Ο φόβος και άλλα διηγήματα

by Stefan Zweig, Αλέξης Καρρέρ (Translator), Σπύρος Λεβαντής (Translator)

Περιλαμβάνονται η νουβέλα Ο φόβος και τα διηγήματα Απρόοπτη αποκάλυψη ενός επαγγέλματος, Λεπορέλα, Η γυναίκα και το τοπίο, Ο παλαιοβιβλιοπώλης Μέντελ, Η αόρατη συλλογή.

Με τη γλαφυρότητα και τον ρυθμό που χαρακτηρίζει τη γραφή του Τσβάιχ, οι ιστορίες αυτές με το ψυχογραφικό τους βάθος και τον διάχυτο ανθρωπισμό τους, θίγουν θέματα που επανέρχονται ξανά και ξανά έως σήμερα. Από τη φροϋδική πρόσληψη του Τσβάιχ σε θέματα σεξουαλικότητας και ανθρώπινης φύσης μέχρι την αγωνία του για το μεταπολεμικό μέλλον της Ευρώπης, οι ιστορίες του δημιουργούν ένα λογοτεχνικό δίχτυ ποικίλων ερμηνειών.

[…] Μα –όλοι μας το ξέρουμε– δεν υπάρχει τίποτα πιο δύσκολο από το να βοηθήσεις έναν άνθρωπο προτού αυτός ζητήσει βοήθεια. Στην επιμονή του να μην ζητήσει τίποτα βάζει τον καλύτερο εαυτό του, την περηφάνια του, που εσύ δεν έχεις το δικαίωμα να την πληγώσεις. Μονάχα οι ζητιάνοι διευκολύνουν το έργο μας και πρέπει να τους ευχαριστούμε που δεν μας εμποδίζουν να τους βοηθάμε. Ο άνθρωπός μου ήταν απ’ αυτούς τους περήφανους χαρακτήρες, που προτιμάνε να διακινδυνεύουν την ελευθερία τους, τη ζωή τους, παρά να ζητιανεύουν. […]

(Απρόοπτη αποκάλυψη ενός επαγγέλματος)

208 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2023

About the author

Stefan 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.

Reviews

[Giuseppe Riccardi · Rating 4 out of 5]

ENGLISH BELOW

Una vita assuefatta all'intorpidimento e all'appiattimento emotivo del falso idillio della mondanità viene travolta e tramortita da un fuoco ardente di sensazioni nuove, proprio quando i castelli di sabbia costruiti in anni e anni di diligente ignorare e ignorarsi iniziano a crollare.
Quello della protagonista è un percorso di (ri)conoscenza di sé e di esplorazione di quegli anfratti della propria emotività rimasti fino ad allora inesplorati. Il prezzo di questa libertà senza freni è un senso di inadeguatezza e di colpa che si tramuta ben presto in psicosi. Ogni ombra che la sfiora diventa una minaccia imminente. Si rende conto di quanto il fascino del proibito l'abbia sedotta, fino a spingerla a un baratto tragico: in cambio dell'ebbrezza di sentirsi finalmente viva, rischia di perdere tutto ciò che aveva sempre dato per scontato. La vera vita, forse, era proprio quella che non aveva saputo riconoscere, quella che avrebbe potuto apprezzare se fosse stata più presente a sé stessa.
Trama e dialoghi sono costruiti magistralmente da Zweig per trasmettere il crescendo della paura che divora la protagonista, trascinando il lettore nella sua stessa spirale di angoscia. È una novella che si legge in una sola seduta: intensa, soffocante, capace di togliere il fiato proprio come la paura quando stringe la gola.

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A life numbed by emotional stagnation and the false idyll of high society is suddenly overwhelmed by a blazing rush of unfamiliar sensations, just as the sandcastles built over years of diligently ignoring both the world and oneself begin to crumble.
What follows is a journey of self-(re)discovery, an exploration of those hidden corners of the protagonist's emotional life that had remained untouched and unknown. The price of this unrestrained freedom is a growing sense of guilt and inadequacy, which soon spirals into paranoia. Every shadow that brushes against her seems to foretell imminent danger. She comes to realize how irresistibly the forbidden had drawn her in, luring her into a devastating bargain: in exchange for the intoxicating feeling of finally being alive, she risks losing everything she had always taken for granted. The real life, perhaps, was the one she had failed to recognize all along—the one she might have cherished had she only been more present to herself.
Zweig masterfully crafts both the plot and the dialogue to mirror the mounting terror consuming the protagonist, drawing the reader ever deeper into her psychological descent. It is a novella that can be devoured in a single sitting: intense, suffocating, and capable of taking your breath away in the same way fear briefly does when it tightens its grip on your throat.

[Ximena Laborde · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And her consciousness of guilt for this somewhat accidental adultery was only partially soothed by the tingling vanity of having for the first time, by what she believed to be her own decision" Este libro me sorprendió muchísimo. Desde que empieza no lo puedes dejar de leer. Sigue la historia de Irene, una mujer rica en los 1900s que decide tener un amante por mero aburrimiento y para matar la monotonía. Se da cuenta que esta decisión es la primera decisión que ha tomado ella sola por su cuenta. Lo que sigue es un retrato de lo que es la Culpa y la Vergüenza, Irene se nubla cada vez más en estos sentimientos. El final es brutal. Escrito con muchísimo detalle, comedia y profundidad, me encantó!!!

[Alecita Rositas · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW EL SUSPENSO ME ENCANTÓ. muy loca irene!!!!!!

[Olga Malafeka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Agony on every single page.

[Thewalkingelene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bro this was toxic as fuck, like from both sides.
But I'd fuck the husband

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fear is my second Zweig short story. I have to appreciate the way he writes. So many emotions and so much intensity on every page. He did a great job in exploring fear that suffocates you and his writing style makes you feel everything in detail. I thought that the beginning where Irene is fed up with her ordinary "great" life was very interesting and a good hook. He doesn't rush us, as a writer Zweig is patient. I am torn about the ethics of what husband did too. I thought he took it too far. He just could have confronted wife but I guess he wanted for her to confess. Still unnecessary. In the end I'm glad I read it.

[LightIssues · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads remarkably classist for a long time, until the horrifying end reveal which it turns out we're not meant to read as that horrifying after all lol. Zweig has a way with sentences, but they rarely accumulate to a whole that actually manages to give off the strong feelings they're meant to drown the reader in, and for all his preoccupation with the shards of the bourgeois life, he strikes me as an incredibly bourgeois writer himself, or so conservative he cannot help but stand for that class and its normativities.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This symphonically emotional novella from 1910 is one of those that you read and first think, "Why haven't I read this before?", quickly followed by, "why isn't this taught in highschool?" The blackmail plot here delivers some thrilling menace that powers the book across its pages and our protagonist along the streets of Vienna, but it's the swooping and soaring of Irene's inner landscape that is the star here. Really good.

[mambasis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. The way the suspense builds through the pressure inside her mind, allowing us to experience the panic and fear authentically, is simply brilliant.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

everyone may look away while i log all my novellas