisin

You have inspired me to find the works in their original language and read them in French. Up til now I thought schoolgirl French would not suffice but just providing me with that one sentence makes me think it is worth trying!!!!

Well, Zweig wrote in German so I'm still reading a translation but his writing is quite simple so if you did read him in French, it wouldn't be too difficult. But I'm happy to serve as inspiration to anyone who wants to read books in their original language.

I have my anthology in front of me and the prefaces make some interesting notes. Being familiar with Zweig I'm in total agreement with what is being said and I hope we all observe it as well.

Themes common to Zweig in "24 hours":
Confession
Secrets
Guilty conscience (appeased in 24 hours, not appeased in Amok)
Characters turned off by life who becomes attracted to the passion (or, as in 24 hours, obsession) that resides in another

Freud, a fan of Zweig calls 24 hours a chef-d'oeuvre.

Zweig is compared to Dostoevsky in terms of how their characters come to interact with one another. Both authors "consider the 'the access of passion' to be a pathogenic phenomena that the subject does not master and that, under this effect, finds himself transformed in soul and body."

Preface comments on Letters from an unknown woman:
Zweig uses his technique of going back in time via a confession, here, in a feminine voice.

A quote from Zweig from the preface to "Moonbeam Alley."

Notre vie a des significations plus profondes que les simples evenements exterieurs, qui nous reunissent puis nous separent, et qu'une profonde magie de l'existence gouverne nos destinees, meme lorsque nous croyons en rester les maitres -- une magie que seuls les sentiments percoivent, et non les sens.

Le preface considers this story to be an impressive illustration of compulsive domination; of sadomasochist passion. Interesting.

Please stop me if you don't find this very informative or interesting.

Okay - next installment - The Royal Game - well I think I liked this more than Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman - although they are of course completely different subjects...or are they???? I think Zweig is interested in the human condition...and what IS the human condition, I hear you ask? Well, speaking as a mere human, who has not studied psychology or Freud or anything like that...for me ... the conundrum of human existence is that we often know better, but we don't....or we supposedly have access to rationality of thought but are subject to our whims or passion. Why, for example, every year do I firmly avow that I will lose weight, that I won't drink so much wine of an evening and yet...and yet....those enticing strawberry tartlets....that enticing glass of wine...or two....This next story from Zweig takes us on board a liner (ooh how I dream of travelling on a liner). Ooh how wonderful to not have to think of anything but the next game of chess or bridge.....Travelling on the liner is Mirko Czentovic, the world chess champion. Mirko, despite his prowess at chess, to all intents and purposes is a social oaf. Our unnamed narrator declares a fascination with "monomania, by persons wrapped up in a single idea..." and sets out to snare the champion into a game or several games so he can "examine this speciment of one-track intellect under a magnifying glass." And so follows a study of all sorts of conundrums....can it be called just a game? Can it be played alone? What is the difference between amateur and professional? I don't want to give too much away but I do look forward to a discussion about this story - about playing by the rules...and playing to live or indeed to survive.

Zweig short story
La femme et le paysage

Just read this short 20 page story that I can't seem to find an equivalent English title. It'd be "The Woman and the landscape" literally but that just doesn't have the same ring in English so I'm certain it's translated differently in English.

In any case, I enjoyed this. Zweig really explores how human interaction is affected by its surroundings. In this case, it's August in the middle of a horrid heat spell. The narrator describes with such marvelous detail the dryness and the heaviness of the spell. You can feel the heat, you can feel the brief but unsatisfactory whisper of a breeze, and you can imagine the dissapointment when a storm seemingly decides to come in but only lets go of a few heavy drops.

The part with the breeze is nice:
"Toujours recroqueville dans mon coin d'ombre, je ne sentais pas encore son approche, mais les arbres, la-bas, sur le versant d'en face, semblaient avoir devine une presence etrangere, car soudain ils se mirent a osciller tres legerement, comme s'ils se penchaient l'un vers l'autre pour se parler."

"Still huddled in my corner of shade, I couldn't yet feel it's approach, but the trees over on the opposite side seemed to have noticed a strange presence as they suddenly started to oscillate lightly, as if they leaned towards one another to speak."

The narrator goes back into the hotel where he starts observing the other guests. Everything is muddled and the heaviness of the air makes him become unnerved with the clinks of forks, the rustling of human voices, heavy and slow.

He in turn notices a girl and the story continues as their interactions reflect that of the air about them.

Truly remarkable imagery; literally "refreshed" by the ending.

I will read The Royal Game (aka "Chess Story" aka "Le Joueur d'echecs" for me) next so I can compare notes with you alex.

I think I'll also read "Les deux jumelles" (The two twins) which is subtitled "A Humorous Story" which seems to be a step away from Zweig's usual work. Plus at 15 or so pages it's nice and short.

