Bức thư của người đàn bà không quen

by Stefan Zweig, Dương Tường (Translator), Lê Phát (Translator)

Cuốn sách gồm 2 truyện vừa của văn hào Áo Stefan Zweig, Bức thư của người đàn bà không quen và 24 giờ trong đời một người đàn bà, đều đã được dựng thành phim. Bên cạnh nguyên tác văn học, cuốn sách còn cung cấp thông tin và hình ảnh đẹp về các bộ phim làm theo hai câu chuyện đầy bi kịch về tình yêu đơn phương không được đền đáp của những người phụ nữ.

Không phải ngẫu nhiên mà cuốn sách gồm 2 truyện vừa đều về những mối tình đầy bi kịch của phụ nữ liên quan đến giới thượng lưu châu Âu đầu thế kỷ 20. Bức thư của người đàn bà không quen được viết dưới dạng một lá thư của một người phụ nữ gửi cho nhà văn R., người mà cô say mê suốt cả cuộc đời. Bức thư được gửi đến cũng là bức thư tuyệt mệnh của cô, vì thế chất chứa nỗi đau của một người đã yêu đơn phương. Sự si mê của người đàn bà từ lúc là thiếu nữ đến lúc trải qua thăng trầm của đời đối với nhân vật nhà văn vốn không hề nhận ra cô dường như quá cực đoan. Nhưng đó chính là điểm mạnh của Zweig khi khai thác tận cùng chiều sâu tâm lý phụ nữ và lòng khao khát yêu thương của họ.

24 giờ trong đời một người đàn bà cũng vậy, là hồi ức của một người phụ nữ lớn tuổi kể về mối quan hệ tình cờ và kỳ dị với một chàng trai mê cờ bạc. Giằng co giữa niềm tin đạo đức và sự tha hóa của con người, những nhân vật trong truyện dường như tuyệt vọng trong việc chiến thắng định mệnh, để rồi số phận đẩy đưa đến những lối rẽ không đừng được. Qua 2 truyện vừa trên, Stefan Zweig xứng đáng là nhà văn được tìm đọc vào loại nhiều nhất suốt hơn một thế kỷ qua.

Những bộ phim làm theo truyện đều nổi tiếng với các ngôi sao kinh điển. Bộ phim Bức thư của người đàn bà không quen làm năm 1948 được đánh giá là một trong những bộ phim tâm lý hay nhất của Hollywood, còn 24 giờ trong đời một người đàn bà đã được lên màn bạc đến 7 lần. Sự gắn kết giữa truyện và phim là điểm đặc sắc sẽ được nhắc đến trong cuốn sách này.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Romance, Literature, German Literature, Literary Fiction

151 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

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

[Helga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing makes one as healthy as happiness, and there is no greater happiness than making someone else happy.

A collection of four heartrending short stories:

-Letter from an Unknown Woman
-A Story Told in Twilight
-The Debt Paid Late
-Forgotten Dreams

[Dia · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 huge stars for such emotional and heartbreaking short stories

It's been years since I discovered Stefan Zweig. My aunt recommended to me a book she adores, Burning Secret and I was immediately hooked by his writing style. She knew I read mostly romance and even if his work is SO far from what I usually enjoy, well she had a feeling I might be into this too.

What can I say about Stefan Zweig's work? How can I describe best my feelings while reading his stories? It's very hard to explain in words the way he ripped my heart and crushed it into a million pieces. Sad and heartbreaking doesn't even cover it. I might go with soul wrenching and even this word wouldn't be enough.

Letter from an Unknown Woman is by far my favorite novel by Stefan Zweig. I *never* cry while reading, no matter how sad the story gets, BUT while reading this one, I got pretty close to crying, I had my heart in my throat and I could barely breath.
I would advise people to read it only if they think they can manage such painful stories. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
I'd still like to reread this someday but only while being in a good mood and making sure I wouldn't get my heart bleeding again. As if I could stop it.

In conclusion: amazing writing style! One of the best classic I've ever read.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally good short stories. I turned to this after reading his brilliant novel Beware of Pity and the equally good Chess Story. For me, Zweig is on a level here like that of de maupassant or chekhov when it comes to writing short fiction. He also reminded me of another Austrian, Arthur Schnitzler, with his intuitive use of psychological detail within his narrative.

Four stories are included, which doesn't seem much, but it's certainly a case of quality over quantity. All are captivating and expertly crafted, and told with an unwaveringly strong feeling towards his characters. The title story is wonderfully lyrical and heart-rending, probably my favourite. But the other three still struck me as being very good. Zweig's prose is deftly acute and
just so readable. On finishing, I wanted to read again.

