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Journey into the Past
Stefan Zweig, Anthea Bell (Translator), André Aciman (Introduction)
3.82
8,344 ratings953 reviews
A deep study of the uneasy heart by one of the masters of the psychological novel, Journey into the Past, published here for the first time in America, is a novella that was found among Zweig’s papers after his death. Investigating the strange ways in which love, in spite of everything - time, war, betrayal - can last, Zweig tells the story of Ludwig, an ambitious young man from a modest background who falls in love with the wife of his rich employer. His love is returned, and the couple vow to live together, but then Ludwig is dispatched on business to Mexico, and while he is there the First World War breaks out. With travel and even communication across the Atlantic now shut down, Ludwig makes a new life in the New World. Years later, however, he returns to Germany to find his beloved a widow and their mutual attraction as strong as ever. But is it possible for love to survive precisely as the impossible?
GenresFictionClassicsRomanceGerman LiteratureLiterature20th CenturyNovella
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136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
Original title
Reise in die Vergangenheit
Setting
Germany, Mexico
This edition
Format
136 pages, Paperback
Published
November 23, 2010 by NYRB Classics
ISBN
9781590173671 (ISBN10: 1590173678)
ASIN
1590173678
Language
English
More editions
PaperbackTürkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları2018
PaperbackAcantilado2009
PaperbackGrasset2008
HardcoverUitgeverij Atlas2009
Paperbackمنشورات حياة2022
Kindle EditionNYRB Classics2012
PaperbackΜεταίχμιο2014
Mass Market PaperbackLe Livre de Poche2010
PaperbackPushkin Press2013
PaperbackIbis2012
PaperbackFischer Taschenbuch Verlag2010
PaperbackViena2025
PaperbackTekin Yayınevi2017
PaperbackLJ Veen Klassiek2015
Unknown Bindingתשע נשמות2017
PaperbackPushkin Press2009
PaperbackΕκδόσεις Ροές2014
Kindle EditionAcantilado2020
PaperbackMarti Yayinlari2018
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About the author
Stefan Zweig2,066 books10.1k followers
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Stefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Among his most famous works are Beware of Pity, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. He and his second wife committed suicide in 1942.
Zweig studied in Austria, France, and Germany before settling in Salzburg in 1913. In 1934, driven into exile by the Nazis, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, to Brazil by way of New York. Finding only growing loneliness and disillusionment in their new surroundings, he and his second wife committed suicide.
Zweig's interest in psychology and the teachings of Sigmund Freud led to his most characteristic work, the subtle portrayal of character. Zweig's essays include studies of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Drei Meister, 1920; Three Masters) and of Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche (Der Kampf mit dem Dämon, 1925; Master Builders). He achieved popularity with Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928; The Tide of Fortune), five historical portraits in miniature. He wrote full-scale, intuitive rather than objective, biographies of the French statesman Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935), and others. His stories include those in Verwirrung der Gefühle (1925; Conflicts). He also wrote a psychological novel, Ungeduld des Herzens (1938; Beware of Pity), and translated works of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Emile Verhaeren.
Most recently, his works provided the inspiration for 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel.
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Jim Fonseca
1,144 reviews8,279 followers
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July 22, 2017
The introduction gives the complete plot and the story is told retrospectively from the opening scene, so I’m not giving a spoiler warning.
Set in 1914 right near the outbreak of World War I, a young chemical engineer and his employer’s wife fall in love. Her elderly husband is disabled and the young man (reluctantly) agreed to move into their fancy home to be her husband’s right-hand man. I say reluctantly because he was embarrassed by his poverty – when he moved in he spent all his savings on clothes so the maids wouldn’t see his ratty underwear!
Just as they are about to consummate their relationship he gets sent to Mexico for what is supposed to be two years. She says “not now” but pledges to give herself to him when he returns. The war intervenes and even letters between them get cut off. NINE years later, after he has married and had kids in Mexico, and her husband has died back in Europe, he’s back!
