AMOK - Zweig E-Book

Zweig Stefan

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 106

Beschreibung

Stefan Zweig was born on November 28, 1881, in Vienna and is one of the most important European authors of the first half of the 20th century. Jewish, he was persecuted by the Nazis and forced into exile. His final resting place was in Brazil, where he met a tragic end. A versatile writer, Zweig devoted himself to almost all literary activities but became famous mainly for his novellas, many of which were translated into various languages, as well as adapted for the stage and cinema. Stefan Zweig is always synonymous with emotion, passion, and tragedy, on all levels. His novellas fill us with love, but above all with great pain, which is universal to most of his deeply human characters. In this work, the reader will discover Stefan Zweig's immense talent and creativity through two of his most famous novellas: "Amok" and "Beware of Pity."

Leseprobe

Stefan Zweig

AMOK

Original Title:

“Der Amokläufer”

Contents

INTRODUCTION

AMOK

INTRODUCTION

Stefan Zweig

1881-1942

Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna, Austria, on November 28, 1881, the son of Moritz Zweig and Ida Brettauer.

Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he showed talent for literature from an early age, publishing his first book, a collection of poems, at the age of 20. He studied at the University of Vienna, where he presented his doctoral dissertation on the philosophy of Hippolyte Tayne in 1904. That same year, he published his first biography, that of the French writer Paul Verlaine. In 1906, he wrote his first play.

During World War I (1914-1918), while living with his first wife, Frederike Maria, Zweig volunteered for the Yellow and Black Cross, a philanthropic organization of the Vienna municipality. He was then called to serve in the Austrian army's War Archives, where, along with other writers like Rainer Maria Rilke, he produced newspapers for the soldiers. During the conflict, he wrote the pacifist text "Jeremiah," which was highly successful.

In late 1917, he traveled to Switzerland, where he remained until the end of the war. Upon returning to Austria, he settled in Salzburg in 1919. He would live in the city until 1934, during which time he wrote his most well-known works. In the 1920s, his books began to be adapted into films. Over 75 years, 56 of Zweig's works were brought to the screen.

Pressured by the Nazis due to his Jewish origin, he abandoned Austria in 1935 and emigrated to England, where he resided until 1941. During this period, in August 1936, he made his first trip to Brazil, where he was received as a celebrity. In 1938, with the Anschluss - the annexation of Austria by Germany - Zweig, like other Jews in the country, lost Austrian nationality; as a stateless person, he began to seek British citizenship. In mid-1938, while awaiting a response from the British authorities, he applied for citizenship to the Brazilian government.

After the start of World War II (September 1939), he decided to leave England and, accompanied by his second wife, Charlotte Elizabeth Zweig, traveled to the United States in June 1940 and from there to Brazil.

Exile in Brazil and suicide

Zweig and Lotte made three trips to Brazil. During the first, between 1940 and 1941, for a series of lectures throughout the country, he wrote from Bahia to Manfred and Hannah Altmann, his in-laws: "You cannot imagine what it means to see this country that is so interesting and has not yet been spoiled by tourists."

It was during this first trip that Zweig, with Lotte's help, gathered his personal notes and finished the essay "Brazil, Land of the Future." The nickname "Land of the Future," coined by Zweig, would become a moniker for Brazil. Indeed, despite the depression he already felt due to the unfolding war in Europe, the writer tried to find in Brazil not only the conditions to recreate his private life but also the old atmosphere of his native continent.

According to Alberto Dines, author of a biography of the writer, Zweig would be one of the last remnants of European culture and way of life from the 19th century. His discouragement with the advance of Nazism, in fact, came long before, since World War I, when the first signs of a rupture with the old European imperial order emerged.

Zweig was enthusiastically received by both the local intellectual community and the political authorities. For Brazilian intellectuals, the presence of such a renowned writer on national soil brought prestige and opportunities for exchange with other foreign writers. But for political authorities, Zweig's arrival, with his liberal and anti-Nazi baggage, was contradictory. Getúlio Vargas's government remained in power thanks to authoritarian policies, and many of its ministers and military advisors sympathized with Nazism, although others, more liberal, approached Zweig.

From the third trip to Brazil, Lotte and Zweig settled in Petrópolis, a city in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, where he completed his autobiography, "The World of Yesterday"; wrote the novella "Chess Story: A Chess Tale," and began the work "The World of Yesterday," an autobiographical work with a description of Europe before 1914.

In 1942, depressed by the growth of intolerance and authoritarianism in Europe and without hope for the future of humanity, Zweig wrote a farewell letter and, together with his wife, Lotte, committed suicide with a fatal dose of barbiturates. The sad event occurred on February 23 in the city of Petrópolis, where they had rented a house. The news shocked both Brazilians and admirers worldwide. The couple was buried in the Municipal Cemetery of Petrópolis, according to Jewish funeral traditions, in the perpetual 47,417, block 11. The house where the couple committed suicide is now a cultural center dedicated to the life and work of Stefan Zweig.

About the Work

Zweig was one of the most famous writers in the world during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the USA, South America, and Europe. Versatile, he produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalistic pieces, but he stood out and became famous primarily for his novellas, many of which were translated into several languages and adapted for the cinema dozens of times.

Among his most famous novellas are: "Amok," "Chess Story," "Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman," "Fear," "Confusion of Feelings," and "Beware of Pity."

