E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten
Zweig Encounters and Destinies
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78227-408-7
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
A Farewell to Europe
E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-78227-408-7
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Between the wars, Zweig was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath and New York-a period during which he produced his most celebrated works: his only novel, Beware of Pity, and his memoir, The World of Yesterday. He eventually settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.
Weitere Infos & Material
He has come home, the great exile of the past, returned in glory to the city that he, as an outcast, departed only a few years ago. In the same hall where formerly his compelling will exercised its demonic effect, his long-absent nature now takes on new spiritual form, resounding in the work. Nothing can restrain it, not opprobrium or rancour; irresistibly burgeoning with its unique qualities, feeling the purer for no longer being locked in struggle, it now fills and expands our inner world. No war, no event could hinder this elemental blossoming of his fame, and the same man who appeared to people here as something of an irritant and almost a monster has overnight become consoler and liberator. Pain and loss—his Kindertotenlieder express his spirit more powerfully than any others of the time, and who today does not wish to learn, with empathy, how sorrow transmogrifies itself through depth of feeling in his farewell song, the ‘Song of the Earth’? Never was Gustav Mahler so revitalized and inspired by this city as now, when he is far removed from us and the ungrateful city that abandoned him is his eternal homeland. Those who truly loved him were patiently awaiting this hour, but now that it has come it scarcely brings us joy. For while he was engaged in work, our desire was to witness his creations, see them come alive. And now that they have achieved renown, it is he himself we long for, the man who will not return.
Because for us, an entire generation, he was far more than a musician, a master, a conductor, more than an artist: he was the unforgettable presence of our youth. To be young ultimately means to be conscious of the extraordinary, of some wondrously beautiful happening that transcends the narrow world of appearances, of a phenomenon, the fulfilment of a once-dreamt vision. And everything, admiration, enthusiasm, humility—they all stir up powers of devotion, of exuberance, they only seem so fiery and chaotic when concentrated in unfinished beings, burning deep within when they appear—recognized as such or intimated—in art, in love. And there is a certain grace in experiencing such fulfilment in art, in those days of premature, unspent love to observe something truly meaningful, yet free with the fullest flow of feeling. It happened to us. Anyone who has experienced those ten years of opera from Mahler’s youth has enriched his life in ways that cannot be measured in words. With the keen sense of impatience, we sensed from the outset the rare thing, the miracle he harboured, the demonic man, the rarest of all, one who isn’t entirely at one with creativity, but with something far more mysterious in its essence, possessing a distinctly natural power, the inspired element. There is nothing to distinguish it from the external, the influence it exerts constitutes its own singularity, something indescribable, which can only be compared to a certain magical arbitrariness of nature. It can be likened to the magnet; thousands of iron filings may cling to it. All are tragic. They know only how to plunge downwards, commanded by their inner weight, alien to all else and inactive. But there is one piece of iron, seemingly no brighter or richer than any of the rest, which inwardly retains a power, the power of stars or the furthest depths of the earth, that pulls all relatives together, weaves its own form and frees itself from the internal weight. What the magnet seizes it enlivens through its own power; if it can hold it long enough, its secret flows forth. It draws towards it kindred metals in order to enter them, dividing itself without weakening the whole: its very nature and instinct are effect. And this power—whether from the stars or the remotest depths of the earth—constitutes the will of the demonic man. Thousands mill around him, thousand upon thousand, each one rushing headlong into his own life, inherently tragic and inanimate. But he drags them towards himself, he fills the essence of the oblivious with his own will, his rhythm; he propagates himself in them by animating them. Through a kind of hypnosis, he forces them all to draw near, tensing their nerves in time with his own, wrenching them often painfully into his rhythm. He enslaves them, imposes his will on them, lends the willing something of the mystery of his force. It is precisely this demonic will that was in Mahler, a power which suppressed and resisted all opposition, but also one that inspired and enriched. About him was a molten sphere where everyone seemed to glow, always fiery, but working towards clarity. It was impossible to resist. They say that sometimes musicians tried, but his will was just too hot: all resistance simply melted. With unrivalled energy he transforms his entire world of singers, assistants, directors, musicians, moulding the chaotic interplay of hundreds of individuals into his single unit in the space of a mere three hours. He literally wrenches the will from them, he hammers, pounds and files their individual qualities, he drives them on, already they are aglow with fervour, moving inexorably into his rhythm, until the point when he has salvaged the unique from the ordinary, art from enterprise, until he is fulfilled in the work and the work is fulfilled in him.
