The story here is simple enough: a… what shall we call him? a lothario? a rake? a Casanova? a sexual predator?… anyway you get the idea, this charmer, referred to in the text only as the Baron, has taken a week off work “without feeling any real need for one, mainly because all his colleagues were away for the spring break, and he didn’t feel like making the office a present of his week off.” He heads off to a hotel where he’s disappointed to find he knows none of the other guests. This is a concern:He felt no inclination to be alone and avoided it as far as possible; he didn’t really want to become any better acquainted with himself. He knew that, if he was to show his talents to best advantage, he needed to strike sparks off other people to fan the flames of warmth and exuberance in his heart. On his own he was frosty, no use to himself at all, like a match left lying in its box. In particular there are no women. A woman would be a distraction. And from all accounts he’s not especially fussy:He was the kind of young man whose handsome face has brought him plenty of success in the past and is now ever-ready for a new encounter, a fresh experience, always eager to set off into the unknown territory of a little adventure, never taken by surprise because he has worked out everything in advance and is waiting to see what happens, a man who will never overlook any erotic opportunity, whose first glance probes every woman’s sensuality and explores it, without discriminating between his friend’s wife and the parlour-maid who opens the door to him. Such men are described with a certain facile contempt as lady-killers, but the term has a nugget of truthful observation in it, for in fact all the passionate instincts of the chase are present in their ceaseless vigilance: the stalking of the prey, the excitement and mental cruelty of the kill. The young Baron may not care for introspection but our narrator has his number. And then the Baron notices her:The lady, on whom alone the young Baron’s attention was bent, was very soignée, dressed with obvious good taste, and what was more, she was a type he liked very much, one of those rather voluptuous Jewish women just before the age of over-maturity, and obviously passionate, but with enough experience to conceal her temperament behind a façade of elegant melancholy. The only obstacle is her twelve-year-old boy, Edgar. Surely a young, apparently-sickly, impressionable and inexperienced pubescent boy is not going to be an unsurmountable problem. Think again.What follows is an account showing how the Baron pursues Edgar’s mother, how his mother starts to buckle under pressure but, most importantly, how Edgar’s eyes get opened. It takes him a while to suss out that something is going on but this was a hundred years ago and twelve-year-old boys were still very much boys. Hell, men were getting married back then who knew nothing about sex. Although it’s patently obvious to us readers what’s going on the boy only comes to realise that they have a secret, an adult secret (he so detests still being treated as a child) and he desperately wants to know what it is:They’re not chattering away like yesterday, they’re not laughing either, they’re embarrassed, they’re hiding something. They have a secret of some kind, and they don’t want to share it with me. A secret, and I must find out what it is at any price. I know it must be the sort of thing that makes people send me out of the room, the sort of thing books are always going on about, and operas when men and women sing together with their arms spread wide, and hug and then push each other away. Somehow or other it must be the same as all that business about my French governess who behaved so badly with Papa, and then she was sent away. All those things are connected, I can feel that, it’s just that I don’t know how. Oh, I wish I knew the secret, I wish I understood it, I wish I had the key that opens all those doors, and I wasn’t a child any more with people hiding things from me and pretending. I keep wondering what age the kid would have to be nowadays for this to be believable. Ten? Maybe even eight. I really can’t remember how far back I’d have to go in my own childhood before I could say that sex was a mystery to me. Pretty young. This is Edgar’s book. We get to see what’s going on with the adults—and actually sympathise with them if you can believe that—but most of the time we spend with Edgar and I do remember being like him, trusting and believing and having my innocence stripped away from me. (That sound dramatic but I’m thinking about when I was five and realised it wasn’t Santa Claus but the school janitor—who looked like an old jakey—dressed up; that was the start and it was all downhill from there.)Of course it’d spoil things to say what Edgar finds out but it’s not the single, solitary secret he imagines at first. It’s more complex than that. He gets answers to questions he’d never even considered asking.Comparisons to The Go-Between are easy enough to make—Leo is happy to help Marian because she’s kind to him and he has a crush on her; Edgar is happy to run off on errands for the Baron because he hero-worships him—but everything is compressed here into a few days and, of course, neither adult is interested in Edgar as a means of communication—they manage to communicate quite effectively in that way that adults do without actually saying what’s on their minds (although to be fair at first the Baron does befriend Edgar as a means of getting to know the boy’s mother)—but after introductions have been made all they really want to do is be rid of him.Really the only problem anyone is likely to have with this tale is that it’s dated. It wouldn’t take much to make it work in a modern setting. The book was filmed in 1988 but I’ve not seen it. It gets mixed reviews and I can see why. There is really very little action to the story. Everything rests on what’s going on within the characters’ heads, especially the boy’s, and it would take an exceptional young actor to be able to do Edgar justice. Unless they have a voiceover but that would just be awful. Of course to pad the story out to make it a film of any length means spending more time on the budding relationship between the Baron and the boy’s mother and from what I’ve read of the reviews the screenwriter made some interesting choices there, stuff that’s not in the book, but that all detracts from Edgar.
