Song of exile 流亡之歌

Stefan Zweig
斯蒂芬·茨威格
Song of exile
流亡之歌

A superb new biography of a celebrated Europhile
一本有关一位著名的支持欧洲统一的人士的新传记

Jun 14th 2014

The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World. By George Prochnik. Other Press; 390 pages; $27.95. Buy from Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk
《不可能的流亡：茨威格在世界的尽头》

KNOWN today as the inspiration behind Wes Anderson’s film, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, Stefan Zweig was one of the most popular writers of his day. His biographies of Marie Antoinette, Erasmus and Mary Stuart, all published in the early 1930s, were acute studies of doomed protagonists; his novellas sharp parables for his own dark times.

今天以韦斯·安德森的电影“布达佩斯大饭店”的灵感之源闻名的斯蒂芬·茨威格是他所处时代最受欢迎的作者之一。他于20世纪30年代早期出版的传记无不是对其悲剧主人公--玛丽·安托内瓦特，伊拉斯谟和玛丽·斯图尔特--的敏锐研究；他的中篇小说则是对自身黑暗岁月的尖锐写照。

Zweig was raised in the glamour of fin-de-siècle Vienna and became part of the cultural ferment that produced Gustav Mahler and Gustav Klimt. But behind the Jugendstil façade, Zweig’s Vienna was also the place where another young man eight years his junior was rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts and began to ponder the programme of racist terror that he would inflict on continental Europe a generation later.

茨威格成长于世纪末的维也纳之荣光之中，并成为了孕育出古斯塔夫·马勒和古斯塔夫·克里姆特的文化氛围的一部分。然而在“新艺术十年”的背后，茨威格所处的维也纳同样也是一个比他小八岁的年轻人遭美术学院拒绝，并开始思考种族主义恐怖活动的地方，一代人之后，这个年轻人使得欧洲大陆种族主义恐怖笼罩。

Partly as a result of Hitler’s campaigns in the wake of the Great Depression, by the mid-1930s the cosmopolitan Europe that Zweig had known—in the coffee houses of Vienna, the salons of Paris and the cabarets of Berlin—had shrunk into a draughtboard of warring nation-states. Zweig, the consummate European who had once been at home everywhere, suddenly found himself safe nowhere. As a pacifist, Jewish intellectual, his books were burned in Berlin in 1933, and, like millions of others, he was driven into an exile that took him to London, New York and, finally, Brazil, where he committed suicide in February 1942. He died not so much a man without a country as a man without a world.

部分由于大萧条之后希特勒的宣传鼓动，到20世纪30年代，那个茨威格一度在维也纳的咖啡馆里，在巴黎的沙龙里，在柏林的卡巴莱餐厅里熟悉的带有世界主义气质的大欧洲缩减成一个由交战的民族国家组成的棋盘。茨威格，这个一度以四海为家的完美欧洲人，突然发现自己到哪里都不安全。身为和平主义者，犹太学者，他的书于1933年在柏林被焚毁，像数百万其他人一样，他被迫流亡，途经伦敦，纽约，最终到达巴西，并于1942年2月在这里自杀。茨威格死时与其说无故国可依，不如说他的世界已经崩塌。

Subtle, prodigiously researched and enduringly human throughout, “The Impossible Exile” is a portrait of a man and of his endless flight. George Prochnik sets about excavating Zweig’s sensibility and psychology as the celebrated writer tried—and failed—to endure the greatest upheaval his native Europe had ever known. “The Impossible Exile” is thus a Zweigean portrait of Zweig, who turns out to be as idealistic as Erasmus, as helpless as Mary Stuart and as delusional as Marie Antoinette.

《不可能的流亡》一书笔触微妙，研究丰富，而又自始至终停留在人的层面，它是对一个人和他无休无止逃亡的刻画。在书中，乔治·普罗尼克发掘茨威格试图忍受--但没有成功--他的欧洲故土有史以来最为严重剧变时的心理和情感，因此这本书是对茨威格的茨威格式描述，这位著名的作家像伊拉斯谟一样理想主义，像玛丽·斯图尔特一样无助，又像玛丽·安托瓦内特一样满心妄想。

Illusions stubbornly maintained were the essence of Zweig’s ultimate tragedy. “All his life,” writes Mr Prochnik, “Zweig had venerated two things: the dream of human unity on earth and the capacity of art to induce a sense of earthly transcendence—all woes and petty factionalism sublimated in aesthetic rapture.” Even after 1933, Zweig was still certain that the German veneration of Bildung, or “self cultivation”, would make it impossible for a “beer-hall agitator” to appeal to the educated ranks of German society, arguing instead that the surest way to fight Nazi brutality was for artists to showcase the strength of the country’s cultural heritage. “We must never permit ourselves to descend to the intellectual level of our opponents,” he wrote.

茨威格最终悲剧的本质在于其顽固抱持的幻想。“终其一生，”普罗尼克这样写道“茨威格都尊重两件事情：人类大同的梦想和艺术唤起一种尘世超脱感的能力--即在审美的狂喜中，所有的悲苦和渺小的派系之争得到升华。”即使在1933之后，茨威格依然坚信因为德国对“自我修养”的尊重，因此一个“啤酒店里的煽动者”无法吸引德国社会受教育的阶层，相反，他称，对抗纳粹暴虐行为最可靠的方式就是：由艺术家们展示德国文化遗产的力量。他写道：“我们永远不能允许自己在知识上堕落到与敌人相当的程度。”

But perhaps the most poignant of Zweig’s illusions was his ideal of a universal European citizenship. Before the second world war Zweig had been at ease in a host of different identities: he was Austrian, a curator of the German language, a Jew, a European and a cosmopolitan—a true citizen of the world. In the end, he was reduced to a life of visas and passports, imprisoned in a singular identity, that of the Jewish refugee. As Mr Prochnik elegantly shows, Zweig’s exile was technically an exile from Europe, but his “impossible exile” was an exile from himself.
然而，在茨威格的幻想中，或许最令他感到痛苦的就是他对统一的欧洲公民身份的构想。二战前，茨威格享有一系列身份：他是奥地利人，又是德语的守护者，是犹太人，欧洲人，四海为家的人--一个真正的世界公民。最终，他的生活沦落至由签证的护照组成，他被禁锢在一个身份--犹太难民的身份--里。正如普罗尼克优雅地展示得那样：从事实上而言，茨威格的流亡是从欧洲出逃，然而，他的“不可能的流亡”则是放逐自身。
Remark: 正如普罗尼克优雅地展示得那样：从事实上而言，茨威格的流亡是从欧洲出逃，然而，他的“不可能的流亡”则是放逐自身。
2. 然而，在茨威格的幻想中，或许最令他感到痛苦的就是他对统一的欧洲公民身份的构想。二战前，茨威格享有一系列身份：他是奥地利人，又是德语的守护者，是犹太人，欧洲人，四海为家的人--一个真正的世界公民。最终，他的生活沦落至由签证的护照组成，他被禁锢在一个身份--犹太难民的身份--里