Look at the letter from the strange woman: Is love lost, or free?

Author: Youxia

"Letter from a Strange Woman" is one of Zweig's most famous novels, even if you have not read it, I believe many people have heard about it, telling the story of a dying woman, how desperately wrote down her life about love. This classic work is also a frequent guest of Meng Jinghui's plays, which tour a round almost every year, and some time ago, the Beijing Hive Theater once again staged this one-man show starring Huang Xiangli.

When Zweig is mentioned, many people's first impression may be his biographical novels, such as "When the Stars Of Mankind Shine" and "The Severed Queen", etc., with a degree of detail as if the author is the party to the event. Of course, just as wonderful as his biographical novels are the writer's description of the psychology of the characters, as can be seen in "Letters from a Strange Woman". Zweig is considered to be the male writer who knows women best, and in this novel, his indistinguishable writing and meticulous emotional output often indulge the reader. Also a novel about a crush, Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Letter from a Strange Woman are in completely different styles. The former hid his vague love in the wet Venetian air and in the writer's deep-seated pride; the latter's love was so passionate that it spilled out of the books and appeared enthusiastically on every street corner in Vienna.

"Letter from a Strange Woman" is destined to be a tragedy. The 13-year-old "I" lived with my mother in Vienna, living a life of seclusion and poverty, bleak and hopeless, until one day "I" moved in with a new family, a young writer. Since then, in "my" life, the writer has become the only light. At the age of 16, my mother remarried and the family moved to another city, but "I" returned to Vienna at the age of 18 and began to pay attention to writers silently again. From the age of thirteen, for nearly twenty years thereafter, a woman's life revolved around the writer, her efforts, her depravity, her paranoia and madness, all in order to get closer to the writer. At the age of 13, the young girl did not know that the writer was a wandering playboy, a girl who had never experienced the adult world, and was forcibly pulled into the adult world, and began a lifelong struggle and chase.

From Zweig's novels, to Meng Huijing's plays, and different film versions of "Letters from a Strange Woman", although the form is constantly changing, the sincere love of women for writers is always unchanged and always moving. From the perspective of drama, it is a one-man play starring Huang Xiangli, the plot is more exaggerated, the emotions are fuller, whether it is light and shadow or eroticism, it is well grasped, but it is still too concrete compared to the book, or it is the letter from Meng Jinghui and Huang Xiangli, it is their thinking about love, compared to the language of the book can bring more sense of substitution.

In literature throughout the ages, love is a very common theme, but such a pious and crazy love is rare. Therefore, we must not only see the love discussed between the lines of the novel, but also see the self and cognition of "me" behind it. Zweig prefers to write about the relationship between adults and children, such as "The Burning Secret", etc., although "A Letter from a Strange Woman" is not written, but it can also be detected from the growth experience of women. Single mother, reclusive life, poor family, these factors make her grow up, missing a lot of intersection with the adult world, and the emergence of writers directly pulled women from simple family life to the adult world. Therefore, throughout her life, she hoped that the writer would recognize her as the 13-year-old girl next door to her—a woman constantly looking for an alienated sense of identity from the writer, as if only "recognition" could make up for her childhood and love.

A woman's love for the writer, not possessive rather than greedy, is more inclined to a devout faith, she dedicates herself to the writer, in order not to disturb the writer would rather give birth to the child in the slum, and then would rather sell herself to be someone else's mistress to give the child a better life, this sacrifice is related and puzzling. She does not love herself, only thinks of writers, which is obviously contrary to the modern perception of "loving yourself better to love others".

Everyone reading this novel may have different feelings. Some people think that women have lost themselves and are too crazy and stupid. She was indeed lost, because she had never been identified with the adult world in her heart, or by the writer, so that she could not live in peace with the adult world, and could only keep chasing her faith. But if you want to look at a woman with a moral critical perspective, I am afraid it is not appropriate, even if love becomes the only theme in her life, why not. Her life's experiences of heartbeat, longing, pain, anticipation and despair unfold in Zweig's delicate nib, intense and real, when love triumphs over fear, desire, greed and sin, purely as this woman is unreserved and rare.

"He felt death, he felt immortal love: a thousand feelings came to his heart for a while, and he vaguely remembered the invisible woman, she was floating, but enthusiastic, like a burst of music coming from afar." At the end of the novel, the writer who received the letter finally remembered the woman, remembered the love that had disappeared. Has this sad, strange woman, lost in love, never been free? Maybe love buried her life, but maybe, it was her best life. (Another summer)

Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel