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141 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1945
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About the author
Stefan Zweig
2,257 books10.5k followersStefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Among his most famous works are Beware of Pity, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. He and his second wife committed suicide in 1942.
Zweig studied in Austria, France, and Germany before settling in Salzburg in 1913. In 1934, driven into exile by the Nazis, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, to Brazil by way of New York. Finding only growing loneliness and disillusionment in their new surroundings, he and his second wife committed suicide.
Zweig's interest in psychology and the teachings of Sigmund Freud led to his most characteristic work, the subtle portrayal of character. Zweig's essays include studies of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Drei Meister, 1920; Three Masters) and of Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche (Der Kampf mit dem Dämon, 1925; Master Builders). He achieved popularity with Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928; The Tide of Fortune), five historical portraits in miniature. He wrote full-scale, intuitive rather than objective, biographies of the French statesman Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935), and others. His stories include those in Verwirrung der Gefühle (1925; Conflicts). He also wrote a psychological novel, Ungeduld des Herzens (1938; Beware of Pity), and translated works of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Emile Verhaeren.
Most recently, his works provided the inspiration for 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Zweig studied in Austria, France, and Germany before settling in Salzburg in 1913. In 1934, driven into exile by the Nazis, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, to Brazil by way of New York. Finding only growing loneliness and disillusionment in their new surroundings, he and his second wife committed suicide.
Zweig's interest in psychology and the teachings of Sigmund Freud led to his most characteristic work, the subtle portrayal of character. Zweig's essays include studies of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Drei Meister, 1920; Three Masters) and of Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche (Der Kampf mit dem Dämon, 1925; Master Builders). He achieved popularity with Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928; The Tide of Fortune), five historical portraits in miniature. He wrote full-scale, intuitive rather than objective, biographies of the French statesman Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935), and others. His stories include those in Verwirrung der Gefühle (1925; Conflicts). He also wrote a psychological novel, Ungeduld des Herzens (1938; Beware of Pity), and translated works of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Emile Verhaeren.
Most recently, his works provided the inspiration for 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 10, 2014
The first and last stories in the collection earn 5 stars. The other stories are less enchanting.
Here is the review I wrote for the Washtenaw Jewish News.
Stefan Zweig has been restored to wide attention by film director, Wes Anderson, whose recent movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is based on Zweig’s writings. In interviews, Anderson lamented the obscurity into which Zweig fell after his death in 1942. In his day, Zweig was among the most acclaimed writers of Europe. His work was translated into fifty languages.
The Buried Candelabrum, a novella, and Buchmendel, a short story, are the first and last pieces in a Zweig anthology entitled Jewish Legends. Candelabrum is based on a little-known Jewish legend. In Zweig’s retelling of the story, about the last remaining relic of Solomon’s temple, the narrative is both cinematic and gripping. It takes us through the sweep of Jewish history. Though Zweig was not a religious Jew, he was conversant with the customs and traditions of Jewish observance. He references biblical hallmarks and liturgical touchstones. He recreates the veneration accorded to rabbinic leaders and offers detailed portraits of these figures, emphasizing their tenderness, authority, and compassion. Zweig combines his powers of observation with a spirit of hope, as symbolized in the candelabrum. He embraces the notion that the Jewish people were chosen to be a source of light unto the nations. He follows the candelabrum on its journey through time, over land and sea, to its apocryphal final resting place. Zweig manages to capture the fears and excitement of a seven year old Jewish boy, enlisted to aid his elders, as well as the perspective and experience of an aged sage. Zwieg’s storytelling powers are in full bloom in this narrative, which reveals the author’s yeasty imagination and uncanny powers of observation.
Buchmendel is a story about a mousy, reclusive Jacob Mendel, a walking encyclopedia. He lives for books; hence his eponymous nickname. His photographic memory mesmerizes the young narrator of the story, who is in awe of this self-contained Jew. The story, a parable for the people of the book, shows us a man absorbed solely by texts. He is a walking concordance, oblivious to world events. Yet suddenly, he is arrested as a spy, an enemy alien.
