The Last Days (15 page)
Authors: Laurent Seksik
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Psychological, #Biographical
p.
50
“So I ask my memories to speak and choose for me, and give at least some faint reflection of my life before it sinks into the dark.”
From Stefan Zweig,
The World of Yesterday
, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Pushkin Press, 2009), p. 22.
p.
102
“He may not sleep who watches over the people. The Lord hath appointed me to watch and to give warning.”
From Stefan Zweig,
Jeremiah: A Drama in Nine Scenes
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, NY: Thomas Seltzer, 1922), p. 216.
p.
102
“Wanderers, sufferers, our drink must be drawn from distant waters, evil their taste, bitter in the mouth, the nations will drive us from home after home, we will wander down suffering’s endless roads, eternally vanquished, thralls at the hearths where in passing we rest.”
From Stefan Zweig,
Jeremiah: A Drama in Nine Scenes
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, NY: Thomas Seltzer, 1922), pp. 331–35.
p.
120
“And their fear of death turns to hopeless resignation.”
From Stefan Zweig, “In the Snow”,
Wondrak and Other Stories,
trans. Anthea Bell (London: Pushkin Press, 2009), p. 25.
p.
120
“Josua holds his fiancée with cold hands. She is dead already, although he does not know it.”
From Stefan Zweig, “In the Snow”,
Wondrak and Other Stories,
trans. Anthea Bell (London: Pushkin Press, 2009), p. 24.
p.
124
“My heart is so sore, that I might almost say the daylight hurts my nose whenever I stick it out of the window.”
From Stefan Zweig,
The Struggle with the Daemon
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 222.
p.
128
“…left Marie von Kleist, who was also dear to him, in loneliness and neglect; and dragged Henriette Vogel down with him to death… he retired more and more into himself, growing more solitary even than nature had created him.”
From Stefan Zweig,
The Struggle with the Daemon
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), pp. 162–63.
p.
128
“Like every other of his hyperbolical affects, Kleist’s passion for a fellowship on which a joint suicide could alone put the seal remained a mystery to his friends. Vainly did he seek a companion into the Valley of the Shadow. One and all they contemptuously or shudderingly rejected the proposal.”
From Stefan Zweig,
The Struggle with the Daemon
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 225.
p.
128
“He encountered a woman, hitherto almost a stranger, who thanked him for his strange invitation. She was an invalid, whose death could not in any case be long delayed, for her body was inwardly devoured by cancer even as Kleist’s mind was devoured by weariness of life. Though herself incapable of forming a vigorous resolution, she was sensitive and highly suggestible, and therefore open to the promptings of his morbid enthusiasm; she agreed to plunge with him into the unknown.”
From Stefan Zweig,
The Struggle with the Daemon
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 225.
p.
129
“At bottom this somewhat priggish and sentimental wife of a tax-collector was of a type uncongenial to Kleist… She who would have been too petty, too soft, too weak for him as a living companion, was welcomed by him as a comrade in death.”
From Stefan Zweig,
The Struggle with the Daemon
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 226.
p.
129
“Although another woman swore to be his companion in death, his thoughts turned to her for whom he had lived and whom he loved, to Marie von Kleist.”
From Stefan Zweig,
The Struggle with the Daemon
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 230.
p.
129
“In the high spirits of honeymooners, the couple drive to the Wannsee. The host at the inn hears them laughing, sees them sporting merrily in the fields, can tell how they drank their coffee with gusto in the open air. Then, at the prearranged hour, came the two pistol shots, in swift succession, the first that with which Kleist pierced his companion’s heart, the second that with which (barrel in mouth) he blew out his own brains. His hand did not falter. It was true that he knew better how to die than to live.”
From Stefan Zweig,
The Struggle with the Daemon
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 232.
p.
130
“You beam through the blindfold covering my eyes
At me with the radiance of a thousand suns.
Wings have put forth on both my shoulders,
My spirit lifts through the ether’s silent spaces.”
From Heinrich von Kleist,
Selected Writings of Heinrich von Kleist
, trans. David Constantine (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 2004), p. 204.
L
AURENT
S
EKSIK
trained as a doctor, was a radiologist in a Paris hospital and continues to practise medicine alongside his work as a writer. Before
The Last Days
(2010) he published
Les Mauvaises Pensées
(1999, translated into ten languages),
La Folle Histoire
(2004, awarded the Littré Prize) and several other books, including a biography of Albert Einstein.
The Last Days
was a bestseller in France and has been translated into ten languages. The novel has been adapted for the stage into a very successful play, and a film version is currently in production. Seksik lives and works in Paris.
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The Last Days
first published in French as
Les derniers jours de Stefan Zweig
in 2010
Original text © Flammarion, Paris, 2010
English translation © André Naffis-Sahely, 2013
“A Man of Sixty Gives Thanks” translated from the original poem in German, “Der Sechzigjährige dankt”, by Anthea Bell
Published by Pushkin Press in 2013
This ebook edition published in 2013
ISBN 978 1 782270 65 2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
This book is supported by the Institut français Royaume-Uni as part of the Burgess programme (
www.frenchbooknews.com
)
www.pushkinpress.com
