Stefan Zweig

 

It had been many years since I last encountered a book by Stefan Zweig, but over the past month, I've read and finished perhaps his most acclaimed novel, Beware of Pity. Let me say at the start, this book is a triumph: it's everything I'd associated with Zweig -- and more. Published in 1939, the novel focuses on the relationship between a crippled young woman of aristocratic stock and an Austrian military officer, only slightly her senior. The complexity of that relationship allows Zweig to explore a range of themes, including love, patriotism, and wealth. But there's more than that: Zweig is also attuned to matters of identity, psychology, and control. In some sense, Beware of Pity is very much a reflection of its time: Zweig and Freud maintained a relationship for many years, and the influence of Freud on Zweig's characters and their motivations is clear. Then, too, there's the First World War, which comes crashing like a wave at the end of the novel, and serves, in some sense, to liberate Zweig's primary character, Anton Hofmiller, of his guilt, his lingering pity: in effect, nothing so small as actions in defense or rejection of love could escape the slaughter of the war. But then, Zweig offers a caveat: guilt, he writes, is never truly forgotten so long as the 'conscience' is still aware. Beware of Pity is wonderfully written, perfectly ordered, and evocative, in its characters, scenes, and scenery, of the fading days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. This is a paean to a lost time, and also, in many ways, to a lost love.