Burning Secret [1911/2008] – ★★★★1/2
“I’ve lived an awesome deal amongst grown-ups. I’ve seen them intimately, shut at hand. And that hasn’t a lot improved my opinion of them.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Stefan Zweig knew that genuine drama, horror, trauma might merely reside in a single’s realisation of private circumstances, state of affairs, predicament. The story on this psychologically astute novella takes place in Semmering, Austria. When one dashing dandy, a baron, stops at a resort on their own, he’s prepared for his subsequent romantic conquest partly to push back the boredom on this place. He’s younger, however already an professional womaniser, and his gaze falls on one lovely girl who additionally occurs to be along with her twelve year-old boy. The Baron’s pursuit of the girl begins by way of befriending that boy referred to as Edgar, however the Baron doesn’t even realise the hazards behind sowing so many seeds of attachment, as Saint-Exupéry additionally wrote in The Little Prince: “you grow to be accountable, endlessly, for what you will have tamed“.
A lot of Zweig novels concern themselves with selfishness and narcissism, and their relations to like. What occurs when one bestows faux love (or mindlessly grants moments of happiness as in Zweig’s The Put up Workplace Woman) or performs with others’ feelings for some benefit? Who’s damage, then, and what are the implications of hopes being constructed on a skinny ice? That theme is most prevalent in such Zweig novels as Watch out for Pity and Letter From an Unknown Girl, however it continues in some kind in Burning Secret, too. On the one hand, we now have the Baron: “He was, like everybody of a strongly erotic disposition, twice pretty much as good, twice as a lot himself when he knew that ladies appreciated him….He knew that, if he was to point out his skills to finest benefit, he wanted to strike sparks off different folks to stir up heat and enthusiasm in his coronary heart. On his personal he was frosty, no use to himself in any respect, like a match left mendacity in its field”. And, however, we now have one clever and delicate boy Edgar, who nonetheless clings to his mom and shyly explores this world of perceived class, kindness, and goodness.
The story begins with the Baron earlier than the creator surreptitiously shifts the angle to Edgar, as he makes pals with the Baron, after which tries to grasp his mom and the Baron’s complicated, more and more mysterious interactions. Their behaviour hides the important thing to unlocking that “burning secret” for the boy. Zweig was a grasp of exploring fascinating psychological conditions that usually concern deeply emotional, at instances introverted, folks, and on this story, he additionally opens up the harmless world of delicate Edgar that’s about to be turned the wrong way up. Poor Edgar is oblivious that “love” can be a sport the place it is vitally laborious to distinguish the prey from the hunter, and the pursued from the pursuer, particularly since these roles can reverse in a fraction of a second.
However Zweig doesn’t simply lay out the state of affairs, he desires us to really feel and actively take part on this story. We grow to be all-knowing observers and additionally that misplaced boy from whom his mom and his new buddy begin to slip away: “He didn’t perceive something in any respect about life, not now he knew that the phrases which he’d thought had actuality behind them have been simply shiny bubbles, swelling with air after which bursting, leaving nothing behind.” The readers and that clever boy know that behind each seemingly mundane motion, there may be that means, and that’s what unites them, and behind each different line by Zweig there may be seemingly an actual emotion bursting to return ahead. George Orwell as soon as stated that the perfect books inform you what you recognize already, and this can’t be more true than in relation to this novella the place the protagonist slowly grasps “the truth that the reality might merely be trodden underfoot, extinguished like a burning match”. Edgar begins constructing his fortifications, gearing for his assault on the world that betrayed him: “you study quite a bit whenever you hate, and also you study it quick”.
Nonetheless, the start guarantees extra depth and complexity than Zweig’s somewhat easy ending finally delivers. If we begin with one thing like an engrossing story with moments of thrills and loads of perception, then the conclusion barely underwhelms, however not earlier than hitting that remaining nail on the coffin of the primary protagonist’s rosy worldview. And, what additionally elevates this novella is that Zweig additionally occurs to be a kind of few authors who by no means beat across the bush and don’t want 5 hundred pages to strike on the very core of human essence and showcase critically the human situation. Burning Secret could also be a really slim novella, however it weighs a ton in feelings. Zweig knew instinctively that within the issues of a coronary heart, it’s best to go straight to the center of a matter.
Burning Secret is a fragile exposé of childhood awakening to the deceptions and cruelties of the grownup world filled with artifices. In just a few very brief chapters, the entire world is constructed after which destroyed, and, to cite F. Scott Fitzgerald, all one can do is to stare blankly.