“A obra de arte não se entrega ao primeiro olhar; como a mulher, quer ser primeiro cortejada, para depois ser amada”Stefan ZweigStefan Zweig nasceu em Viena em 1881, no mesmo ano de James Joyce, Virgínia Wolf e Pablo Picasso. Morreu em 1942, no exílio brasileiro, suicidando-se em Petrópolis.Nos livros que Stefan Zweig escreveu nos anos vinte há um tema comum: o segredo (cf. O Medo, Amok, Carta de uma desconhecida, Confusão de Sentimentos).Como título aparece uma só vez neste “Um segredo ardente” (tradução literal do alemão), onde o adjectivo ardente no plural ou singular aparece , pelas minhas contas, pelo menos, uma vintena de vezes.E que segredo ardente é este, afinal?Um triângulo perfeito num hotel de Semmering: Um barão narcisista, aborrecido por estar sozinho, anseia por uma aventura amorosa, ainda que passageira, com uma hóspede do mesmo hotel que “ possuía maneiras distintas e vestia elegantemente; era, de resto, o tipo de que ele mais apreciava, uma dessas judias um nadinha sensuais, já a entrar na casa dos quarenta, uma passional, sem dúvida, mas bastante esperta para dissimular o seu temperamento, atrás de uma melancolia cheia de distinção” e o seu filho Edgar, um rapaz de 12 anos, a única personagem referida pelo seu nome, que “Parecia encontrar-se naquele momento em que vai começar a luta entre a virilidade e a infância; tudo no seu rosto estava como que acumulado e informe…..Encontrava-se, além disso, na idade má dos rapazes, em que eles não se adaptam aos fatos….e em que a vaidade não os obriga ainda a prestar atenção ao exterior.”O barão, frustrado pela recusa inicial da mulher, trava amizade com o inseguro, inocente e desajeitado garoto a fim de o usar como intermediário.Aí, começa uma discórdia entre o barão e Edgar mas, com o decorrer dos dias, o jovem compreende que está a ser usado para algo que, embora ainda não consiga compreender exactamente o quê, já adivinha ser importante: o segredo ardente. Chegando a este ponto, entendemos estar perante uma história sobre a perda da inocência, um despertar da infância para o mundo adulto da luxúria, da paixão e do sexo. Edgar é o centro da história, inibindo a relação entre a mãe o barão, começando a fazer referências ao “papá” com ameaças veladas de o informar sobre esse segredo em chamas. O rapaz provoca nos dois adultos, muitas vezes de forma algo cómica, o receio da descoberta do segredo ardente.Com muita mestria Zweig estabelece um inspirado paralelo entre os sentimentos provocados pela passagem da infância para a idade adulta com os da juventude para a maturidade ou velhice. O final é magnífico, mas não vou desvendá-lo. O último parágrafo é sublime.Zweig é uma relíquia literária!
What do You think about Burning Secret (2008)?
This was a fun little read. The story in a nutshell - a Lothario Baron, vacationing at an Austrian hotel, intends to make a middle-aged women his next conquest. His initial ruse involves befriending her son Edgar (recuperating at the mountain resort after an illness) so as to worm his way into her affections. He succeeds in this, but the novella is mainly interested in the psychological effect on little Edgar, used as a romantic prop and then discarded. He's right on the edge of adolescence and eager to be treated as an adult. At first, he's convinced he's found a new friend. Then, after realizing he's in the way of the Baron's further goals, he's filled with anger and dismay at this betrayal and burns with curiosity over this unknown secret that's shared between his Mother and The Baron, some secret that, he intuits, involves the very essence of adulthood. If only he could crack the mystery...Zweig's language is clear and concise. Seemingly, he was much loved at his time but has kind of fallen between two stool in the history of literature - too clear and concise for the "literature must be obtuse and symbol laden" literati, too concerned with human psychology and emotions for the plot-driven mainstreamers. This really is an interesting exploration of events which usher a boy into beginning to change into an adult, the perceptual shifts and realizations that come with that (a late-in-the-book train ride of insight is particularly well done - Edgar's sudden understanding of the complexities of adult life - money, work, how wonderful such complexity is and yet how everyone is struggling after the same things). The ending is also well-done, strong without being too powerful, linking our own adult emotional lives to the actions of our parents. Solid.
