There Goes The Fear Again (Let It Go...)

A hearty welcome to everyone joining me from Judith's Literary Blog Hop for this special giveaway post - please visit her page for a list of all the participants :)  As German Literature Month is just around the corner, I thought I'd use today's review to promote Caroline and Lizzy's wonderful event and highlight an excellent writer too.  Last year, I read Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle (Chess) for the first German Lit Month, and it was one of my favourite books for the year, prompting me to rush out (metaphorically...) and order Angst (Fear) - only to leave it on my shelves for the best part of a year...

I'm making up for that oversight now, and after my review, I'll be giving you the chance to get a copy for yourself.  Oh, and don't worry if your German's not quite up to scratch; those lovely people at Pushkin Press, obsessed as they are by Herr Zweig, have a lovely English-language version of Fear, and I'll be giving away one of those too :)

*****
Angst, like Schachnovelle, is a wonderful, psychological tale.  It's a relatively short work, but right from the first words, Zweig plunges us into the world of his hapless heroine:

"Als Frau Irene Wagner die Treppe von der Wohnung ihres Geliebten hinabstieg, packte sie mit einem Male wieder jene sinnlose Angst." p.9 (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2011)

"As Irene Wagner walked down the stairs from her lover's apartment, she was once again gripped by that pointless fear." ***

Irene Wagner is a wealthy married woman who has taken a lover to get out of the rut of her boring bourgeois existence, driven to the affair by the eventlessness of her life.  The thrill she initially experiences becomes the 'Angst', the 'fear', of the title, and her relationship becomes a series of brief moments of excitement and happiness, surrounded by long periods of crippling anxiety.

We enter Irene's life at a crucial point, as her world begins to crumble once she reaches the bottom of those stairs.  As she attempts to leave the building, a woman stops her, claiming to be a girlfriend that Irene's lover has cast off in favour of his new conquest.  Panicked and confused, Irene (hidden behind a veil) thrusts some money into the woman's hands and flees, hoping never to see her again.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that.  The woman somehow finds Irene's house and threatens to tell the wealthier woman's husband about what has been going on.  Irene's initial plan of brazening it out crumbles immediately under the strength of her rival's onslaught, and she agrees to keep paying her blackmailer.  As the sums begin to get higher and higher, Irene doubts that she can continue to pay for much longer without her husband becoming suspicious.  And indeed, Herr Wagner is suddenly very concerned about his wife's strange behaviour...

Angst is another brilliant book, one I can recommend to anyone.  The theme of the novella is fear itself and the incapacitating effect it can have on the human mind and body.  Having been attracted into an affair by her humdrum everyday life and the perceived glamour of such a relationship, Irene is actually ill-suited to such an existence.  As Zweig says:

"...wie die meisten Frauen, wollte sie den Künstler sehr romantisch von der Ferne und sehr gesittet im persönlichen Umgang, ein funkelndes Raubtier, aber hinter den Eisenstäben der Sitte." p.25

"...like most women, she wanted the artist to be romantic from a distance and very civilised up close, a sparkling predator, but behind the iron bars of manners." ***

Irene feels trapped by her unchanging, tedious, bourgeois existence, but she soon comes to realise that this is the way she is meant to live her life (in fact, after the initial excitement of the affair, it becomes just another part of her weekly routine, slotted in between her visits to friends and in-laws...).  Once the affair is discovered though, this all changes, and she begins to suffer the consequences of her betrayal.  Zweig repeatedly shows us the physical effects of the psychological strain - cold chills, electric shocks of emotion, a racing pulse, fatigue...  But what is she actually afraid of?

Her mental torture has little to do with the outside world - Irene is her own torturer, subconsciously punishing herself for her indiscretions (well, this is Vienna, after all...).  The writer constantly repeats the words 'Angst' and 'unterirdisch' ('subterranean' or 'underground'), emphasising the psychological nature of her struggle, a struggle against herself.  Even in her dreams, she can find no respite from her emotions:

"Wie zwischen Kerkerwänden, müßig und erregt, ging sie auf und nieder in ihren Zimmern; die Straße, die Welt, die ihr wirkliches Leben waren, waren ihr gesperrt, wie der Engel mit feurigem Schwert stand dort die Erpresserin mit ihrer Drohung." p.42

"As if between prison walls, idle and excited, she walked up and down in her rooms; the street, the world, which were her real life, were barred to her - like the angel with the flaming sword, her blackmailer stood there with her threat."***

