Recently, the restored version of the classic old film "The Pianist on the Sea" was released, and many fans couldn't wait to check in in the theater.
This award-winning movie tells the legendary story of an abandoned baby named "1900" who became a piano master on an ocean liner. He never left and would not leave this ship in his life. Finally, when the scrapped ship was finally about to withdraw from the stage of history, he chose to be buried in the flames with the ship. This ending made many viewers burst into tears.
1900 is a fictional character. But his resolute reluctance to abandon the ship always reminds me of a real person who has ever existed, that is, the Jewish Austrian writer Stephen Zweig. Everyone knows the end of
Zweig: After the outbreak of World War II, he was exiled to Brazil because of his Jewish identity. On February 22, 1942, he committed suicide with his wife and ended his life.
Just as people think that 1900 in the movie can clearly choose to disembark. From the perspective of the onlooker, Zweig at this time node in 1942 does not seem to be at the end of the road.
First of all, he was not locked into a concentration camp like countless compatriots, and suffered inhuman torture. Secondly, although he was in exile abroad, he still received a certain degree of courtesy in Brazil because of his identity as a writer. In terms of finances, he is also well-off, even in wartime. There is also his work, although it has become a "poisonous weed" in the German-speaking world and was burned by the Nazi Party, after all, there are translations in other languages that are distributed in many countries. Simply put, if it is to be miserable, he is certainly not the worst.
Today, we will even ask afterwards: In 1942, there were only three years left before the end of World War II. Why couldn't Zweig endure it anymore? It's fine to survive until victory. As everyone knows, in the minds of the parties, the facts are ironclad: unbearable. In everyone's heart, there may be a "boat" that he does not want to go down.
Zweig's "ship", set sail from November 28, 1881. One hundred and thirty-eight years ago, he was born in a prosperous Jewish family in Vienna. His father was a textile industrialist and his mother was born in the Bretauer family who started a bank. He received the old-fashioned elite education completely in his hometown, and then fell on the door of the old age in the last year of the 19th century; while entering the new century, he also crossed the country.
He chose to study at a university in Berlin, Germany, for no reason. In 1900, Berlin was transitioning from a kingdom’s capital to a world city, and new things happened every day. During college, he roamed around Paris and London, and almost traveled all over Europe, making friends of different nationalities and speaking different languages.
In 1910 and 1912, he traveled to India and the United States respectively. You know, it was a century ago! At that time, people were generally frugal, and their circle of activities did not surpass that of their home country. People who could travel overseas were considered alternative regardless of their class. Returning from India, he found that he "can no longer regard Europe as the permanent axis of the world"; and the United States, he was inspired by Walt Whitman to go to "the land of new rhythms", representing a kind of "The feelings of brotherhood in the four seas that are coming soon."
It can be said that as early as the beginning of the 20th century, Zweig already had an international vision. Even in today's chanting of globalization, he is also the most popular youth. No wonder the Western critics hailed him as the "first modern European" and "European cosmopolitan". He had long perceived that Europe should be a harmonious community of many ethnic groups, and he perceives this not as an ambitious politician, but as a spiritually independent intellectual.
Many years later, Zweig recalled the year when he was thirty-two (1913), and wrote: "In the range of my sight, everything seemed so flat and bright." Then, the time came to 1914 In the summer of 1999, the First World War broke out and everything was torn apart. The first half of his sunny life was turned over.
What happened to Zweig
in his youth is recorded in history books, so there is no need to repeat it. The point is that during the First World War, Zweig soberly let himself out of the frenzy of the times. Failed to pass the medical examination, exempted him from military service. Fortunately, he did not have to go to the front line to "pierce a bayonet into the intestines of Russian farmers." He did not want to be like many writers,To raise the flag for the justice of our country’s participation in war, write some deliberately uplifting propaganda articles. He insisted that he "must be a citizen of the world from the beginning". This is his "personal design" for himself. He took a spare job at the War Archives, and kept publishing articles in newspapers and periodicals in his spare time, opposing war and promoting peace and humanitarianism. "Peace" was not the main theme at the time, it was the blood and sacrifice for the country. In short, at the beginning of World War I, he was already untimely committed to the future of mutual understanding, believing that European intellectuals needed to build ties and make efforts for this. The most valuable thing about
is the deep friendship between him and Romain Roland. Romain Roland is a French. In World War I, France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire where Zweig was located were opposed. But their friendship has not become the cannon fodder of the times. In spirit, the two have always been fellow travelers. Instead, they began a 25-year correspondence.
Roman Roland
may be precisely because when others were feverish and manic, Zweig chose to return to his heart and re-examine the world and humanity, so in the ten years after the end of World War I, he could quickly, He calmly returned to his desk and ushered in a peak period of literary creation. Most of his best-selling works were written in this period.
"The Biography of the Three Great Masters" opened the road to his achievements in biographical writing; "When the Stars of Mankind Are Shining" became a work in all schools, and soon exceeded the sales volume of 250,000 copies... each of his books , 20,000 copies can be sold on the first day of publication in Germany, which is the result achieved without any advertisement in the newspaper. Publishing houses in dozens of countries including France, Portugal, Argentina, Norway, Finland, and China also extended olive branches to him. When he saw the statistics of "Intellectual Cooperation" of Geneva International Organization, he couldn't believe that he was the author who was translated the most at that time.
As early as the 1920s, Zweig's biography "Roman Roland" had been translated and introduced to China. However, Zweig’s work most familiar to the Chinese public is probably "A Letter from a Strange Woman", which was adapted into a movie of the same name and directed by Xu Jinglei.
However, after Hitler came to power in 1933, Zweig became the author of the Nazi blacklist overnight, simply because he was a Jew. During World War I, he still had the opportunity to speak up, but this time, he was deprived of all rights to publish works in the German-speaking world.
In 1934, Zweig moved to London. Austria fell in 1938. Yesterday he was a foreign gentleman who consumed foreign exchange and paid taxes. Today, he is a "refugee" who wants to apply for a passport for a stateless person, a kind of inferior person who is not fully trusted by any country. The heaviest blow came in September 1939, when he and his second wife registered their marriage, Germany invaded Poland and World War II broke out; two days later, the radio told him that Britain had declared war on Germany. This Austrian, who had never belonged to Germany and was squeezed out by Germany long ago, was suddenly classified as a German forcibly, and was pushed to the opposite of Britain. With a swipe of the
politicians, the meaning of Zweig's entire life has become absurd. Later, he described this disillusionment in his memoirs: "It was a feeling of nerve destruction. He stepped into the void with his eyes sober, knowing that no matter where he stood, he might be driven away in a moment. Come out... the deepest task in my heart, the work for which I have devoted all the power of faith for 40 years-the peaceful unification of Europe-has all been in vain." After
moved to Brazil in 1941, Zweig could not stop there. Escape from Europe and worry about Europe. Technology has brought information synchronization, which is tantamount to supplementing him again and again: South American newspapers can let him know the news of the assassination of his old friend in the first time; far away, he can also listen to it on the radio To Hitler's crazy speech. The sunshine in Brazil was full and bright, but Zweig was already sixty years old that year. He was too tired to imagine that he could have a fresh start.
Zweig and his wife took medicine in Petropolis and committed suicide
. Zweig continued to work hard and completed his last few works in Brazil, including the memoir "Yesterday's World". He used the sentence in Shakespeare’s "Cimbelin" as the title of this memoir: "Let us be calm and meet the narrow road of our own time." When
meets the narrow road of our own time, is Zweig considered calm and calm at all ? Maybe optimists thinkIt is not enough for him to choose to commit suicide. There are indeed many critics who call him a "cowardly intellectual". And pessimists will feel that Zweig is calm and calm in choosing his destiny, and his cowardice is due to his self-knowledge and fear, and he takes the initiative to stay on his spiritual boat to ensure that he does not fall into madness because of catering. It is the commonality of those who are not cruel.
In the famous film "Budapest Hotel" written and directed by Wes Anderson, the hero Gustav resembles Zweig from style to spirit.
"The true trajectory of life is determined by inner power. No matter how chaotic and meaningless our life path looks, it deviates from our desires, it will eventually lead us to our invisible life goals." When others wrote the biography, Zweig seemed to predict his fate early on, although he didn't necessarily realize it. It is not difficult to find that he has a special liking for losers, and almost all of his most successful works are thinking about the same problem, that is, "the advantage of the loser in the soul".
takes "When the Stars of Mankind Are Shining" as an example. Just looking at the title of the book, it should be a book such as "The Encyclopedia of Stars" or "Guide to Success Studies"; the actual situation is, except for the individual articles of Lenin and others. The content, this is almost a "cannon fodder biography." But Zweig uses his own words to reinterpret the accidents and coincidences of history, and the various possibilities of human nature, so that the loser is remembered by history as the victor, and even more luminous than the victor.
"Budapest Hotel" puts
"inspired by Stephen Zweig's work" on the ending subtitles, and
once made many hardcore "ci fans" cry.
The big waves are scouring the sand, and Zweig's book will stay.
Click me if you want to see
"When the stars of mankind are shining"
[Australia] Stephen Zweig
high school Fu Pan Zili translated
"When the stars of mankind are shining" is a history of Austrian biographer Stephen Zweig Feature collection, including 14 historical features, reveals the "critical moment" in the process of human life that determines the life and death of a person, the survival of a nation, and even the destiny of the entire human race. The author uses fourteen wonderful portraits of people to extend and enlarge these mysterious moments in history, so that we can read the personal experiences and hearts of individuals under the peculiar fate. They may succeed or fail, glorious or dim, passionate or desperate, but Relying on discovery, creation and hard work, they constitute the shining stars that symbolize human belief.
The text "The Great Tragedy" in the seventh grade of the nationally compiled Chinese textbook is an excerpt from the chapter "Antarctic Scramble" (a translation of "The Struggle for Antarctica") in the book.
"The Biography of the Three Great Masters"
[O] Stephen Zweig written by
Shen Wenlin translated
"The Biography of the Three Great Masters" is composed of three outstanding literary masters, Balzac, Dickens and Dostoevsky. Through the analysis of the inner world of the biographical objects, the author Zweig interprets the inevitability of the formation of the style of his work and the fate of his fate, and has created "a character of Balzac, an image of Dickens, and a character of Dostoevsky." Century's "Unique Biography of Great Novelists" is also a unique work of "The Psychology of Novelists".
