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Stefan Zweig Biography of Michelangelo. Stefan Zweig

Yesterday's world

Memories of a European

We will meet such a time

how it will overtake us.

Shakespeare. Cymbeline

Foreword

I have never attached so much importance to my person that I would be tempted to tell others the story of my life. Much more had to happen—much more than usually falls to a single generation—events, trials, and catastrophes, before I found the courage to start a book in which my self is the protagonist, or rather the focal point. Nothing is more alien to me than the role of a lecturer commenting on transparencies; time itself creates pictures, I just choose words for them, and it will be not so much about my fate, but about the fate of a whole generation, marked by such a difficult fate, as hardly any other in the history of mankind. Each of us, even the most insignificant and imperceptible, is shaken to the very depths of the soul by the almost continuous volcanic shudders of European soil; one of many, I have no other advantage than one: as an Austrian, as a Jew, as a writer, as a humanist and pacifist, I have always found myself exactly where these tremors were felt most strongly. Three times they turned my house and my whole life upside down, tore me from the past and threw me with hurricane force into the void, into the "nowhere" so well known to me. But I'm not complaining: a person deprived of his homeland acquires a different freedom - whoever is not bound by anything can no longer reckon with anything. Thus, I hope to observe at least the main condition for any reliable depiction of the era - sincerity and impartiality, for I am cut off from all roots and even from the very earth that nourished these roots - this is what I am now, which I will not wish anyone else .

I was born in 1881 in a large and powerful empire, in the Habsburg monarchy, but you should not look for it on the map: it has been erased without a trace. He grew up in Vienna, in this two thousand year old supranational capital, and was forced to leave it as a criminal before it degenerated into a German provincial city. My literary work in the language in which I wrote it has been reduced to ashes in the very country where millions of readers have made my books their friends. Thus, I no longer belong to anyone, I am a stranger everywhere, at best a guest; and my great homeland - Europe - has been lost to me since the second time it was torn apart by a fratricidal war. Against my will, I witnessed a horrific defeat of the mind and the wildest triumph of cruelty in history; never before - I note this not with pride, but with shame - no generation has suffered such a moral fall from such a spiritual height as ours. In the short period of time when my beard broke through and turned gray, during these half a century, more significant transformations and changes took place than usually in ten human lives, and each of us feels this - an incredible amount!

My Today is so different from any of my Yesterdays, my ups from my downs, that sometimes it seems to me that I have lived not one, but several completely different lives. So every time I inadvertently drop: “My life,” I involuntarily ask myself: “What life? The one that was before the First World War, or the one that was before the Second, or the present? And then again I catch myself saying: “My home” - and I don’t know which of the former I mean: in Bath, in Salzburg, or my parents’ house in Vienna. Or I say: "With us" - and I remember with fright that for a long time I have belonged as little to the citizens of my country as to the British or Americans; there I am a cut piece, and here I am a foreign body; the world in which I grew up, and the world of today, and the world that exists between them, separate in my mind; they are completely different worlds. Whenever I tell young people about the events before the first war, I notice from their bewildered questions that much of what still exists for me looks like distant history or something implausible to them. But in the depths of my soul I have to admit: between our present and past, recent and distant, all bridges have been destroyed. Yes, I myself cannot help but be amazed at everything that we happened to experience within the limits of one human life - even such a maximally unsettled one and facing the threat of destruction - especially when I compare it with the life of my ancestors. My father, my grandfather - what did they see? Each of them lived his life monotonously and monotonously. All, from beginning to end, without ups and downs, without upheavals and threats, life with insignificant disturbances and imperceptible changes; in the same rhythm, measuredly and calmly, the wave of time carried them from the cradle to the grave. They lived in the same country, in the same city, and even almost constantly in the same house; the events taking place in the world, in fact, happened only in the newspapers, they did not knock on the door. True, somewhere in those days there was some kind of war going on, but it was, on the current scale, more like a war, and it was played out far, far away, guns were not heard, and after six months it faded away, was forgotten, a fallen leaf history, and the same life began again. For us, there was no return, nothing remained of the former, nothing returned; we have had such a fate: to drink a full cup of what history usually lets go down the throat of this or that country in this or that period. In any case, one generation experienced a revolution, another a coup, a third a war, a fourth a famine, a fifth an inflation, and some blessed countries, blessed generations, did not know any of this at all. But we, who are sixty years old today and who, perhaps, are destined to live a little longer - what we have not seen, suffered, what we have not experienced! We've flipped through the catalog of every conceivable catastrophe from cover to cover - and still haven't reached the last page. I alone was an eyewitness to the two greatest wars of mankind and met each of them on different fronts: one on the German, the other on the anti-German. Before the war, I experienced the highest degree of individual freedom and then the lowest in several hundred years; I was praised and branded, I was free and bonded, rich and poor. All the pale horses of the Apocalypse swept through my life - revolution and famine, inflation and terror, epidemics and emigration; before my very eyes, such mass ideologies as fascism in Italy, national socialism in Germany, Bolshevism in Russia, and above all this deadly plague, nationalism, which ruined the flowering of our European culture, grew and spread their influence. I found myself defenseless, powerless witness to the incredible fall of mankind in the seemingly long forgotten times of barbarism with its deliberate and programmed doctrine of anti-humanism. We have been given the right - for the first time in centuries - to see again wars without a declaration of war, concentration camps, torture, mass looting and bombardment of defenseless cities - all these atrocities that the last fifty generations have not known, and future ones, I would like to believe, will no longer tolerate. But, paradoxically, I saw that at the same time when our world was morally thrown back a millennium ago, mankind achieved incredible successes in technology and science, surpassing in one fell swoop everything achieved in millions of years: the conquest of the sky, the instantaneous the transmission of the human word to the other end of the earth and thereby overcoming space, the splitting of the atom, the victory over the most insidious diseases, which yesterday could only be dreamed of. Never before has mankind manifested its diabolical and god-like essence so strongly.

