EBOOK
Adepts in Self-Portraiture: Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy
Eden Paul (translator), Cedar Paul (translator)
Stefan Zweig(0)
About
In Adepts in Self-Portraiture, Stefan Zweig turns his keen psychological insight toward three writers who transformed their lives into the very material of their art - Casanova, Stendhal, and Tolstoy. Written with Zweig's signature elegance and moral intensity, these essays illuminate the different ways in which self-knowledge, confession, and creative will intertwine in the making of genius.
Casanova, the Venetian adventurer, emerges as the supreme sensualist and storyteller, whose memoirs reveal both the charm and vanity of a man enthralled by life's pleasures. Stendhal, the lucid analyst of passion, constructs his identity through reflection and irony, forever seeking authenticity amid masks and illusions. Tolstoy, the moral titan, turns his gaze inward with ferocious honesty, laying bare the conflicts between faith and doubt, desire and duty, that define his spiritual universe.
For Zweig, these men are not merely autobiographers - they are artists of the self, each striving to give form to the chaos of inner life. His portraits are less biographies than acts of interpretation, blending literary criticism, philosophy, and psychological drama into a unified vision of human creativity. Through his luminous prose, Zweig reveals that the deepest form of art may be the struggle to understand and transform oneself.
Translated with clarity and fidelity by Eden and Cedar Paul, Adepts in Self-Portraiture stands as one of Zweig's most intellectually refined works - a meditation on the relationship between life and art, vanity and truth, confession and redemption. It is a celebration of self-exploration as a path to universality - a timeless dialogue between genius and conscience.
Casanova, the Venetian adventurer, emerges as the supreme sensualist and storyteller, whose memoirs reveal both the charm and vanity of a man enthralled by life's pleasures. Stendhal, the lucid analyst of passion, constructs his identity through reflection and irony, forever seeking authenticity amid masks and illusions. Tolstoy, the moral titan, turns his gaze inward with ferocious honesty, laying bare the conflicts between faith and doubt, desire and duty, that define his spiritual universe.
For Zweig, these men are not merely autobiographers - they are artists of the self, each striving to give form to the chaos of inner life. His portraits are less biographies than acts of interpretation, blending literary criticism, philosophy, and psychological drama into a unified vision of human creativity. Through his luminous prose, Zweig reveals that the deepest form of art may be the struggle to understand and transform oneself.
Translated with clarity and fidelity by Eden and Cedar Paul, Adepts in Self-Portraiture stands as one of Zweig's most intellectually refined works - a meditation on the relationship between life and art, vanity and truth, confession and redemption. It is a celebration of self-exploration as a path to universality - a timeless dialogue between genius and conscience.