[Anonymous] After reading this topic, the first thing that emerged in my mind was the most touching anonymous letter in human history. A thin twenty pages of paper write a woman's sad life - childhood, love, childbirth, and death. Relying on this novel with a short 30,000 words,

【Anonymous】

After reading this topic, the first thing that emerged in my mind was the most touching anonymous letter in human history. A thin twenty pages of paper write a woman's sad life - childhood, love, childbirth, and death. Zweig Relying on this novel with a short 30,000 words, it depicts the most extreme secret love of women in the world.

She said, "Even if I die, I lie in the grave. If you call my name, I will immediately gain a kind of strength, stand up and follow you." What kind of love is this? !

Unfortunately, this girl saw the male protagonist for thousands of years at the age of 13, and when she was 18, she became pregnant and had a child with him three times, and then was abandoned twice. Until she was 26, her mother and son died. Before her death, she wrote this desperate anonymous letter. The unfaithful man neither remembered who she was nor knew her name.

She said: "I did not leave you a photo, I did not leave you a mark, just like you left nothing for me; in the future you will never recognize me, and you will never recognize me."

Because the so-called name is a bondage, it is the shortest mantra in the world ( Dream Magami "Onmyoji"). When the person in front of you tells his name gently, it will be engraved in your heart.

The strange woman has known the unruly nature of a man since her first meeting, so she never confessed her love in this thirteen-year unrequited love. She neither told her name nor worried that she would bring him even a little burden and confusion; no photo was circulated, fearing that it would lead to his possible pain, nostalgia and deep self-blame.

[Oriental]

Many people harshly ridiculed this as a farce between paranoid and face-blindness , claiming that the burying of a strange woman's own feelings is a complete disaster. People who say so may lack a deep understanding of human emotions.

In my opinion, on the contrary, this is one of the most burning love in the world. It is a blooming of all your strength based on understanding, pure and noble. Therefore, over the past century (the book was published in 1922), countless people empathize with and cry.

"It is finally the end of death, but because of the immortal love, although your body is destroyed, your soul is conveyed into eternity.

——"Wuthering Heights"

Because of this love, the strange woman was not forgotten by the world because of her namelessness. On the contrary, her cold and arrogant life of the lonely lamp and dark fire was finally turned into books under the wonderful writing of the "writer", and accompanied by the man she beloved forever.

So you may be surprised why we know that "women are stupid and men are scumbags", but we are still moved by such love and cannot extricate ourselves from such a tragic story, and regard it as the top 100 classic in Douban Book List. You may not know that in the 1930s, it used to be the best-seller in German with the most language versions.

Zweig and Kafka of the same age are both Jewish geniuses and live in the fragmented sunset of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . However, his gorgeous writing style is considered to be the remnant of romanticism , which is exactly the opposite of Kafka's absurd irony of modernism. Therefore, after the war, it was not favored by European and American intellectual elites who focused on the tradition of English and French literature. And because World War II left his hometown, eternally exiled himself, and even lost his Austrian passport, he never received the praise he deserved in his mother country.

Interestingly, his works are very popular in China - for example, this book "Letter from a Stranger Woman" has 120,000 book reviews on Douban alone, and its popularity has basically reached the status of the top ten works.

I think this is because the extremely restrained and tolerant emotions of the woman in the book, the delicate thoughts of crying and complaining, and the sadness and grace and gracefulness triggered synesthesia in the hearts of Asian audiences, just as subtle as "there are trees in the mountains and branches in the mountains, and the heart is happy and you don't know", which makes this Vienna story adapted from the author's real life has a strange and implicit oriental beauty.

In the book, the woman abandoned her identity and status as a countess and was willing to linger with her lover overnight with the image of a prostitute. The madness and irrationality reminded me of "asking about what love is in the world, it just teaches people to agree with each other in life and death."

But she is essentially traditional. Her soul has never belonged to anyone else. Her unwavering faith in love is exactly what we often say, "The reed is as tough as silk, and the rock is untransferred."

Her love was when she was thirteen years old and she looked at him in the crowd. She never forgot his face again. It is the so-called "love does not know where it arises, and it goes deeper."

Every step she takes for love is like drinking poison to quench thirst, and in the end, the love is deep and will not live long.

Her love is as extreme as a real person, but the details of her face are so real that she has her shadow in many people, and she has her eyes, whether it is a woman or a man.

For example, the same young Guo Xiang , after a glance, he could not wash the man's voice, appearance and smile from his heart for a lifetime.

For example, Gatsby, who watches the riverside, squanders money, time, affectionately pays until the end of his life, only Daisy's indifferent smile.

I can see her from the poems of resentful women and the poems of mistresses from ancient times to the present, and also hear her sorrow in popular songs like "A Taoist nun friend" - I have a lot of feelings, but I can't beat your love...

These people are all love but cannot get it, but this situation is inconsistent with the tragic aesthetics in Eastern culture - the so-called "life has been infatuated since ancient times, and this hatred has nothing to do with the wind and the moon."