Stefan Zweig is one of the world's most popular Austrian writers. His short stories about love capture the reader from the first arcs, generously endowing them with the joy of recognition and empathy. He wrote so penetratingly about love, not only because he was talented, but also because he loved. There was great and bright love in his life, but one day he abandoned it in order to regain his youth. He was wrong: it turned out that this is possible only in fairy tales ...

coryphaeus of the bride

Stefan Zweig was born on November 28, 1881 in Vienna into a wealthy Jewish family of a prosperous manufacturer and the daughter of a banker.
After graduating from the gymnasium in 1900, Stefan entered the University of Vienna at the Faculty of Philology. Already during his studies, at his own expense, he published a collection of his poems - "Silver Strings".

After graduating from the university and receiving a doctorate, Zweig led a traveler's life for several years, full of events, cities and countries: Europe and India, "foggy Albion" and North Africa, both Americas and Indochina ... These travels and communication with many prominent people - poets, writers , artists, philosophers - allowed Zweig to become a connoisseur of European and world culture, a man of encyclopedic knowledge.

... Despite the success of his own poetry collection and, most importantly, poetic translations, Zweig decided that poetry was not his path, and began to seriously study prose. The very first works that came out from the pen of Zweig drew attention to themselves with subtle psychologism, amusing plot, and lightness of style. He captured the reader from the first page and did not let go until the end, leading along the intriguing paths of human destinies.

Over the years, the writer's voice has grown stronger and acquired an individual flavor. Zweig writes tragedies, dramas, legends, essays, but he feels most "comfortable" in the genres of short stories and historical biographies. It is they who bring him first European, and then world fame ...

"I met you…"

... In general, their acquaintance was a matter of chance: the range of interests and, most importantly, communication, the son of a rich bourgeois and the ladies from the circle of the service aristocracy are different. And yet they found one point of contact - a passion for literature.
This happened in one of the usual small Viennese cafes, where writers and their admirers liked to gather.

Friederike Maria von Winternitz, the wife of a Kaiser official, an exemplary mother of two daughters, a young but serious woman, sat modestly with her friend at a table in the corner. And in the center were two men, one of them - slender, smartly dressed, with a neatly trimmed mustache and fashionable pince-nez - kept looking at Friederike. He even smiled at her a couple of times.

Shortly before this, a friend gave Friederike a volume of Verhaarn's poems translated by Zweig. And now, carefully pointing at the smiling dandy, she said: “Look, there is our translator!”