Letter from an Unknown Woman 5/5
A Story Told in Twilight 4/5
The Debt Paid Late 5/5
Forgotten Dreams 5/5

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this - a tender, moving and so well written short story collection, looking at unrequited love, obsession and changes in lives over time. I'd highly recommend.

[Harun Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

ইংরেজিতে এই গল্পগুলোর সারাংশ এককথায় বলে দেওয়া যায় - obsession। এর সরল বাংলা "ঘোর" বা "বোধের আচ্ছন্ন অবস্থা"। যদিও প্রেমের গল্প নামেই এগুলো পরিচিত ও এককালে বিশ্ববিখ্যাত; গল্পের চরিত্ররা মননে ও মস্তিষ্কে ঘোরগ্রস্ত। অবশ্যই প্রেম নিয়ে। এমনভাবে ঘোরগ্রস্ত যে কোনো বাস্তবতাই তাদের প্রেমের সামনে বাঁধা হয়ে দাঁড়াতে পারে না। প্রথম গল্প letter from an unknown woman এ  এক নারী তার প্রিয় লেখককে নির্দ্বিধায়, যুক্তিহীনভাবে ভালোবাসতে থাকে। a story told in twilight -এ আবার এক কিশোরের দেখা পাওয়া যায় যে সাঁঝের আলোয় পাওয়া অপ্রত্যাশিত চুমুর পেছনের ব্যক্তিকে খুঁজতে যেয়ে ডেকে আনে বিয়োগান্ত পরিণতি। তৃতীয় গল্পের চরিত্রদের বয়স বেড়েছে, সেইসাথে তারা পরিণতও। চতুর্থ গল্পে আবার প্রথম তিন গল্পের সম্পূর্ণ বিপরীত পথে দাঁড়িয়ে প্রেমের রূঢ় সমালোচনা করেছেন লেখক। অবশ্য গল্প হিসেবে প্রথম দুটোকেই এগিয়ে রাখবো। চরিত্রদের প্রেমে পড়া আর তাদের ঘোর যোয়াইগ এতো জীবন্তভাবে ফুটিয়ে তুলেছেন যে, তাদের অনুভূতিকে আমাদের নিজেদের একান্ত ব্যক্তিগত বলেই ভ্রম হয়।

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are four stories in this book and disturbingly, two of them are about teenage girls becoming obsessed, besotted, infatuated with inappropriately older men. The title track, “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, is early-Pedro-Almodovar melodramatic to say the very least, gothically morbid and full of unacceptable behaviour. Well, what would you call it if a 13 year old girl is besotted by a 25 year old man and remains so obsessed that she never gets married, becomes a call girl and meets up with this guy years later, and is hired by him for three straight nights of high intensive physical interconnectivity, he not, of course, recognising her as his shy 13 year old former neighbour, and she, of course, not divulging that she has stalked him for years and is now, in the most lurid of circumstances, living her dream. As we are now in full-on soap opera mode, of course she conceives a child, of course. Now read on!

The other, “The Debt Paid Late”, is gentle, sweet, sad and altogether wonderful. Best long-short-story I have read in an age. Brought tears to the eyes.

Come to think of it, there is a third long-short-story here all about underage sex. Hmmmm.

[Raghdaa Morad · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Letter from an unknown woman" such a pathetic & strongly emotional and frustrating sad story .. I can't help but feel sorry for poor little heroine her great big love had ruined her entire life she suffered a lot specially the loss of her child i only wished she was a little stronger💔

Loved The movie it was great too and I so much love classical movies hopefully one day i will create my own classical DVDs library.

[Nguyên Trang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hiếm khi có một chiến thắng tuyệt đối cho cả hai bên thế này ;)) một người tuyệt đối sống trong tình yêu bằng cách chết trong tình yêu, một người thì tuyệt đối ăn chơi mơ màng. Hai anh chị gặp nhau là rấ xứng. Một kết thúc có hậu viên mãn hiếm hoi. Với một người OCD nặng như tôi, đọc xong thấy dễ chịu kinh lên được =))) chị này chắc chắn cũng OCD luôn. Anw, lối hành văn cũng như diễn biến câu chuyện không có gì bất ngờ (chắc do cùng OCD giống nhau;))). Văn học thế hệ 18xx thì đành phải vậy thôi. 3,5*

