Hölderlin, Kleist, and Nietzsche by Stefan Zweig

Zweig's interest in psychology and the teachings of Sigmund Freud led to his most characteristic work, the subtle portrayal of character. Finding only growing loneliness and disillusionment in their new surroundings, he and his second wife committed suicide. In 1934, driven into exile by the Nazis, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, to Brazil by way of New York. Zweig studied in Austria, France, and Germany before settling in Salzburg in 1913. He and his second wife committed suicide in 1942. Among his most famous works are Beware of Pity, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Wishing to console Johann Christian Friedrich’s mother, she wrote to the latter: “His spirit cannot stoop to these petty labours … or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he takes them too much to heart.Stefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. Charlotte von Kalb, who was anything but obtuse, grasped the underlying truth.

The boy of nine had a stronger will than the man of twenty-five. Hölderlin’s incapacity to meet the demands of everyday life was in this matter all too plain.

He spoke of his pupil’s stubbornness, of defects in the lad’s character which he, as tutor, was impotent to remedy. He still rationalised the immanent inflammability of his impulses by discovering objective causes for them. In this first crisis he probably failed to understand that the trouble sprang from the daemonism within him, from the jealous exclusiveness of the spirit that possessed him, making mundane relationships impossible. No existence other than that of a poet was acceptable. He could not endure regular occupation, could not bear to participate in the daily round of ordinary people. He began to complain of his “dependent position”, and the forces at work within him soon became obvious. Shadows of gloom and discontent crept into his letters. “Ere long, however, the daemon was wrestling with him once more he was seized by that “terrible spirit of unrest” which drove him “like the deluge, to the mountain peaks”.

Hölderlin, Kleist, and Nietzsche by Stefan Zweig