A day later, Stefan Zweig received a letter signed "FMFW". It began like this: “Dear Herr Zweig! Do I need to explain why I so easily decide to do what people consider indecent ... Yesterday in a cafe we were sitting not far from each other. In front of me on the table lay a volume of Verhaarn's poetry in your translation. Before that, I read one of your short stories and sonnets. Their sounds still haunt me ... I do not ask you to answer, but if you still have a desire, write on demand ... "

She sent the letter, in general, not counting on anything. Nevertheless, at first, a polite, non-binding correspondence ensued. Then they started calling each other. And, finally, at one of the musical evenings, Zweig and Friederika met in person.

Against the background of even a stately, handsome (and cheating on her right and left), but in general a former ordinary official husband, Stefan was a special man for Friederike. She understood this very quickly. But Friederike also turned out to be an unusual woman for Zweig, in her he felt a kindred spirit.

They continued to meet and correspond, and in one of the next messages Stefan offered her a hand and heart ... Friederike did not hesitate for long and, with great difficulty, getting rid of her marriage with her official, soon became the wife of Stefan Zweig.
And then the First World War began...

Mind and love games

Their marriage turned out to be a happy union of two creative natures: Fritzi, as Stefan called her, also turned out to be a capable writer.
The couple were briefly separated by the war; reunited, they lived in Switzerland for two years, and then settled in Salzburg - in an old house on Mount Kapuzinerberg.

The Zweigs lived in love, harmony and creativity; they didn’t spend much on themselves, they avoided luxury, they didn’t even have a car. Their days most often passed in communication with friends and acquaintances, and they worked at night, when nothing interfered.
In their house they received many representatives of the European intellectual elite: Thomas Mann, Paul Valery, Joyce, Paganini, Freud, Gorky, Rodin, Rolland, Rilke...

Zweig was rich, he was successful, he was a real favorite of fate. But not all rich people are generous and compassionate. And Zweig was just like that: he always helped his colleagues, even paid a monthly rent to some, literally saved many lives. In Vienna, he gathered young poets around him, listened, gave advice and treated him in a cafe.

... For two decades, Zweig and Friederika were practically inseparable, and if they parted for a few days, they certainly exchanged tender letters. Creative family: she is the author of several stories and novels that were successful in Austria, he is a world famous writer, lived in happiness and prosperity, enjoying love and creativity. But one day everything changed...

In search of eternal youth

Contemporaries noted the writer's special sensitivity and his tendency to depression. Zweig, a man with a very subtle psychological structure, turned out to have a strong complex: he was terribly afraid of old age.

... One evening, Stefan and Friederika went to wander the streets of Salzburg. A couple were walking towards them: an old man, leaning heavily on a stick, and a young girl carefully supporting him, who kept repeating: “Be careful, grandfather!” Stefan later told his wife:

How disgusting old age is! I wouldn't want to live to see her. And by the way, if next to this ruin there was not a granddaughter, but just a young woman, who knows ... The recipe for eternal youth remains the same for all time: an old man can only borrow it from a young woman in love with him ...
In November 1931, Zweig turns 50 years old. He is at the pinnacle of literary fame, he has a beloved wife - and suddenly he falls into a terrible depression. Zweig writes to one of his friends: “I am not afraid of anything - failure, oblivion, loss of money, even death. But I'm afraid of disease, old age and addiction."

Fryderika, apparently not understanding his fears and feelings, decided to "facilitate" his creative process: carried away by her own literary work, she hired a secretary-typist for Stefan. Charlotte Altman, a 26-year-old Polish Jewish woman - thin, round-shouldered, ugly, with a face of some unhealthy color, in general, a very pitiful creature - timidly appeared in their house and modestly took her rightful place.
She turned out to be an excellent secretary, and the fact that this timid ugly girl from the first day of work looked at Stefan with loving eyes did not bother Friederika at all. She is not the first, she is not the last.

But Stefan... It's mind-boggling! Stefan, who is in his 50s, who has never looked at another woman during their many years of marriage ... What is this? And when she heard: “Yes, understand, Lotta is like a gift of fate for me, like a hope for a miracle ...”, she remembered the old man with the girl and understood everything.

But, apparently, Zweig himself did not fully believe in this miracle. For several years he rushed about inside a love triangle, not knowing whom to choose: an aging, but still beautiful and elegant wife, besides a colleague in literary creativity, or a mistress - a young, but some kind of nondescript, sickly and unhappy girl, from whom waiting for the miracle of the return of youth. The feeling that Zweig felt for Lotte can hardly be called attraction, and even more so love - rather, it was pity.

And, despite the fact that he nevertheless received a divorce, “internally” Zweig did not completely part with his ex-wife: “Dear Fritzi! .. In my heart I have nothing but sadness from this break, only external, which is not an internal rupture at all ... I know you will be bitter without me. But you don't have much to lose. I became different, tired of people, and only work makes me happy. The best times have irrevocably gone, and we survived them together ... "

insight and recognition

Zweig and his young wife emigrated first to England, then to the USA, then followed by Brazil.
Stefan, as in the old days, often wrote to Friederike. The nature of the letters, of course, was quite different from that in the past. Now he is interested in all the little things, all the details of her life, if necessary, he is ready to help. He wrote sparingly about himself: “I read, work, walk with a small dog. Life here is quite comfortable, people are friendly. Little donkeys graze on the lawn in front of the house ... "
And suddenly in one of the letters the phrase: “Fate cannot be deceived, King David did not come out of me. It's over - I'm no longer a lover. And in the next letter - as a recognition of his mistake, as a plea for forgiveness: "All my thoughts are with you ..."

... There, far from his beloved Europe, from friends, Zweig finally broke down. In his letters to Friederike, there is more and more bitterness and despondency: “I continue my work; but only 1/4 of my strength. This is just an old habit without any creativity…” In fact, “1/4 of my strength” meant passionate, earnest work, he wrote a lot, as if obsessed, as if he wanted to forget, escape from depression, work to drown out pain and bitterness. The novelized biography of Magellan, the novel "Impatience of the Heart", the book of memoirs "Yesterday's World", the manuscript of the capital book about Balzac, on which he worked for almost 30 years! ..

"For freedom, to the end! .."

The mid-1930s in Europe were filled with important and disturbing events: German fascism was raising its head and building up its muscles. But Zweig, who hated the war, did not find himself ready to actively participate in counteracting its preparation. However, the entire Western civilization could not or did not want to stop the advance of Hitler. The cult of violence and chaos turned out to be more powerful than the forces of reason, humanity and progress. But, unlike civilization, a writer could run away, emigrate - at least outwardly.

... From a mountain house in the Brazilian resort town of Petropolis on February 23, 1942, no one came out for breakfast. When the doors did not open at noon, the worried servants called the police. Stefan Zweig and his wife Charlotte, carefully dressed, were found in the room on the bed. They slept. Slept forever.
They voluntarily passed away, having taken a large dose of veronal. Next to them, on the desk - 13 farewell letters.

Justifying her act, Charlotte wrote that death would be a release for Stefan, and for her too, because she was tormented by asthma. Zweig was more eloquent: “After sixty, special forces are required to start life anew. My strength is exhausted by years of wandering away from my homeland. Besides, I think it's better now, with your head up, to put an end to an existence, the main joy of which was intellectual work, and the highest value - personal freedom. I greet all my friends. May they see the sunrise after a long night. I'm too impatient and go to meet him first.
Friederike Zweig wrote: "I'm tired of everything..."

Afterword to life

Friederika and her daughters settled in the United States, in New York.
One early February morning, she sat thoughtfully at her desk in front of a piece of paper on which was written: “Dear Stefan!”. She finally decided to talk frankly with the one she loved so much: to tell how empty and lonely she was without him, to convince him that, since his young (and not loved by him) wife was unable to restore his youth, then maybe he should return to her that old age is not at all so terrible if it is old age together, because they could ...

... The daughter entered the room:
- Mom ... Look ... - and put a newspaper on the table, on the front page of which there was a headline: "The Suicide of Stefan Zweig."

Friederika shuddered, her soul shrank into a ball from the terrible cold that seized her, and her heart trembling in anguish, with its interrupting rhythm, stubbornly said that Stefan was wrong this time too ...

Stefan Zweig - Austrian writer, famous mainly as the author of short stories and fictional biographies; literary critic. He was born in Vienna on November 28, 1881 in the family of a Jewish manufacturer, the owner of a textile manufactory. Zweig did not expand on childhood and adolescence, talking about the typicality of this period of life for representatives of his environment.