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit that Zweig is fast becoming one of my all-time great writers. I absolutely loved this short stories book and it’s a genre that I don’t usually like or get that engaged with. This book comprises 4 stories and 3 of them were amazing - 2 in particular. The first one which the book is named after is about a letter that a 40 something year old writer received from a woman that he barely recognises but this woman has loved him her entire life. The letter is a confession of the lifelong love and obsession she had for him. It sounds simple but the story that wraps around this letter is heart breaking and beautiful at the same time. Brutiful? The other story that really got me was about an old time actor that is well past his sell-by date who gets completely ignored in the local village and pub that he frequents except one day when a younger woman turns up and recognises him. Zweig is able to pull your heart strings unlike many writers. He is a special writer undoubtedly. Here are the best bits from across the 4 stories:
• For there is nothing on earth like the love of a child that passes unnoticed in the dark because she has no hope: her love is so submissive so much a servants love passionate and lying in wait in a way that the avid yet unconsciously demanding love of a grown woman can never be.
• When I opened my eyes in the dark and felt you at my side I was surprised not to see the stars above me, I could feel heaven so close – no, I never regretted it, beloved for the sake of that hour, I never regretted it.
• He sensed the presence of death he sensed the presence of undying love something broke open inside him and he thought of the invisible woman incorporeal and passionate as one might think of distant music.
• Nothing makes one as healthy as happiness and there is no greater happiness than making someone else happy.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 5 out of 5]

These four stories all center on first love. In each, it produces a sort of melancholy. The title story is indeed, almost entirely a letter recounting a love that began at age 13. The love becomes almost an obsession and lasts a lifetime, though the love is unrequited. The second, A Story told in Twilight, begins and ends in youth. The story itself covers just a few nights. The third, A Debt Paid Late is probably my favorite. This involves a letter to a childhood friend recounting a love they both had for an actor. The final story, Forgotten Dreams is very short. The youthful love isn't clear and one must read between the lines, but it is my impression.

Stefan Zweig's prose is a delight to read. Authors most certainly work at their craft, and work hard. We rarely read first drafts. To me, this makes me appreciate good prose even more. Short stories are usually about characterization and these stories are no exception.

I haven't had a lot of good reads lately, and this was a refreshing change. I have some others by Zweig I hope to get to some day. This is not as good as his Chess Story, but perhaps only because it is so entirely different from that offering. Still, this sits just at the line between 4- and 5-stars, but I did enjoy it enough to bump it up.

[Quỳnh Ngọc Quỳnh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cái vô thức nữ tính và nhiệt thành!

Không hiểu sao đọc xong mình đều cảm thấy 2 nhân vật nữ này đều là người buông mịn theo vô thức , nỗi niềm tình cảm sâu thẳm nhất, dục vọng và khao khát nguyên sơ mà mãnh liệt, những cái tuyệt đối không màng lí trí.

Truyện Lá thư... Nhân vật nữ ôm mối tình đơn phương quay quắt một cách cuồng dại. Cô hết lòng ấp ủ mối thương điên dại không mong đáp lại, không cần bận tâm. Cô ấy yêu tưởng không lí trí mà thực ra rất lí trí, vì nó là thứ tình cảm duy nhất có giá trong đời mình, nên cô đánh cuộc cả cuộc đời mịn vào nó, hết lòng mà không có kì vọng. Đau đớn. Nhưng cô hiểu rõ nỗi đau đớn, nỗi dại dột của mình. Thế mới hay, người ta vừa tự tách mình ra nhận thức khách quan về mình, vừa sống hết sức cuồng nhiệt như thế!

Trong 24h ... Thì lại là một người đàn bà đã có tất cả, và trong 24h ấy đã vứt bỏ tất cả để chìm đắm vào cuồn cuộn cảm xúc. Rồi bị hiện thực như gáo nước dội sạch xúc cảm ấy. Mở đầu là câu chuyện hết sức lãng mạn và đầy chất thơ ngây nữ tính thì cái kết là một hiện thực vốn luôn hiển hiện ở đó. Câu chuyện này giống như cuộc đời của bất cứ ai. Ai cũng có thể giây nào đó trong đời buông hết tất cả chỉ theo lối con tim, ngỡ sẽ không cần gì cả ngoài thứ cảm xúc đầy xáo động ấy. Lương tâm hay đạo đức vốn không tồn tại trong lúc ấy. Chỉ còn cái tôi tiềm thức.

