Stefan Zweig epitomised the courtly Viennese cosmopolitanism of the early twentieth century, revelling in a life of letters that brought him global fame, along with the social cache that allowed him entry to the drawing rooms of Europe’s luminaries, from Freud to Rilke, Toscanini to Rodin. Yet as much as his decades of success, it is the last part of his life that continues to fascinate, and in particular his period of Brazilian exile from August 1940 to February 1942, during which he composed his controversial paean to his new home Country of the Future, finished his autobiographical ode to pre-Hitlerian Europe The World of Yesterday, and finally, horribly, committed suicide by barbiturate overdose alongside his much younger wife Lotte.
The Last Days by Laurent Seksik recounts their last six months. It blends reality and fiction, drawing from the voluminous scholarship on Zweig’s life. A slim, readable book, its six chapters show scenes from each of the last six months of Stefan and Lotte’s life, with almost cinematic effect.
There is an atmosphere of loss, nostalgia, and alienation throughout the book. Yet, it is also a story of real people fighting to survive in an unfamiliar world, and the two protagonists veer from hope to despair, from light to darkness. Seksik foregrounds the banal, the professional rivalries and personal jealousies that occupy their minds even as Stefan’s spirit diminishes in a world where his pacifism leaves him rudderless and his social world has disappeared forever.
Seksik also allows Lotte to tell her story. She is Stefan’s second wife, and they had only been married for two years during the period when the story takes place. Lotte is insecure, at once in awe of Stefan and eager to gain his affection and respect. Having only met Stefan after he had gone into exile, Lotte is jealous of Stefan’s first wife Friderike for being at his side during his long years of triumph. The only way that she can fully claim her place in his life story is by accepting death with him, which Lotte also sees as an escape from a body prematurely saddled with illness.
One searches for an explanation in the book, a reason for the conclusion one knows is coming, and for Stefan’s unforgivable decision to let Lotte kill herself alongside him. Even at this point, he was an influential and hugely prolific writer with friends and contacts in Brazil and around the world. Can he really not see a future for himself and Lotte in this land of the future? Is it the seemingly permanent loss of his cultural milieu that he cannot overcome? Or is it the fear of what is still to come? Does he mean his act as a final statement, dignifying a life made devoid of meaning? Inevitably, and realistically, this book can provide no adequate answer.
In the end, what pushes Stefan over the edge is, of all things, the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, half a world away and utterly unconnected to his and Lotte's Mitteleuropean homeland. The book ends with their final breaths, and one feels that Hitler has won a small victory. The Last Days is an evocative story of Stefan Zweig as he may have been, and to the feelings of loss and longing that he will always be associated with.
Review by Andrew Wolman
This review was written for the ACF London's EXPLORE OUR LIBRARY initiative.