Having been educated at the gymnasium, in 1900 Stefan became a student at the University of Vienna, where he studied German and Roman studies at the Faculty of Philology. While still a student, his debut poetry collection Silver Strings was published. The novice writer sent his book to Rilke, under the influence of whose creative manner it was written, and the result of this act was their friendship, interrupted only by the death of the second. In the same years, literary-critical activity also began: Berlin and Viennese magazines published articles by the young Zweig. After graduating from university and receiving his doctorate in 1904, Zweig published a collection of short stories, The Love of Erica Ewald, as well as poetic translations.

1905-1906 open in the life of Zweig a period of active travel. Starting from Paris and London, he subsequently traveled to Spain, Italy, then his travels went beyond the continent, he visited North and South America, India, Indochina. During the First World War, Zweig was an employee of the archives of the Ministry of Defense, had access to documents and, not without the influence of his good friend R. Rolland, turned into a pacifist, wrote anti-war articles, plays, and short stories. He called Rolland himself "the conscience of Europe." In the same years, he created a number of essays, the main characters of which were M. Proust, T. Mann, M. Gorky and others. During 1917-1918. Zweig lived in Switzerland, and in the post-war years, Salzburg became his place of residence.

In the 20-30s. Zweig continues to write actively. During 1920-1928. biographies of famous people are published under the title "Builders of the World" (Balzac, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Stendhal, etc.). In parallel, S. Zweig was engaged in short stories, and the works of this particular genre turned him into a popular writer not only in his country and on the continent, but throughout the world. His short stories were built according to his own model, which distinguished Zweig's creative style from other works of this genre. Biographical writings also enjoyed considerable success. This was especially true for the Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam written in 1934 and Mary Stuart published in 1935. In the genre of the novel, the writer tried his hand only twice, because he understood that short stories were his vocation, and attempts to write a large-scale canvas turned out to be a failure. From his pen came out only "Impatience of the Heart" and the remaining unfinished "Freak of Transfiguration", which was published four decades after the death of the author.

The last period of Zweig's life is associated with a constant change of residence. As a Jew, he could not stay in Austria after the Nazis came to power. In 1935, the writer moved to London, but he did not feel completely safe in the capital of Great Britain, so he left the continent and in 1940 ended up in Latin America. In 1941, he temporarily moved to the United States, but then returned to Brazil, where he settled in the small city of Petropolis.

Literary activity continues, Zweig publishes literary criticism, essays, collection of speeches, memoirs, works of art, but his state of mind is very far from calm. In his imagination, he painted a picture of the victory of the Nazi troops and the death of Europe, and this drove the writer into despair, he plunged into a severe depression. Being in another part of the world, he did not have the opportunity to communicate with friends, he experienced an acute feeling of loneliness, although he lived in Petropolis with his wife. On February 23, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a huge dose of sleeping pills and voluntarily passed away.

(by the way, this is his favorite writer), depths and abysses of the soul. Zweig the historian was interested in the star hours of mankind and "fatal moments", heroes and villains, but at the same time he always remained a gentle moralist. The finest psychologist. Refined popularizer. He knew how to grab the reader from the first page and not let go until the end, leading along the intriguing paths of human destinies. Stefan Zweig loved not only to delve into the biographies of celebrities, but also to turn them inside out so that the bonds and seams of character were exposed. But the writer himself was an extremely secretive person, he did not like to talk about himself and his work. In the autobiography "Yesterday's World" a lot is said about other writers, about his generation, about the time - and a minimum of personal information. Therefore, we will try to draw at least an approximate portrait of him.

Stefan Zweig Born November 28, 1881 in Vienna, in a wealthy Jewish family. Father, Maurice Zweig, is a manufacturer, a prosperous bourgeois, well-mannered, drawn to culture. Mother, Ida Brettauer, is the daughter of a banker, a beauty and fashionista, a woman with great pretensions and ambitions. She took care of her sons much less than governesses. Stefan and Alfred grew up as well-groomed handsome men, in wealth and luxury. In the summer they went with their parents to Marienbad or the Austrian Alps. However, the arrogance and despotism of the mother put pressure on the sensitive Stefan. Therefore, having entered the Vienna Institute, he immediately left his parental home and began to live independently. Long live freedom! .. “Hatred of everything authoritarian has accompanied me all my life,” Zweig later admits.

