Fantastic night
Fantastic Night is a novella by Stefan Zweig from 1922.
frame
At the age of 37, the Austrian Reserve Lieutenant Baron Friedrich Michael von R. died in autumn 1914 during the Battle of Rawaruska . The family hands over the text, written in October 1913, from the estate of the fallen dragoon to Stefan Zweig, who acts as a kind of editor. The latter publishes this “spiritual self-disclosure” unprocessed.
action
The Baron von R. from Vienna , the first-person narrator, records the miracle of his awakening ; but only for yourself. None of his friends know anything about the papers. In literary matters the nobleman considers himself ignorant. It's about the hour of magic, more precisely, about "apparently hardly connected episodes of a single evening". This means just under six hours, beginning on the afternoon of June 7, 1913 in Vienna.
The university graduated from R. His parents died early. As the sole heir of considerable parental assets, he is no longer able to choose a career. The baron describes himself as a “cultured, elegant man, rich, independent, friends with the best of a city of millions”. Even after he had to register that his youth has passed, he continues to live his "old comfortable, unrestrained life". Von R. is a connoisseur. He says of himself that his “most real erotic pleasure” was “to arouse warmth and unrest in others instead of“ heating himself up. ”Such vain chatter does not hide the“ numbness ”that the baron observes through introspection afterwards left him one after the other. First, the woman he was with for three years gave him a basket after she found a good husband. Then a friend died.
In any case, von R. rebels against that rigidity. That afternoon on June 7th, the lieutenant dragoons boarded a cab on the Ringstrasse for the derby . The awakening mentioned above will begin at 3:16 p.m. on that day. Half against his will, R. bets twice. The horses seeded win every time. Although the baron puts the crowns he has won in his wallet, he thinks he's a thief. He cheated on the losers. So far more of contemplation, R. remarked astonished, he, a dying man, is blossoming again; is "a person with bad and warm appetite." His waiting Fiaker brings the protagonist back to Vienna in the Sachergarten .
Von R. strolls into the Wurstelprater . Otherwise adept at the conversation, the strollers are embarrassed to address one of the "broad-hipped maids". His derby dress, the Parisian top hat and the pearl in the dove-gray tie confuse the common people at the table at whom he has sat. Von R. only sips the beer he has ordered and runs away. On the fantastic night he doesn't get a wife in Prater and finally follows a small, crippled, rachitic Prater whore. As she walked, the woman half turned to look at him, showed her bad teeth - smiling invitingly - and asked for a present. The baron feels that he is living for someone in the world and kisses the dirty woman. R. becomes the victim of a staged game in the dark bushes. Two bad guys, “poor blackmailing amateurs”, want money. The baron voluntarily gives a few of the crown notes he has won. The two "shredded guys" let the "oversized parasite" run. Going home, von R. gives away the rest of the Derby prize to a woman who hunts , to a balloon seller, to a street sweeper and to a lighter. He throws the remaining money he won into the hatch of a bakery on the ground floor of a house on the road and finally onto the steps of a church.
interpretation
The lieutenant's struggle against his numbness seems to an atheist reader during that fantastic night as a pathetic attempt that is doomed to failure from the start. Perhaps the manuscript that Stefan Zweig published from the estate of the fallen man should be a step towards overcoming years of wellbeing and idleness through creative activity.
But a believing reader may think of Jesus and the washing of the feet while reading it .
The following quotation from the work may serve as a guideline for interpretation for a devout reader: "I am not ashamed of him, because he does not understand me. But whoever knows about what is connected does not judge and has no pride."
literature
First edition
- Stefan Zweig: Fantastic night. Narrative. The New Rundschau . Volume 33. Issues 5 and 6 (May and June). Pages 513-528 and 590-627. S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1922
Used edition
- Stefan Zweig: Fantastic night. In: Novellas . Vol. 2, pp. 173-245. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1986 (3rd edition), without ISBN, licensor: S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 532 pages
Further editions
- Stefan Zweig: Fantastic night and other stories. Frankfurt am Main 1983.
- The Mondscheingasse. Collected stories (Burning secret. Story in the twilight. Fear. The gunman. Letter from a stranger. The woman and the landscape. The Mondscheingasse . Fantastic night. The sinking of a heart. Confusion of feelings. Twenty-four hours from the life of a woman. Buchmendel. Leporella. The equal-dissimilar sisters. Chess novella). Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1989 (Fischer Taschenbuch 9518), ISBN 3-596-29518-1 .