Confusion

 Confusion 

From Moira on Stefan Zweig:

 Dear Ted,

I have been reading over your shoulder: you have been reading Stefan Zweig’s novella, Confusion - and without inviting me to tag along! What did you think of it? I went ahead and read it, too; I did tag along, invitation or none.

     At first, I thought it was overwrought; then, I thought how well the sixty-year-old narrator gets back into his twenty-year-old self - twenty, that peak of adolescence when everything matters more than it does really and one thing, love, matters more than everything itself. Love and sex. Love and sex in a situation in which betrayal is inevitable given who must love whom and how, which is in conflict with who can love whom how. (And, as always, there must be three.)

     I can think “how well sixty-year-old Roland puts himself back into his twenty-year-old self” (or puts his twenty-year-old self back on), and I can still see the problems that causes: what begins as a Berlin comedy will become a provincial tragedy. It’s like how Restoration comedy becomes 18th-century pathetics - how in three short years, The Way of the World becomes The Fair Penitent (and there is sillier stuff to follow). Does that make sense?

     On a story level - back to Zweig - I felt sorry for the Professor’s poor, brave, little wife, stuck out there in the middle of nowhere with all her sly energy - physical energy, sexual energy, even, I imagine, intellectual energy (if not quite the right sort) - all of that and no way to dissipate, much less use, it. Women aren’t always more practical than men. I know! I’m a case in point. Still, here is a practical woman caught between two extreme Romantics, two heady yet air-headed Romantics neither of whom is half as smart as he thinks he is.

     Finally - the last thing I’ll say about the novel: All the drama leads nowhere. It’s not exactly sound and fury signifying nothing, but there is sound and there’s more fury; then everyone scatters. Or, the hero runs away, leaving the stage behind. Imagine the Professor and his wife, frozen there, Didi and Gogo in Act II, waiting still for Godot though he has already come and now is gone for good.

     What are you going to write about this week? I confess I don’t get all of the biblical stuff, what the Rantrage books are parodying - cleverly, I’m sure. Still, I do like the way they often take on God. I’ll warn you, however: he’s not quite the petty, self-important old fool they (you?) sometimes make him out to be. Beware.

     One more thing, a question: Have you given up on your German? You could have read Zweig auf Deutsch, nicht wahr? Did I get that right? Warum didn’t you? Have you given up?

Love, Moira

06.24.20

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More about and letters from Moira, links here. The drawing of Stefan Zweig is by m ball.