Years of study - years of passion for literature and theater. Stefan has been interested in reading since childhood. Along with reading, another passion arose - collecting. Already in his youth, Zweig began to collect manuscripts, autographs of great people, claviers of composers.

A novelist and biographer of famous people, Zweig began his literary career as a poet. He published his first poems at the age of 17 in the Deutsche Dichtung magazine. In 1901, the publishing house "Schuster und Leffler" published a collection of poems "Silver Strings". One of the reviewers responded like this: “A quiet, majestic beauty flows from these lines of a young Viennese poet. Enlightenment, which is rarely seen in the first books of novice authors. Sympathy and richness of images!”

So, a new fashionable poet appeared in Vienna. But Zweig himself doubted his poetic vocation and went to Berlin to continue his education. Acquaintance with the Belgian poet Emil Verhaarn prompted Zweig to other activities: he began to translate and publish Verhaarn. Until the age of thirty, Zweig led a nomadic and eventful life, traveling around cities and countries - Paris, Brussels, Ostend, Bruges, London, Madras, Calcutta, Venice ... Travel and communication, and sometimes friendship with famous creators - Verlaine, Rodin, Rolland , Freud , Rilke… Soon Zweig becomes a connoisseur of European and world culture, a man of encyclopedic knowledge.

He completely switches to prose. In 1916 he wrote the anti-war drama Jeremiah. In the mid-1920s, he created his most famous collections of short stories "Amok" (1922) and "Confusion" (1929), which included "Fear", "Moonlight Street", "Sunset of One Heart", "Fantastic Night" , "Mendel the second-hand book dealer" and other short stories with Freudian motifs woven into "Viennese impressionism", and even flavored with French symbolism. The main theme is compassion for a person who is squeezed by the "Iron Age", entangled in neuroses and complexes.

In 1929, Zweig's first fictionalized biography, Joseph Fouche, appears. This genre fascinated Zweig, and he creates wonderful historical portraits: '' Marie Antoinette '(1932), 'The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam' (1934), 'Mary Stuart' (1935), 'Castelio against Calvin' (1936), ' Magellan" (1938), "Amerigo, or the History of a historical error" (1944). More books about Verharn, Rolland, "Three singers of their lives - Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy." Above biography Balzac Zweig worked for about thirty years.

Zweig said to one of his fellow writers: “The history of outstanding people is the history of complex mental structures ... after all, the history of nineteenth-century France without solving such personalities as Fouche or Thiers would be incomplete. I am interested in the paths that certain people have taken, creating brilliant values, like Stendhal And Tolstoy or afflicting the world with crimes like Fouche…”

Zweig studied his great predecessors carefully and lovingly, trying to unravel their actions and movements of the soul, while he did not like the winners, he was closer to the losers in the struggle, outsiders or madmen. One of his books is about Nietzsche, Kleiste and Hölderlin - this is what is called "Fight against madness".

Novels and historical novels-biographies of Zweig were read with rapture. In the 1920s and 1940s he was one of the most popular authors. He was willingly published in the USSR as a "denunciator of bourgeois morals", but at the same time they did not get tired of criticizing for "a superficial understanding of social development only as a struggle between progress (humanism) and reaction, idealizing the role of the individual in history." The subtext was: not a revolutionary writer, not a singer of the proletariat, and not ours at all. Zweig was not his own for the Nazis either: in 1935, his books were burned in the squares.

At his core, Stefan Zweig is a pure humanist and citizen of the world, an anti-fascist who worshiped liberal values. In September 1928, Zweig visited the USSR and wrote very restrained memoirs about this trip. Seeing the unprecedented enthusiasm of the masses in the country, he, at the same time, could not communicate directly with ordinary people (he, like any foreigner, was carefully monitored). Zweig especially noted the situation of the Soviet intellectuals, who fell into "painful conditions of existence" and found themselves "in a tighter framework of spatial and spiritual freedoms."

Zweig put it mildly, but he understood everything, and his guesses were soon confirmed when many Soviet writers fell under the rink of repression.

In one of his letters to Romain Rolland, a great admirer of Soviet Russia, Zweig wrote: “So, in your Russia, Zinoviev, Kamenev, veterans of the revolution, the first comrades-in-arms Lenin shot like mad dogs - repeats what Calvin did when he sent Servetus to the stake because of the difference in the interpretation of Holy Scripture. Like u Hitler, as in Robespierre: ideological differences are called "conspiracy"; Wasn't it enough to use a link?"

