{"product_id":"encounters-and-destinies-isbn-9781782273462","title":"Encounters and Destinies","description":"\u003cb\u003eA new collection of essays by Stefan Zweig: tributes to the great artists and thinkers of the Europe of his day\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStefan Zweig was one of the twentieth century's greatest authors and a tireless champion of freedom, tolerance and friendship across borders. Encounters and Destinies collects his most impassioned and moving tributes to his many illustrious friends and peers: literary, philosophical and artistic luminaries from across the Old Europe that Zweig loved so much, and which he grieved to see so cruelly destroyed by two world wars.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIncluding pieces on Rainer Maria Rilke, Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, Maxim Gorky and Arturo Toscanini, this essential collection is also Zweig's tribute to the ideal of friendship: an ideal he clung to as the world he knew was torn apart.‘\u003ci\u003eEncounters and Destinies\u003c\/i\u003e… capture(s) a special moment in modern European culture, caught for posterity on the eve of catastrophe.’ — \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Jewish Chronicle\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Zweig's accumulated historical and cultural studies [are] almost too impressive to take in.' — \u003cb\u003eClive James\u003c\/b\u003eZweig's   accumulated historical and cultural studies [are] almost too impressive to   take in. --Clive JamesStefan Zweig was one of the most popular and widely translated writers of the early twentieth century. Born into an Austrian-Jewish family in 1881, he became a leading figure in Vienna's cosmopolitan cultural world and was famed for his gripping novellas and vivid psychological biographies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1934, following the Nazis' rise to power, Zweig fled Austria, first for England, where he wrote his famous novel \u003ci\u003eBeware of Pity,\u003c\/i\u003e then the United States and finally Brazil. It was here that he completed his acclaimed autobiography \u003ci\u003eThe World of Yesterday,\u003c\/i\u003e a lament for the golden age of a Europe destroyed by two world wars. The articles and speeches in \u003ci\u003eMessages from a Lost World\u003c\/i\u003e were written as Zweig, a pacifist and internationalist, witnessed this destruction and warned of the threat to his beloved Europe. On 23 February 1942, Zweig and his second wife Lotte were found dead, following an apparent double suicide.The Return of Gustav Mahler\u003cbr\u003e (1915)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He has come home, the great exile of the past, returned\u003cbr\u003e in glory to the city that he, as an outcast, departed only\u003cbr\u003e a few years ago. In the same hall where formerly his compelling\u003cbr\u003e will exercised its demonic effect, his long-absent nature\u003cbr\u003e now takes on new spiritual form, resounding in the work.\u003cbr\u003e Nothing can restrain it, not opprobrium or rancour; irresistibly\u003cbr\u003e burgeoning with its unique qualities, feeling the purer for\u003cbr\u003e no longer being locked in struggle, it now fills and expands\u003cbr\u003e our inner world. No war, no event could hinder this elemental\u003cbr\u003e blossoming of his fame, and the same man who appeared to\u003cbr\u003e people here as something of an irritant and almost a monster\u003cbr\u003e has overnight become consoler and liberator. Pain and loss—\u003cbr\u003e his \u003ci\u003eKindertotenlieder \u003c\/i\u003eexpress his spirit more powerfully than any\u003cbr\u003e others of the time, and who today does not wish to learn, with\u003cbr\u003e empathy, how sorrow transmogrifies itself through depth of\u003cbr\u003e feeling in his farewell song, the ‘Song of the Earth’? Never was\u003cbr\u003e Gustav Mahler so revitalized and inspired by this city as now,\u003cbr\u003e when he is far removed from us and the ungrateful city that\u003cbr\u003e abandoned him is his eternal homeland. Those who truly loved\u003cbr\u003e him were patiently awaiting this hour, but now that it has come\u003cbr\u003e it scarcely brings us joy. For while he was engaged in work, our\u003cbr\u003e desire was to witness his creations, see them come alive. And\u003cbr\u003e now that they have achieved renown, it is he himself we long\u003cbr\u003e for, the man who will not return.