FRAGMENTED IDENTITIES / FRAGMENTED NOVELOne has to approach this novella with trepidation. Zweig did not publish it. The first and posthumous edition is from 1982, after a considerable reworking of Zweig’s drafts by Knut Beck. Zweig took his own life in a planned manner in February 1942, but before doing so he had sent to his publisher two manuscripts which he had just finished: his memoirs or Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers and Schachnovelle. To leave this earlier work unfinished was his decision.The German edition has a most interesting Afterword by Beck, the paramount editor, in which he explains the history of the composition. Beck quotes from a letter by Zweig from 1931 in which he confides that he is stuck in the middle of the novel and that he felt as in front of a ditch (ein tiefer Graben). He probably stopped there and years later, when he was already living in London, took it up again. This was going to be his first novel.We don’t even have his title for the work. It has been published in German under Der Rausch der Verwandlung (The Intoxication of Transformation), and this title has been kept literal in the translations into French and Spanish. It originates in a couple of fragments from the book and Beck picked it. For the English edition, or The Post Office Girl, my understanding is that the very different title was borrowed from a tag used by Donald Prater European Of Yesterday: A Biography Of Stefan Zweig in his biography from the 1970s (mentioned by Beck as Postfräuleingeschichte). I have to say that I don’t like this English title. It is too prosaic and there is an enchanting amount of lyricism in this novel. But the German title does not entirely suit it either, or may be it suits half of the work. But that is just it: this title suits the part that Zweig wrote before he felt to be in front of a hole.Because the novel itself, in its current form, is somewhat fragmented, as was its conception. And this I clearly felt while I was reading it. Disconcerted, I posted an update stating that I did not know where Zweig was going.In the first part, and the English edition has indeed adroitly created two separate parts, Zweig presents in his very characteristic way what has been called an existential version of the Cinderella story. But Zweig is our literary cardiologist. He is the author who with his pen can listen to a heart pulsating and give us, flowingly, the life that emanates from that inner pump. Using expansive imagery in which he equates the landscape in the Alps with the inner workings of a young woman’s heart he brings forth issues of identity – and fragmentation. Because in taking her pulse he has detected more than one heart.And so Zweig shows us that traveling can exert its transforming power. It can tear away from the individual the protecting shell of conventionality. The metamorphosis thus began and Christine Hoflehner becomes the much happier Christiane van Boolen. And questions are raised. What constitutes one’s identity? How come a different self can be conjured up by a change of setting and a change of clothes? Is materiality so determinant for the soul then? Do we have more than one “I” if one starts accumulating, deep in one’s consciousness, different experiences from those lived in the past? How many "selves" do we have?Zweig dwelt on this idea, and on his memories from his earlier time in Engadin, when he first worked on this novel. When he returned to the work, his own life and his own circumstances had changed. He was living in exile and in distraught awareness of the dreadful political situations with as yet unforeseen consequences that were developing in his and other countries. He was also going through the divorce from his first wife and the marriage to his young secretary.Zweig himself was grappling with his newly transforming identity as he undertook the continuation of his story and the search for the soul of Christine. In a different tone he proceeded to project a greater emphasis on the limitations that prevent full control of one’s life and destiny. With this new focal point social and political circumstances, and money, take on an unexpected role. Money, the magic substance that can become the mirror of one’s desires, becomes the helm that could allow a person to steer towards the desired self.Zweig however felt that he had not succeeded in this literary attempt and left the drafts on loose sheets. And Beck’s archivist work could only leave us a novella that did not quite become a novel. Its modernist tint and ending may not be intentional. With interest I learn, also from Beck, that in the early 1940s Zweig took his manuscript up again, but this time to adapt it to a film. He worked very closely with Berthold Viertel on the new script. It was filmed, also posthumously, in 1950 as Das Verstohlene Jahr. The basic story had been transformed to include an additional episode (the sabbatical year of a Composer) not present in the book as Beck has graciously delivered it to us.Now I am on the search for that film.
