The themes of the four tales in this little collection from Austrian author Stefan Zweig are romance, youthful love, adoration, and how all of those feelings can slip away.

The title story, from 1922, is one of Zweig’s better known works, and has a woman penning a letter to a famous author as she prepares to die, which recounts how she’s known him since childhood. While the story is improbable and a little melodramatic, the writing is strong, and the expression of inequality in love tugs on one’s heartstrings.

‘A Story Told in Twilight’ (1911) has a young man in rapture over a young woman’s passion in the forest at night, but wondering exactly who she is. There is a dreamlike, intensely erotic feeling to the narrative, and it was my favorite.

‘The Debt Paid Late’ (published posthumously, and written c. 1940) has a woman coming across poor old man, shunned by the country folk in a mountain inn, and realizing she once idolized him. The scene that Zweig sets is brilliant, and the feelings he evokes are those of warmth and kindness.

Lastly, ‘Forgotten Dreams’ (1900, amongst his earliest works, written when he was just 19), has a man meeting the love of his youth in a beautiful seaside villa, where the two talk about marrying for status, versus true love. It’s a very short story, simple and largely undeveloped, and yet also touching.

Quotes:
On mind and body, intellect and passion, from ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’:
“You were so gentle and affectionate with me, a woman picked up in the dance café, so warmly and sensitively respectful, yet at the same time enjoying possession of a woman so passionately; once more, dizzy with my old happiness, I felt your unique duality – a knowing, intellectual passion mingled with sensuality. It was what had already brought me under your spell when I was a child. I have never felt such concentration on the moment of the act of love in any other man, such an outburst and reflection of his deepest being – although then, of course, it was to be extinguished in endless, almost inhuman oblivion.”

On love remembered, from ‘A Story Told in Twilight’:
“He travelled in many countries, one of those correct, silent Englishmen whom many consider unemotional because they are so reserved, and their eyes look coolly away from the faces and smiles of women. For who thinks that they bear in them, inextricably mingled with their blood, images on which their gaze is always fixed, with an eternal flame burning around them as it does before icons of the Madonna?”

And this one, from ‘Forgotten Dreams’:
“Now they both smiled. The sweet, light fragrance of a first youthful, half-spoken love, with all its intoxicating tenderness, had awoken in them like a dream on which you reflect ironically when you wake, although you really wish for nothing more than to dream it again, to live in the dream.”

On love unrequited, from ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’:
“I was always looking out for you, always in a state of tension, but you felt it as little as the tension of the spring in the watch that you carry in your pocket, patiently counting and measuring your hours in the dark, accompanying your movements with its inaudible heartbeat, while you let your quick glance fall on it only once in a million ticking seconds.”

On passion, from ‘A Story Told in Twilight’; sorry it’s long but wow…
“Then, all of a sudden, as he goes deeper into the darkness, an extraordinary thing happens. The gravel behind him crunches slightly, and as he turns, startled, all he sees is a tall white form, bright and fluttering, coming towards him, and in astonishment he feels strong and yet caught, without any violence, in a woman’s embrace. A soft, warm body presses close to his, a trembling hand quickly caresses his hair and bends his head back; reeling, he feels a stranger’s open mouth like a fruit against his own, quivering lips fastening on his. And he dares not look, because shudders are running through his body like pain, so that he has to close his eyes and give himself up to those burning lips without any will of his own; he is their prey. Hesitantly, uncertainly, as if asking a question, his arms now go round the stranger’s body, and, suddenly intoxicated, he holds it close to his own. Avidly, his hands move over its soft outline, fall still and then tremble as they move on again more and more feverishly, carried away. And now the whole weight of her body, pressing ever more urgently against him, bending forward, a delightful burden, rests on his own yielding breast. He feels as if he were sinking and flowing away under her fast-breathing urgency, and is already weak at the knees. He thinks of nothing, he does not wonder how this woman came to him, or what her name is, he merely drinks in the desire of those strange, moist lips with his eyes closed, until he is intoxicated by them, drifting away with no will or mind of his own on a vast tide of passion. He feels as if stars had suddenly fallen to earth, there is such a shimmering before his eyes, everything flickers in the air like sparks, burning whatever he touches. He does not know how long all this lasts, whether he has been held in this soft chain for hours or seconds; in this wild, sensual struggle he feels that everything is blazing up and drifting away, he is staggering in a wonderful kind of vertigo.”

Also:
“And now she has placed her hand on the chaise lounge and is gently stroking his arm above the rug spread over him – the blood surges from that hand in a hot wave through his whole body – stroking his arm calmly and carefully. He feels that her touch is magnetic, and his blood flows in response to it. This gentle affection, intoxicating and intriguing him at the same time, is a wonderful feeling.
Slowly, almost rhythmically, her hand is still moving along his arm. He peers up surreptitiously between his eyelids. At first he sees only a crimson mist of restless light, then he can make out the dark, speckled rug, and now, as if it came from far away, the hand caressing him; he sees it very, very dimly, only a narrow glimpse of something white, coming down like a bright cloud and moving away again. He feels her fingers clearly, pale and white as porcelain, sees them curving gently to stroke forward and then back again, dallying with him, but full of life. They move on like feelers and then withdraw; and at that moment the hand seems to take on a life of its own, like a cat snuggling close to a dress, a small white cat with its claws retracted, purring affectionately, and he would not be surprised if the cat’s eyes suddenly began to shoot sparks.”

On twilight, from ‘A Story Told in Twilight’:
“There, I didn’t mean my story to be dark and melancholy – I only wanted to tell you about a boy suddenly surprised by love, his own and someone else’s. But stories told in the evening all tread the gentle path of melancholy. Twilight falls with its veils, the sorrow that rests in the evening is a starless vault above them, darkness seeps into their blood, and all the bright, colorful words in them have as full and heavy a sound as if they came from our inmost hearts.”

On warm looks, from ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’:
“You looked at me with a warm, soft, all-enveloping gaze that was like a caress, smiled at me tenderly – yes, I can put it no other way – and said in a low and almost intimate tone of voice: ‘Thank you very much, Fraulein.’
That was all, beloved, but from that moment on, after sensing that soft, tender, look, I was your slave. I learnt later, in fact quite soon, that you look in the same way at every woman you encounter, every shop girl who sells you something, every housemaid who opens the door to you, with an all-embracing expression that surrounds and yet at the same time undresses a woman, the look of the born seducer; and that glance of yours is not a deliberate expression of will and inclination, but you are entirely unconscious that your tenderness to women makes them feel warm and soft when it is turned on them.” ( )

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