Từ ngày xưa ấy mà đã có một nhà văn thấu hiểu tâm can phụ nữ và trao cho nữ giới những câu chuyện đầy nữ tính như thế! Quả là đáng trân trọng.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I’ve probably said in every review of a short story collection that I’ve ever written, I generally don’t have much time for short stories not written by Borges. I made an exception for ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ because The Post-Office Girl was utterly fantastic, so any Zweig book that I could find in the library seemed well worth a try. The four stories here don’t add up to the same incredible experience as that full length novel, however they are still compelling and rather beautiful. As is typical, the first story is titular, longest, and best. The final one, by contrast, is the shortest and the least effective. In fact, it seems rather tacked on and doesn’t fit that well with the others. The former three tales are neatly united by the theme of how romantic infatuation creates dangers for women. Zweig treats this topic with delicacy and sympathy, not judging women for their desires and deftly showing the gendered double standards of behaviour. ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ depicts this most powerfully and is therefore the most moving of the four. ‘The Debt Paid Late’ likewise carries considerable emotional weight, perhaps because it also takes the form of a letter written by a woman. ‘Forgotten Dreams’, however, is little more than an ambiguous vignette, prettily written but ephemeral. Overall, I remain impressed both by Zweig’s insight into the constraints placed on women and his elegant way with words. It’s also worth noting that this Pushkin Press edition is very nicely presented. The cover is simple but appealing.

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read my first Stefan Zweig book last year. It was called 'A Game of Chess and other stories'. I fell in love with it - with the stories and with Zweig's prose. So I decided to read my second Zweig book, 'Letter from an Unknown Woman'. This book has four stories, the title story and three others - 'A Story Told in Twilight', 'A Debt Paid Late' and 'Forgotten Dreams'. The first three are the length of a long short story or a short novella - somewhere between forty and fifty pages. The last one is a short story.

In the title story 'Letter from an Unknown Woman', a writer comes home after a walk and when he checks his mail, he finds a letter written in a woman's handwriting. There is no name on it and no sender's address. He takes it out and reads it. In that letter a woman tells the writer that she loves him, has always loved him from the time she was a girl, describes how they have met many times and how he didn't recognize her each time. She then describes the details of her life and their interactions across the years. It is a beautiful, poignant story. I loved this passage from the story very much.



"...for there is nothing on earth like the love of a child that passes unnoticed in the dark because she has no hope : her love is so submissive, so much a servant's love, passionate and lying in wait, in a way that the avid yet unconsciously demanding love of a grown woman can never be. Only lonely children can keep a passion entirely to themselves; others talk about their feelings in company, wear them away in intimacy with friends, they have heard and read a great deal about love, and know that it is a common fate. They play with it as if it were a toy, they show it off like boys smoking their first cigarette. But as for me, I had no one I could take into my confidence, I was not taught or warned by anyone, I was inexperienced and naive; I flung myself into my fate as if into an abyss. Everything growing and emerging in me knew of nothing but you, the dream of you was my familiar friend."



The second story 'A Story told in Twilight' starts as a story told by one person to another as twilight sets in, in the evening. It looks like an imaginary story set in a castle in Scotland where a boy in his middle / late teens - an age which has been described by some writers as too old to be a boy but too young to be a man - this boy meets a woman in the night when he is taking a stroll. They have a passionate time together. The next day at breakfast time, all the women in the house are there in the dining room and everything is quiet like it has always been. The boy tries to find out which of these women he met in the previous evening. He devises ways to discover that. And then he makes a surprising discovery. And then he does something silly, like all love-smitten people do, and makes another shattering discovery which breaks his heart. I won't tell you more. You have to read the story to find out what happened. I loved this passage from the story. It showcases the beautiful, evocative descriptions that Stefan Zweig frequently gives.



"In an hour's time it will be night. That will be a wonderful hour, for there is no lovelier sight than the slow fading of sunset colour into shadow, to be followed by darkness rising from the ground below, until finally its black tide engulfs the walls, carrying us away into its obscurity. If we sit opposite one another, looking at each other without a word, it will seem at that hour, as if our familiar faces in the shadow were older and stranger and farther away, as if we had never known them like that, and each of us was seeing the other across a wide space and over many years."



In the third story, a woman who is a homemaker takes a break from her routine to re-energize herself and goes to a small village in the mountains and stays in an inn. Her plan is to stay there for two weeks, walk in the meadow, read a book, not talk to anyone and spend time in tranquility. But there she meets a man whom she recognizes from her childhood. What happens after that is the rest of the story. The whole story is in the form of a letter that this woman writes to her friend, after the events happened.

The fourth story, 'Forgotten Dreams', is about two people, a woman and a man, who meet years later and remember their attraction for each other during their younger days, and talk about what has happened in their lives and what might have been. I loved this passage from this story.



"The apparently unruly confusion of her fragrant, shining curls was the careful construction of an artist, and in the same way the slight smile that hovered around her lips as she read, revealing her white teeth, was the result of many years of practice in front of the mirror, but had already become a firmly established part of the whole design and could not be laid aside now."