When will it be me? When will it be my turn? What have I been dreaming about during these long empty mornings if not about being free someday from this meaningless grind, this deadly race against time? Relaxing for once, having some unbroken time to myself, not always in shreds, in shards so tiny you could cut your finger on them.Life can sometimes seem to be arrested in a state of perpetual halt; the waiting for your chance that never ever comes. Not a moment of respite, not a moment without worry. Not a moment that isn’t barely scraped from the blatant drudgery of routine. No rest, no sleep that doesn’t fear waking up. Christine’s life has no joy, no enthusiasm, no happiness. The days are of boredom and monotony, packed up into the office-routine, like used giveaway clothes in a cardboard box. It is the feeling of not having a personal moment of living dedicated just to oneself, to solely being happy. And of being caged forever in this drabness, like being stuck in a compartment with rapidly depleting air. A joyless living, a resignation, still with something sleeping inside that could be scratched back to consciousness. Meat too expensive, butter too expensive, a pair of shoes, too expensive: Christine hardly dares to breathe for fear it might be too expensive.War has ruined childhoods, it has destroyed families, it has afflicted people with a nightmarish living. War has killed desire, it has bred ennui and apathy, and worst of all it has bred unrelenting poverty. Zweig frequently describes the characters in this book in terms of their stark possessions. A tattered coat, its threadbare elbows, a cheap dirty shirt, a flat straw suitcase, a ragged umbrella, and one could conjure up a person altogether, could tell their whole stories. Christine’s mother’s life could be recounted with the meager possessions she left behind. Such images graze upon the mind; the bareness of existence, its insufficiency. How could she ever wear such splendid and fragile treasures without constantly worrying? How do you walk, how do you move in such mist of color and light? Don’t you have to learn how to wear clothes like these?It is interesting to mark the Cinderella-like transformations in Christine. Pretty clothes, new shoes; they highlight her sketchy outline and fill it with colors of visibility. It is as if she is a tangible person for the first time. Then lifeless and now intoxicated with life, with a new feeling of joy blazing inside. This rare swoon of lying back and being ministered to, this strange voluptuous feeling you haven’t experienced in years, in decades. The sensuality of this new feeling has been depicted as vividly as taking the first bite of a ripe fruit, as gulping in the freshness of morning air, and running down the path of one’s own self-discovery. It is the joy of being noticed, appreciated, desired. For the first time. The awareness of one’s own youth, attractiveness, desirability and desires. That such a phase is so short-lived, yet extremely potent in its possibilities makes Christine’s downfall extremely painful. The anti-climax seems like a sudden and rude cessation. But how can I hide, how can I disappear quickly before anyone sees me and takes offense.There is always the fear of betraying her poverty, her middle-class bearing to the contemptuous gaze of the rich. With such poverty, how hard it is not to be unsure of oneself. For Zweig’s protagonists, poverty is a great assault to pride because it perpetually denies them their rightful places in the world. It burrows deep holes in their withered lives making them dysfunctional individuals, impervious to genuine love, incapable to love fully. It is amazing how Zweig portrays these fully rounded characters with their continued apathy, their shrunken capacity to love, their lessened ability to live. There is a lack of stability, of dignity, of a personal space. It is an existence that is fractured, sullied and threatened. It keeps running around the same unbreakable circle of regularity and powerlessness. There are some who are hyper aware, some who are doused in sinuous complacence. Some have devised their own strategies of living their reduced lives, some refuse not to see what has been obfuscated, not to want what has been denied. They can’t be placidly engulfed in an existence that is scanty, at most a concession. How terrible it is to have to live here, and why, who’s it for? Why breathe this in day after day, knowing that there’s another world out there somewhere, the real one, and in herself another person, who is suffocating, being poisoned, in this miasma. Her nerves are jangling. She throws herself down onto the bed fully clothed, biting down hard on the pillow to keep from screaming with helpless hatred. Because suddenly she hates everyone and everything, herself and everyone else, wealth and poverty, everything about this hard, unendurable, incomprehensible life.
What do You think about The Post-Office Girl (2008)?
