Stefan Zweigwas born in 1881 in Vienna, a member - Pushkin Press

The Struggle with the Daemon:
Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche
Stefan Zweig
Translated from the German by
eden and Cedar Paul
The Struggle with the Daemon is a brilliant analysis of the
European psyche by the great novelist and biographer
Stefan Zweig. Zweig studies three giants of German
literature and thought: Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich
von Kleist and Friedrich Nietzsche—powerful minds
whose ideas were at odds with the scientific positivism
of their age; troubled spirits whose intoxicating
passions drove them mad but inspired them to great
works. In their struggle with their inner creative
force, Zweig reflects the conflict at the heart of the
European soul—between science and art, reason and
inspiration. Both highly personal and philosophically
wide-ranging, this is one of the most fascinating of
Zweig’s renowned biographical studies.
Publication: SPring 2012
ISBN 9781906548865 • 336pp • £11.99
Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member
of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and
was first known as a poet and translator, and later as a biographer. Zweig
travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoyed literary
fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year,
with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship.
After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942
he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide.