Great Deal Journey Into the Past (New York Review Books Classics)
This is the latest volume in the Pushkin Press' admirable undertaking to make more of the brilliant works of Stefan Zweig available in English. The novella of just 81 pages is flanked by a Foreword by Paul Bailey and an Afterword by the superb translator Anthea Bell.
Ludwig, a young German of humble social origins, had fallen passionately in love with the wife of his wealthy industrialist employer, and she with him. Zweig - and his translators - have always excelled in descriptions of tempestuous emotions which sweep the reader along. Ludwig was sent on what was intended to be a two-year business mission to Mexico, but before the end of those two years the First World War had broken out, and it would be nine years before he returned to Germany and met her again, and the journey of the title is in part a train journey they take together from Frankfurt to Heidelberg. He was now married, and the industrialist had died. On the train he recalls the history of their relationship in the past. And now? And in the future?
One part of what lies ahead is when they came across a massive Nazi parade - just three years after the end of the First World War and twelve years before the Nazis came to power - as they left the station at Heidelberg. The novella itself was started in 1924, and Zweig probably worked on it as late as the 1930s. As the complete typescript was not found and then published (in a French translation) until 2008, it is impossible to know whether this episode, laden with menace, was part of the original draft. Zweig had always loathed war and the nationalism that gave rise to it, so it may well have been an example of his highly-strung prescience.
A superb novella - Darryl R. Morris - Atlanta, GA
Ludwig is a self-made man, who was born in poverty, put himself through university at night while working during the day, and rose to become the trusted right-hand man of a wealthy German industrialist in the years before the Great War. The industrialist is in failing health, and asks Ludwig to move into his vast estate. He initially refuses, but finally agrees. Upon his arrival, he meets the industrialist's beautiful young wife, who makes him feel immediately at home, and he soon falls madly in love with her.
Two years later he is sent to Central America by the company, and the trip is to last two years. He is initially reluctant to leave, due to his previously unexpressed feelings for his unnamed love. Once she finds out he is leaving, she admits that she fell in love with him from the moment she first met him, and they agree to consummate their smoldering love on his return. The meeting is delayed due to the onset of the Great War, but eventually he is able to return to Germany, and the two agree to meet. He feels the same passion for her that he had on his departure, but wonders if she will still agree to her promise.
Journey into the Past is a complex, passionate tale of love and how it can grow or wither with time and hardship. The story had me on edge for its short length, and is one of the best novellas I've ever read.
Rating : 5.0
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Journey Into the Past (New York Review Books Classics) Overviews
A deep study of the unhappy heart by one of the masters of the psychological novel, Journey into the Past, here for the first time in America, is a previously unpublished novella that was found among Zweig’s stories after his death. Investigating the strange ways in which love, in spite of everything—time, war, betrayal—can last, Zweig tells the story of Louis, an ambitious young man from a modest background who falls in love with the wife of his rich employer. His love is returned, and indeed the couple vow to live together, but then Louis is sent to Mexico on business and, while he is away, the First World War breaks out. With travel and even communication across the Atlantic shut down, Louis makes a new life in Mexico. Years later, however, he returns to Germany to find his former beloved a widow and their feelings, though altered, no less engaged. Is it possible for love to survive precisely as the impossible?
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