I liked all the four stories in the book. The first three seemed to have some kind of theme in common - there is a question of identity in each of them. In the first, the identity of the narrator is never discovered though the writer tries to, in the second the identity of the woman is a big surprise, and in the third one, the discovery of the identity of the man brings back old memories. The book is vintage Zweig, with beautiful, flowing prose, beautiful passages and a perfect balance between story-telling and aesthetic beauty. I loved it. I can't wait to read my next Zweig story now.

Have you read Stefan Zweig's 'Letter from an Unknown Woman'? What do you think about it?

[Nhi Nguyễn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thing that I love about these two short stories in this book is the way the author organize the stories, and the way he told them with such deep sympathy and emotions. I don't know about his other stories, but through these two, I can tell that he's a man that really has a gift for understanding women and their nature in love :))

I love how the author just let the characters speak for themselves, telling the stories from the first person perspective, which makes the stories more real, helping readers to indulge in the stories and feel for the characters' situations. And not to mention the beautiful metaphors and charming words/sentences, at the sufficient level (not less, but not too much. The thing that I hate most about reading a piece of literature work is that it features an overabundance of metaphors and high level of literature that most of the time I cannot understand what they mean), which helps leverage the stories more.

As a romance reader, somehow I found myself devour the second story, "24 hours in a woman's life" more than the first romance story, "A letter from an unknown woman" :D

[Megan Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved these stories. They were my introduction to Zweig. I picked the book up by chance at the library, and quickly became delighted.

The first story/novella, "Letter From An Unknown Woman," is by far the best of the four. It left such an impression on me. I can't really explain to you what it felt like reading that, as a girl who had had similar dreams about one person, and only one person, for nearly two decades.

I also really enjoyed "The Debt Paid Late" for similar reasons.

All of the stories border on melodrama, but I think that that was the style of the era. It didn't bother me, because I tend to gravitate toward stories of this type.

Missed opportunities, long lost loves, forgotten friends, and strangers who are not so strange after all.

I will definitely be reading more Zweig.

[M was M]

Recommended by Merphy Napier ☘️

[Zahidul Islam Sobuz · Rating 4 out of 5]

আমাদের বড় ভাই বন্ধুর অনুবাদ। শুরুর দিকে কিঞ্চিৎ অনুবাদ গন্ডগোল লাগলেও গল্পের ভেতর ঢুকেও যাওয়ার পর মনে হলো ভয়াবহ এক পৃথিবীর মধ্যে ঢুকে গেলাম। আজ হতে ১০৩ বছর আগের গল্প। অথচ মনে হচ্ছে আজকেরই গল্প। প্রথম গল্প লেটার ফ্রম এন আননোন উইমেনের নারীটা যেন আমি। নারীর সেই কাঙ্ক্ষিত পুরুষ লেখক আর. সেও আমি। নারীর মৃত্য শিশুটাও আমি। গল্প এত সুন্দর হতে পারে? ভাবতেই পারছিলাম না।

এই বইয়ের বাকি গল্পগুলোও সুন্দর। যেন কোনো এক বেদনা বৃক্ষের তলে বসে এক অভিজ্ঞ গল্পাকার। জীবনের কঠিন বাস্তবতাকে নির্মম সুন্দরভাবে বলে যাচ্ছে।

[Cas (Fia) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful even in translation. Didn’t expect anything less from Zweig.

[Kressel Housman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hardly ever give 1-star reviews because when I dislike a book, I usually just stop reading it, but I actually liked this book at the beginning. It's well-written and emotionally gripping, but eventually, the portrayal of the protagonist became completely unrealistic.

The book is written as a long letter written by a woman to the man she loves, but because he's been with so many women in his life, she doesn't expect him to know her. When she first falls in love with him, she's an adolescent, and I thought that part of the book was remarkably well done. I was amazed that a male author could capture the romantic fantasies of a young teenage girl so well. But the protagonist never loses interest in the man. She becomes so obsessed, she refuses to participate in the normal social life of a teenager, even a shy one. And it only gets worse from there. When she is 18, the man finally takes notice of her, and she gives herself to him readily. Only two types of women would do that, she observes: the inexperienced and the prostitute. So once they've become lovers, then there's not much else for the character but to become a prostitute, right? She gives her body to anybody, but her heart belongs to one man. Blech, I could throw up. In this age of #MeToo, this was one book I could really have skipped. Oh, well, at least it was short.

