Showing results by author "Stefan Zweig" in All Categories

Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era.

In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner. There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard. Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character of the very best of Zweig's work. Definitive translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell.

Momentos estelares de la humanidad es probablemente el libro más célebre de Stefan Zweig. Desde el 44 a. C. hasta 1919, el autor hace un repaso único de algunos de los momentos que cambiaron para siempre el transcurso de la Historia. Zweig recrea, con una prosa vibrante y de manera magistral, catorce momentos clave: desde Cicerón hasta Thomas Woodrow Wilson, los protagonistas se enfrentan a aquellos instantes cruciales de la Historia de la humanidad.

With the age of voyages of discovery in the 15th century, the curtain of history slowly came down on the late Middle Ages. Portuguese and Spanish seafarers set out to remeasure the dimensions of the earth. Numerous spices and fruits, which we would hardly be able to do without today, found their way to Europe for the first time. Columbus discovered America in 1492 on his quest for India. Six years later, it was left to Vasco da Gama to travel through the sea route to India sought by Columbus on the eastern route around Africa.

"The others form the human being, I depict him; and here I present an individual who is quite poorly formed and whom I would certainly make largely differently if I had to reshape him. But now that's the way he is." This phrase from the famous essays of Michel de Montaigne outlines the character of the author and his work. Montaigne wrote his essays not from a position of certainty but from an awareness of his inadequacy. He thus reveals a level of critical self-reflection that, before his time, was rarely put on paper.

Stefan Zweig trabajó más de veinte años en Momentos estelares de la humanidad. El libro reúne catorce momentos históricos retratados por Zweig, fundamentales desde su punto de vista para el transcurso de la historia. El asesinato de Cicerón, la expedición fallida al Polo Sur del capitán Scott y la fiebre del oro de California en 1848 son solo algunos de estos relatos que ilustran la visión del mundo que tenía Zweig, que apela a los procedimientos narrativos de sus novelas para dar vida a narraciones que siempre oscilan entre lo ficcional y lo fáctico.

The fame of the The Royal Game is evident in the number of translations. The last work of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig can be read today in over 60 languages. The first translation into English appeared in New York in 1944. In Germany, the book has become a constant bestseller. The first-person narrator learns of the presence of the world chess champion Mirko Czentovic on a boat trip from New York to Buenos Aires. Together with his acquaintance Mc Connor and other chess players, the first-person narrator manages to challenge the world champion to a game of chess.

In this book, Stefan Zweig traces 12 fateful events of world history in his unique artistic style: from the conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople by the Turks, to the Battle of Waterloo to Sir Robert Falcon Scott's tragic South Pole expedition. The human character and sometimes simple fate are decisive historic factors that have led to dramatic and lasting changes in the past. Often short, coincidental and highly dramatic moments have the potential to change the future of mankind in a decisive manner – the so called "Great Moments of Humanity".

Nel 1940, Stefan Zweig lascia l'Europa in guerra per gli Stati Uniti e poi il Brasile. Qui, nel 1941, un anno prima di uccidersi, scrive "Il mondo di ieri", un'elegia dell’Europa che è scomparsa con la Prima guerra mondiale - il composito Impero asburgico, il fermento culturale di Vienna, Berlino e Parigi - e di quella cosmopolita e in pace che si pensava in costruzione negli anni '20 ma disintegrata dal fascismo e il nazismo.

"The others form the human being, I depict him; and here I present an individual who is quite poorly formed and whom I would certainly make largely differently if I had to reshape him. But now that's the way he is." This phrase from the famous essays of Michel de Montaigne outlines the character of the author and his work. Montaigne wrote his essays not from a position of certainty but from an awareness of his inadequacy. He thus reveals a level of critical self-reflection that, before his time, was rarely put on paper.

Una certera radiografía de la cultura europa del siglo XX por Stefan Zweig, uno de los escritores más traducidos de los años 20 y 30 del siglo pasado. El mundo de ayer es el valioso testimonio y el testamento vital de uno de los intelectuales más importantes del siglo XX. Poco antes de morir, desde la desolación del exilio, Stefan Zweig describe, con una prosa magistral, el periodo de entreguerras, el auge del nazismo y el estallido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

El mundo de ayer es uno de los más conmovedores y atractivos testimonios de nuestro pasado reciente, escrito además con mano maestra por un europeo empapado de civilización y nostalgia por un mundo, el suyo, que se iba desintegrando a pasos agigantados. Escritor extraordinariamente popular y...

