Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig Read Online Free PDF Page A

some books that Feder had lent him he had come across yet another historical figure, in the person of the humanist Michel de Montaigne, to whom he planned to devote an extended essay. In a letter to Felix Braun he recounts how he feels much more at home in the “Latin sphere” of Brazil than in the USA. In describing his new domicile he once again resorts to a comparison with his native country, calling Petrópolis “a kind of miniature Ischl”. He goes on: “We have rented a tiny bungalow, we have a black woman servant, everything is splendidly primitive, donkeys laden with bananas walk right past our windows, all around us are palm trees and virgin forest, and the starry night sky is just amazing. What we miss are books and friends.” 14
    The isolation was also difficult for Lotte. She was afraid that she might bore Stefan with talk about the mundane details of their daily life. She had yet to find a friend of her own sex with whom she could converse, and so she spent a great deal of time trying to communicate with their housemaid Aurea in a language that was still very foreign to her. They planned the menu together for the week ahead, and she was soon able to report: “She has learnt (and so have I) to make Palatschinken, Schmarren and Erdäpfelnudeln & other ‘European’ dishes”. 15

Lotte and Stefan Zweig

    Stefan and Lotte Zweig at work in Petrópolis
    At the beginning of December 1941 Lotte and Stefan spent a day in Rio. While he prepared himself for various meetings and went to the barber’s shop to get a shave, Lotte used the time to write a long letter to her sister-in-law Hannah. In it she was happy to report that Stefan was now feeling better again. His view that everything was pointless while the war was on, and even after the war was over, had changed, and he was now taking pleasure in his work again. He was even hoping to borrow some books from friends and colleagues. Lotte’s strategy—to get him writing again, and thus help him out of his depression—seemed to be working. The manuscript of Die Welt von Gestern —the new title he had chosen for his autobiography—was finished, and as yet he did not know what project to tackle next. So Lotte asked her sister-in-law to locate the ring binder in Bath that contained Zweig’s notes for the Balzac biography, and, if at all possible, to get them typed up by Richard Friedenthal. She asked for this back-up copy to be sent to Petrópolis so that Stefan could continue with his ambitious project, which was likely to occupy him for years to come.
    This news was doubly surprising in that Stefan’s sixtieth birthday, which represented a major hurdle in his life, had passed just a few days previously. In recent weeks Lotte had enlisted the help of others around her in her efforts to provide for her husband. Thus she had been able to secure an antiquarian edition of Balzac’s works, which she presented to Stefan on his birthday. And Koogan, who accompanied them on a birthday outing, had brought a ten-month-old wire-haired fox terrier with him as a present (to his great regret, a spaniel had proved impossible to find in Rio and the surrounding area). To all those who had sent him birthday greetings Zweig sent copies of a poem entitled Der Sechzigjährige dankt [ A Thank-you from the Sixty-Year-Old ]:
More lightly now the passing hours
Touch the hair that turns to grey
Only the cup that’s nearly drained
Reveals its floor of gold at last.
Premonition of approaching night
Comes not as pain but as release.
Pure delight of worldly contemplation
Knows only he who nothing more desires,
And nothing cares for past success,
Laments no more the things undone,
And finds that growing old in years
Is just a gentle way to start to leave.
Never is the prospect clearer
Than in the glow of the departing day,
Never is life more truly loved
Than in the shadow of renunciation. 16
    He seems to have got over the birthday, and everything that it entailed, remarkably well, and in