Zweig and the daemon. Presences and absences of the reception of a european figure in Catalonia

Abstract

For decades, the figure and works of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (Vienna, 1881-Pe­trópolis, Brazil, 1942) enjoyed the benefit of unparalleled popularity in Catalonia. Beyond praise  and criticism, Zweig, who is arguably one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century, interested and involved writers, artists, critics, translators, politicians, and all sorts of cultural agents in a critique reception of his work in Catalonia which is still to be studied exhaustively and to be interpreted properly.

This article proposes a first interpretation of Zweig’s critical reception in Barcelona, which, however anecdotal, episodic and tangential, necessarily reflects the same contradictions and fluctuations of the author’s global reception. From the analysis of his first translations, the relationship with Salvador Dalí, the meeting with Eugeni d’Ors or Joan Estelrich, the repercussions in the press of his death or the debates that his work provoked between idealists and skeptics, some episodes are analyzed that point out major lines of interpretation of Zweig’s work and thought.