Stefan and Friderike Zweig Their Correspondence 1912-1942
Zweig, Stefan and Zweig, Friderike
New York. 1954. Hastings House. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. Translated from the German & Edited by Henry G. Alsberg with the assistance of Erna MacArthur. 344 pages. hardcover. keywords: Literature Letters Germany Austria Biography Autobiography. FROM THE PUBLISHER - These letters, exchanged between two outstanding literary figures over three decades, are the record not only of a passionate and touching personal relationship but also the tragic reaction of a great soul to the disintegration of the world he knew and loved. But this correspondence is more than the history of a great and, in the end, despairing love. It is also a documentary history of the political and artistic life of Western Europe in our time. Stefan Zweig was in close contact with the leading figures of his day in politics and the arts. ‘These pages are star-sprinkled with famous names- Romain Rolland, Rilke, Rathenau, Bahr, H. G. Wells, Valery, Gorky, Richard Strauss, Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Jules Romains, and a host of other luminaries. Zweig knew them intimately and his thumb-nail portraits of them are unforgettable. Stefan and Friderike met in 1912; Friderike fell in love on sight, having already been enamoured of Stefan's poetry. The first letters are hers; his answers were lost or stolen during the Nazi invasion of France in 1940. But behind the tender lines of her letters his figure is clearly discerned-the already great man of letters attracted by this young woman just emerging from the chrysalis of Austrian upper-class society into a career of noteworthy self-expression. The attraction was mutual, but years of struggle had to be endured before there could be legal sanction to their marriage. Meanwhile the agony of realization of the futility of World War I, with all its hardshi1)s for Austria and the rest of the world, made pacifists of them both. Romain Rolland was their faithful mentor during this bitter period while Stefan and Friderike traveled from one end of Europe to the other, sometimes together, at other times separately. The letters written during these separations hold much of interest-both were poets, both had a sensitive love of landscape and a deep insight into people. So there are nostalgic pictures of Switzerland, of Italy, Paris, the Côte d'Azur, of Germany between two great wars. With the gradual swelling of Nazi hysteria, Stefan first, and then Friderike, became fugitives; he migrated to England and then embarked on a lecture tour of South America. He came back to England but later returned to an(l settled in Brazil. There, depressed by his fate as an exile, banned in his native land and with his books burned by the Nazis, Stefan fell victim to a constantly increasing melancholia, though he continued to write more industriously than ever. Though he and Friderike had, before that, come to a parting of the ways, their exchange of letters continued, and their spiritual and intellectual comradeship gained new poignancy. Finally in 1942, in a period of intense depression at his little house in Petropolis, Stefan took his own life. His last letter to Friderike was dated the day of his death. Stefan Zweig needs no introduction to the American public; his works have been admired here perhaps more than those of any other contemporary German writer, with the possible exception of Thomas Mann. Friderike Zweig is also an outstanding figure in contemporary German literature, with novels, poetry, biographies and translations to her credit. She is the author of Stefan Zweig which has appeared in translation in this country, and is at present at work on a new novel. inventory #34404
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