"Amok," written in 1922, includes clear psychoanalytical elements, possibly inspired by the works of Freud, whom Zweig admired and knew. "Amok" addresses an extreme obsession that leads the protagonist to sacrifice his professional and private life to the utmost limit. The title of the novella comes from the Indonesian term "amok": a person who attacks anyone in their path and tries to kill them without any sense of danger or awareness of the act. In the novella, the narrator travels from India to Europe. One night, during a walk on the deck, he meets a man who, although disturbed and scared at first, tells him his story. A doctor from Leipzig, he moved to Indonesia seven years earlier to practice medicine in a small, remote village. One day, a white woman, "the first white woman in years," unexpectedly appears and fascinates him with her haughty and distant nature. As the conversation progresses, it becomes clear that the woman, an Englishwoman and the wife of a Dutch merchant, came to see him for a discreet abortion, for which she is willing to pay a large sum. From there, the entire narrative unfolds, leaving the reader in suspense until the unexpected and dramatic conclusion.

AMOK

In March 1912 a strange accident occurred in Naples harbor during the unloading of a large ocean-going liner which was reported at length by the newspapers, although in extremely fanciful terms. Although I was a passenger on the Oceania, I did not myself witness this strange incident — nor did any of the others — since it happened while coal was being taken on board and cargo unloaded and to escape the noise, we had all gone ashore to pass the time in coffeehouses or theaters. It is my personal opinion however, that a number of conjectures which I did not voice publicly at the time provide the true explanation of that sensational event and I think that, at a distance of some years, I may now be permitted to give an account of a conversation I had in confidence immediately before the curious episode.

When I went to the Calcutta shipping agency trying to book a passage on the Oceania for my voyage home to Europe, the clerk apologetically shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know if it would be possible for him to get me a cabin, he said; at this time of year, with the rainy season imminent, the ship was likely to be fully booked all the way from Australia and he would have to wait for a telegram from Singapore. Next day, I was glad to hear, he told me that yes, he could still reserve me a cabin, although not a particularly comfortable one; it would be below deck and amidships. As I was impatient to get home, I did not hesitate for long but took it.

The clerk had not misinformed me. The ship was over-crowded and my cabin a poor one: a cramped little rectangle of a place near the engine room, lit only dimly through a circular porthole. The thick, curdled air smelled greasy and musty and I could not for a moment escape the electric ventilator fan that hummed as it circled overhead like a steel bat gone mad. Down below the engines clattered and groaned like a breathless coal-heaver constantly climbing the same flight of stairs, up above I heard the tramp of footsteps pacing the promenade deck the whole time. As soon as I had stowed my luggage away amidst the dingy girders in my stuffy tomb, I then went back on deck to get away from the place and as I came up from the depths I drank in the soft, sweet wind blowing off the land as if it were ambrosia.

But the atmosphere of the promenade deck was crowded and restless too, full of people chattering incessantly, hurrying up and down with the uneasy nervousness of those forced to be inactive in a confined space. The arch flirtatiousness of the women, the constant pacing up and down on the bottleneck of the deck as flocks of passengers surged past the deckchairs, always meeting the same faces again, were actually painful to me. I had seen a new world, I had taken in turbulent, confused images that raced wildly through my mind. Now I wanted leisure to think, to analyze and organize them, make sense of all that had impressed itself on my eyes but there wasn’t a moment of rest and peace to be had here on the crowded deck. The lines of a book I was trying to read blurred as the fleeting shadows of the chattering passengers moved by. It was impossible to be alone with myself on the unshaded, busy thoroughfare of the deck of this ship.

I tried for three days; resigned to my lot, I watched the passengers and the sea. But the sea was always the same, blue and empty and only at sunset was it abruptly flooded with every imaginable color. As for the passengers, after seventy-two hours I knew them all by heart. Every face was tediously familiar, the women’s shrill laughter no longer irritated me, even the loud voices of two Dutch officers quarrelling nearby were not such a source of annoyance anymore. There was nothing for it but to escape the deck, although my cabin was hot and stuffy and, in the saloon, English girls kept playing waltzes badly on the piano, staccato-fashion. Finally I decided to turn the day’s normal timetable upside down and in the afternoon, having anaesthetized myself with a few glasses of beer, I went to my cabin to sleep through the evening with its dinner and dancing.

When I woke it was dark and oppressive in the little coffin of my cabin. I had switched off the ventilator, so the air around my temples felt greasy and humid. My senses were bemused and it took me some minutes to remember my surroundings and wonder what the time was. It must have been after midnight, anyway, for I could not hear music or those restless footsteps pacing overhead. Only the engine, the breathing heart of the leviathan, throbbed as it thrust the body of the ship on into the unseen.

I made my way up to the deck. It was deserted. And as I looked above the steam from the funnel and the ghostly gleam of the spars, a magical brightness suddenly met my eyes. The sky was radiant, dark behind the white stars wheeling through it and yet radiant, as if a velvet curtain up there veiled a great light and the twinkling stars were merely gaps and cracks through which that indescribable brightness shone. I had never before seen the sky as I saw it that night, glowing with such radiance, hard and steely blue and yet light came sparkling, dripping, pouring, gushing down, falling from the moon and stars as if burning in some mysterious inner space. The white-painted outlines of the ship stood out bright against the velvety dark sea in the moonlight, while all the detailed contours of the ropes and the yards dissolved in that flowing brilliance; the lights on the masts seemed to hang in space, with the round eye of the lookout post above them, earthly yellow stars amidst the shining stars of the sky.