#140 Forgotten Dream- Stefan Zweig
For how long do we hold onto old loves, old ideas, old
feelings? A past aquaintence stops in for a visit. He says its by chance, but
it isn’t. He is there to see his old love one more time, she who has married the
“wrong” man. What of those old things they used to know of each other?
Sometimes what we feel when we’re young remain only in memory, without regret
and without longing.
I had never read Zweig before this. His writing is rich and
flowery, perhaps a bit too rich:
“The sweet, light fragrance of a first youthful,
half-unspoken love, with all its intoxicating tenderness, had awoken in them
like a dream on which you reflect ironically when you wake, although you really
wish for nothing more than to dream it again, to live in the dream. The
beautiful dream of young love that ventures only on half-measures, that desires
and dares not ask, promises and does not give.”
Passages like this are wonderful, but only if they are a
passage, not a page. At some point you have to….make a point. As the story went
on, so did the melodramatic phrases:
Peels of happy laughter…little love tokens…half-remembered
legends…melancholy solemnity, etc.
It’s like eating a plate full of chocolate fudge without
having any milk to wash it down.
Notable Passage: “My husband made my dreams come true, and
because he could do that I married him.”
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