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STEFAN ZWEIG (1881-1942) and Franz Kafka (1883-1924) could have been expected to have much in common and to belong to the same category in modern literature. Born only two years apart, they belong to the same epoch. Although Zweig was born in Vienna and Kafka in Prague, both wrote in German, and Prague, though the center of the Czech region, was till 1918 a city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both authors happened to be Jewish and retained a positive attitude to Judaism, which may have influenced their writing, even if it did not dominate it.
Yet, anybody examining any of the writings of the two authors, let alone anybody familiar with their respective works, cannot but be struck by the profound difference between the two. They appear to have lived not merely in different centuries, but in divergent worlds. They seem to belong not merely to different ages, but to epochs disjointed by apocalyptic events.
Zweig, as he admirably explains in his autobiographical work, The World of Yesterday (1944), grew up in a social environment which believed in stability and progress. He was deeply attached to the cultural life of Vienna and, at the same time, regarded himself as a European, and maintained strong connections with French literary circles. Life in Vienna at the turn of the nineteenth century was solid, cosy, and stimulating. Although Zweig was privileged by economic and social conditions, and aware that not everybody shared in his economic circumstances, he believed that the entire society benefited from constantly improving conditions, and that the progress towards a better Europe-and eventually a better world-was virtually assured. This optimistic view, which may well have been strengthened by his personal well-being, had a profound impact on Zweig's writing and colored his works, especially his early writings.
This does not mean that Zweig the writer presented to his readers diverse episodes in an idyllic setting, or told stories evolving along the way of progress towards a perfect world. For though he essentially believed in the march toward a better, fairer, more peaceful world, he was aware of human tragedies, of flaws in human character, of tragical conflicts. Indeed, he often seems to have been motivated by an urge to unravel human failures with the implicit intent...