The story was prescient. It was first published in 1928. Eleven years later, Zweig himself was designated an enemy alien by Great Britain—shortly after Germany invaded Poland. He soon left for Brazil. In 1936, he published The Buried Candelabrum. It, too, was prescient. If Zweig had only been as prophetic about Hitler’s demise, he might not have taken his own life, which he did in 1942 in a suicide pact with his second wife, Lotte. He was 60 years old. Days before his death, he sent off the completed manuscript of his autobiography and a number of short stories, including The Royal Game, which became the title story of that fine collection.
Zweig was born and raised in Vienna. He lived in various parts of Europe, Great Britain, the United States, and Brazil, but he always wrote in German, his beloved native tongue. For most of his life, travel had been one his greatest pleasures. He gave lectures around the world and relished foreign experience. But when travel became necessary for survival, he came to see it as a kind of torture.
Writing was Zweig’s primal form of expression. In Buchmendel, he writes: “What is the use of living, when the wind obliterates our footsteps in the sand directly we have gone by?” Then, evoking biblical precedent, and savoring the bible’s spare language, he adds: “and there had arisen a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.” In story after story, Zweig transports the reader through time and space, recalling both Jewish and general history.
Zweig wrote fiction, poetry and many biographies—of figures including Marie Antoinette, Magellan, Erasmus, and Balzac. Zweig counted among his friends Sigmund Freud; Theodor Herzl; the philosophers Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber; and the writers Arthur Schnitzler and Romain Rolland, a Nobel laureate. Most of Zweig’s writing had nothing to do with Jews or Judaism. But four of the five stories in Jewish Legends are very Jewish. As is the writing.
Not only does Candelabrum lay out the sad blueprints of perennial anti-semitism, it also validates the premise of the Zionist movement. Hitherto, Zweig had dismissed the movement as unrealistic and unwarranted—despite his admiration for and warm relations with Theodor Herzl, the visionary behind modern Zionism.
In the first and last stories of Jewish Legends, Zweig ruminates on mortality, on the ebb and flow of succeeding generations, on the nature of time. The final sentence of Buchmendel, spoken by the story’s narrator, sums it up. “I, a man of education and a writer, had completely forgotten Buchmendel for years—I, who at least should have known that one only makes books in order to keep in touch with one’s fellows after one has ceased to breathe, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives—transitoriness and oblivion.”
A passage that links Zweig dramatically to his current champion, Wes Anderson, is the opening paragraph of The Buried Candelabrum. This description of interrupted, gladiatorial combat shows Zweig’s erudition, his pace, and his cinematic bent.
“In the Circus Maximus, on a fine June day in the year 455, a combat between two tall Heruli and a sounder of Hyrcanian boar had reached its sanguinary close when, in the third hour of the afternoon, disquiet spread among the thousands of onlookers. At first, it was only those seated near the imperial box who noticed that something was amiss. A horseman, dusty and travel-stained by a long ride, descended the stairway with its statues on either side, and approached the bedizened dais where Maximus lolled, surrounded by courtiers. The Emperor listened to the tidings, sprang to his feet, and—disregarding the convention which forbade him to leave while the games were in progress—hastened out, followed by his train. The senatorial benches likewise and those of the other dignitaries quickly emptied. The cause must be grave for such a breach of etiquette. Naturally the common folk grew uneasy.”
I am deeply indebted to Wes Anderson for introducing me to Stefan Zweig, whose writing carried me away. I don’t remember the last time I opened a book and could not put it down, as was the case with Jewish Legends. If you read only the first and last stories of this collection, you will appreciate the legacy of this great writer.
Here is the review I wrote for the Washtenaw Jewish News.
Stefan Zweig has been restored to wide attention by film director, Wes Anderson, whose recent movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is based on Zweig’s writings. In interviews, Anderson lamented the obscurity into which Zweig fell after his death in 1942. In his day, Zweig was among the most acclaimed writers of Europe. His work was translated into fifty languages.
