Confusion
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Review
Confusion is one of his finest and most exemplary works ... a marvellously poised account of misunderstood motives, thwarted love, and sublimated desires ... a perfect reminder of, or introduction to, Zweig's economy and subtlety as a writer. --ROBERT MACFARLANE Times Literary Supplement
Passion and dedication ... Outside the works of Plato, I don't think I have ever read a better or more honest account of what ill always remain at the heart of teaching. --GABRIEL JOSIPOVICI The Jewish Chronicle
Passion and dedication ... Outside the works of Plato, I don't think I have ever read a better or more honest account of what ill always remain at the heart of teaching. --GABRIEL JOSIPOVICI The Jewish Chronicle
Product Description
In the autumn of his days, a privy councillor contemplates his past, looking back at the key moments in his life. He remembers sharing a lodging with a professor and his wife and a close friendship is formed. The professor, however harbours a dark secret which changes both men forever.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Perfect Paperback
The first time I heard of Stefan Zweig was when one of the reviewers on Radio 4's Saturday Review programme chose the novella "The Invisible Collection" as a guest choice. The discussion was so compelling that I ordered the book straight away and was not disappointed. In fact I was even more impressed by the other short story in that book, Buchmendel, that I immediately went and bought every work by Zweig that I could lay my hands on. So far every one of Zweig's stories I have found deeply satisfying but "Confusion" is by far the most moving. It is not so much the story or the plot that affects the readers most but the way Zweig is able to absorb you into the feelings of his characters by the many layers of his tales that often leaves you emotionally drained. He almost always uses the story-within-a-story structure, but to good effect. In "Confusion" the reminiscence of a middle-aged Privy Councillor of an incident in his youth which leaves in him a lasting effect is recounted with so much intimacy and psychological profundity that you feel as though you have been through the same experience as the protagonist.
Thanks to Pushkin Books we can now enjoy the works of a hitherto much neglected writer, in delightfully bound booklets with good quality paper and tastefully designed covers. Some of the book covers are a bit fragile though.
Thanks to Pushkin Books we can now enjoy the works of a hitherto much neglected writer, in delightfully bound booklets with good quality paper and tastefully designed covers. Some of the book covers are a bit fragile though.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Perfect Paperback
The first book I read by this author and I loved it. Beautifully written and a page turner. I bought all of Stefan Zweig's books which are available and I'm enjoying each one of them just as much
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
The complex relationship between student and teacher
18 Mar 2003
Format:Perfect Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A friend who teaches European lit asked me if I didn't think Stefan Zweig was "sentimental." But in the case of "Confusion," all the high emotion fits the story of a rather obsessive-compulsive young man, who is rather disinterested in learning until he meets the right teacher. Framed by the perspective of this same young man as a 60-year-old professor, the tale is even more poignant. This tale of an over-eager student, who can't see that he's behaving like a spurned lover when his teacher criticizes him, is a searing psychological study. Considering that Zweig gave the eulogy at Freud's funeral, who better to explore such things? I've never read a work by Zweig I didn't find richly textured, beautifully written, and deeply felt. If that's "sentimental," then I plead guilty!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Rediscover the long-neglected Zweig
23 Sep 2004
Format:Perfect Paperback
It's nearly impossible to review "Confusion" without giving away the "hideous secret" on which the plot turns, so I'll limit myself to saying that, by today's standards (outside conservative America, at least), the scenario Zweig offers here verges on implausible. Today, the Professor's "vice" would be well known, of little consequence, and hardly likely to generate much confusion - least of all in Roland, an intelligent and highly-sexed nineteen year-old. Zweig's popularity declined soon after his death in 1942 and his sentimental humanism, based on the values of late nineteenth-century Viennese liberalism, has made him an easy target for some. Yet his vivid, psychoanalytically-oriented biographies, novellas and stories are still incredibly engaging. Something like the fictional equivalent of Freud's collected works, they usually deal with the psychological representation of repressed personalities suffering major crises under the weight of nineteenth-century values, and in that sense they are wonderfully evocative of the time. For twenty-first century readers, I suppose, it's that shift in values that is now part of the point of reading Zweig, and a large part of the pleasure. But not only that: his focus is always the emotions - agonizing frustrations, secret fears, explosive joys - with insightful analysis of all of them; and his characters are closely observed - entire plots can turn on one look, one word, one obsessively worried-over instant. It's a rich and rewarding oeuvre, not least because of Zweig's finely cadenced voice (translated here with considerable skill by Anthea Bell). "Confusion" is also worth reading for the Professor's unusual theory of Elizabethan drama, its historical motivations, and its arguable place at the pinnacle of English theatre. It's also interesting because it confirms something we all know from experience: that the events which determine the course of our lives are not always the ones others might think.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Zweig should be rediscovered
30 Aug 2003
Format:Perfect Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I knew of Zweig as Richard Strauss' librettist. Wanting to see what his work was like when he stood on his own I discovered his novella, "Confusion". Elegantly and tautly written it is the story of a respected professor reflecting back upon his life and about the man who had the greatest impact on his life. This man is his English professor. As a young student, our narrator is drawn to this brooding man and his mysterious wife. He is drawn into the web of their lives and the terrible secret that is hidden there.
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