[Ha Nguyet Linh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mất tận gần 3 năm mới đọc xong cuốn này. Lúc bắt đầu đọc với tâm hồn của thiếu nữ đang tuổi yêu đương và hết sức nữ tính uỷ mị với tình yêu, kết thúc cuốn sách với hệ ý thức của cô gái có nữ tính chọn lọc, quên mất luỵ tình là gì và thấy kiếm tiền còn dễ hơn yêu đương. Nên không lạ gì khi không còn thấy cuốn này vừa vẹn nữa, phải gồng mình trong lúc đọc để chống lại cơn nhức xương chạy dọc thân thể vì cái sự nữ tính uỷ mị diễm tình tràn trề trên trang sách hic

May quá, cũng đã xong rồi :(((

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Letter from an Unknown Woman [1922] – ★★★★★

The opposite of love is not hatred, it’s indifference. This novella by an Austrian author, which was adapted into a major film of 1948 directed by Max Ophüls and starring Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan, tells the story of a man who receives a strange letter one morning penned by one unknown-to-him woman. What this woman tells him is something much more than a mere confession. It is a soul-searching, gut-wrenching effort at personal liberation, a last cry to be finally understood in life and one fearful culmination of a life lived with one endless hope, a fruitless succession of attempts at happiness and one final tragic resignation. R. is a handsome man and a celebrated novelist who always had a lot of affection from women. The unknown woman is a dreamy and impressionable person from a much more modest family. What ties them together? From his point of view: three, very brief life episodes which can be counted by mere hours and which he forgot the moment they happened. From her point of view: absolutely everything, including three most important moments in her life, her whole world-view and the very point of her existence. Stefan Zweig wrote a powerful, sincere and moving account of one unrequited love and close examination of a person on the very fringes of another person’s life always looking in, hoping in vain to become a full-time participant.

“You ought to know all about my life. It has always belonged to you and you knew nothing about it”. Such are the words in the letter penned by one unknown woman to R., which is full of pain and anguish mixed with feelings of love and tenderness. She recounts to him the time when she was only thirteen and spying on the work in progress – a handsome bachelor and a novelist, only twenty-five years old, was moving next door to her and her family. That handsome bachelor was him, R. She details to him the growth of her obsessive love for him when he was still a mere stranger to her, and she to him – a non-existent person. By then, they met only once on a staircase. As years passed, they met twice more, but the woman’s affection was hardly ever returned.

There is much in the book on the psychology of obsessive love that borders something truly frightening. People obsessed with others may have “a tunnel vision”, and all their actions may be dictated by their unreachable “significant others”. To the unknown woman, R. has always been her greatest joy and her greatest torment. The unknown woman describes him as “supernatural awe”, “a mystery” and “an alluring enigma” [Zweig, 1922: 221]. She tells him that “her life… truly began only on the day she saw him” [1922: 218]. That all-denying and all-scarifying love held with utmost conviction and belief should never be underestimated. But, the novella is also about how a secret may confine a person, and how one buried, unseen-by-others passion may psychologically isolate a person from others, with these people never then understanding how that person may sacrifice everything for – what the society views – a total stranger.

It is easy to dismiss the story as a foolish melodrama and unrealistic idolisation, but I think Stefan Zweig is just too clever and nuanced a writer for these kinds of assumptions or conclusions. The point here is also that an internal life of individual may be very different from the image they portray. The society, that only sees outward appearances and actions, may never know what was really going on inside an individual, and, thus, their understanding of that person and their actions will always be superficial. A married husband and wife may live together for decades being completely indifferent to each other and even barely registering each other in their thoughts, and another person may love another, so-called “stranger”, so passionately, they may be willing to die for them, and yet, on the surface, the two examples should tell us something entirely different. As Mark Twain wrote in 1907: “What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is lead in his head, and is known to none but himself…His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world… The mass of him is hidden-it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written”.

The novella is also psychologically interesting because, from R.’s point of view, it opens an examination of life details missed. “To you who never really knew me” [1922: 217], writes the unknown woman to R. R. did not know the unknown woman because he never really cared to know. In a hectic whirlpool of life, he never stopped and considered the impact his actions or words may have on others, or that these may even seal another’s fate. People only pay full attention to things and people that interest them or mean something to them. They remember vividly events from the past that they care to remember, that meant something to them, or which they found interesting or somehow overwhelming. Thus, the unknown woman remembers everything about R., but he remembers nothing about her.

The story also says something about the position of women at the turn of the century and what little choice they had in life in comparison to men. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, it may be too easy to judge the story’s heroine and the choices she made, but the power of love, devotion and willingness to self-sacrifice can also be taken into account.

Translated from the German, Letter from an Unknown Woman is an intimate, psychologically-intriguing story of obsessive love and self-sacrifice, a vivid portrayal of how much someone can matter to a person and how little that person can matter to another in return.