He had to go back to Europe on business so he looked her up. She’ll keep her promise but what does it mean now? They take what seems like an endless train trip back to a town they had visited on business in earlier years. The journey (the opening scene) seems to be their fulfillment: the endless “getting there;” the limbo of the unfulfilled promise. Will there forever be something “unrelieved and unresolved” between them?
The author was an Austrian Jew who fled central Europe in the 1930’s to go first to the UK, then briefly to the US and finally to Brazil. He and his second wife committed suicide together in Brazil in 1942, perhaps because of the latest bad news coming out of World War II. These themes enter the story when the couple arrives at their hotel and encounter Nazi marchers chanting and raising fists. There’s a mood spoiler.
It’s hard to know how finished this novella really was. Zweig had published it as a short story years earlier and this latest version with handwritten edits was discovered among his papers after his death. An interesting twist is that he was considering two titles for it and this one (Journey Into the Past) was crossed out in favor of “Resistance to Reality.”
All of Zweig’s stories are good and this one is no exception although I don’t think it’s as strong as one other of Zweig’s I have read, The Post-Office Girl.
photo from telegraph.co.uk
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Jibran
226 reviews748 followers
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May 6, 2015
People may grow old, but they remain the same.
Few writers are bestowed with the gift of insight that penetrates the shadowy black holes of human psychology with remarkable economy of words and incredible acuity of expression. With Zweig, it is as though words come flying from the four winds to arrange themselves seamlessly on the blank page as he sits back with a smile to guide them with the movement of his eyes into a series of exquisitely designed proportionate lines enhanced by a succession of stunning images and striking metaphors such that every now and then you cry out, with a smile of your own on your face, to say, “This is it! This is how it feels like! This is how it looks like!” This there then sums up my reading experience of this sleek novella.
Zweig casts a gimlet look in the dark depths of mind in recounting the story of Ludwig and his beloved with as much of a keen eye as he paints the shifting vistas of urbane, cosmopolitan Frankfurt to contrast it with rocky, wild terrain of rural Mexico across the span of a tumultuous decade all through which Ludwig – being the primary focus of our story - is in a painful negotiation with time and place to keep the flame of love burning for the woman left behind in Frankfurt. The Great War in Europe has left him stranded in Mexico, and having lost all contact with her lover, he freezes his emotions in the hope of thawing them when he sees her. When they finally meet, Ludwig muses:
Time is helpless, he thought to himself, helpless in the face of our feelings. Nine years have passed, and not a note in her voice is different, not a nerve in my body hears her in any other way. Nothing is lost, nothing is past and over, her presence is as much of a tender delight now as it was then.
Their journey into the past is fraught with dangers of the present. The time gone by fails to heed the summons of the beating hearts. Their love remains the same, as strong and pure as it was when they first saw each other and drank elixir from each other’s mouths, their hands taking liberties with the finer details of their bodies, his up her bodice and hers down his pants - but unable to reach the summit of fulfillment for the threat of being found out by her big shot husband or by one of the servants that always lurked about like a sword hanging over their heads. Even as old love is rekindled they still can’t bring back the fire that burned in their hearts nine years ago. Something has terribly gone amiss. Ludwig realises but, like a stubborn child who wants to play with the “white ball” in the night sky, refuses to accept that...
The past always comes between us, the time that has gone by.
Blind, unalloyed love defies reason and morality, laughs in the face of odds, mocks all earthly reality as it pleases - yet all the same it is so slavishly bound to the externalities of existence. Time and place, now and then, war and peace together pronounce the final verdict, however strong the love may be.
A startling thing happens towards the end of the story. Right when Ludwig and his lover are searching for the lost time on a trip to Heidelberg, they run into Nazi cadres marching up and down the streets. The previous war that separated them a decade before has come back again to destroy more lives, crush more hearts and kill more aspirations. Beware, lovers, beware! Perhaps this passage expresses the perennial truth of cyclical time which is attempting to come full circle in contemporary Europe where people of similar persuasion are seen marching in the streets under old banners with new names.