What kind of person was Stefan Zweig? Perman Kesten in his essay “Stefan Zweig, my friend” wrote: “He was the favorite of fate. And he died as a philosopher. In the last letter, addressing the world, he once again spoke about what was his goal. He wanted to build a "new life". His main joy was intellectual work. And he considered personal freedom to be the highest good ... He was an original, complex person, interesting, curious and cunning. Thoughtful and sentimental. Always ready to help and - cold, mocking and full of contradictions. Comedian and hard worker, always excited and full of psychological subtleties. Feminine sentimental and boyishly easy on pleasure. He was a talkative and loyal friend. His success was inevitable. He himself was a real treasure trove of literary stories. In fact, a very modest person who perceived himself and the whole world too tragically ... "

For many others, Zweig was simple and without much psychological nuance. “He is rich and successful. He is the favorite of fate" - this is a common opinion about the writer. But not all rich people are generous and compassionate. Namely, this was Zweig, who always helped colleagues, some even paid a monthly rent. Literally saved many lives. In Vienna, he gathered young poets around him, listened, gave advice and treated him to the trendy cafes "Grinshteidl" and "Beethoven". Zweig did not spend much on himself, he avoided luxury, he did not even buy a car. During the day he liked to communicate with friends and acquaintances, and to work at night, when nothing interfered.

. Biography of Zweig
. Suicide in a hotel room
. Zweig's aphorisms
. The last European
. Biographies of writers
. Austrian writers
. Sagittarius (zodiac sign)
. Who was born in the Year of the Snake

Stefan Zweig is an Austrian writer, author of the short stories 24 Hours in the Life of a Woman and Letter from a Stranger. Moritz Zweig, the owner of a textile factory in Vienna, had an heir in November 1881, who was named Stefan. The child was raised by a mother named Ida Brettauer. The woman came from a family of bankers. The period of childhood is practically not studied by the biographers of Stefan Zweig.

After that, a new life stage began in Zweig's biography. A talented young man ended up at the University of Vienna. Philosophy captured Stefan, so the writer received a doctorate after 4 years of study.

At the same time, the young talent creates a collection of poems, which he called "Silver Strings". Stefan Zweig's work during this period was influenced by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke. Stefan began a friendly correspondence with the poet Rilke. The men exchanged their own compositions and wrote reviews of the work.

Studying at the University of Vienna came to an end, the great journey of Stefan Zweig began. For 13 years, the author of "Letters from a Stranger" visited London and Paris, Italy and Spain, the USA and Cuba, India and Indochina, Panama and Switzerland. The young poet chose Salzburg as his permanent place of residence.

After graduating from the University of Vienna, Zweig went to London and Paris (1905), then traveled to Italy and Spain (1906), visited India, Indochina, the USA, Cuba, Panama (1912). The last years of the First World War he lived in Switzerland (1917-1918), and after the war he settled near Salzburg.

Literature

After moving to Salzburg, Stefan Zweig sat down to create a novel called "Letter from a Stranger". This work made an impression on readers and critics of the time. The author tells an amazing story about a stranger and a writer. The girl sent a letter in which she told about all-consuming love and the ups and downs of fate, the intersections of the paths of the main characters.

The first meeting between the writer and the stranger took place when the girl was 13 years old. The novelist lived next door. Soon there was a move, because of which the teenage girl had to suffer in splendid isolation, not seeing her loved one. The long-awaited return to Vienna allowed the stranger to plunge into the romantic world again.

Unexpectedly, the lady finds out about the pregnancy, but the father of the child does not know about this important event. The next meeting with her lover took place 11 years later, but the writer did not recognize in the woman the only one with whom the affair lasted three days. The stranger decided to write a letter to the only man that the lady thought about all her life, after the death of the child. A heartfelt story that touches the soul of the most callous person formed the basis of the films.

Zweig has incredible skill, which is revealed gradually. But the peak of his career fell on the release of the short stories "Amok", "Confusion of feelings", "Mendel the second-hand book dealer", "Chess novel", "Humanity's finest hours", that is, for the period from 1922 to 1941. What is in the words and sentences of the author such that thousands of people in pre-war times leafed through volumes with Zweig's works with pleasure?