According to Stefan Zweig, no contemporary author, not even Marx or Nietzsche, delivered the radical spiritual shock that Tolstoy's works gave millions and millions of people around the world. But which Tolstoy are we talking about? For Zweig it is the essayist Tolstoy, the radical thinker and incorruptible anarchist. The Tolstoy who claims that the state is the great cover-up of social injustice through a complex system of violence based on parliaments, prisons, judges, tax collectors, the police and armies.

"Dickens is the highest poetic expression of the English tradition between the heroic century of Napoleon, the glorious past, and imperialism, the dream of his future. (...) Only when one hates the hypocritical narrow-mindedness of Victorian culture from the bottom of one's soul can one appreciates with full admiration the genius of a man who compelled us to find this disgusting world of sated sluggishness interesting and almost endearing, who redeemed life's most banal prose into poetry".

Stefan Zweig schildert das Leben Marie Antoinettes von ihrer Kindheit in Österreich bis zu ihrer letzten Nacht in Versailles in Frankreich. Einfühlsame und detaillierte Beschreibungen zeigen die "Königin des Rokokos" als sorglos-heitere junge Frau, die auf unzähligen durchtanzten Maskenbällen alle Pflichten einer Königin vergisst. "Wo aber die an den Augenschein streng gebundene Forschung endet, beginnt die freie und beschwingte Kunst der Seelenschau.

Giacomo Casanova ist für den Autor Stefan Zweig einer der Größten in der Literaturgeschichte und dieses wegen seiner schamlosen, auf niemanden Rücksicht nehmenden Wahrhaftigkeit.

Auf einer Schiffsreise von New York nach Buenos Aires kommt der Ich-Erzähler dem arroganten Schachweltmeister Mirko Czentovic erst nahe, als sich dieser bereit erklärt, gegen alle Hobbyspieler gemeinsam eine Partie zu spielen. Als diese schon verloren scheint, greift ein Dr. B. in das Spiel ein und holt gegen Czentovic noch ein Remis heraus. Durch Dr. B.s seltsames Spielfieber neugierig gemacht, will der Ich-Erzähler mehr von ihm erfahren. Daraufhin berichtet ihm Dr. B. von seiner monatelangen Einzelhaft im Wiener Gestapo-Gefängnis, wo er dem Irrewerden nur dadurch entkam, dass er aus einem entwendeten Schachbuch Meisterpartien nachspielte.

Joseph Fouché (1759-1820) est l'une des figures les plus énigmatiques de son temps. Il a servi avec zèle la République, le Directoire, le Consulat, l'Empire et la Monarchie. Homme de l'ombre, disciple de Machiavel, Fouché aura survécu à tous les changements de régime sans jamais se départir de cette "absence de conviction" qui fascina Balzac autant que Stefan Zweig. Élève chez les Oratoriens, il devint sous la Révolution un pilleur d'églises. Conventionnel modéré, il vota la mort du roi et participa activement au massacre des Lyonnais royalistes.

De la amplia obra de Stefan Zweig, celebrada por generaciones de lectores alrededor del mundo, quizá sus biografías son las que mejor dan muestra de la destreza del escritor para el retrato, de su agudeza psicológica y de la profunda comprensión del alma humana.

Stefan Zweig ist ein Meister der historischen Miniatur. Dieses Talent zeigt er besonders bei seinen "Sternstunden der Menschheit". So schildert er in "Die Weltminute von Waterloo" äußerst eindringlich, wie Napoleon am 17. Juni 1815 sein endgültiges Scheitern einleitet. Der französische Feldherr schickt fatalerweise Marschall Grouchy mit seinen Truppen den Preußen hinterher. Einen Tag später fehlen Napoleon genau diese Soldaten zur Rettung... Gleichermaßen packend beschreibt Zweig eine frühere Sternstunde: Die Nacht vom 25. auf den 26. April 1792 wird zum Fanal für den Kampf um die Freiheit.