Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig

reciting a couplet from this poem first in French— Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé/ Deux spectres cherchent le passé , and then translating it into German (which I have translated into English). In fact Zweig’s text merges the second line of the first couplet in the French original— Deux formes ont tout à l’heure passé— with the second line of the third couplet: Deux spectres ont évoqué le passé. I have left it exactly as Zweig had it, since, whether intentionally or subliminally, he was adapting Verlaine’s words to the idea that he wanted of two spectres in search of the past.
    ANTHEA BELL 2009

THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK
    PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
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    Copyright © by Williams Verlag, Zürich, and Atrium Press, London
    Translation copyright © 2009 by Anthea Bell
    Introduction copyright © 2011 by André Aciman
    All rights reserved.
    Originally published as Widerstand der Wirklichkeit , 1987
    Translation published by arrangement with Pushkin Press Ltd.
    Cover image: Cover image: Léon Spilliaert, Interior , 1909
    Cover design: Katy Homans
    The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:
    Zweig, stefan, 1881–1942.
    [Widerstand der Wirklichkeit. English]
    Journey into the past / by Stefan Zweig ; introduction by André Aciman; translated [from the German] by Anthea Bell.
        p. cm. —(New York Review Books Classics)
    ISBN 978-1-59017-367-1 (alk. paper)
    1. Young men—Germany—Fiction. 2. Married women—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. 4. Love stories. I. Bell, Anthea. II. Title.
    PT2653.W42W5313 2010
    833'.912—dc22
    2010016526
    ebook ISBN: 978-1-59017-412-8
v1.0
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