[Trouble Love]

The strange woman in this book presents the purest and most intense form of humble love. Although contradictory and pathological, it is paved by Zweig with exquisite plots and delicate psychological monologues. It is reasonable to

A man is as erratic as the wind, never rejecting any beautiful woman, and every time is the same as the first time, elegant, considerate, gentle and brisk. When he was forty-one, he still had childish innocence and tenderness and the cruel forgetfulness of a young man. But she loved him so cruelly: "The relationship is fierce, forgetful by nature, fall in love at first sight, and love is not loyal."

The more cruel he is, the more he aggravated her love. This kind of love is almost self-abuse, but the executioner is herself. Why is such a sad love that makes people feel moved and unforgettable?

Because torture has its own sweetness of torture, this sacrificial tragedy belongs to the category of aesthetics: refers to the inevitable conflict between people and things with positive value in social and historical. Being subjected to invasive destruction causes strong pain and at the same time, it is moved by its lofty spirit, so that it can experience the beauty of a special form of turning from pain to pleasure due to the rapid shock of emotions.

Schiller said: "People may manifest as great in happiness, but only in misfortune as noble." This is why "A Letter from a Stranger Woman" makes people feel solemn.

Similarly, the girls in love are very similar to the Nightingale in " Little Prince ". They hope to witness true love coming beside them - the nightingale presses against the thorns with her chest and sings all night in the moonlight. The bloody rose finally blooms beside her cool body. However, such a rose was thrown into the gutter in a blink of an eye. Such love is extremely admirable and heartbreaking!

In order to experience this ultimate and noble love, women often have a tendency in their nature: to move themselves and turn sorrow into eternity.

"The scholar can still be leniency. The woman cannot be leniency!" The Book of Songs has clearly told us how difficult it is for a woman to be leniency in love.

Of course, love in real life will bring substantial harm after all, and sometimes this price is unbearable. Therefore, as strange emotional animals, women have developed strong empathy and imagination. They shed their own tears when they read other people's stories.

In this book, the sensitive and delicate Zweig sets an ultimate Shura field for women who are looking forward to hysterical and happy love once. The woman in his writing lives only for love, and her love is called a person's love.

The strange woman's persistent pursuit of love has brought her life into this infinite vortex of death. The more she desires, the faster she approaches death. Finally, she tells us with a letter of writing - what will you live like when you use everything in your life to love someone with all your heart.

However, her death was not ugly, but was full of nobility, because as an extremely proud and romantic woman, she would never allow herself to be given alms and merciful - rather than letting a man bow down, it would be better to die by herself.

Her anonymity corresponds to the sentence: "I love you, it has nothing to do with you."

She burned herself up, illuminated love, and helped thousands of women in the world project their love and tears.

[Secret Love]

I always think that what Zweig deserves the most respect is that he has created a new path for biographical literature, which is still unattainable. However, this book spans time and writes the souls of countless women, portraying the most extreme secret love, making them recognize him as the confidant in the book, the friend of women - as the saying goes, the great souls are all hermaphrodites.

He can write the words "I'm not good" and spread the word "I love you but don't ask for reward" for more than ten pages. His exquisite psychological analysis and story unfold, superb character setting and delicate emotional expression allow this originally bizarre story between the male and female protagonists to properly arrange.

Let us look at those touching descriptions, which you can hardly imagine, came from the hands of a middle-aged man.

She kissed the door handle he touched, peeped at a man's life from the cat's eyes, and collected the smoke tails he sucked - those pure heartbeats and obsessions, countless girls had experienced them at that age.

She knew all his shortcomings, but because of his dazzling charm, she became extremely cute - if you love him, you must love everything about him. The less you understand

, the more you can’t get it, the more you miss and beautify him. This is the specialty of being a woman. He became the sun in her dark and slim life. She kept looking up, turning him into a comforter when he was lonely and an indispensable part of life, thus completely changing his lifestyle.

Her love for him began with appearance and was trapped in talent. The girl had already understood the two sides of men as early as 13 years old. She bought all his books and could memorize all his poems - "I know you are used to women saying they love you. But I am sure that no one is as blind as me, and loves you so humble and loyally."

She fell into the dust because of love and bloomed a flower: "Because nothing can compare to a child's undetected love. It is full of despair and humility, but lasting and full of passion."

Because she couldn't see him, she measured the longevity of her thoughts with every minute of her life.

She is grateful to the man for bringing her hope of life during her adolescence. In order to meet him again, she studied and worked and became a better self.

She grafted her ideals on a man and deliberately maintained a certain distance. The few helpless separations in her destiny made this love become more intense and mellow with time.

The most touching thing in this book is the description:

"My heart is always nervous for you and trembles for you; but you have no feelings about it, just like you have a pocket watch in your pocket, and you don't feel about its tense clockwork. This clockwork patiently counts your hours for you in secret, calculates your time, and runs around with its inaudible heartbeat, and you only glance at it in the millions of seconds that keep ticking. "

Until the old butler John recognized her tears at a glance, pushing the plot to a climax, and then her life was full of despair, because her love had nothing to do with him -

"Fate is destined, and my life is waiting in front of your closed life."

This is undoubtedly the most thorough and heartbreaking description of despair unrequited love.

Finally, the thirteen years of Shura field made her understand that she loved not only him, but also the self who was pursuing love, and it was love itself. If she confessed to the male protagonist, it would destroy this sense of distance and beauty of isolation - the love for herself makes me close to you, and the love for you makes me not disturb you.

So don't meet someone who is too stunning at a teenager, he will make you unforgettable in this life, and let you bind for a lifetime - a girl either doesn't love, if she loves, she will love earth-shaking -

"Only a lonely child can gather all his passion. I had no experience and no preparation, and I fell into my destiny like falling into an abyss. "

People in adolescence are not mature enough, and are prone to impulsiveness and difficult to control themselves. When they meet someone they love, they are very likely to fly into the flames and fight to the death. However, I don't know if I should dissuade such young people. Because I have lost such impulse to young people, I may not be able to experience a passionate love in my life. The ending of the story is very sad:

"He was shocked all over: he seemed to feel that an invisible door suddenly opened, and the cold wind blows into his quiet room from another world. He felt death and immortal love. For a moment, he felt a thousand worries surged into his heart. He vaguely remembered the invisible woman. Her figure was floating, full of passion, like music coming from afar. "

There are many women who believe that in this relationship, the strange woman did not lose, but won completely. Because although a man has countless women, he has long lost the ability to love and does not remember any of them. However, the strange woman used this last letter to make this man never forget her again in this life. The love he owed for the first half of his life will definitely be paid back with his heart for the rest of his life.

I think this is probably the beautiful fantasy and wishful thinking of female readers -

This story is rewritten based on Zweig's real life experience, and he is indeed I have actually received similar anonymous letters. And just like the many male protagonists in his novels that enjoy happiness and love vanity, these men are eager for lust and dewy love, and have a perfect hunter mentality. After living in Europe for many years, I can tell you very responsibly that even a hundred years later, there are still a considerable number of middle-class men in Europe who are very "zweig", so the more realistic ending will probably be like this -

The man just sighed and picked up the dusty memories in the dusty past, the tragic story of the invisible woman full of suppressed emotions, and it is only him after all A short ripples in life.

【 Martyrdom 】

Even if the ending is a sigh, why can this work be loved so long?

I think in addition to the description of secret love is the ultimate skill success, the most fundamental thing is that Zweig has created the heroine's destined to be desperate and noble love through her grasp of human nature, which is rare in literary history.

As an idealist, the heroine pursues pure and perfect love, she simply wants the hero to be with her because of love, Rather than responsibility, compassion or sympathy. It is her noble and painful heart that makes this love perfect and moving.

such a heavy brush to depict a woman full of martyrdom and almost pathological affection, which has made some scholars point out that Zweig hopes to make up for the cruelty in real life with people who believe in noble moral spirit. Because this love tragedy is moving with its spiritual power, it essentially comes from the purest love belief deep in the girl's soul, which is called eternal love belief. Her short and not very beautiful life has accomplished a mission that most of us cannot accomplish - love someone.

And such extremely idealistic, extremely mentally clean, and martyrdomized pursuit of ideals and love are gradually forgotten by the world - women sacrificed their love, martyrs sacrificed their revolution, and scholars sacrificed their science - When a feeling can be deep enough to transcend everything, no matter what kind of person or thing is poured into, it can be elevated to unshakable faith, supporting people to move forward without hesitation.

Therefore, "Letter from a Stranger Woman" does not simply describe the ultimate love, it is also a story about faith, redemption and martyrdom.

Zweig himself also ended his ideal life by committing suicide.

In the second half of his life, the great power collapsed and Austro-Hungary collapsed. After that, there was a chaotic human heart and a turbulent era. Vienna, the capital of art, was no longer elegant. The wars on the European continent were rampant. He eventually lost his motherland and his roots and embarked on a journey of exile that never returns.

"It seems that every breath is to be grateful to a strange nation, because you breathe their air" - "The World of Yesterday".

But his tenderness towards the old world was still a matter of time, until he sent him his life. Gradually, there was no such light in his heart. Such a person and such love, and he sacrificed himself like a strange woman.

Nowadays, we are laughing at the poor but not the prostitute . We are lazy to think about people and do not seek too much understanding but pursue utilitarianism. Everyone thought they had seen through everything in the world, and they picked up the keyboard and deconstructed the heroes in arbitrarily, distorted and ridiculed their beliefs.

As far as love is concerned, there are unscrupulous blind date programs everywhere, and public accounts that spread anxiety. Marriage has gradually become a means to improve the economy and transcend classes. In order to satisfy one's bottomless desires, surrender to the world, and even have no way to judge whether a like-minded person is aware of it, he is eager to start a family with a stranger.

People have long forgotten the appearance of love, forgotten the first love and secret love that deserves to be moved by. Even when they see a strange foreign woman’s selflessness and loyalty a hundred years ago, they do not forget to be a lunatic and ridicule.

Little do we know that when we deconstruct love and abandon faith, even if we look like flowers in life, we still lose its underlying foundation. After busy work, we are full of emptiness and sit in the pale light and shadow at the end of the years, we cannot write a letter worthy of engraving for our life.