The Buried Candelabrum, a novella, and Buchmendel, a short story, are the first and last pieces in a Zweig anthology entitled Jewish Legends. Candelabrum is based on a little-known Jewish legend. In Zweig’s retelling of the story, about the last remaining relic of Solomon’s temple, the narrative is both cinematic and gripping. It takes us through the sweep of Jewish history. Though Zweig was not a religious Jew, he was conversant with the customs and traditions of Jewish observance. He references biblical hallmarks and liturgical touchstones. He recreates the veneration accorded to rabbinic leaders and offers detailed portraits of these figures, emphasizing their tenderness, authority, and compassion. Zweig combines his powers of observation with a spirit of hope, as symbolized in the candelabrum. He embraces the notion that the Jewish people were chosen to be a source of light unto the nations. He follows the candelabrum on its journey through time, over land and sea, to its apocryphal final resting place. Zweig manages to capture the fears and excitement of a seven year old Jewish boy, enlisted to aid his elders, as well as the perspective and experience of an aged sage. Zwieg’s storytelling powers are in full bloom in this narrative, which reveals the author’s yeasty imagination and uncanny powers of observation.
Buchmendel is a story about a mousy, reclusive Jacob Mendel, a walking encyclopedia. He lives for books; hence his eponymous nickname. His photographic memory mesmerizes the young narrator of the story, who is in awe of this self-contained Jew. The story, a parable for the people of the book, shows us a man absorbed solely by texts. He is a walking concordance, oblivious to world events. Yet suddenly, he is arrested as a spy, an enemy alien.
The story was prescient. It was first published in 1928. Eleven years later, Zweig himself was designated an enemy alien by Great Britain—shortly after Germany invaded Poland. He soon left for Brazil. In 1936, he published The Buried Candelabrum. It, too, was prescient. If Zweig had only been as prophetic about Hitler’s demise, he might not have taken his own life, which he did in 1942 in a suicide pact with his second wife, Lotte. He was 60 years old. Days before his death, he sent off the completed manuscript of his autobiography and a number of short stories, including The Royal Game, which became the title story of that fine collection.
Zweig was born and raised in Vienna. He lived in various parts of Europe, Great Britain, the United States, and Brazil, but he always wrote in German, his beloved native tongue. For most of his life, travel had been one his greatest pleasures. He gave lectures around the world and relished foreign experience. But when travel became necessary for survival, he came to see it as a kind of torture.
Writing was Zweig’s primal form of expression. In Buchmendel, he writes: “What is the use of living, when the wind obliterates our footsteps in the sand directly we have gone by?” Then, evoking biblical precedent, and savoring the bible’s spare language, he adds: “and there had arisen a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.” In story after story, Zweig transports the reader through time and space, recalling both Jewish and general history.
Zweig wrote fiction, poetry and many biographies—of figures including Marie Antoinette, Magellan, Erasmus, and Balzac. Zweig counted among his friends Sigmund Freud; Theodor Herzl; the philosophers Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber; and the writers Arthur Schnitzler and Romain Rolland, a Nobel laureate. Most of Zweig’s writing had nothing to do with Jews or Judaism. But four of the five stories in Jewish Legends are very Jewish. As is the writing.
Not only does Candelabrum lay out the sad blueprints of perennial anti-semitism, it also validates the premise of the Zionist movement. Hitherto, Zweig had dismissed the movement as unrealistic and unwarranted—despite his admiration for and warm relations with Theodor Herzl, the visionary behind modern Zionism.
In the first and last stories of Jewish Legends, Zweig ruminates on mortality, on the ebb and flow of succeeding generations, on the nature of time. The final sentence of Buchmendel, spoken by the story’s narrator, sums it up. “I, a man of education and a writer, had completely forgotten Buchmendel for years—I, who at least should have known that one only makes books in order to keep in touch with one’s fellows after one has ceased to breathe, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives—transitoriness and oblivion.”
A passage that links Zweig dramatically to his current champion, Wes Anderson, is the opening paragraph of The Buried Candelabrum. This description of interrupted, gladiatorial combat shows Zweig’s erudition, his pace, and his cinematic bent.
