In his memoirs, entitled "The World of Yesterday," Stefan Zweig sets out a guiding principle that remains valid throughout his life and directs his work: "There is more security in the sacrificial service of the initiating writer than in his own work, and nothing that a man has committed once with dedication has been done in vain. " Zweig himself, who lived from 1881 to 1942, subordinates his literary work to one purpose: to serve the beautiful. He considers himself a "citizen of the world," because beauty, and especially the beauty of art, does not know state borders, nor national or language barriers. This aesthetic attitude also forms the essence of Stefan Zweig. Here he combines psychological observation and interest in the extraordinary states of the human soul with his extensive readings, with the taste of Carlisle-style history and "great personalities." His essayist gift is revealed most fully in works devoted to his beloved spiritual teachers. As early as 1904, twenty-three-year-old Zweig published his first monograph in which he portrayed the life and work of his youthful poet Paul Verlaine, and only a few years later he was already designing a cycle of biographical essays under the general title "Builders of the World." The series must reveal the "typology of the spirit" and have not only artistic-cognitive but also scientific value. The four volumes published from 1920 to 1931 include observations of the creative destinies of Balzac, Dickens and Dostoevsky ("Three Masters"), Hölderlin, Kleist and Nietzsche ("The Fight with the Demon"), Casanova, Stendal and Tolstoy (" Three poets of their lives ") and Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddie and Freud (" Healing through the Spirit ").
In the "Builders of the World", Stefan Zweig applies a special artistic method: through the personalities he illustrates certain ideas - let us recall the historiographical book of Simeon Radev "Builders of Modern Bulgaria". So Zweig treats Balzac, Dickens and Dostoevsky to those epic creators who create in their novels a "second reality" alongside the already existing one. And Casanova, Stendal and Tolstoy present themselves as writers, whose works dominate the "spirit of self-expression". Hölderlin, Kleist, and Nietzsche are "demonic natures" for him that despise reality as unsatisfactory. Each one of them, on his own, is a revolver, a rebellion and a rebel against the existing order. Zwig watches his characters in their attitude to the time they live in. He points out that Dickens describes the world of the Balzac family - the world of the world, and Dostoevsky - the world of loneliness. According to him, Dickens is covered by his time, while Balzac covers his time. While Balzak's element is the delight, Dostoevsky's suffering is. In the series "Builders of the World", the Dickens essay, created in 1919, is a special place, because here Stefan Zweig uses a technique that is characteristic of his entire biographical work: instead of talking directly to the writer and his works, he first examines the impact on society and the echo of his books in the world. This approach leads to the ideas of receptive aesthetics, which have become widespread only in recent decades. Zwieg talks about the enthusiasm of the thousands of readers who have once welcomed each of those blue books that come out once a month - another part of the Dickens novel - who are now yellowing in the bibliophile cabinets. People were eager to wait for the postal distributor and traveled two miles to meet him and get his book earlier.
They were counting on it the other way, one peeking over the shoulder of another, the third loudly reading, and only the best of the hearts took a quick step toward the houses to take the loot of their wife and children. So Dickens was loved in every village, every city, across the country, and across its borders - from the whole English-speaking world scattered all over the earth; they loved him from his first dating with him until his last hour. Nowhere in the nineteenth century is there any other such close proximity between a writer and his nation, Zwig noted.According to him, such a huge, both in scope and in depth, impact of a literary work can only be obtained thanks to the rare combination of two usually opposing elements: between the genius and the tradition of his time. Because the distinctive feature of the genius is that he, as a personification of the emerging tradition, is hostile to the dying tradition that, as the birth of a new generation, he provokes a bloody struggle to the generation that is experiencing its time. And Dickens, "continues Zwig," is the only great writer of his century, whose deep-seated personal designs coincide with the spiritual needs of his time. His novel fully corresponds to the taste of the then England, his work is a materialisation of the English tradition. Dickens, this is humor, life experience, morality, aesthetics, the spiritual and artistic essence of the sixty million people living across the Channel. He is not the author of this work, and the English tradition - the strongest, the richest, the most unique, and hence the most dangerous among the contemporary cultural traditions, concludes the Austrian Stefan Zweig.
But why is this tradition so damning for art? Because it is treacherous: it is not an icy outcast, inhospitable and uncomfortable, it cheats with a warm hearth, with softness and convenience, but puts moral boundaries, limits, guides and hardly tolerates the free creative impulse. It is a modest home with stagnant air, protected by the dangerous storms of life, cheerfully, welcoming and hospitable, a real home with the fireplaces of Enosh's satisfaction, but it is a prison for the one who feels like his homeland all over the world but the highest delight finds himself in the blessed, adventurous wandering in the vast expanse. And "citizen of the world" Stefan Zweig is committed to defining in his essay where Dickens' place is in the hierarchy of literary values. According to him, his work is only remarkable, but not spectacular, for what his genius predetermined him. And the reason is not in England, it's not in his blood, but in the character of time that Dickens can not change. He is a loyal citizen of a Queen, of the mild, businesslike and insignificant Queen Victoria; he is a citizen of a chaste, cozy, well-being state lacking in scope and passion. His impulse was discouraged by the dawn of an era that was sieve and only wanted to survive. As Shakespeare is the courage of thirsty Elizabethan England, so Dickens is the caution of the Victorian England siege. In order to appeal to that time, the art was supposed to be lightly digestible, not to worry, to shake with violent emotions, but only tenderly to caress, to be sentimental, but not tragically. Dickens is godly and timid; everything existent brings to him a benevolent astonishment, a constant, childish joyous admiration. He is happy and does not want much of life: so are his characters.
A Balazak hero is greedy and power-loving, he burns out of an ambitious thirst for power. Dostoevsky's characters are fierce and unrestrained, their will rejects the world and, with delightful greed, extends their hands from the weekday to the real life; they do not want to be spies and mere mortals. In each of them, with all his oppression, he sparked the dangerous proud pride of becoming a messiah. Balzac's hero strives to conquer the world, Dostoevsky's hero - to rise above him. Both the one and the other are tensely seeking to get out of the everyday life, to achieve infinity. And all Dickens heroes are modest. What do they want? One hundred pounds a year, a dear wife, a dozen children, a good table for good friends, a London home overlooking a green lawn, a small garden, a modest handful of happiness. Stefan Zweig completed his essay on Dickens, recalling the extraordinary impact of his books. He points out that some artists create power, others - peace. Charles Dickens has sang one of the moments of lull in the world. Today, life has become more noisy, machines are shaking, time flies faster. But idyll is immortal because it means joy; it returns again, like the blue sky after the storm - the eternal clarification of life after the psychic crises and tremors. That's why Dickens will not go out of their minds every time their people need joy, when they are transformed by the tragic tension of passion, they will want to experience the mysterious music of the poetic, emanating from the quiet ordinary life.