Stefan Zweig as a member of minority community whose life was destroyed in the madness of World War II must be turning in his grave.
May 2015
============
PS: Special thanks to Seemita Pooja for recommending this beautiful novella.
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Seemita
189 reviews1,739 followers
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May 5, 2015
LOVE. ABSENCE.
Two words. Short but Strong. Both are trend-setters, albeit of different kind. Both have their own, absolute meanings; their legion of fans swear by it. Those under their hypnotic spell can hardly belong elsewhere. Both can multiply themselves and fill the adjacent heart too, with their scents.
But are they related to each other? In any way? Are they friends? Or adversaries? Or are they family, since such striking resemblance is invariably rooted in familial ties? Is the birth of one never without the other? Are they forever twins, living a life that is half divided between themselves, each making its presence felt in the other’s moment of pride too? Or are they those quarrelsome siblings, who can never share the same room?
It is a difficult question which the brilliant Zweig attempts to answer in the splendid Journey Into The Past. The story is set between 1912 and 1921. 23-years old, industrious Ludwig, from humble origins, finds pure, infallible love in the serene, jovial and compassionate wife of his wealthy but genial employer. His love is reciprocated with the same sincerity and longing.
"But true love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart."
However, before their love flower can bloom in full, Ludwig is sent to Mexico for undertaking work assignment for two years. The vision of a passionate reunion at the other side of this painful separation, keeps the two alive in their colourless worlds. But with just a few weeks left for the divine rendezvous, the World War I breaks out. It changes everything, cutting the thread between the two lovers, ever so slowly, mercilessly. The two years never see the end and both the lovers move on in life. After nine years though, they come face to face once again and embark on a journey to rekindle their lost love.
But is it their love anymore? Are they, worthy owners of their love after all? Is it love even?
It is often said that love blossoms in absence. But does the blossoming, sap the bud of its innocence? Does that love ever remain the same once usurped by the curse of absence? Under the shadow of absence, the love sapling feels nourished and protected. But leave the sapling under its refuge for long and it starts wilting away. It needs the intermittent sunshine of a touch, a smile, an embrace, a kiss to grow vivacious and healthy. Without this measured shed, the sapling lives a feeble life; one that can spring to life today and sleep to death tomorrow. And most importantly, the gardener himself doesn’t know whether he wants the sapling to breathe or perish.
After nine thirsty years, when Ludwig and his beloved finally get a deserted road, all to themselves, to soak the intoxicating feeling of being alone for the first time, they get besieged by the conflicting emotions picking violently at their hearts. The clasped hands seem like chained links, the brushing shoulders, like rough shawls. The essence of this contradicting unravelling of events gets captured in this striking paragraph:
"And whenever a lamp by the roadside cast its light on them at an angle, the shadows ahead merged as if embracing, stretching, longing for one another, two bodies in one form, parting again only to embrace once more, while they themselves walked on, tired and apart from each other. As if spellbound, he watched this strange game, that escape and recapture and separation again of the soulless figures, shadowy bodies that were only the reflection of their own.”
Zweig’s silken magic and profound insights place us in striking distance of Love and Absence. But he fittingly does not take a call whether one should keep both in the same box. But he says enough to convey that both need to be kept under strict vigil; after all, they have the capacity to change our world, singlehandedly.
favorites novella
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Cheryl
515 reviews801 followers
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August 13, 2015
Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé
Deux spectres cherchent le passé.
I took this journey into the past through pages of scintillating scenes, symphonic sentences, and crystal-clear character-consciousness. From cover to cover I read, pausing only to eat and care for my sick Labrador. Into the past I went, with love and war and indiscretion and despondency and life and illness and all that happens in between. Whenever a book forces me to give it my complete attention, even at the risk of ignoring my Virginia Woolf read, I know that it deserves all the love stars my reader heart can give.
It’s in the way Zweig writes: soft, simple and supple—his words caress the senses. Nothing is overworked here, not the scenes, not the characters, and certainly not the word placement. I immediately sense that I’m in the hands of a scholar humble with words. My love affair with this novel is similar to the surprise love that unfolds between two unlikely people: the woman of the house and her husband’s servant.