Her fear prevents her from confessing the affair to her husband, but as the story progresses, we begin to wonder if that is the whole truth.  Why is she doing this to herself?  What exactly is it that Irene is so afraid of?  The answers, to these and other questions, may well surprise you.  As well as being a wonderful psychological story, Angst has a great ending :)

*** All English translations in the text have been messed up by yours truly :)

*****
So, on to the giveaway!  I will be giving away two copies of the book reviewed above, one in the original German and one in the 2010 Pushkin Press English-language version.  If you want to enter, simply:

  - comment on this post, stating whether you want the English or German version
  - write the word 'please' somewhere in your comment; manners are important :)

  - a contact e-mail would be nice, but I will endeavour to track down the winner!
  - commenting on my review is welcome but not obligatory ;)

This competition is open to all, but please note that I will be using The Book Depository to send this prize, so it is limited to people living in countries where The Book Depository has free delivery.  Entries will close at midnight (Melbourne time) on Wednesday, the 31st of October, 2012, and I'll be announcing the winner shortly after.  Good luck to all, and may your dreams be free of fear...

More Than a Game

One thing which has rapidly risen to the top of my things-to-do list in recent weeks is familiarising myself with the basics of psychoanalysis.  Why?  Because it is becoming increasingly clear that the key to understanding Austrian literature is having a passing knowledge of the theories of a certain Sigmund Freud.  Arthur Schnitzler, a contemporary of the good doctor, is certainly fascinated by his characters' thought processes, and Alois Hotschnig's short-story collection, Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht, could also be seen in this light.  It was no surprise then to find that my third Austrian writer of the month was himself no stranger to egos, super-egos and ids ;)

*****

Stefan Zweig is a writer that I had never heard of at the start of this year.  However, his books seem to have been everywhere recently (among the blogs I frequent anyway), and I have been very keen to sample his work for a while now.  Luckily, I won a copy of Schachnovelle (Chess) recently, allowing me to have a little taste of Zweig's style.  It's a style that I could become extremely fond of...

On a passenger ship travelling from New York to Buenos Aires, an Austrian, the novel's narrator, becomes fascinated by a fellow passenger, the current world chess champion.  Determined to make his acquaintance, our friend lures him into playing a game against some of the passengers.  Of course, Czentovic, a Hungarian prodigy, casually defeats the group in the first game, but in the second game, some assistance from a casual passer-by helps the group to obtain a draw.  And it's here that the game really begins...

Alas, I simply don't have the time, energy or willpower to give this book the treatment it deserves.  Schachnovelle is simply brilliant.  In its contrast of the two chess geniuses, the dogmatic, automaton-like Czentovic, and the self-taught, half-crazed Dr. B, Zweig not only symbolises the eternal clash of art and science, but also lays bare the events of Hitler's annexation (Anschluß) of Austria - I kid you not.

The middle part of the book is a story within a story, in which Dr. B, who hasn't actually picked up a chess piece for twenty years, explains how he developed his incredible chess ability.  It's closely connected with Austria's subsumption into the Third Reich, and as a study of the horrors of nothingness, it is without parallel.  Let's just say that it is possible to be bored out of your mind...

So when the good Doctor, a man who struggles to connect the wooden pieces in front of him to the abstract notions in his head, sits across the board from the self-taught idiot savant, unique among chess Grand-masters in being unable to play a game without actually seeing the board, it is more than just a friendly game to pass the time - ideologies and psychologies come face to face (and don't much like what they see).

As the game progresses, it becomes clear that Dr. B is more than a match for the world champion when it comes to pure chess ability.  But is that all you need to make it to the top?  Or is animal cunning, a thick hide and a lot of patience actually more important in the long run?  Who will come out on top?  I won't tell you that, but the big match is certainly an absorbing contest to watch.

And that's not all Schachnovelle has to offer.  I could easily have written more about the narrator himself, obsessed with getting into Czentovic's mind; or about McConnor, the aggressive Scots millionaire, a man who can't take no for an answer (and definitely doesn't like losing).  In fact, while it may seem that our two protagonists are addicted to chess, they are not the only ones with a bit of a problem...

I read this twice, about ten days apart.  Both times I intended to spread my reading out over two nights; both times I rushed through it in a single evening.  While I would love to go into a deep, psychological analysis of the book, in truth that really is as much about Schachnovelle as you need to know...