Stefan Zweig's Character and Literary Style

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10 жыл бұрын

Biographer George Prochnik talks about his subject Stefan Zweig, the inspiration for Wes Anderson's new film Grand Budapest Hotel.
By the 1930s, Stefan Zweig had become the most widely translated living author in the world. His novels, short stories, and biographies were so compelling that they became instant best sellers. Zweig was also an intellectual and a lover of all the arts, high and low. Yet after Hitler's rise to power, this celebrated writer who had dedicated so much energy to promoting international humanism plummeted, in a matter of a few years, into an increasingly isolated exile-from London to Bath to New York City, then Ossining, Rio, and finally Petrópolis-where, in 1942, in a cramped bungalow, he killed himself.
Prochnik's biography, The Impossible Exile, tells the tragic story of Zweig's extraordinary rise and fall while it also depicts, with great acumen, the gulf between the world of ideas in Europe and in America, and the consuming struggle of those forced to forsake one for the other. It also reveals how Zweig embodied, through his work, thoughts, and behavior, the end of an era-the implosion of Europe as an ideal of Western civilization.
Learn more: otherpress.com/books/impossible-exile/
Other videos in this series:
• George Prochnik: The I...
• Stefan Zweig - Sex and...

Пікірлер: 39

@queensigal 2 жыл бұрын

I met Stephan Zweig's nephew in zurich,his name was Adam and he was a psychiatrist. He passed away this April almost 100 years old. He was modest and obviously had a brilliant mind having worked as psychotherapist and Mathemetician. Modesty is a characteristic i believe applied to Stephan as well.

@tehsinsatti9964 3 жыл бұрын

I discovered Zweig 6 mins ago, reading Forgotten Dreams, and he is holding me now firmly

@fungus_am0nguz644 3 жыл бұрын

My dad mentioned this Stefan Zweig dude in the late 90s. He was always recommending epic writers to me. Many years passed and one day i pick this huuuuge orange book of him that has his most well known titles, you know (Amok, letter from an unknown woman, the royal game, etc etc) the first story that i read from him is the first one of that book (sorry id remember the title) and immediately i could see this beautiful prose in his writing, it just flows like water or wine, just beautifully written right? The story is about this dude that comes to this huuge castle like villa, with butlers, and a pool and there is a woman in the pool....the dude goes to her and says "my love my darling i did it, i finally did it, we can be together now" the woman recognized the man and says "hello, what did u do? What is this about being together now" guy goes " my love our dreams, i know that when we broke up bc i didnt have anything now i have a lil something i know i havent seen u in 10 years but now we can run away darling, remember our dream?" Yoooooo this woman answers like this " yeah i remember dreaming about running aways with u for a better life, i dreamed about building a future together......but i also dreamed of jewelry, the best ones, i dreamed of diamonds as big as a hazelnut, i also dream of fancy dinners, i also dreamed of going to operas, and castles, and the best of best....so no i ai t going with u"....and that was it lol that was the story. This guy complety crushed....fuck i was crushed as well by this woman and i couldnt believe that ending, beautifully written, i was blown away that i had to check the date of the story (i think in the 1920s) but is a story that applies then NOW specially and tomorrow. Zweig is a monster writter with sooooo many works. Great video

@michaelthomas366 4 жыл бұрын

Stefan Zweig had he lived should have gotten the Nobel prize.

@naomideguyane 4 жыл бұрын

Absolutely!

@naomideguyane 4 жыл бұрын

Many in France now re-discover "La Peste" by Camus...because of Covid-19..

@naomideguyane 6 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for sharing these beautiful words! I just ordered the movie "Vor Der Morgenröte" about Zweig's exile to Brasil..My grandfather was Austrian & fled Austria too in 1938...He was an unknown poet who had great writers as PENfriends..It is they who helped him to leave Vienna...He died of a broken heart my father always said, although it was malaria that killed him, 5 years after the war ended...I understand why Zweig committed suicide..My grandfather was a melancholic Viennese poet...Exile turned him into a broken man...I so much want to write a biography of his exile & Guyane the country where I was born...It will probably become one of the millions of silent books on a forgotten shelf...

@fionad9913 5 жыл бұрын

Go ahead and write that book!

@wellrose17 5 жыл бұрын

Denise Brutus Pardon my delayed discovery of Stefan Zweig and rather surprisingly your grandfather's story but, I am genuinely fascinated by both. If you have occasion to tell your grandfather's story I'd watch or read it. Does anyone have a reference in which I may start with Zweig's work?

