Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, tres personajes extraordinarios por los que Stefan Zweig, como «psicólogo por pasión, creador por voluntad creadora» sentía un profundo apego. Su inquietud vital los aleja de la contención de Goethe decidido a autoconstruirse: «La fórmula para la vida según Goethe es la representada por el círculo: una línea cerrada, la redondez absoluta que abarca toda existencia, el eterno retorno a uno mismo.» En cambio, «la forma de lo demoníaco», de la inquietud interna en Hölderlin, Kleist y Nietzsche, «se expresa por una parábola: un ascenso rápido e impetuoso en una única dirección, hacia lo superior, lo infinito, una curva perpendicular y una caída brusca.» El demonio, entendido por Stefan Zweig como remanente del caos original del mundo, es quien desafía a los hombres creativos, poseídos por él, y les «arranca de las manos, a la fuerza, el timón de la voluntad, de manera que... son tambaleados por la tempestad, y chocan contra las peñas de su destino.»

AG-5

traduccion Joaquin Verdaguer ( )

В русском переводе - три певца своей жизни.
Шикарно. Никогда не думал, что биографические очерки могут быть такими занимательными, поучительными и интересными, представленными в столь читабельной и литературной форме. Прочел с удовольствием. Полезно читать подобные вещи перед началом чтения серий автора. ( )

I have little enough time for writing this review. So I won't. But what I can tell you is that this book is a fine and perfect example of great writing. Zweig is a master at teaching and expressing his thoughts clearly and he is so very interesting in his approach to this (and any) subject. Though he was profiling three great artists of their own particular time in Holderlin, Kleist, and Nietzsche, Zweig was primarily instructing us on the daemon, which is a word I had heard prior to this reading but never had it explained to me in such clear and precise language. Now, at least, I know what is wrong with me, or what is right, depending on your own personal perception of the artist's drive. How frustration and unhappiness continue to press us on to better work and more serious incisions into our consciousness. This book is amazing on so many levels. To say I loved it would be an inadequate expression of my feelings for it. It is a precious and important work written by a man who was such a great writer and thinker. Zweig certainly did justice to the good and lasting memory of these three subjects, misunderstood and rejected in their own time, but who now live on in immortality as the great writers they really were. The fact that all three were social outcasts was basically by their own design, and it offered them the opportunity to perfect their work privately in a most violent and disruptive way that is scary and a threat to those of us who are delusional in the comforts of our daily living. Truth is, the world is always in chaos and we better not ever forget it. ( )