And, magically, all flows from the external to him, all he needs he seems to find, but it finds him. Female singers are needed, rich, fiery natures, in order to bring Wagner and Mozart into being: summoned by him (or rather, unconsciously willed by the demon within) arise Mildenburg and Gutheil; a painter in order to provide an animated backdrop to the animated music, and he discovers Alfred Roller. Whatever he shares a connection with, whatever he needs to make the work complete appears suddenly as if by magic, and the stronger the personalities involved, the more passionate becomes his own. Everything is mysteriously drawn to him, slips submissively into his will, and on such evenings a work, a crowd, a house suddenly forms around him, as if for him alone. Out of his baton pulses the rhythm of our blood: just as a lightning rod binds together the tension of the whole atmosphere, so it binds the sum of our pent-up feeling. Never before in the performing arts have I experienced such unity as on these countless evenings, a unity where the purity of effect can only be aligned with the elemental, a landscape with sky, clouds and the breath of the season, that inadvertent harmonious unity of things which become present only for oneself, undiscriminating and impartial. In those days we young people learnt to love the art of perfection in him, through his example we came to understand that amidst our fragmented world it is still possible for the heightened, demonic will to construct – for an hour, two hours – the eternal, the flawless, out of fragile earthly material. In those days he became both educator and guide. No one then wielded commensurable power over us.
And so powerful was this demonic genius of his inner self that it burst through the thin layer of his outer being like a jet of flame, for he was always burning up, barely able to suppress the heat beneath the delicate crust of his corporeality. Observing him just once, you had the feeling you knew his soul. Everything about him was in a state of tension, brimming over, saturated with passion, something flickered about him like the sparks around a Leyden jar. Fury was his natural element, the only capable force, at rest he seemed pent up, when he was sat still it was as if electricity still crackled over him. It was impossible to imagine him idle, sauntering along or in gentle mood of reverie, the overheated state of his inner cauldron always demanded more power to drive on, push forward, to be perennially active. He was always en route to a destination, as if borne on a great storm, and all else seemed too leaden for him; maybe he just felt an innate aversion to real life because it was brittle, crude, shiftless, because it was all earth, weight and resistance and he sought access to the other that lay behind things, at the very furthest point of art, where this world reaches into the celestial vault. He yearned to find a path through, past these intermediate forms and on to the pure, the clear, where art becomes an element in itself through immaculacy, something flawless and crystalline, unpremeditated and free; but as long as he remained director he was obliged to follow the routine of day-to-day affairs, the odious atmosphere of business, traps set by the malicious, the impenetrable undergrowth of human pettiness and triviality. But he tore a path through, hurled himself, surged forward, like a frenzied attacker towards this goal, which he knew to be beyond, on the outside, inaccessible and yet already lying within him: perfection. His whole life long he kept running, casting all else aside, knocking down, trampling anything which threatened to hold him up, he ran and ran, as if whipped by the terror of not ultimately achieving perfection. In his wake resounded the hysterical shrieks of the aggrieved prima donnas, the groaning of the self-satisfied ones, the jeering of assorted mediocrities, the herd of conventional men, but he never turned back, he was oblivious to how the ranks of his persecutors swelled, he did not even feel the blows they rained down on him, for he stormed on and on until eventually he stumbled and fell. It was said he was inhibited by this...