“In the Circus Maximus, on a fine June day in the year 455, a combat between two tall Heruli and a sounder of Hyrcanian boar had reached its sanguinary close when, in the third hour of the afternoon, disquiet spread among the thousands of onlookers. At first, it was only those seated near the imperial box who noticed that something was amiss. A horseman, dusty and travel-stained by a long ride, descended the stairway with its statues on either side, and approached the bedizened dais where Maximus lolled, surrounded by courtiers. The Emperor listened to the tidings, sprang to his feet, and—disregarding the convention which forbade him to leave while the games were in progress—hastened out, followed by his train. The senatorial benches likewise and those of the other dignitaries quickly emptied. The cause must be grave for such a breach of etiquette. Naturally the common folk grew uneasy.”
I am deeply indebted to Wes Anderson for introducing me to Stefan Zweig, whose writing carried me away. I don’t remember the last time I opened a book and could not put it down, as was the case with Jewish Legends. If you read only the first and last stories of this collection, you will appreciate the legacy of this great writer.
February 12, 2021
Disclaimer: I am a HUGE Zweig fan. He does not seem to have written anything that does not fascinate me. He is able to hook the reader (or me) early on with unusual situations or dilemmas, which I cannot help but be intrigued by how he is going to resolve them. Or, put them to rest in some fashion.
My first read of his was "Beware of Pity." Oh, the twists and turns and tortured psychology of the characters. Almost gripping.
This particular collection of stories is rather different as 4 out of 5 are stories of Jews and 3 appear to be set in Biblical times. I had to adjust to this style of religious-seeming writing but after I did, the stories grabbed me as usual. My 2 favorites were "Buchmendel" and "Virata or The Eyes of the Dying Brother".
Note: my local library did not have this book and I had to make an inter-library request for it through the large city library (Enoch Pratt of Baltimore.)
My first read of his was "Beware of Pity." Oh, the twists and turns and tortured psychology of the characters. Almost gripping.
This particular collection of stories is rather different as 4 out of 5 are stories of Jews and 3 appear to be set in Biblical times. I had to adjust to this style of religious-seeming writing but after I did, the stories grabbed me as usual. My 2 favorites were "Buchmendel" and "Virata or The Eyes of the Dying Brother".
Note: my local library did not have this book and I had to make an inter-library request for it through the large city library (Enoch Pratt of Baltimore.)
February 11, 2022
Diese 4 kurzen Legenden (208 Seiten) wurden erst nach dem Tod von Stefan Zweig veröffentlicht. Es geht um Gespräche mit Gott, einem jüdischen Leuchter, einem Krieger und der 3. Taube, die Noah aus der Arche fliegen lässt.
Wunderbare Sprache. Die Geschichten waren nicht ganz nach meinem Geschmack...
Wunderbare Sprache. Die Geschichten waren nicht ganz nach meinem Geschmack...
February 13, 2016
I got this book because I heard that Zweig's work was the basis for the Budapest Hotel movie and because I had heard his name mentioned many times as a great German writer - he was actually Austrian - of his time, 1881 through 1942.
Although purported to be Jewish legends, the stories are out of Zweig's mind. In a couple he uses vague Jewish legends but none are actual "rewrites." In this book, the work is uneven - I found two "Rachel Arraigns with God" and "The Legend of the Third Dove" very poorly written - but three of the stories were so superb that I know I want to read more of Zweig's work.
The first story "The Buried Candelabrum" tells the story of Benjamin, a boy of seven, who is taken on a journey to the coast to see the original menorah (from the Solomon's House) taken from Rome, where it had been since it was stolen by the Romans, sail off to the land of the Vandals who had just sacked Rome. Not understanding, Benjamin tries to take the menorah from the Vandal who is taking onto the boat. He fails and falls into the sea and breaks his arm. Because of a bad set, the arm remains somewhat withered his entire life. The elders see this as the sign God has given that no one is to touch his menorah and that Benjamin will be the one to return it to Jerusalem. Years later, the menorah was taken again, this time to Constantinople. Bejamin, now 87, makes the journey to attempt to buy the menorah and return it to the Holy Land.