—Shawn
I really should have written this review closer to the time I read this novella, when my reasons for my arguments were fresher in my mind. All I know is that this is the least favorite of the Zweig "entrees" on my list this year. It failed to satisfy. I note the early publication date---that is undoubtedly a factor. Zweig was writing in an early, pre-World War One world, in a style that would be thrown over after the war. This heavily mannered style is probably what bothered me the most and somehow forced a further distance between me and the characters. I found that I had sympathy for no one, found the twelve year old boy, the lynch-pin, over-wrought and ultimately unsympathetic. An example of my problem in a conversation between Edgar and his mother:"Edgar, what's the matter with you? You're not yourself at all. I can't make you out. You've always been such a good, clever boy, anyone could talk to you. And suddenly you act as if the devil had got into you. What do you have against the Baron? You seemed to like him very much, and he's been so kind to you." "Yes, because he wanted to get to know you." She felt uneasy. "Nonsense! What are you thinking of? How can you imagine any such thing?" But at that the child flared up. "He's a liar, he's only pretending. He does it out of mean, horrid calculation. He wanted to get to know you.... he wants something from you too, Mama, you can be sure he does. Otherwise he wouldn't be so friendly and polite. He's a bad man...." (loc 649)My experience of children does not have a 12 year old speaking this way to his mother. The child could certainly have grasped that something was wrong, but the essence of this speech just seems wrong.And so I must say that I found this novella the least satisfying of all of the stories and other works by Zweig that I have read so far. But I do intend to read further in his short stories and novellas after a break.
—Sue
This is the story of Gustav von Aschenbach. No, wait a minute. I’m confused. It is Hans Castorp whom we follow. OMG, what a mess I’m making. We don’t really know the name of the protagonist. We only know that he is a Baron, and The Baron he remains for the rest of the book, although we later learn, in passing, the name of his father, Count Grundheim. But the Baron is the Baron, a type. He is a member of the second or third level of the complex aristocratic structure as it existed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to WWI. The story then is about this Baron who travels by train to Davos, to visit a Sanatorium. No, no… Erase that. He travels further south than Davos. He goes to Trieste and from there takes the boat to Pola and then Venice where he goes on holidays to a nice hotel. I obviously do not know what I am writing. Our Austrian hero is indeed traveling by train but to a resort, and not to a Sanatorium, and he is not going abroad but remaining in his country. He is going to the elegant Semmering, in the Eastern part of modern Austria.Finally I got it straight.So, the Baron is bored, because he is not one of those individuals who knows how to be alone; he is therefore not a reader and could not have formed part of the GR population. As someone for whom his own interior is no company he decides to go hunting instead. By hunting I mean that he sets himself on the prey of a woman. And now I am getting again confused with Georges Duroy, our beautiful Bel Ami. But no, our Baron is not a social climber, he just wants female entertainment. So we can leave nineteenth century literature completely and its concern with social mobility.But what is it about Germanic fiction in the years prior to WWI that presents us with similar beginnings? Having read Death in Venice (1912) recently and being now in the midst of The Magic Mountain (conceived also in 1912), this novella from 1911 has thrown me into a confusing muddle.But suddenly there is a turn in the book and now I know well where I am. I am reading Brennendes Geheimnis or Burning Secret. There is a child here. There is the twist. This is Edgar and we now see the world through the eyes of this young teenager. I feel in new sound ground.And with this swing I am far away from Thomas Mann and his fixations with his abstract and dualistic ideas, and I can breathe. We are not presented with characters preoccupied with the abyss and destructive passions or deceiving rationalities that do not appease the tormented or explain the phenomenon of life. There is a different scent in the air.This is Stefan Zweig writing. There is a wider range and subtlety of shades. Through the child, and unfolding a gripping plot, which at times has the tantalizing tones of a thriller, Zweig explores the whole array of human emotions as they germinate in a budding individual. If hatred, and jealousy, and revenge, and betrayal, and bitterness, and rancor are all human reactions, Zweig also uncovers the forgiving, the tolerant, the brave, the benign, the thankful, and the warmhearted, as these qualities take the upper hand. It is the realization that life has many faces and that people need each other, no matter what, that make this courageous youth enter the mind of his new self with all his humane facets fully unveiled.This is a beautiful novella and I wish I could watch the film produced in 1988 with Klaus-Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway in the cast.
—Kalliope