The Post Office Girl was published posthumously. After Stefan Zweig's death, the manuscript was found. It was not intentionally left for publication.Much of the novel depicts the strife, poverty and burdens to survive in a bleak world. The second half of it clearly demonstrates the debilitation of lifestyle that individuals went through. Those on the fringe were left with less than the threads they originally had.Stefan Zweig certainly was masterful in his depictions, emotional ones, as well as visual. I found the story to be compelling regarding social stigmas, and how it affects the mindsets of those individuals who are deemed as being less than desirable.I tend to think that the story line is more relevant to his own life, his train of thought, and his perception of society in a state of flux. The ever-changing world was a predominate issue for him, and one he had difficulty coping with.
—Lorri
Author examined the 1920s Austrian conditions and mentality. The characters, Christine and Ferdinand, are at an impasse in their youthful lives. Both (twenty-eight to thirty years old) remember better, hopeful times of earned prosperity and landed security, but that was innocently lost through a force external to them (WWI and its conditions afterward) through no fault of their own and is without recourse to reclaim it. While Christine has meager but steady employment in a village post office through a connected relative and can expect a pension, Ferdinand is an uncompensated, disabled veteran, while the country's bureaucracy checks identifications and seems to perpetuate itself rather than to be a proper "custodian". The scenes range between shabbiness, opulence, and squalor, between poverty, wealth, and homelessness. Ferdinand thinks rationally, planning step-by-step what he intends to do; Christine takes pride in never being a burden but errs in regarding Ferdinand as superior. Ferdinand sets out a seemingly justified, analyzed plan to give them some freedom. The best of the book is the description of interwar life in Austria and the creation out of those times of desperate characters for whom having prestige and money is the way to at least short-lived happiness, esteem, and love. Is Ferdinand an oxymoron, a morally justified knave?
—Asma Fedosia
A bit from a blog post I just did about this one:I really enjoyed this bittersweet novella of Zweig's. I'd long heard of him but this was my first plunge into his work. It's a bit of an anti-Cinderella story, I suppose, where the princess does get to go to the ball, but the prince doesn't bother to come find her later. Christine is working in a remote Austrian village in between the two Great Wars. Her mother is an invalid, they are poor and Christine works at the post office, without much hope of change. Out of the blue a wealthy aunt extends her an invitation to join her in a luxury hotel, and Christine begins to live, breathe and dream again. We've had a great discussion over on the New York Review of Books discussion forum here at GoodReads , which is an open group--feel free to join us--we're on to Berlin Stories by Robert Walser. There is a lot to say about this book, but as someone pointed out to me early on, Zweig was exquisite at rendering subtle psychological states. I was particularly struck by this one, because it shows the mind still remembering its cage:In this new world even sleep is different: blacker, denser, more drugged, you're completely submerged in yourself. As she awakens Christine hauls her drowned senses out of these new depths, slowly, laboriously, bit by bit, as though from a bottomless well. First she has an uncertain sense of the time. Through her eyelids she sees brightness; the room must be light, it must be day. It's a vague, muffled feeling, followed by an anxious thought (even while she's still asleep): Dont' forget about work! Don't be late! The train of thought she's known for the last ten years begins automatically: The alarm clock will ring now... Don't go back to sleep... Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility... Get up now, work starts at eight, and before that I'll have to get the heat started, make coffee, get the milk, the rolls, tidy up, change mother's bandages, prepare for lunch, and what else? There's something else I have to do today...Right, pay the grocer lady, she reminded me yesterday...No, don't doze off, stay alert, get up when the alarm goes off... But what's the problem today...What's keeping it...Is the alarm clock broken, did I forget to wind it...where's the alarm, it's light in the room...Goodness, maybe I overslept and it's already seven or eight or nine and people are cursing at the wicket the way they did that time when I wasn't feeling well, right away they wanted to complain to the head office...And so many employees are being let go these days... Dear God, I can't be late, I can't oversleep...The long-buried fear of being late is like a mole tunneling under the black soil of sleep. Abruptly the last of it falls away.
—Seana