Everyone, without exception, believed that the unusual nature of the plots made it possible to reflect, to think about what was happening, about how unfair fate was sometimes in relation to ordinary people. Stefan believed that the human heart cannot be protected, but it can force people to go on feats.

Zweig's short stories were strikingly different from the works of his contemporaries. For many years, Stefan worked on his own model of the piece. The author took travel as a basis, which became either tiring, or adventurous, or dangerous.

Incidents with the heroes of Zweig did not occur on the road, but during stops. According to Stefan, days and months are not needed for a fateful moment, a few minutes or hours are enough.

Zweig did not like to write novels, because he did not understand the genre and was not able to fit into an event in a spatial narrative. But among the works of the writer there are books made in this style. These are "Impatience of the Heart" and "Fever of Transformation". The author did not finish the last novel due to death. For the first time this creation saw the light in 1982, and was translated into Russian only in 1985.

From time to time, Stefan Zweig preferred to devote himself to the creation of biographies of contemporaries and historical heroes. Among them, Joseph Fouche,. These works were of interest to writers, since Zweig took official papers for the plot, but sometimes the author had to include fantasy and psychological thinking.

In a work entitled "The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam," the writer showed feelings and emotions close to his "I". The author liked the position of Erasmus about the citizen of the world. The described scientist preferred to live an ordinary life. The man was alien to high positions and other privileges. Rotterdamsky did not like social life. The main goal of the life of a scientist was independence.

Stefan Zweig showed Erasmus as a condemner of the ignoramuses and fanatics. The representative of the Renaissance opposed the instigators of discord between people. Europe has turned into a bloody battle against the backdrop of growing interethnic and interclass hatred. But Zweig preferred to show events from the other side.

There was an idea in Stephen's concept that Erasmus felt an inner tragedy due to the inability to prevent what was happening. Zweig supported Rotterdam and believed that the First World War was just a misunderstanding that would never happen again. Stefan and tried to achieve this, but friends failed to save the world from war. During the creation of the book about Erasmus, the writer's house was searched by the German authorities.

About the book "Mary Stuart", which was written in 1935, Stefan declared as a novelized biography. Zweig studied the numerous letters written by Mary Stuart to the Queen of England. Hatred at a distance - this is how you can describe the relationship of two crowned heads.

The novel 24 Hours in the Life of a Woman appeared in 1927. Four years later, the book was filmed by director Robert Land. Modern filmmakers appreciated the novel and presented their own version. The new film was released in 2002.

Stefan Zweig got acquainted with Russian literature at the gymnasium. The writer fell in love at first sight with the works of the classics. The main achievement of the author of short stories and novels is the translation of a collection of essays into Russian.

He considered Zweig a first-class artist, among whose talents there is a gift of a thinker. The Russian writer stated that Stefan could convey the whole gamut of experiences of an ordinary person.

Zweig first visited the Soviet Union in 1928. The visit was connected with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth. In Russia, Stefan met Vladimir Lidin and Konstantin Fedin. Zweig's opinion of the Soviet Union soon changed. The writer expressed his dissatisfaction with Romain Rolland. The author of the short stories compared the executed veterans of the Revolution with mad dogs. According to Stefan, such treatment of people is unacceptable.

Personal life

The first wife of Stefan Zweig was Friederike Maria von Winternitz. The marriage of young people took place in 1920.

After 18 years of marriage, Friederik and Stefan filed for divorce. A year has passed and a new stamp appeared in the writer's passport about the conclusion of an alliance with the secretary Charlotte Altman.

Death

Back in 1934, Zweig was forced to leave Austria because of Hitler's rise to power. Stefan arranged a new house in London. After 6 years, Zweig and his wife went to New York. The writer did not plan to stay in the city of skyscrapers for a long time. Young people went to Petropolis, which is located in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro.

Life away from home and the lack of world peace plunged Stefan Zweig into depression. Disappointment led the writer to suicide. With his wife, the author of the short stories took a lethal dose of drugs. The couple was found dead. They were holding hands.

Later, a museum was organized in the house where Stefan Zweig died. And in Austria, a postage stamp in honor of the writer appeared on the centenary.