Resumen de From the world of yesterday to the Europe of tomorrow: on commitment, ethics, and Europe in the works of Stefan Zweig
This dissertation seeks to explore the intellectual and committed dimension of Stefan Zweig’s oeuvre as it crystallizes around the idea of Europe. In doing so, it aims, above all, to question and problematize the understanding of Stefan Zweig as an ‘uncommitted’, ‘silent’ writer that has dominated a significant part of the critical reception of his works since the thirties. Considering Die Welt von Gestern as the point of departure of our reflections, the analysis of Zweig’s production leads us through, in Chapter I, to a succession of Zweigian figures of commitment, from Émile Verhaeren, Jeremias and Romain Rolland to Erasmus, Castellio and Michel de Montaigne. The discussion of Stefan Zweig’s ‘narrative of engagement’ illuminates the committed dimension of Stefan Zweig’s works while providing a critical assessment of the way(s) in which Zweig constructed his figures of intellectuality, that is to say, of how he negotiated through those figures his commitment to a set of values and, above all, to a vision of the world. Subsequently, Chapter II examines the construction of Zweig’s ‘European’ project and Weltanschauung and how it guides and gives direction to his figures of commitment and their ‘intellectual’ efforts. More specifically, this dissertation analyzes, one the one hand, the potential of Zweig’s ‘Europe’ to become an ‘identity’ paradigm and affiliation. In this sense, it distinguishes between its individual and collective dimensions. On the other, it assesses the possibilities of discussing Zweig’s project as an ethical program. As a result, at the end of our analysis, Zweig’s ‘European’ ethics emerge as the link between Zweig’s figures of intellectuality and his ‘European’ project; at the center of Zweig’s (‘European’) commitment lies an ethical program made up of four essential notions: human(ism), peace, freedom, and post-nationalism.
