Stefan Zweig: Die Entfernung der Sterne by Sophie Reyer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Stefan Zweig: Die Entfernung der Sterne by Sophie Reyer Andrew B. B. Hamilton Sophie Reyer, Stefan Zweig: Die Entfernung der Sterne. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2021. 281 pp. Was Stefan Zweig a good writer? Hardly any question of literary merit seems to elicit such polarizing opinions among readers of German as this one. Now, eighty years after his death, we are still echoing the ambivalence of Zweig's contemporaries—and from the author himself. This ambivalence is near the root of the fascination Zweig exerts over his many readers. For Zweig is remembered at once as a man, as a symbol, and an author: his image is the embodiment of an entire cultural milieu characterized as much by cosmopolitan elegance as by impotence in the face of epochal violence. The best works on Zweig produced in this century have been creative or idiosyncratic works that understand the uncertain bonds connecting the [End Page 78] man, the work, and the persona that derive from this his curious place in cultural memory. Such films as Maria Schrader's Vor der Morgenröte (2016) and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) concern themselves more with how Zweig is seen and remembered than how he was or what his books are like. George Prochnik's unconventional biography The Impossible Exile (2014) frames much of its narration through the lens of Zweig's rising and falling literary reputation. To this constellation, we can now add Sophie Reyer's novel Stefan Zweig: Die Entfernung der Sterne. Reyer has taken on quite a challenge, for while Zweig's life offers an abundance of material, any novelization of the author's life is obliged to compete with Zweig's own autobiography, Die Welt von Gestern, which for all its flaws remains one of his best-loved works. Indeed, it is from this work that so much of his persona is derived. It is hard to imagine any work of Viennese nostalgia supplanting its status. A number of approaches to this problem are possible. A twenty-first-century reader might expect a critical eye toward Zweig's rosy image of the Habsburg world. But Reyer's approach is at once more naïve and more creative than this. Reyer's work spans forms and genres, including fiction, poetry, theater, and performances of various kinds; in fact, this novel was performed as a Hörspiel at the Landestheater Linz in 2021. Its writing is characterized by clipped sentences in the present tense. The chapters are short and bear almost childish titles: "Muter: Geburt," is the first, "Sterben" comes near the end, and in between we find, for instance, "Das erste Buch" and "Krieg." Zweig's life, in Reyer's telling, is a series of set pieces presented with estranging simplicity. The very un-Zweig-like opening sentence reads: "Es ist in einem Kaiserreich, in dem alles beginnt. Denn jede Geburt ist ein Anfang der gesamten Welt" (7). A scene that might have been an emotional climax is written with jarring understatement. This is how the Zweigs decide to go ahead with their plans for a double suicide: "Ich würde gerne aufhören, jetzt!" sagt Stefan an einem Morgen im Februar. Es ist lange geplant, Lotte weiß Bescheid. […] "Ich würde gern damit aufhören," wiederholt Stefan. Pause. "Denkst du, es wird aufhören, wenn wir aufhören?" fragt Lotta da. [End Page 79] "Woher soll ich das wissen," meint Stefan. Dann schweigt er für einen Moment. "Aber schlechter kann es nicht werden, oder?", fragt er und streicht ihr übers Haar. (273) It goes on like this, and the reader will know how it ends. There is a deliberate refusal here to fulfill the promise of the promotional material on the back of the book, to answer the question: "Wie ist es möglich, dass ein derartig großes literarisches Talent im Exil Suizid begeht?" Likewise, the reader's understanding of what kind of book this ought to be is destabilized by such inscrutable gestures as including footnotes at the end of the first four chapters, reading simply, "Vgl.: Stefan Zweig: Die Welt von Gestern." Omitted here are page numbers, which might suggest a...