"Virata or The Eyes of the Dying Brother" is actually an Indian story dealing with a man's journey to "surrender his own will, [and] relieve himself of responsibility, and...give it back to God." It's a Siddhartha type of journey but distinct in how it shows the recognition, each time Virata changes his circumstances, that he has not outstripped his pride and attachment to the world. The writing is in keeping with the Hindu traditional story and quite engrossing, if you like that style of writing.
But the one that touched me most was "Buchmendel" the story of a book peddlar and his obsession. He is a walking (or rather sitting) lexicon. He can recite title, author, dates of publication and other appropriate details of, assumedly, every book. He sits a a table in the rear room of the Cafe Gluck, reading all day, moving his lips and swaying, as if he were reading the Talmud in shul.
To those of us who become so absorbed in books that we lose track of time, he is a brother. "Jacob Mendel saw and heard nothing while thus occupied. He was oblivious to the click of billiard balls, the coming and going of waiters, the ringing of the telephone bell; he paid no heed when the floor was scrubbed and when the stove was refilled. Once a red-hot coal flew out of the latter, and the flooring began to blaze a few inches from Mendel's feet; the room was full of smoke, and one of the guests ran for a pail of water to extinguish the fire. But neither the smoke, the bustle, nor the stench diverted his attention from the volume before him."
This book is a great way to begin your reading of Zweig, since it is short stories and if you don't like them, you can quit the book early. For anyone who has not yet read Zweig and is thinking of doing so, start here.
Although purported to be Jewish legends, the stories are out of Zweig's mind. In a couple he uses vague Jewish legends but none are actual "rewrites." In this book, the work is uneven - I found two "Rachel Arraigns with God" and "The Legend of the Third Dove" very poorly written - but three of the stories were so superb that I know I want to read more of Zweig's work.
The first story "The Buried Candelabrum" tells the story of Benjamin, a boy of seven, who is taken on a journey to the coast to see the original menorah (from the Solomon's House) taken from Rome, where it had been since it was stolen by the Romans, sail off to the land of the Vandals who had just sacked Rome. Not understanding, Benjamin tries to take the menorah from the Vandal who is taking onto the boat. He fails and falls into the sea and breaks his arm. Because of a bad set, the arm remains somewhat withered his entire life. The elders see this as the sign God has given that no one is to touch his menorah and that Benjamin will be the one to return it to Jerusalem. Years later, the menorah was taken again, this time to Constantinople. Bejamin, now 87, makes the journey to attempt to buy the menorah and return it to the Holy Land.
"Virata or The Eyes of the Dying Brother" is actually an Indian story dealing with a man's journey to "surrender his own will, [and] relieve himself of responsibility, and...give it back to God." It's a Siddhartha type of journey but distinct in how it shows the recognition, each time Virata changes his circumstances, that he has not outstripped his pride and attachment to the world. The writing is in keeping with the Hindu traditional story and quite engrossing, if you like that style of writing.
But the one that touched me most was "Buchmendel" the story of a book peddlar and his obsession. He is a walking (or rather sitting) lexicon. He can recite title, author, dates of publication and other appropriate details of, assumedly, every book. He sits a a table in the rear room of the Cafe Gluck, reading all day, moving his lips and swaying, as if he were reading the Talmud in shul.
To those of us who become so absorbed in books that we lose track of time, he is a brother. "Jacob Mendel saw and heard nothing while thus occupied. He was oblivious to the click of billiard balls, the coming and going of waiters, the ringing of the telephone bell; he paid no heed when the floor was scrubbed and when the stove was refilled. Once a red-hot coal flew out of the latter, and the flooring began to blaze a few inches from Mendel's feet; the room was full of smoke, and one of the guests ran for a pail of water to extinguish the fire. But neither the smoke, the bustle, nor the stench diverted his attention from the volume before him."
This book is a great way to begin your reading of Zweig, since it is short stories and if you don't like them, you can quit the book early. For anyone who has not yet read Zweig and is thinking of doing so, start here.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews