Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman

Zweig, Stefan; Paul, Eden

ISBN 10 : 0802139094 ISBN 13 : 9780802139092

Editeur : Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002

Synopsis

Book by Zweig Stefan

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

They chopped off her head To tell the story of Marie Antoinette is to relive the great revolution. To assail the Monarchy, the revolution had to attack the Queen, and in the Queen, the woman. Thus Marie Antoinette, of inviolate virtue, kind heart, and heroic character, was sacrificed by the hordes in their determination to overthrow the Monarchy and send its Queen to the guillotine under the stigma of a prostitute, and guilty of every form of moral corruption and perversion. Somewhere between the two descriptions of the woman lies the truth. What kind of a woman was Marie Antoinette? The life of Marie is perhaps the most singular example of how destiny will sometimes pluck a mediocre woman from obscurity and thrust her into greatness. Marie was an average woman shrinking from adversity, loving peace, quiet and contentment. With diabolical cunning, history began by making her a spoiled darling, wearing a crown while she was still in her teens, endowed with charm, grace and wealth as a young wife, and dowered with a light heart that never troubled to ask the cost of her gifts. Then destiny, having raised her to the pinnacle, dragged her down again. She was torn from her 100-room palace and thrust into a common jail, was hurried from jail to scaffold, from golden coach to tumbril, from luxury to privation, from admiration to hatred and plunged into the abyss of despair. And in these fires of a hell on earth there was unknowingly wrought all the greatness of a long line of ancestors. Just before the mortal, transient frame perished, the immortal work of art was perfected. Marie Antoinette, the mediocrity, achieved greatness commensurate with her destiny.

Biographie de l'auteur :

Stefan Zweig (born November 28, 1881, Vienna, Austria – died February 22, 1942, Petrópolis, Brazil), was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer was one of the most successful and popular authors of the 20th Century. Although he wrote in German, his works were translated into English and several other languages. Zweig was a prolific writer. In the 1930s he was one of the most widely translated authors in the world. His extensive travels led him to India, Africa, North and Central America, and Russia. Zweig's friends included Maksim Gorky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, and Arturo Toscanini. Strangely, at the peak of his popularity and having just completed his autobiography while still working on four other books, Zweig committed suicide in Brazil with his new wife by them both taking poison. In 1939, he had married Charlotte Altmann, his secretary from 1933. She was twenty-seven years his junior. Zweig left a suicide note stating that he had done so because of the Nazi takeover of his country of Austria and because Europe was destroying itself with World War II that was taking place.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Date d'édition: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0802139094
• ISBN 13: 9780802139092
• Reliure: Livre broché
• Nombre de pages: 496