Journeys

By Stefan Zweig

A collection of the great writer's observations, made during his travels across the Europe he loved so much

When I am on a journey, all ties suddenly fall away. I feel myself quite unburdened, disconnected, free - There is something in it marvellously uplifting and invigorating. Whole past epochs suddenly return: nothing is lost, everything still full of inception, enticement.

For the insatiably curious and ardent Europhile Stefan Zweig, travel was both a necessary cultural education and a personal balm for the depression he experienced when rooted in one place for too long. He spent much of his life weaving between the countries of Europe, visiting authors and friends, exploring the continent in the heyday of international rail travel.

Comprising a lifetime's observations on Zweig's travels in Europe, this collection can be dipped into or savoured at length, and paints a rich and sensitive picture of Europe before the Second World War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781782274926

Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) war ein österreichischer Schriftsteller, dessen Werke für ihre psychologische Raffinesse, emotionale Tiefe und stilistische Brillanz bekannt sind. Er wurde 1881 in Wien in eine jüdische Familie geboren. Seine Kindheit verbrachte er in einem intellektuellen Umfeld, das seine spätere Karriere als Schriftsteller prägte. Zweig zeigte früh eine Begabung für Literatur und begann zu schreiben. Nach seinem Studium der Philosophie, Germanistik und Romanistik an der Universität Wien begann er seine Karriere als Schriftsteller und Journalist. Er reiste durch Europa und pflegte Kontakte zu prominenten zeitgenössischen Schriftstellern und Intellektuellen wie Rainer Maria Rilke, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann und James Joyce. Zweigs literarisches Schaffen umfasst Romane, Novellen, Essays, Dramen und Biografien. Zu seinen bekanntesten Werken gehören "Die Welt von Gestern", eine autobiografische Darstellung seiner eigenen Lebensgeschichte und der Zeit vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, sowie die "Schachnovelle", die die psychologischen Abgründe des menschlichen Geistes beschreibt. Mit dem Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus in Deutschland wurde Zweig aufgrund seiner Herkunft und seiner liberalen Ansichten zunehmend zur Zielscheibe der Nazis. Er verließ Österreich im Jahr 1934 und lebte in verschiedenen europäischen Ländern, bevor er schließlich ins Exil nach Brasilien emigrierte. Trotz seines Erfolgs und seiner weltweiten Anerkennung litt Zweig unter dem Verlust seiner Heimat und der Zerstörung der europäischen Kultur. 1942 nahm er sich gemeinsam mit seiner Frau Lotte das Leben in Petrópolis, Brasilien. Zweigs literarisches Erbe lebt weiter und sein Werk wird auch heute noch von Lesern auf der ganzen Welt geschätzt und bewundert.

Reviews for Journeys

[pivic-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Stefan Zweig had—according to Will Stone's introduction—a lot of love for travelling by train. He also abhorred mass tourism and authoritarianism, which is actually reflected in at least one of his musings on travels and places in this anthology, where Zweig's travels around Europe are collated.

At every moment nuns and monks pass furtively, greeting each other in subdued tones, dark, silent, hurrying, funereal at first sight like harbingers of death. But as they draw closer, watching over the long lines of children in their care, and you discover beneath the white caps or in the shadow of wide brims, calm gentle faces, then you realise that only the constant reminder of grandeur and death could be behind so immutable a gravity and could have etched such a coarse picture of life in these features.

Zweig used a visceral and old-schooly language which was not really typical for his days; this is an author who was closely in contact with his emotions and also made writing look like the easiest thing in the world.

So, even if the writing looks opaque to begin with, it's not.

Rarely had I felt with such intensity that hackneyed wisdom contained in the alphabet, according to which death must be signally mournful while life is an interminable force that compels even the most recalcitrant to love.

Altogether, for me, this anthology—ruminations on places that Zweig visited—isn't one of my fave Zweig adventures or even anthologies, but still, it's lofty, airy, and written in a very chilled-out way.

[davidwineberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In Journeys, Will Stone has translated some more Stefan Zweig for edification and enjoyment. This is my first reading of Zweig’s travelogues, and in some ways, they are surprising.What is remarkable is how much they are out of date. The towns, like Avignon or Bruges, have not changed. If anything, huge effort has gone in to preserving and restoring anything that smacks of old. Avignon is still very much the city of popes, and Bruges the city of canals. But where Zweig describes a dour, sour and morbid atmosphere in the early 1900s, these locales have reinvented themselves into high living towns of fairs, plays, spectacles and tourism. Where the only thing Zweig finds inspiring in Bruges is a small collection of paintings in a room at St. John’s Hospital, and in Avignon some fountains celebrating historical figures, the towns today fill guidebooks with things to do, see and be a part of. His own hometown of Salzburg gets the same cursory treatment.The other thing that stands out is the absence of humanity. In Zweig’s biographical works, it’s all people all the time. In these tours of cities, almost no one is named or quoted. There is reference to history and impressions of environment, but the city stories are surprisingly lacking in roundness. He is just passing through.This is all the more puzzling because Zweig’s passion was travel. He loved nothing better than exploring new towns and writing about them. Yet aside from the historical value of seeing them a hundred years ago, these stories are nowhere as fulfilling as his people stories.In other words, there are more sides to Stefan Zweig than a simple reading a book or two would proffer.David Wineberg