Book review about letter from
“Letter from an unknown woman” is written by Stefan Zweig,an Austrian famous author who was born in 1881 and died in 1942.Zweig is skilled in novel and biography and his field also involves poetry,drama,prose and translation.He is a talent and standing writer.Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna,the capital of the Austro-Hungary.He was born in a rich Jewish family,which provided his a wonderful circumstance to develop his literary ability freely.He published his first poetry when he was only seventeen years old,and he began his writing career from then on.His feature is to depict human emotion, such as pride and vanity, jealousy, hatred.Readers tend to know that emotional power is dye-in-the-wood,so his work is moving. His novels more people subconscious activities and encounters driven by the passion of vicissitudes. He works in the shaping of personality and psychology. He prefers a dramatic plot.,but he does not want to plot twists and turns, bizarre to attract readers, but in the plain of life foil to linger over the people and things.Based on his feature on creation,he is known as the hunter of the soul and the master of psychological realism.
There is no doubt that Stefan Zweig is a outstanding writer,but the book review is mainly about the book named letter from an unknown woman.The reason why Stefan Zweig wrote the novel is worth pondering.In January 1922, after the first world war zweig calmly waited for the world various wave which appeared before the war leaving , rethought the world's problems, reflected on his own creation,and began the most important period of ten years creation."Letter from an unknown woman" was his masterpiece in his thoughts turning period. This work is literary expression about change of the era of spiritual crisis during the time of zweig and it is also the suspicion and reflection of the self about the core value after romantic tide.From an essay of “Readers”,it is possibly that the story about “letter from an unknown woman” is based on a true story which happened to Stefan Zweig and a woman whose name was Jones.No matter which reason Zweig wrote the novel is,this work is worth reading and analyzing.
The main content of the novel is the letter from the woman to the novelist R,and the letter is written by the time. After reading the novel,I tend to divide the story into four parts according to the time line.The frist part is the memory about the childhood belonging to the girl.The drying woman was reminded of the sweet memory that she first met the novelist R and fell in love with him.From this part,the girl was innocent.She felt angry when she saw that the man always brought different women back but she could not help loving him.She was just a thirteen years old girl and became crazy about love.She misunderstood the meaning in the eyes of the man which the man gave many woman.Because her mother would married another man,they had to move to another city but it could not stop the girl missing her loved one.These are all about the first section.The second part is the experience of the unknown woman five years later.She missed the man so much and was unwilling to marry others that she escaped home and came back to find the man even if she had became a charming woman.She hung around the house in which the man lived in order to be recognized by the man.She was so beautiful that the man was appealed and the girl devoted herself to him .But he could not plainly remember the girl who lived near him and he just regarded her as a prostitute and told her that he had to go away for something necessary.Even the girl had grown up,she was still simple and believed the man easily,as the result of which she dreamed of love between her and the novelist R.But after waiting for a long time,her patience had wasted and she found the truth that the man had been back but he did not contact with her.She was hurt but she chose to forgave the man and just left rather than bother him.The second part about reunion is over.The third part is about the woman herself.She devoted herself to the man she loved,as the result of which,she was pregnant.The woman loved the novelist so much that she chose to hide and brought up the child herself.She was only a young and poor lady and did not have such work which could offer her enough money to raise the little boy,so she decided to sell herself to these rich man in order to give her loving boy a good environment like the man when he was just a child to make him become a wonderful person like his father.The boy was so outstanding and never let his mother down and his mother was so charming that many man adored her and one of them wanted to marry with her.If she agreed with him,she would be countess.What surprised readers was that she refused the love of the man,and the reason why she did so was that she still wanted to wait for the R and hoped to have a happy ending with him.What a spoony woman she was,but in other hands,she was foolish and daydreaming.The third part is ended,and then I would like to talk about the last part.The forth part is about the acquaintance between the woman who had given birth to the boy for years and the man she loved for a long time.They met again and the man was appealed to the woman again.It was impossible for the woman to forget and refuse the man,so she left the kind man who had lived with her many years alone,of course she would completely lose him with the soft life which he brought her.Tough the woman devoted so much,the man did still not recognize her.the woman was despaired and she can not stay with the man because her tears could not be held,so she rushed out of the house.It was dramatic that the servant recognized the woman immediately even if he had not met the woman from she had moved away.The plot is exciting and sorrowful.The story of the woman is a tragedy and the emotion is moving.Finally,the man received the letter,and he was reminded of something.But these memories, hazy, chaos, just like a stone at the foot of the high-flowing river, flicker, unpredictable, he is so strange to her.At this point, the story ended.
