Confusion, by Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig’s 1927 novella, Confusion, presents an exemplary instance of the author’s skill at creating inner narratives of personal turmoil and anxiety. Psychology is mixed with a superbly built up suspense story of slowly revealed secrets, the end result being a high quality literature that is a joy to read.

Anyone familiar with the writings of Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) will know how drenched they are in guilt and remorse. It’s no wonder that he was a friend of Sigmund Freud, as his fiction presents an obsessive stream-of-consciousness style. Zweig’s genius is to brilliantly recreate the sort of fevered and panicked imaginings that overcome us in the middle of the night, where we guiltily review our behaviour and the emotional minutiae of our relationships. If Zweig resembles anyone, it is probably Franz Kafka, with his claustrophobic, nightmarish visions. Zweig’s nightmares happen, by contrast, in bright daylight and often in front of unsympathetic strangers. All of Zweig’s major characters suffer crippling insecurity and chronic anxiety, and by today’s definition would be considered prime candidates for psychological counselling. If there’s a visual representation to be found of Zweig’s fiction, the closest approximation could be found in the work of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944), most especially his famous painting The Scream (1983).

Zweig himself was born into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family, and studied at the Universities of Berlin and Vienna. It is tempting to speculate that his university experiences formed some part of his 1927 novella, Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D. The plot revolves around the privy councillor R. von D. (he is called Roland throughout the novella) and his retelling of some dramatic events from his student days that would have a devastating impact on his life. At a small German university he meets a Shakespearean scholar whose literary theories and erudition deeply impresses Roland, causing the young and impressionable student to almost hero worship the professor. The relationship becomes more complex when Roland moves into the same boarding house as the professor and his wife, who seems an odd marital choice for the professor as she is boyish and athletic. Question marks start hovering in Roland’s mind as to the nature of the professor’s marriage. Roland’s own relationship with the professor also becomes increasingly confusing, as his behaviour veers between intimacy and an icy coolness.

A further mystery is added when it is discovered how enervated the professor’s intellectual powers have become. An unwritten but long contemplated masterwork, a history of the Globe Theatre, to be the epitome of the professor’s thought and his literary legacy, cannot be completed due to his flagging energy and will. It’s almost as though a disease and rot has set in the professor’s body and soul, making the writing of this ambitious project an impossibility. What on earth can be wrong with the professor?

Roland cannot stand that this great mind should not fulfill its literary destiny, and urges the professor to dictate his history of the Globe Theatre to him. This makes for an almost intellectual marriage between the two.

Zweig’s novels and stories always make for compulsive reading; the prose has an almost propulsive power, driving the reader on right up to the last page. Zweig’s method is to set up a detective story of the soul: there is always some secret or shameful history that the main character hides, then in a slow revelation layer by layer the mystery is solved and the main character sits emotionally naked and exposed for all to see. By doing this, Zweig more often than not bravely exposes his own weaknesses, personal failings and shame. There’s a powerful sense of autobiography, of the author having lived through what he describes, behind the fiction.

In Confusion, this revealing of the truth builds up a gripping suspense. By the very last pages of the story, the professor confesses his shameful secret, a confession which explains his odd, vacillating behaviour and the deterioration of his mental powers. Roland finds himself shaken and deeply moved, and by a strange process takes on some of the professor’s shame, but continues to extoll his greatness and claims that the now abruptly terminated relationship with the professor was the most influential of his life.

Confusion is an intimate story, told in a quick paced style, propelled by the tight, clockwork springs of a suspense thriller. Zweig delves into memory and personal experience, re-imagining them through his unerring aesthetic sensibility to create a literature that is a satisfying pleasure and a cause for personal reflection and self-examination.

Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D, by Stefan Zweig. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell. Published by Pushkin Press. ISBN: 978 1 901285 22 2