The Struggle with the Daemon: Hölderlin, Kleist and Nietzsche

I have little enough time for writing this review. So I won't. But what I can tell you is that this book is a fine and perfect example of great writing. Zweig is a master at teaching and expressing his thoughts clearly and he is so very interesting in his approach to this (and any) subject. Though he was profiling three great artists of their own particular time in Holderlin, Kleist, and Nietzsche, Zweig was primarily instructing us on the daemon, which is a word I had heard prior to this reading but never had it explained to me in such clear and precise language. Now, at least, I know what is wrong with me, or what is right, depending on your own personal perception of the artist's drive. How frustration and unhappiness continue to show more press us on to better work and more serious incisions into our consciousness. This book is amazing on so many levels. To say I loved it would be an inadequate expression of my feelings for it. It is a precious and important work written by a man who was such a great writer and thinker. Zweig certainly did justice to the good and lasting memory of these three subjects, misunderstood and rejected in their own time, but who now live on in immortality as the great writers they really were. The fact that all three were social outcasts was basically by their own design, and it offered them the opportunity to perfect their work privately in a most violent and disruptive way that is scary and a threat to those of us who are delusional in the comforts of our daily living. Truth is, the world is always in chaos and we better not ever forget it. show less

В русском переводе - три певца своей жизни.
Шикарно. Никогда не думал, что биографические очерки могут быть такими занимательными, поучительными и интересными, представленными в столь читабельной и литературной форме. Прочел с удовольствием. Полезно читать подобные вещи перед началом чтения серий автора.

The only interest lies in seeing what passed for literary criticism in... 19th century--old-fashioned, rejected and surpassed already in Zweig's day. Vague, bombastic impressionistic descriptive twaddle about "Beauty", "Truth", "Damnation", "volcanic flames", "feverish winds", "sublime heights" etc. The best he can muster on the subject of Kant's philosophy is to say it is like "a block of ice". This idea-empty intoning and purple prosing becomes tiresome pretty quickly. It's shocking to remember that he was a contemporary of Benjamin's.

AG-5

Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, tres personajes extraordinarios por los que Stefan Zweig, como «psicólogo por pasión, creador por voluntad creadora» sentía un profundo apego. Su inquietud vital los aleja de la contención de Goethe decidido a autoconstruirse: «La fórmula para la vida según Goethe es la representada por el círculo: una línea cerrada, la redondez absoluta que abarca toda existencia, el eterno retorno a uno mismo.» En cambio, «la forma de lo demoníaco», de la inquietud interna en Hölderlin, Kleist y Nietzsche, «se expresa por una parábola: un ascenso rápido e impetuoso en una única dirección, hacia lo superior, lo infinito, una curva perpendicular y una caída brusca.» El demonio, entendido por Stefan show more Zweig como remanente del caos original del mundo, es quien desafía a los hombres creativos, poseídos por él, y les «arranca de las manos, a la fuerza, el timón de la voluntad, de manera que... son tambaleados por la tempestad, y chocan contra las peñas de su destino.» show less

Le XIXème siècle. Après la fanfare de la Révolution Française, la chute des Rois, Bonaparte traçant les frontières de l’Europe à la pointe de l’épée, l’heure de la jeunesse est arrivée. Dans tous les pays se “dressent en même temps, le regard tourné vers les étoiles”, une jeunesse enthousiaste. Le XVIIIème a appartenu “aux vieillards et aux philosophes, à Voltaire et à Rousseau, à Leibnitz et à Kant, à Haydn et à Wieland, aux placides et aux tolérants, aux grands esprits et aux savants maintenant c’est le règne de la jeunesse et l’intrépidité.” Et pourtant pendant 15 ans, le moulin de la destruction lève sa hache. “Divers est leur trépas, mais pour tous il est précoce.” En France André show more Chénier, Apollon d’un nouvel hellénisme, trainé à la guillotine le dernier jour de la terreur. En Angleterre en quelques années, John Keats, Shelley et Lord Byron, la plus noble floraison lyrique est anéantie. Pour l’Allemagne Novalis, Kleist, Raimund, Büchner, Hauff, Schubert, expirent avant le temps. Leopardi, Bellini, Gridojedof, Pouchkine endeuillent Italie et Russie. Seul Goethe est toujours debout à Weimar. show less

traduccion Joaquin Verdaguer