Disclaimer: I bought this as I wanted to read Zweig, but more importantly I wanted to read his address to the funeral service of Joseph Roth.

It is strange to read these eulogies to those whose fame lives on, such as Mahler (where Zweig only knew him as a contemporary), or not, such as Verhaeren (unknown to me, but a very famous poet before the First World War and a personal friend of Zweig who translated his poems into German). These aren’t obituaries or biographies, which I had mistakenly assumed would be the case. The language used is that of the panegyric, which reads as very over the top to this modern sensibility.
However there are insights into the times from Zweig’s descriptions of both the mundanities of contemporary life, and also of larger events, such as reference to Zeppelins and the rush back from holidaying in Belgium to Germany before the outbreak of the First World War in the long essay about Verhaeren.

The funeral oration for Joseph Roth is more biographical than the other pieces (albeit brief), and considers Roth a threefold personality, combining Russian, Jewish and Austrian sensibilities.: The Jewish sensibility created his novel Job, his Austrian sensibility creating The Radetzky March (which I consider a masterpiece) and The Emperor’s Tomb, but then the triumph of Nazism in Germany and Austria driving Roth to an alcoholic despair (characterised as Russian), and an early death. The cry for a cultural “forward defence position” made at the end of the oration is tragic, given our knowledge of Zweig’s subsequent suicide.

This is a book for the completist, but is rewarding if appreciated on its own limited terms. ( )