A Man Out of Time

"There was astonishment and shock when Zweig killed himself along with his young wife Lotte. Some thought it a cowardly act, or that there was a scandal of some kind. But the evidence is clear. His suicide was caused by a slow maturation of anxieties which Zweig in the end was unable or unwilling to prevent overwhelming him... He was exhausted, unable to work and unable to bear the worsening news on the war. Each defeat of the allies nudged him nearer to the abyss..."

Had the pleasure of recently interviewing Will Stone on his new translations of the classic (and doomed) European writer Stefan Zweig (Will's one of my favourite contemporary poets, his forthcoming Drawings in Ash is due out next month on Salt and I highly recommend his earlier astonishing visionary collection Glaciation as well as his translations of the mighty Georg Trakl, To The Silenced - more details about which are on his site).

The interview touches on travel, exile, Auschwitz, dark tourism, suicide, the problems of insular island-bound poetry and the strange afterlife that is a writer's legacy.

You can read it here.