[নাহিদ ধ্রুব · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Love is so short, Forgetting is so long’.. This is probably the best story of an undying love that can fully describe the emotion, written in the poem by Neruda. This is a story where the reader can completely relate himself from the moment , he starts reading. The speaker has the power to hypnotize anyone.. she’s gonna torment the reader, she’s gonna jeopardize the reader by saying something that’s beyond any reasonable explanation! Yet, the reader will follow her footsteps like a blind person. Letter from an unknown woman is a story, I’m gonna remember for a long long time, I believe!

[Ipsita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Light, nostalgic and poignant short stories regarding love as well as its enduring power.

a) Letter from an Unknown Woman

But why describe this raving, tragic, hopeless devotion on the part of an abandoned child feeling angry with herself, why describe it to a man who never guessed at it or knew about it?


You did not recognize me, neither then nor ever, you never recognized me. How can I describe to you, beloved, the disappointment of that moment? That was the first time I suffered it, the disappointment of going unrecognized by you. I have lived with it all my life, I am dying with it, and still you do not recognize me. How can I make you understand my disappointment?


He sensed the presence of death, he sensed the presence of undying love: something broke open inside him, and he thought of the invisible woman, incorporeal and passionate, as one might think of distant music.

b) A Story Told in Twilight

Has rain been sweeping over the city again in the wind? Is that what suddenly makes it so dim in our room? No. The air is silvery clear and still, as it seldom is on these summer days, but it is getting late, and we didn’t notice. Only the dormer windows opposite still smile with a faint glow, and the sky above the roof ridge is veiled by golden mist. In an hour’s time it will be night. That will be a wonderful hour, for there is no lovelier sight than the slow fading of sunset colour into shadow, to be followed by darkness rising from the ground below, until finally its black tide engulfs the walls, carrying us away into its obscurity. If we sit opposite one another, looking at each other without a word, it will seem, at that hour, as if our familiar faces in the shadows were older and stranger and farther away, as if we had never known them like that, and each of us was now seeing the other across a wide space and over many years. But you say you don’t want silence now, because in silence one hears, apprehensively, the clock breaking time into a hundred tiny splinters, and our breathing will sound as loud as the breathing of a sick man. You want me to tell you a story. Willingly. But not about me, for our life in these big cities is short of experience, or so it seems to us, because we do not yet know what is really our own in them. However, I will tell you a story fit for this hour that really loves only silence, and I would wish it to have something about it of the warm, soft, flowing twilight now hovering mistily outside our windows.


Are you smiling because I make up strange stories for people whom I knew fleetingly, dream of whole destinies for them, and then calmly let them slip back into their lives and their own world? Or are you sad for that boy who rejected love and found himself all at once cast out of the garden of his sweet dream for ever? There, I didn’t mean my story to be dark and melancholy—I only wanted to tell you about a boy suddenly surprised by love, his own and someone else’s. But stories told in the evening all tread the gentle path of melancholy. Twilight falls with its veils, the sorrow that rests in the evening is a starless vault above them, darkness seeps into their blood, and all the bright, colourful words in them have as full and heavy a sound as if they came from our inmost hearts.

c) Forgotten Dreams

I didn’t feel angry with you, I had no moments of confused, hostile indecision, since life had cooled the bright blaze of love to a dying glow of friendship by that time. I didn’t understand you—I just felt sorry for you.

[Lê Tuyền ICHI]

Sách ngắn đến mức mình sửng sốt lun á.

Và nội dung với mình thì vô nghĩa thực sự.

Câu chuyện về bức thư kể lể mối tình đơn phương cuồng si thầm lặng của một người đàn bà đối với một người đàn ông không một chút nhớ gì đến mình, dù là chút tẹo nào về sự tiếp xúc va chạm thuần túy, huống chi lại đã chung đụng thân xác nhiều lần và có con luôn.

Như cái kiểu ảo vọng của fangirl với idol vậy.

Mình không biết câu chuyện này có gây xúc động cho một ai không, nhưng với mình thì nó gợn lên mảy may nào xúc động.

Không cảm xúc, nên mình không rating.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished the first story and it worths a five-star. The story is deeply sad and pathetic. Reminds me of some pathetic old days. The pain was so real and it lasts for years. I'm shocked that I still feel it when I read this story today. Love is always one's own business. Indeed. All the painful happiness I've tried to hide carefully; all the struggles I've been through without making a sound; all the tears I've shed in the darkness. You never know.

[Nooshin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zweig is the master of feverish outbursts of emotion within memories within stories within stories within letters. And I just absolutely love him for that.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the title story/novelette only. The unnamed "unknown woman" felt just like a character plucked from a Dostoevsky novel, someone who locks themselves in their own personal hell and throws away the key. I've read this and Chess Story now. Zweig has my favorite type of prose; it's simple and easy to read, but deep. He's able to do a lot with just a little bit.