\u003cbr\u003e Because for us, an entire generation, he was far more than\u003cbr\u003e a musician, a master, a conductor, more than an artist: he was\u003cbr\u003e the unforgettable presence of our youth. To be young ultimately\u003cbr\u003e means to be conscious of the extraordinary, of some\u003cbr\u003e wondrously beautiful happening that transcends the narrow\u003cbr\u003e world of appearances, of a phenomenon, the fulfilment of a\u003cbr\u003e once-dreamt vision. And everything, admiration, enthusiasm,\u003cbr\u003e humility—they all stir up powers of devotion, of exuberance,\u003cbr\u003e they only seem so fiery and chaotic when concentrated in\u003cbr\u003e unfinished beings, burning deep within when they appear—\u003cbr\u003e recognized as such or intimated—in art, in love. And there is\u003cbr\u003e a certain grace in experiencing such fulfilment in art, in those\u003cbr\u003e days of premature, unspent love to observe something truly\u003cbr\u003e meaningful, yet free with the fullest flow of feeling. It happened\u003cbr\u003e to us. Anyone who has experienced those ten years of opera\u003cbr\u003e from Mahler’s youth has enriched his life in ways that cannot\u003cbr\u003e be measured in words. With the keen sense of impatience, we\u003cbr\u003e sensed from the outset the rare thing, the miracle he harboured,\u003cbr\u003e the demonic man, the rarest of all, one who isn’t entirely at\u003cbr\u003e one with creativity, but with something far more mysterious in\u003cbr\u003e its essence, possessing a distinctly natural power, the inspired\u003cbr\u003e element. There is nothing to distinguish it from the external,\u003cbr\u003e the influence it exerts constitutes its own singularity, something\u003cbr\u003e indescribable, which can only be compared to a certain magical\u003cbr\u003e arbitrariness of nature. It can be likened to the magnet;\u003cbr\u003e thousands of iron filings may cling to it. All are tragic. They\u003cbr\u003e know only how to plunge downwards, commanded by their\u003cbr\u003e inner weight, alien to all else and inactive. But there is one\u003cbr\u003e piece of iron, seemingly no brighter or richer than any of the\u003cbr\u003e rest, which inwardly retains a power, the power of stars or the\u003cbr\u003e furthest depths of the earth, that pulls all relatives together,\u003cbr\u003e weaves its own form and frees itself from the internal weight.\u003cbr\u003e What the magnet seizes it enlivens through its own power; if it\u003cbr\u003e can hold it long enough, its secret flows forth. It draws towards\u003cbr\u003e it kindred metals in order to enter them, dividing itself without\u003cbr\u003e weakening the whole: its very nature and instinct are effect. And\u003cbr\u003e this power—whether from the stars or the remotest depths of\u003cbr\u003e the earth—constitutes the will of the demonic man. Thousands\u003cbr\u003e mill around him, thousand upon thousand, each one rushing\u003cbr\u003e headlong into his own life, inherently tragic and inanimate.\u003cbr\u003e But he drags them towards himself, he fills the essence of the\u003cbr\u003e oblivious with his own will, his rhythm; he propagates himself\u003cbr\u003e in them by animating them. Through a kind of hypnosis, he\u003cbr\u003e forces them all to draw near, tensing their nerves in time with\u003cbr\u003e his own, wrenching them often painfully into his rhythm. He\u003cbr\u003e enslaves them, imposes his will on them, lends the willing something\u003cbr\u003e of the mystery of his force. It is precisely this demonic will\u003cbr\u003e that was in Mahler, a power which suppressed and resisted all\u003cbr\u003e opposition, but also one that inspired and enriched. About him\u003cbr\u003e was a molten sphere where everyone seemed to glow, always\u003cbr\u003e fiery, but working towards clarity. It was impossible to resist.\u003cbr\u003e They say that sometimes musicians tried, but his will was just\u003cbr\u003e too hot: all resistance simply melted. With unrivalled energy\u003cbr\u003e he transforms his entire world of singers, assistants, directors,\u003cbr\u003e musicians, moulding the chaotic interplay of hundreds of\u003cbr\u003e individuals into his single unit in the space of a mere three\u003cbr\u003e hours. He literally wrenches the will from them, he hammers,\u003cbr\u003e pounds and files their individual qualities, he drives them on,\u003cbr\u003e already they are aglow with fervour, moving inexorably into\u003cbr\u003e his rhythm, until the point when he has salvaged the unique\u003cbr\u003e from the ordinary, art from enterprise, until he is fulfilled in\u003cbr\u003e the work and the work is fulfilled in him.","brand":"Pushkin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302948229349,"sku":"NP9781782273462","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781782273462.jpg?v=1767726255","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/encounters-and-destinies-isbn-9781782273462","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}