Confusion by Stefan Zweig

Author:Stefan Zweig [Zweig, Stefan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-661-0
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2012-07-24T14:00:00+00:00

The work grew, it grew around me like a forest, its shade gradually excluding any view of the outside world. I lived only in that darkness, in the work that spread wider and further, among the rustling branches that roared ever more loudly, in the man’s warm and ambient presence.

Apart from my few hours of university lectures and classes, my whole day was devoted to him. I ate at their table, day and night messages passed upstairs and downstairs to and from their lodgings—I had their door key, and he had mine so that he could find me at any time of day without having to shout for our half-deaf old landlady. However, the more I became one with this new community, the more totally did I turn away from the outside world: I shared not only the warmth of this inner sphere but its frosty isolation. My fellow students, without exception, showed me a certain coldness and contempt—who knew whether some secret verdict had been passed on me, or just jealousy provoked by our teacher’s obvious preference for me? In any case, they excluded me from their society, and in class discussions it seemed that they had agreed not to speak to me or offer any greeting. Even the other professors did not hide their hostility; once, when I asked the professor of Romance languages for some trivial piece of information, he fobbed me off ironically by saying: “Well, intimate as you are with Professor … , you should know that.” I sought in vain to account to myself for such undeserved ostracism. But the words and looks I received eluded all explanation. Ever since I had been living on such close terms with that lonely couple, I myself had been entirely isolated.

This exclusion would have given me no further cause for concern, since my mind, after all, was entirely bent on intellectual pursuits, except that in the end the constant strain was more than my nerves could stand. You do not live for weeks in a permanent state of intellectual excess with impunity, and moreover in switching too wildly from one extreme to the other I had probably turned my whole life upside down far too suddenly to avoid endangering the equilibrium secretly built into us by Nature. For while my dissolute behaviour in Berlin had relaxed my body pleasantly, and my adventures with women gave playful release to dammed-up instincts, here an oppressively heavy atmosphere weighed so constantly on my irritated senses that they would only churn around in electrical peaks within me. I forgot how to enjoy deep, healthy sleep, although—or perhaps because—I was always up until the early hours of the morning copying out the evening’s dictation for my own pleasure (and burning with puffed-up impatience to hand the written sheets to my beloved mentor at the earliest opportunity). Then my university studies and the reading through which I raced called for further preparation, and my condition was aggravated, not least, by my conversations with

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