[Klinton Saha · Rating 3 out of 5]

যদি কোনো একদিন আপনি একটি চিঠি পেলেন , যেটি লেখা কোনো এক নারীর কাছ থেকে যে আপনাকে সারাজীবন ভালোবেসেছিল অথচ আপনি জানতেই পারেননি—তবে সেই চিঠি কেমন হবে ?


একজন বিখ্যাত লেখক তার জন্মদিনে একটি দীর্ঘ চিঠি পান এক অজ্ঞাত নারীর কাছ থেকে। চিঠিতে ঐ নারী জানান সে তার জীবনের বেশিরভাগ সময় লেখকের ভালোবাসা পাওয়ার জন্য কাটিয়ে দিয়েছে, অপেক্ষা করেছে।অথচ সেই লেখকের কাছ থেকে কোনো সাড়া পায়নি। ঐ নারী তার কিশোরী বয়স থেকে লেখকের প্রতি আকৃষ্ট ছিলেন। কিন্তু মুখ ফুটে কখনো ভালোবাসার কথা বলতে পারেননি। লেখককে এক নজর দেখার জন্য সে লেখকের আশেপাশে সবসময় ছায়ায় মতো থাকতো। একসময় লেখক তাকে শুধুমাত্র ভোগের সরঞ্জাম হিসেবে ব্যবহার করে। লেখকের কাছ থেকে একটি সন্তান পেয়েও ঐ নারী স্ত্রী বা সন্তানের পিতৃত্বের দাবি করে নি। তার কাছে তার একতরফা ভালোবাসা ছিল পবিত্র, তাই একে কোনোভাবেই রূপোজীবিনীর প্রেম হিসেবে প্রকাশ করতে চায়নি। তাই সন্তানের মৃত্যু হলে পৃথিবী থেকে বিদায় নেয়ার আগে শেষ চিঠিতে দীর্ঘদিনের গুপ্ত প্রেমের ইতিহাস বলে দিয়ে যায়।

[Arwen56 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dispetto del fatto che il più “gettonato” sia Lettera di una sconosciuta, i racconti di questa raccolta che personalmente ho preferito sono stati Bruciante segreto e Resistenza della realtà.

In un certo senso, questi ultimi sono “simmetrici”. Bruciante segreto narra, in modo vigoroso e azzeccato, le inquietudini dell’infanzia, che smania per uscire da quella condizione di presunta “inferiorità” e potersi finalmente ascrivere all’universo adulto. Resistenza della realtà racconta invece di momenti lungamente agognati che, col passare del tempo, si appannano sino a non poter essere colti quando sono finalmente a portata di mano, perché, ormai, the time is over.
Sono pagine densissime e attente a cogliere qualsiasi moto dell’animo delle persone coinvolte nelle situazioni proposte. Forse un filino tirati troppo per le lunghe, a rigor del vero, ma nell’insieme molto belli.

Anche Lettera di una sconosciuta è notevole, ma non nel senso in cui paiono averla intesa quasi tutti. Il suo pregio non deriva dalla storia d’amore in sé, bensì dalla confessione della donna senza nome di un’ossessione amorosa che è del tutto a senso unico. Più che una lettera, è una seduta psicoanalitica. Eppure, la maggior parte dei lettori, almeno a giudicare dai commenti che ho letto, finisce per sdilinquirsi solo per le rose bianche, i sacrifici di lei, la sua sublime fedeltà amorosa. Ma qui non si parla di amore, si parla di malattia.

Tutti gli altri racconti sono identicamente scritti assai bene e godibili, ma meno interessanti, per quanto mi riguarda.

[Irina · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Letter of an Unknown Woman"... My first encounter with Zweig was through his little known (and most probably unfinished) last novel "The Post-Office Girl" which I loved so much I started reading his other works. Well, this one was a severe letdown for me. Melodramatic, repetitive, "what-else-can-I-throw-in-there-to-make-you-weep-my-dear-reader" type of story. I'm not a fan of suffering for the sake of suffering and Zweig is obviously into it. We wouldn't get along had we met at a book club discussing this story. The protagonist is insufferable. She got completely obsessed with a man and went on ruining her (and a few decent people around her) life. Is the reader supposed to cheer for "pure" love like hers? Or just cry their eyes out for having nothing else to do on a Sunday afternoon? I'm going to proceed with caution with Zweig now.
Spoiler alert!! Starts now:

if he did indeed recognize her and even married her, poor chap, she would have driven him bonkers with her obsession. He would have left her. She then would have written him a letter about how she loved him too much but doesn't blame him and on and on and on...