A Summer Novella

De: Stefan Zweig

Narrado por: Peter Coates

Duración: 25 m

Resumen del Editor

Bored in a semi-deserted Italian hotel, the narrator of this short story spends his days observing the other residents. However, his routine changes when he finally finds a companion: a mysterious elderly gentleman who is willing to share an idea for an exciting novel...

Throughout his writing career, Stefan Zweig showed great interest in psychology and, in particular, in the work of Sigmund Freud. This fascination with human nature led Zweig to create complex portraits of his characters and, as a result, works that continue to captivate readers for generations.

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Not of the best

Zweig is in my top ten list of favorite writers, and I’ve read him in English and German. I mostly avoid his early work because his later genius puts these attempts in deep shade. I hadn’t read this story before.

“A Summer Novella” suffers from the self-consciousness and sentimentality of which some Zweig works suffer.

The setting is banal, a hotel resort in August at Cadennabia, Lake Como. An old man tells of a time he fell in lust with a very young girl. Yes, at the time he was already an old man, and his observations sound stalkerish and more than a little cringe to modern ears.

The story goes on somewhat pointlessly, and even Zweig goes a little meta by criticizing German language authors’ sentimentality through the protagonist.

I found the whole thing ridiculous, but it was 63 cents on the summer sale.

The main fault is Zweig was a vital, young man of 30 when it was published in 1911 and he is trying to express an elderly understanding of life and depth of experience he did not have. It’s a clanger.

The narration was fine.