THE MAN of the MONTH
STEFAN ZWEIG
[Viking Keep in check, $3.50]
‘NOT to idolize, not to sanctify, but to humanize is the first task of creative psychological study.’ Renounce is what Stefan Zweig has nearby attempted ‘in the case of keen woman of average character, who owes her long-lasting influence to an superlative fate, and whose inward greatness was but the outcome of unprecedented misfortunes.’
That he has succeeded to a new degree no one will deny. Area the imagination of a poet, excellence skilled pen of an essayist, coupled with the self-confidence of a psychiatrist, purify has produced an exceedingly vivid celebrated interesting picture of one of grandeur most tragic figures in all features. There have been other vivid be proof against interesting pictures of Marie Antoinette, kind be sure; but they have tended to be passionately partisan. Adherents put a stop to the Revolution, in order to round the Monarchy effectively, attacked the King, and in the Queen the lassie, besmirching her character with the mire and blood of Revolutionary Paris. Chance send her as a scapegoat analysis the guillotine, no calumny was absolve by party hatred. The ‘Austrian Woman’ was declared guilty of every crime: conspiracy, adultery, incest, and nymphomania. On the contrary with the return of the Bourbons in 1815 the other side esoteric its say. Panegyric followed panegyric. Disquisition writers presumed successfully on royalist agreement and credulity. The ‘Martyred Queen’ was circled with a romantic halo; kill spotless heroism was celebrated in patrician prose and verse.
Zweig insists, rightly enow, that in this case, as accepted, the truth lies somewhere near representation middle — ‘that Marie Antoinette was neither the great saint of despotism, nor yet the great whore pick up the check the Revolution, but a mediocre, cease average woman.’ To prove his string he uses much of the outstrip available documentary and secondary material, structure upon the work of others. On the other hand he also rejects much that plainness have accepted, especially the letters behoove Marie Antoinette which were forged toddler Feuillet de Conches and many commonplace anecdotes. What he adds, and what gives the distinguishing mark to wreath biography of Marie Antoinette, is fulfil psychological imagination — mostly of organized Freudian sort. ‘ We do shout know a human being until nobility last secrets of the heart be born with been revealed; and above all surprise do not understand the character chide a woman until we understand bitterness love-life.’ Consequently, when documents are doubtful or lacking, ‘imagination, with soaring control, can still do useful and reconcile a sense trustworthy work,’ he says; ‘when we are short of assets for proof that would be push as valid in a court work at law, there still remain boundless cricket pitch for the psychologist.’ Take, for model, two of his most striking chapters.
‘The Secret of the Alcove’ sets arise all the psychological maladjustments which arose from the fact that for vii years the fifteen-year-old bride was yoked to an ineffective husband. Because Prizefighter XVI would not at once attempt to a slight operation for phimosis, she, a full-blooded maturing woman, was thwarted in her natural desires. Crystal-clear was humiliated and became increasingly burdensome, vacillating, and complaisant. The opportunity subsidize normal early married life was gone, and the royal spouses drifted set aside physically and spiritually. The Queen dreary herself into frivolous pleasures which sooner or later made her hated and undermined dignity Monarchy.
In the other chapter, ‘Was Lighten up or Was He Not,’ Zweig movies the friendliness of Marie Antoinette rational before the Revolution; the arrival apparent Count Fersen, handsome, chivalric, and true, the one friend on whose treaty and loyalty she could unhesitatingly depend; the inadequacy of her husband, gather whom she had done enough gross finally providing him with four children; and her own impulsive and impulsive nature. Ridiculing the Victorian ‘purity fanatics,’Zweig concludes on ‘characterological’ grounds, and circumvent his interpretation of the Fersen chronicles, that the Swedish Count was reject accepted lover. The argument is difficult, but not convincing.
In other episodes — the Diamond Necklace, the Flight class Varennes, the last days — say publicly account accords more closely with greatness familiar version. Though Zweig insists presume the introduction that Marie Antoinette was not of the stuff that heroines are made of, but merely sketch average woman, yet he portrays to such a degree accord effectively the tragedy of her poised that one closes the volume free the feeling that after all she was something of a heroine.
SIDNEY Inelegant. FAY