Zweig short story
Les deux jumelles

Entitled "The two twins" this story is just that. Two twins, alike in every manner grow up in fierce competition. When one, Helena, decides to use her body to entice men and their wallets the other, Sophia, decides to keep her body to herself to entice men to her virginity. This aggravates the first leading her to trick her sister into sacrificing her virginity.

Once devirginized the sister joins her twin in corrupting men out of their fortunes. With age, their looks fade as do they and the story ends with them donating their fortunes.

This very short story (20 pages) is quite atypical of Zweig and really makes you wonder why he wrote it at all. According to the preface Zweig was starting to feel disdain towards contemporary times thus setting this story in a more medieval setting. Bah humbug is all I can say to that.

The preface to this story also compares the sisters to the sisters in Balzac's Pere Goriot, a book I didn't finish due to my lack of interest in some of the characters. (I will finish it some day considering it's short and I only had 60 or so pages left.)

But you can see one of Zweig's themes of passion within the characters. Not necessarily a constructive thing but it's there. Such as the Helena's passion in proving to her virgin sister Sophia that outside of her clerical world she'd be unable to deny a man's charm. Another of Zweig's themes is confusion as to one's sentiments. We do see that here but overall, not the most remarkable story nor is it really the best reflection of Zweig.

Zweig short story
Rachel contre Dieux

Just finished another short story by Zweig during my lunch break. The original title is "Rahel rechtet mit Gott" which literally means Rachel disputes with God which the French translate as Rachel against God. The story is subtitled "Legend".

It's short, 13 pages, and is about Rachel confronting God when he shows his anger and disgust at men putting idols of other Gods in his temples. Rachel sees this as being a type of jealousy and explains how she overcame a rage and a jealousy by taking in his name and believing in his benevolence and mercy. She does this by explaining how she had to give up the love of her life to her older sister due to her father's mischievous planning.

The preface compares this story to that of another legendary story, Virata, which I'm not familiar with. Overall, you see elements of Zweig's style but at the end of the day this story doesn't particularly speak to me. But I never was a huge fan of short stories.

ETA: Virata is another short story of Zweig which just happens to fall right before Rachel in my anthology. Silly me.

I finished reading Chess Story/The Royal Game (the first thing I've read by Zweig, and now I'm a fan) about a week ago, so I've had time to digest. Overall, I thought it was wonderful, despite the sense of hopelessness that pervades the book. Knowing that this is Zweig's last novel, I had a hard time ignoring what Zweig must have been feeling about the rise of fascism and what must have looked like the inevitable Nazi takeover of the whole world. Therefore, it's possible I'm reading too much into it, but I saw Dr. B as representative of the peoples of the world who were resisting the rise of Nazi power. Chess, and particularly the chess game between him and the chess master, could be a symbol for the resistance of the intellectual anti-fascist movements to the relentless attacks of the unthinking Nazi regime.

What makes this story so poignant and sad, to me, is that it seems Zweig is saying that try as they might, resistance to the Nazis is futile and will drive the resistors crazy, and they'll just lose anyway, so the only thing to do is walk away. Or, in Zweig's personal case, suicide. Tragic, really, especially since if he'd just held on for another 3 years...

As far as Zweig's style goes, I've not read him before so I have no comparisons but I found him very easy to read, and enjoyable. I'm looking forward to reading more.

"Twilight" by Stefan Zweig

My thoughts and comments:

"Twilight" by Stefan Zweig is a wonderful short story about a woman who has for all practical intents and purposes ran the court of the King of France. It is based on the true life of Madame de Prie. It is not a pretty story but I am finding that Zweig writes nothing but great stories.
Madame de Prie is asked by the King to leave court and expels her to her country estate. I don't believe we ever truly find out the reason she falls out of favor unless it has to do with one of her lovers at court, the Duke of Bourbon, who is likewise dismissed from his duties as prime minister in charge the affairs of state.
At any rate, Madame de Prie finds living in the country and away from court to be unbearable and this is the story of her state of mind throughout her exile to her death.
It is not a pretty story, but it is a wonderfully written one and one I highly recommend.
belva

I read Selected Stories yesterday, which is a new collection of four novellas and two short stories that was published by Pushkin Press last year.

The novellas are:

Fantastic Night (1922): An account of a bored and emotionally impotent Viennese man of leisure who is transformed by a series of incredible circumstances that allows him to experience live fully.

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922): The highlight of the book, in which a noted author and man about town receives a mysterious letter from a woman who has loved him since childhood, unbeknownst to him. This was the most heartbreaking story I've read in a long time, and I was wiping away tears at several points during the woman's description of her tragic life. The full text of this novella is available here.

Buchmendel (1929): A story about a Russian Jew, Jacob Mendel, a second hand book dealer who holds court in a café until he falls afoul of the police during the Great War.

Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927): An English woman shares her story of her attempt to save the life of a handsome young man who is consumed by gambling, and contemplating suicide.

The short stories are:

The Fowler Snared (1906): An older man at a beach resort notices a young girl, and writes letters of love to her in the voice of a young man from a neighboring village.

The Invisible Collection (1925): A Berlin art-dealer visits an old client after the Great War, who has become blind. He lives with his wife and daughter, who have managed to disguise the family's destitute situation from him, as inflation has plunged them into poverty. The client wants to show the art-dealer his most valued possession, a prized collection that he can touch but no longer see, one that means the world to him.

Overall, this was a very good and definitely recommended selection of stories, although only Letter from an Unknown Woman compares favorably to my other favorite Zweig novellas, Amok, Chess Story and Journey into the Past.

Chess Story was a great pick for my first Zweig. He's a good manager of time (story vs backstory, with seamless transitions), and I admired a passage describing madness which mimics it in the reader through long sentences with more commas and semicolons than periods. I was interested that, despite being set WWII-ish, I often felt myself firmly in the 19th century; is that intentional or inadvertent or am I imagining?

I was interested to see the presence of paparazzi, and a favorite line reminded me of today's celebrity culture -- it's a response about the uneducated chess champion who considers himself the most important man in the world: Isn’t it damn easy to think you’re a great man if you aren’t troubled by the slightest notion that a Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante, or Napoleon ever existed?

>2 alexdaw: the idea of someone trying to amuse themselves when they were bored witless
Zweig also explored that here, fantasizing about the distraction of a book: …what sort of book I’d most like it to be: closely printed above all, with many, many characters, many, many thin pages, so there would be more to read. So true! -- plus it brought to mind Infinite Jest, which I’m currently reading, and which has many, many characters and closely printed thin pages :) I might follow Zweig in this theme by reading Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman next.

what sort of book I’d most like it to be: closely printed above all, with many, many characters, many, many thin pages, so there would be more to read.

When I first started buying books, I used to get a special thrill if the book was an especially big one--and it was more than just getting my money's worth. That's why I like novels so much more than short stories, and why I wait until I can spend most of the day or evening reading, so that I can get truly immersed in the story. I'll add Chess Story if I haven't already, since you did recommend my favorite book of the year so far, M.J. :-)

edit. to make clear I was referring to DetailMuse's recommendation of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and my apologies for interrupting a discussion about Steig's works (I'm not sure how I got here!)

I'm not really participating in this theme read, but I have just read Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig. This novella tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who goes to a spa with his mother sometime in the very early 1900s, is befriended by a mysterious baron who sees the boy as the way to get to know the mother, who he wants to seduce, and who then goes through a torrent of emotions as he begins to comprehend that he was used and that adults, including his mother, lie and have secrets, including one very big mystery. Zweig's writing takes us inside the minds of all three characters, and the psychological drama propels the novella along as the boy comes to recognize that he is leaving childhood behind. As a modern reader, I had to suspend disbelief that a 12-year-old could be as naive as this one was, but I am perfectly ready to believe that could be true of someone from his upper middle class background at that time.

Twilight & Moonbeam Alley by Stefan Zweig (Pushkin Press)

This was another excellent short story collection by Zweig, consisting of the novella Twilight and the short story Moonbeam Alley

Twilight narrates the last days of Madame de Prie (1698-1727), a beautiful but vacuous and conniving noblewoman, who was the mistress of the prime minister of King Louis XV. She was the most powerful person in the kingdom for a time, until she was banished from Versailles by the King after a power struggle. Although she lived in luxury in Courbépine, de Prie became increasingly agitated and despondent in exile from French high society, and finally decides to stage a spectacular event that will make her the talk of Paris.

Moonbeam Alley is a short story about a visitor who spends the night in a French coastal town after missing an evening train, who encounters a man desperate to win back the woman he loves and has lost.

Both stories were very well done, and, similar to his other works, focus on characters who are in states of extreme crisis and desperation. Twilight was the better of the two, as de Prie's character was more fully developed than the man in the much shorter Moonbeam Alley, but the latter story was also very good.

I just finished reading Le joueur d'echecs (Chess Story) over my lunch break. As always, with Zweig, I become fully immersed in his books. It's hard not to turn the page to read on.

The introduction of my novel quotes Zweig as sayingm in a letter to his ex-wife:
"J'ai commence une petite nouvelle sur les echecs, inspiree par un manuel que j'ai achete pour meubler ma solitude, et je rejoue quoitidiennement les parties des grands maitres."

"I started a novella on chess, inspired by a manual that I bought to furnish my solitude, where I re-play daily the games of the great masters."