The novel is mainly about the letter the woman wrote ,and the letter is organized by the time.It is very reasonable because we can follow the girl’s experience to understand her feeling in order to finger out the theme of the novel.I think that the idea of the work is that I love you ,but it is none of you business.From the woman’s letter” a dead woman is telling you her life story; the story of a life which was yours from its first to its last fully conscious hour. ”,we know that she liked the man first time.The she reviewed the experience from childhood to near death.It was a long time but she kept the secret firmly,which perfectly express the theme that “I love you but has nothing to do with you”.
I would like to share some of my understanding.Firstly,why the hero and the heroine had a bad ending?I intend to support the opinion that love is between two similar persons.We can safely draw a conclusion that they are too different from each other.The girl is the specificity and yearning for love but this man is affectionate and forgetful,which creates an inevitable tragedy between them.The unrequited love ended with the woman and her son's death.Secondly,I want to talk why the girl loved the man so much.Every girl is eager for love,and hopes to fall in love with prince charming who is single-minded and excellent.The girl is so.In her teen years met the novelist,who was handsome and let the girl could not help but fell in love with him from on.Was the novelist so perfect that the girl could not stop loving him?Of carouse not.No one is perfect,everyone has weaknesses.As the old saying said:Beauty lies in lover's eyes.At the same time, the women and men seldom contact, two people do not even get to know each other. Novelist R in her eyes may not be the real him, a large part of all was a woman of his own imagination. She imagined what is the man of her dreams, she all deficiencies found excuses for him, she can even forgive he did not recognize her despite hurting her heart. They seem to be the love story of two people, but is actually belong to woman herself, as the protagonist,novelist in fact is not much involved in fact.The above is two major problems which I want to discuss, but I have some other ideas about the heroine want to share.Big literary giant gorky after reading this novel, wrote to zweig said: "due to the characters of sympathy for you, as well as her grief because of her image, and make me feel no shame to cry.”A lot of people think that this novel shows the woman's clean and pure love, expression of her firmness specificity, even someone said about feminism. the novel attacked the ugly society full of traditional hierarchical, money trading. The loyalty of commoner the longing for love, for a better life yearning and pursuit, is fading as the flowers of life and to turn into a wisp of smoke drift, leaving only a rs of life and to turn into a wisp of smoke drift, leaving only a beautiful, touching, the touching love story. I read the book, did not consider too much era background and creation background.So the talk may be shallow, focusing on the female character itself and her outpouring of emotion in the novel.When I firstly read the book ,I just could not understand why the woman was so stubborn without moving.I can not understand she had loved one whom she just met a few for more than ten years. I do not understand that just the short time of childhood, let her not forget the moment. I can not understand that she was willing to give the birth to the boy belonging to the man who never remembered her. I can not understand her out of the countess life, like a moth to return to the novelist R bosom, eventually lost the rich life, the heart also critically injured.That I can not understand firstly does not mean that I dislike the work,on the contrary,I like it very much.I tend to put forward a view that art originates from life but higher than life. I can't understand the heroine of the novel, because I will be a view of life in the face of usual her feelings.But if I to appreciate the view of the novel, this novel beauty can be aware. The heroine is emotional amplification we ordinary people. The author just makes our inner subtle emotion exaggerated can make readers feel in detail. Under the shape of the author, the heroine became a set of our emotion and the representative of the most extreme.
