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Stefan Zweig, one of the world's most widely read writers, spent his final years in Brazil
- Handwritten letter from Stefan Zweig.
- One page, in French.
- 21.5 cm x 28 cm.
- Brazil, September 20, 1940.
- Perfect condition.
- Unique piece.
Translation from French to Portuguese
I thank "Gazeta" for the invitation to give a lecture under their auspices and confirm receipt of five contos. Thank you very much.
Stefan Zweig.
It is well known that all of us who were born or identify as Brazilians have at some point heard the famous phrase that titles this text. Politicians use it as a campaign slogan. Political scientists use it as a maxim: a utopian future that will, in fact, never be achieved. What few know is that this phrase, before being created or copied by some party, was actually written by Stefan Zweig (1881 - 1942), an Austrian who, in the 1940s, came to Brazil and fell in love with the land of palm trees and sabiás. For a man who claimed to be passionate about Brazil, he had a name that was a bit difficult for Brazilians to pronounce!
Linguistic misunderstandings aside, Zweig was one of the greatest writers, novelists, poets, playwrights, journalists, and biographers (phew!) of the 20th century. He is still one of the most widely read authors today, with an average of 300,000 books sold every year in France, for example.
Of Jewish origin, he himself said that his parents were Jewish by an accident of birth, since, in his family, religion never played a central role. This does not mean that the writer denied his origins; on the contrary, in his prolific career, he wrote about many Jewish personalities and themes.
Truth be told, it was Judaism that brought this great thinker to Brazil, though not for the best reasons. During the First World War, political ideology began to mark Zweig's trajectory. Like many intellectuals of his time, he adhered to the Germanic cause, although he never enlisted as a combatant. Today we know that the real effect of the war was a bloodbath. As a result, the writer became a pacifist, advocating for the unification of Europe as a solution to its problems. Such unification never occurred, and with the Second World War came the persecution of Jews, which directly affected the writer.
Thus, after various comings and goings, Zweig finally settled in Brazil, where he produced a significant bibliography about his perceptions of the Brazilian nation. Upon seeing the poverty in some regions of Bahia, Zweig was impressed by the ability of the people living there to find happiness in simplicity. Something that, according to him, those who had everything and lost it, like his companions from the Old Continent, were incapable of achieving. He was also moved by how Brazil was built through miscegenation, while Europe was undergoing a war in search of a pure race.
It was during this time in Brazil that Zweig wrote the essay "Brazil, the Country of the Future." Would this great admirer of Brazilian culture be proud of the future we have built today? Unfortunately, Zweig did not find his own future here. Disheartened by the advance of Nazism throughout Europe, and even beyond it — it is worth remembering that Getúlio Vargas, then president of Brazil, admired the philosophy of the Aryan race — the writer fell into a deep depression. As a result, in 1942, Stefan Zweig committed suicide, along with his wife. In his farewell letter, Zweig thanked Brazil, a country he had learned to love, and wished that his friends from the Old Continent could soon see the dawn of that long night. He, very impatient, departed before.
In this unpublished letter in French, the writer accepts an invitation to give one of his last lectures, a little over a year before committing suicide.
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