One of Zweig's great strengths comes from the strength of his characters and their interaction with their environment. Every mental subtlety and flaw and strength is observed and pondered as we see how their stability is altered upon their diferent situations. The battle between Czentovic's naive arrogance and M.B's morose passion is fascinating. Truly fascinating.

jfetting -
"but I saw Dr. B as representative of the peoples of the world who were resisting the rise of Nazi power. Chess, and particularly the chess game between him and the chess master, could be a symbol for the resistance of the intellectual anti-fascist movements to the relentless attacks of the unthinking Nazi regime."

I find your analysis interesting and I can certainly see how you find this correlation. Is it was Zweig intended? We'll never know but it is an interesting thought.

Just started Stefan Zweig's La confusion des sentiments. I like having novella's to read during my work lunch hour white sitting on the outside patio and soak up the sun.

The introduction so far as usual really absorbs you into the book. Will be a nice read.

La confusion des sentiments
Translated title: Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. von D.

Zweig is seriously just one of those authors where I find it nearly impossible not to give him a full 5 stars everytime I read one of his works. He just has an uncanny ability to pull a reader in and toy with their emotions.

This novella was particularly uncomfortable to read. It speaks of a 19 year old student who has been newly reformed by the inspiration he has gained thanks to his professor. He becomes utterly fascinated with his professor and does all he can to learn from him and learn about him. This idolatry leads, as the title suggests, to a confusion of feelings, and we are forced to continue to see if the protagonist succumbs to what is being hinted at us.

As I mentioned before, the book is almost uncomfortable to read. Not due to its subject matter but due to the way the subject is presented. You can feel the tension of the characters, the oppression that comes from an intellectual mind and the uncomfortable passion the student has for his professor. Truly stunning.

I would have to rank this one at the top of Zweig's works.

I just finished Selected Stories by Stefan Zweig, the Pushkin Press edition mentioned by kidzdoc up in message #17.

Fantastic Night (1922): Not my favorite of the lot, but I did appreciate the way it ended on a high note, emotionally. Although we know how things turned out for the protagonist, thanks to Zweig's framing device, it was so much happier than most of Zweig's work.

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922): This was my favorite story in the book, and one of my favorite stories that he wrote, period. It's about a man, one of those who have many, many women in his past, and a letter he receives from a woman. She details how she has been obsessively in love with him from the age of 13, and had been a casual encounter of his at least twice, but he couldn't really even remember who she was. The story is so well-done - I couldn't stop reading until I had finished it.

Buchmendel (1929): Sad, this one. What really struck me about this one was the love of books, physical books, that Jacob Mendel possessed. The story was funny, in parts, like when Mendel wrote to "enemy" publishers during WWI demanding that his magazines or whatever be delivered, but it stopped being funny when he was arrested.

Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927): Although this was the one I most looked forward to, I didn't like it nearly as much as I liked the rest of the stories. Zweig does describe the mindset of an addict very well, and it was almost a surprise to me that the Englishwoman was naive enough to believe that her little intervention would have had an effect.

The Fowler Snared (1906): Cute story, about an old man who wrote love letters to a young girl, pretending to be from a young man, and who ends up falling for the girl a little bit. Set in one of Zweig's lovely elegant hotels, as so many of these stories are.

The Invisible Collection (1925): I loved this one, about an art dealer and a blind art collector, during the inflation that set in after WWI. It was a sweet story, a little bit sad but any Zweig story that involves happy people is rare.

Fantastic! I've read two of those and loved them.

#25 I read a collection of Zweig's stories earlier this year--The Royal Game and other stories--which included Letter from an Unknown Woman. I think that is my favorite of the stories I've read of his so far although none of the other stories you mentioned were in that collection.

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Thank you all for the wonderful discussions on Zweig. He is a master writer, without a doubt, and one of my all-time favorites. I stumbled upon him about three years ago. To date, I have read Chess Story, Beware of Pity and Post Office Girl. I look forward to reading through his entire collection over time. So many books, so little time. Cliche, I know, but so very true! Thanks again!

Here is what I read by Zweig and when I read it:

1192. Balzac, by Stefan Zweig translated by William and Dorothy Rose (read 1 Nov 1972)
1306. The Tide of Fortune Twelve Historical Miniatures, by Stefan Zweig (read 1 Dec 1974)
1359. Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, by Stefan Zweig translated by Eden and Cedar Paul (read 20 Sept 1975)
2056. The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography by Stefan Zweig (read 23 Feb 1987)
4296. Joseph Fouche The Portrait of a Politician, by Stefan Zweig translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul (read 6 Apr 2007)
4435. The Royal Game - Amok - Letter from an Unknown Woman, by Stefan Zweig (read 3 May 2008)
4709. Kaleidoscope thirteen stories and novelettes by Stefan Zweig Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul (read 17 May 2010)

What else should Iread?

Maybe try one of his longer novellas, or even Beware of Pity, his novel? I really enjoyed The Post-Office Girl as well. I'm maybe not the best person to give you advice, though, since I love his work and so I think you should read all of it!