Adolescent the sort of silly unrequited love, the feeling will be familiar for every girl, we have tried to love somebody, maybe your deskmate, maybe your classmates, may be next to you every day after your window in the class that he, perhaps, like in the book he is your neighbor. Let's heart hiding such a person, thought it was a big secret, or any human speech, not just alone the secret. With his every one to be the center of your mind, anything related to his will always let you silently concern. he will let the people around you feel warm,or he will make you feel familiar with place to live, or he in front of you each look, every movement, let you long speculation; Or with your sister swap the secret of the heart, to help each other to collect that any news of him, to give each other, comfort each other, encourage each other, but to hide from each other.Only when we leave the days, we will slowly forgotten that he may remember the heart, but people have already forgotten. But she, with a crush on, through the life of self.These are why I think the heroine is the representation of people。
The novel's structure is special. It is not like other novels which have strict start, development, climax, ending. The main body of this novel is a letter from the woman. Also the perspective of the woman in the narrative story is unlike the god point of view to write novels. Readers can not only know the story from the heroine, but also realize her feelings more. Different people telling the same story will have different versions. The authors’ main purpose is to let readers understand the heroine. So to write her voice can not only direct expression of a woman's feelings, more conducive to cause resonance with readers.I would like to talk about the letter next.Since the beginning of the letter, use the flashbacks.Flashback can enhance the vitality of the article, make the article produces the suspense and could be more fascinating to attract readers.At the same time, it can avoid the monotony of the tablet and structure of the narrative.In the begin of the letter,the woman told the man that her boy had died and she was dying,which really confused the man.So she recalled the first meeting ,second meeting and so on.In these memories, there is an objective description, there are also her inner emotional surge.Complex emotions interweaving together, make the novel have the power of the heartstrings.This novel also contains a lot of figures of speech.For example,”you who have never, never recognized me; you who stepped across me as you might step across a stream, you who trod on me as you might tread on a stone; you who went on your way unheeding, while you left me to wait for all eternity?”,this uses the parallelism.Parallelism can achieve the effect of strengthening language .It can strengthen the rhythm of the article and make the organization better, more conducive to express strong feelings.At the same time, the author still use the contrast to highlight the love tragedy. Woman poured out her love of man in the letter. She started to fall in love with the novelist from the age of 13, and almost paid for its life.But for the writer, this just is a pile of his numerous affairs and does not have any ripple in his life.The attitudes of the man and woman are contrasted.The woman regards the love as important as her life,but for the novelist R, love just a play,which could makes his life interesting.Two different people can not have a happy ending from the contrasting.
zweig's word is magic.From his words,we can feel the changed of the woman.”When you came into my life, I was thirteen, and I lived in the house where you live today, in the very house in which you are reading this letter, the last breath of my life. I lived on the same floor, for the door of our flat was just opposite the door of yours. You will certainly have forgotten us. You will long ago have forgotten the accountant’s widow in her threadbare mourning, and the thin, half-grown girl. ”.From this part,we can feel the lone feeling of the woman.She had no hope to be recognized by the man.”I thought about you the whole evening, although I had not seen you yet. ”” At length I saw you, on the third day. How astounded I was to find that you were quite different from the ancient godfather conjured up by my childish imagination.”In this part, the author describes the early adolescent heroine feelings for men from curiosity to love. ”I had been for a walk with a schoolfellow, and we were standing at the door chattering. A motor drove up. You jumped out, in the impatient, springy fashion which has never ceased to charm me, and were about to go in.”These details show that the memories are the valuable for the woman,so she could remember them clearly.”Need I tell you whither my steps first led me that foggy autumn evening when, at last, at last, I found myself back in Vienna? I left my trunk in the cloakroom, and hurried to a tram. How slowly it moved!”“Every stop was a renewed vexation to me. In the end, I reached the house. My heart leapt when I saw a light in your window.”Woman left her home to find the man she was eager to meet and planned to devote herself to him.The descriptive words of zweig vividly show the expectation that she would have a reunion with the man.There are lots of the sentences like those I have mention above in the novel,and I can not list completely.Through reading the novel,readers will find more magic words that I do not find.I admire the novel so much because the writer wrote the work with emotion and I can find myself partly in the heroine,which is very surprising.The woman of the book seems to be a foolish person but she has her own belief ,which is what many people do not have.
Finally,I tend to paraphrase gorky's letter to zweig here,which said that "The characters in the novel whom you create can move people, because you make them more noble and human nature than those whom we meet everyday around us. This point is particularly important, and makes me believe once again that consciousness has every reason to be higher than the reality."
京公网安备 11010802032529号