But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart.
What happens when life goes on, and time passes, but the love we’ve had for someone still remains? How far would we go to explore a love affair from the past?
…he must simply stay like this, carried on into the unknown as if in a dream, carried on by a strange torrent, without physical sensation and yet still feeling, desiring yet achieving nothing, moving on into his fate and back into himself.
This novel is about the moments that escape us in life, moments that could become regrets or second chances. It is about the fragility and untimeliness of life and people. At its core, it is about self-awareness and reflection, and the tone is one I wish for in any novel of psychological aptitude. It’s simply beautiful.
In the old park, in ice and snow caught fast
Two spectres walk, still searching for the past.
europe fiction mesmerizing
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Rowena
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November 18, 2019
Andre Aciman wrote a great introduction to this book (with spoilers). In it he lauds Zweig’s fluidity in writing:
“He never quarrelled with his tools; his tools were happy to oblige. He didn’t spend nights searching for the mot juste; the mot juste just simply came…Zweig is firm and fluent. Everything in its time, everything just right, never a false move, not one sleight of hand.”
Having just spent hours editing a report I would very much like to have been gifted with even a fraction of Zweig’s literary brilliance, and his writing is sheer genius.
The novella follows a love affair between Ludwig, a poor private secretary, and the lady of the house. On the day his employer tells him he’ll be sent to work in Mexico for 2 years, he discovers that his employer’s wife reciprocates his love. This is a love affair that will be interrupted both by Ludwig being relocated to Mexico, and also the breakout of WW1:
“But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart.”
While the protagonist’s feelings of love were definitely melodramatic and probably difficult for most of us in this day and age to understand (I can’t imagine anyone I know kissing the letter of a loved one, or sewing protective pockets onto their clothing so that they can carry said letters with them everywhere, but who knows?), I did enjoy this novella. The more poignant and thoughtful passages dealt with the post-war experiences with Ludwig returning to Germany; can things still stay the same when war has interrupted our lives? The concept of memory was also an important one, can we live on our memories and for how long? As Ludwig discovered, “It is not in human nature to live entirely on memories, and just as the plants and every living structure need nourishment from the soil and new light from the sky, if their colours are not to fade and their petals to drop, even such apparently unearthy things as dreams need a certain amount of nourishment from the senses, some tender pictorial aid, or their blood will run thin and their radiance be dimmed.”
A beautifully written book.
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Paula Mota
1,552 reviews523 followers
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January 25, 2021
“Sem reflectir, traduziu os versos:
Naquele velho parque solitário e gelado
Dois espectros procuram o passado
E, logo que os pronunciou, compreendeu-os e encontrou a sua chave. A associação de ideias que tirou do fundo de um poço de águas adormecidas emergiu, nítida e palpável. Aquela recordação, precisamente aquela, aquelas sombras estavam lá, no caminho, as sombras que tinham tocado, despertado, as palavras por ela pronunciadas. E, num frémito, ele percebeu, assustado, o sentido daquela revelação."
É num comboio, aquele que me parece o meio de transporte mais romântico de todos, que ocorre esta “Viagem ao Passado”, num reencontro muito aguardado, dez anos depois de Ludwig se apaixonar pela mulher do patrão. É um amor que nunca foi consumado por força das circunstâncias, pelo oceano que se meteu entre eles e pela súbita deflagração da Primeira Guerra Mundial, que os manteve separados mais tempo do que o planeado. Os avanços e recuos na possível relação deste casal, a ansiedade e nervosismo que eles causam, passam para o leitor com uma intensidade que considero admirável.
Para quem nunca leu Stefan Zweig ou ainda não se rendeu a este grande escritor, que tanto exprime em tão poucas páginas, o meu coração, que é um autêntico barroco coberto de musgo, recomenda sem pejo “A Viagem ao Passado”.
