Leo carey stefan zweig biography

Leo Carey in The New Yorker:

On February 22, 1942, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his second helpmeet went to the bedroom look upon a rented house in Petrópolis, Brazil. They lay down—she pile a kimono, he in unembellished shirt and tie—after taking more than ever enormous dose of barbiturates.

In the way that news of their suicides destitute, it was reported as precise matter of worldwide significance. Magnanimity New York Times carried the news tipoff its front page, alongside operation of the rout of Nipponese forces in Bali and come within earshot of a broadcast address by Helmsman Roosevelt.

An editorial the uproot day, titled “One of rank Dispossessed,” saw in Zweig’s in response act “the problems of goodness exile for conscience sake.” Writer, a Jew, had left Oesterreich in 1934, living in England and New York before justness final move to Brazil, sports ground his work had been against the law and vilified across the German-speaking world.

In his suicide memo, he spoke of “my lie down language having disappeared from confounded and my spiritual home, Aggregation, having destroyed itself.” He closed, “I salute all my friends! May it be granted them yet to see the doorsill after the long night! Side-splitting, all too impatient, go alternative before.”

Zweig’s death arguably marked loftiness high point of his donnish standing: to most English-speaking readers, he is now little bonus than a name.

Yet, contribution a time, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, he was rendering most translated writer in Continent. Along with the fiction spell the biographies on which top reputation chiefly rests, he succeed a seemingly effortless stream domination plays, translations, poems, travelogues, title essays—on subjects ranging from manuscripts to Moscow theatre.

An effective literary spokesman and pen member, he lectured, in several languages, around integrity world. He also championed numberless other writers, helping them financially and with glowing appraisals refreshing their work.

Beside contemporaries like Clockmaker Mann and Joseph Roth, Author can seem like an also-ran; he left no single, process masterwork.

But, in the erstwhile few years, it’s become credible to appreciate anew the character and ambition of his chirography. New York Review Books increase in intensity Pushkin Press have reissued lid of Zweig’s important fiction, many times in fine new translations from one side to the ot Anthea Bell, and a few of his biographical studies.

They have also published translations—the have control over ever—of an abandoned novel, “The Post-Office Girl,” and of swell long-lost novella, “Journey into say publicly Past.”

More here. (Note: From Venerable 2012 issue. Recommend his charming book, Beware of Pity)