@michaelthomas366 4 жыл бұрын

Denise, if the socialists take over America, I'm moving to Petropolis which I know of through the life and works of Herr Zweig. Write your book!

@RadiolariaXY 4 жыл бұрын

Hi Denise, that's a story I'd love to hear more about. I am fascinated by all the exiles from that period ,from Vienna and Budapest in particular. They were, collectively, some of the most brilliant and creative people ever known, it seems to me. You should really read George Prochnik's biography, the one I made these videos to promote: otherpress.com/books/impossible-exile/ Also check out the other videos I made in this series if you haven't already: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/a7GElpOJuLateWQ.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jr6kntOl27SydZc.html

@naomideguyane 4 жыл бұрын

@@RadiolariaXY Good afternoon Ted W... Since 2 decades a Biography lives inside of me about my birth in Guyane..and how it all happened...It is because of my grandparents (both of them..from father's and mother's side) that I ended up there to begin with...My paternal grand-parents came all the way from Vienna before the War and my maternal grand-parents migrated after the war when the French Gestapo had tortured to death my grandmother's only brother, who was like a father to her because he was 20 years older..He was the Leader of the French Resistance in the South of France...My dearest grandmother never got over his horrible death, just 1 month before the end of the War...They even pulled out his blue eyes so he would talk and denounce his friends, which he didn't...My paternal grandfather died so young...He was only 45...He had been able to escape Hitler's folley but mosquitos got him! He managed to leave Austria in a small plane with his wife and young son (my father) and stayed for a while in Switzerland where his good friend Thomas Mann had him as a guest...In those days there was no Internet and pen-friends where the only way to bond with kindred spirits abroad... They went from Switzerland to Paris where he also had famous pen-friends and they managed to get him on a boat to South America just before the War broke out...I have always loved my grandfather Leopold through the stories of my paternal grandmother who lived with us, and my father .The movie "Von Der Morgenröte" gave me an insight of HOW he & his pen-friends must have felt in exile...This book will be an act of deep admiration and love for my ancestors, who believed so much in freedom of mind and a better world...About a month ago now I have started writing it...The title of the novel I had in my head since over 20 years...I will love them forever through my words...

@SuperFata 4 жыл бұрын

I just learned about Zweig minutes ago. This video inspired me to research more, thanks!

@michaelthomas366 4 жыл бұрын

He's a great writer who needs to be rediscovered by readers like you.

@sophialewis5474 4 жыл бұрын

You will love Zweig now you have discovered him. 24 hours in the Life of A Woman.

@matthiasstaber9216 4 жыл бұрын

Please don't stop with "The Royal Game", please... I beg you, please read "The World of Yesterday", its big, I know... but what is woven into this book is so grand, beautiful and tragic that it'll change your life. Yours a young Viennese

@MrJellybeen 2 жыл бұрын

@@matthiasstaber9216 I read it it's awesome

@michelodonnell7240 16 күн бұрын

A brilliant writer

@harrywix 2 жыл бұрын

What insightful thoughts! I have just finished Zweig's World of Yesterday and this description rings so true.

@yonathanasefaw9001 3 жыл бұрын

Great insight to Stefan, I liked this a lot, good job!

@brucejackson4219 11 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for this very interesting presentation: did Zweig ever meet Freud and/or Jung? The dual suicides too sad for words...if not too late , I can only say RIP to them both.

@robertoguzman6057 2 жыл бұрын

Sweig no sabía que Alemania estaba condenada a perder la guerra, y que por lo tanto, debía esperar solo dos años para constatarlo...y trabajar por la reivindicación de la cultura europea. R. Guzmán, México.

@mellow5123 6 жыл бұрын

Long version please.

@RadiolariaXY 6 жыл бұрын

Thanks for your interest. Here are the other videos in the series: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/a7GElpOJuLateWQ.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jr6kntOl27SydZc.html

@michelodonnell7240 16 күн бұрын

❤️

@wolfgangdraxler3177 3 жыл бұрын

One of the best!! Love his books!

@italialibera2102 Жыл бұрын

honestly i find zweig's writings quite heterogeneous. some things, like his autobiography, some short stories, are good; other writings seem rather mediocre to me (eg, the essay on Mesmer: one cannot speak of biography given the laconic nature of the text). in general, then, his prose seems to me a bit heavy and at times rhetorical. on the other hand, those who write a lot cannot fail to be rhetorical and syntactically convoluted.