“Também os próprios sonhos, mesmo aqueles que parecem etéreos, devem alimentar-se de um pouco de sensualidade, devem ser mantidos pela ternura e por imagens, sem as quais o sangue paralisa e a luz se esbate. Foi o que aconteceu àquele ser apaixonado, sem que disso se apercebesse – quando as semanas, os meses e finalmente um ano e depois outro passaram, sem que chegasse uma palavra um sinal dela. (...) Procurava as cartas, mas a tinta apagara-se, as palavras já não abalavam o seu coração, e um dia ficou assustado ao ver a fotografia dela, porque não se recordava da cor do seus olhos.
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Tuğba
159 reviews71 followers
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February 28, 2018
Hasta bünyeye bir ilaçtır Zweig. Uzun süre elime kitap alamıyor, hiç birşey okuyamıyorsam bile bir Stefan Zweig kitabı beni canlandırıp çabucak eski tempoma döndürebiliyor. Yine öyle bir durgunluk dönemime denk gelen iyi ki de okumuşum dediğim bir kısa öykü oldu Geçmişe Yolculuk.
Zweig'in yine muhteşem psikolojik analizleri eşliğinde, imkansız gibi görünen bir aşkın öyküsünü okuyoruz bu kez. Birbirlerine ilk aşık oldukları günün üzerinden tam 9 yıl geçmiş. Araya önemli bir görev, farklı ülkeler, Birinci Dünya Savaşı ve başka insanlar girmişti fakat herşeye rağmen zaman bu iki insanı yeniden bir araya getirecek ve onları geçmişlerine doğru bir yolculuğa sürükleyecekti.
Zweig bize yine az sayfada çok dolu bir hikaye anlatıyor. Bunu yaparken içeriğin zenginliğinden, anlatımın kusursuzluğundan asla taviz vermiyor.
T.
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Flo
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January 26, 2018
In the old park, in ice and snow caught fast
Two spectres walk, still searching for the past. (33)
I planned a review with all the things I didn't like and quotes to back them up. However, after contemplating these pages for awhile, I realized I couldn't. It is not Zweig's fault. I can't blame it on his writing, his idea and execution. I liked his lyrical prose and the psychological depth he gave to his characters, always haunted by their past. Past? “Nothing is lost, nothing is past” (20), he says, still accepting the fact that “it is not in human nature to live entirely on memories” (23). I also liked how the characters' pure feelings for each other contrasted with the dark and confusing social context of those times.
In conclusion, what I liked, I really liked. As for the rest, I didn't hate it, I was kind of indifferent to it. It was okay. This is an unfinished work and yet, it is not a fair reason for me. So, this rating is based on what I felt while reading this novella. By all means, read it yourself and form your opinion. Do not be afraid of this translation, Bell has done a superb job, again.
But I would like to keep playing chess for a little while longer, if you don't mind.
When you can't connect with a story about a passionate love and soul mates resisting the power of time, then your heart must be in some sort of lethargic limbo, detachedly mourning the loss of something, the absence of something; cynically avoiding everything. I am just guessing; you might even don't know the cause. It is only temporary, to the lucky ones. The lucky ones. An ephemeral tragedy. But a tragedy, after all.
May 25, 14
* Also on my blog.
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E. G.
1,144 reviews798 followers
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January 25, 2018
The Resurrected Master: The Subtle Fiction of Stefan Zweig, by Paul Bailey
--Journey into the Past
Translator's Afterward, by Anthea Bell
5-star austria-hungary-slovakia-czech fiction
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Gemma
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June 21, 2017
I watched the excellent film adaptation of this last night and it reminded me how much I loved this novella. It’s such a tender and powerful account of enduring love. Ludwig is a young engineer, an orphan, who ingratiates himself with his elderly and ailing employer until he becomes his private secretary and moves into his home. Here he falls in love with his boss’ young wife. Before anything can happen between them his boss sends him to Mexico. Then World War 1 breaks out. A novel to warm the heart.
historical-fiction sentimental-education
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