Ton Naaijkens

(Original Review from the German and English editions, 2002-06-03)

Someone might say that there is a danger of a kind of blinkered euphoria surrounding a writer like Zweig, the mobilising of an army of too easily won over devotees, Sunday supplement blurb believers who can recognise a compelling novel or novella, but misjudge the modernist credentials of writing which an experienced critic is seeking, so that someone can line that writer up alongside the true innovators of twentieth century literature, in German terms Musil, Mann, Kafka et al. But then what really matters in the end, whether a few axe grinding critics are convinced or whether a won over reader is inwardly rewarded?

However, I simply do not recognise Zweig should be dismissed as “second rate”. Second-eate-Zweig is not the Stefan Zweig I know, nor is it the Stefan Zweig whose travel essays I have tried rendering into the Portuguese language. Zweig really has his origins as writer in the late Nineteenth century. It has been said more than once he is an heir to Maupassant for example, though he was also an heir spiritually to Verhaeren, the great Belgian poet, who in a literary travesty of titanic proportions, is entirely unknown in Portugal. Zweig's writing is of a different kind altogether to those some critics assemble as his firing squad, and I would argue that at its best has a delicacy, sparseness and understated poignancy, a penetrative psychology (recognised by Freud and others) which has for a long time been applauded in France and other European countries, whilst Portugal has squatted like some bloated complacent toad on the sidelines, engorged on its own entrails, only to wake now and start a monotonous croaking over Zweig's merits. Yes there are some clichés and hackneyed effects in certain of Zweig's writings, I don't object to that accusation. He can also be repetitive and over-egg the adulatory mixture on occasion (e.g., “The World of Yesterday”). But if we have insight we can see that he often achieves something miraculous by engaging the reader, in a satisfying or disturbing psychological 'self-recognition' through his characters. Zweig's biographical essay archive is vast and amongst the more popular portraits is studded with undeniable quality, such as the monograph on Erasmus from 1935, or the fascinating essay on Nietzsche, not to mention the final incomplete essay on Montaigne, which offers clues to his, again not properly understood, suicidal propensity. To accuse Zweig of bwing a “second-rate writer” or “coat tailing on the genius of others” is tempting once one sees him as easy prey, but in fact another predictable mistake. What Zweig was doing was trying to articulate the psychology of those people he admired, to make a deeper reading of their lives if you will, in the same way that a translator does when they treat a text of an author they passionately admire. What makes the most accomplished of these portraits so effective is Zweig's unforced intimacy, his instinctive personal fusing with his subject. Yes, it is about 'him,' but only in so far as to enable the flowering of his subject. But people are entirely ignorant in this country of such a legacy, whilst in France all these books are in print, published by major presses in paperback editions and displayed to the fore in every literary bookshop, here the Portuguese Literati merely fumble about doing the odd reissue of chess and Granta, one time bastion of European lit' in translation, dumbs down to do only translations of English fiction, we are left with small presses to take on the Zweig back catalogue. I presume the debate on Zweig's qualities will persist and the see-saw will find its own momentum. For those who are still confused, I would say go out and buy the short story “Buchmendel,” I would say to those who recognize in Zweig a first-rate writer, read that incomparably moving story and then tell me that Zweig is only “a second-rate writer.”… (altro)