The Invisible Collection E-Book

Zweig Stefan

• Herausgeber: ERIS
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: ERIS Gems
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 29

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

"I found it terrible, yet at the same time touching, for in all the years of the war I had not seen so perfect and pure an expression of bliss on any German face." An ostensibly whimsical story about the adventures of a Berlin art dealer, Stefan Zweig's The Invisible Collection is a powerful evocation of the condition of Germany between the wars. When Zweig's anonymous narrator sets off to the provinces in search of a lucrative bargain, he finds himself caught up in the slow unfolding of a family tragedy—and is confronted with a unique reminder of the power of art…

Leseprobe

Stefan Zweig

The Invisible Collection

Translated by Anthea Bell

ERISgems

Contents

Title PageThe Invisible CollectionCopyright

The Invisible Collection

TWO STATIONS AFTER DRESDEN, AN elderly gentleman got into our compartment, passed the time of day civilly and then, looking up, expressly nodded to me as if I were an old acquaintance. At first I couldn’t remember him; however, as soon as he mentioned his name, with a slight smile, I recollected him at once as one of the most highly regarded art dealers in Berlin. In peacetime I had often viewed and bought old books and autograph manuscripts from him. We talked of nothing much for a while, but suddenly and abruptly he said: “I must tell you where I’ve just come from—this is the story of about the strangest thing that I’ve ever encountered, old art dealer that I am, in the thirty-seven years I’ve been practising my profession.” And the story as he told it follows.

You probably know for yourself what it’s like in the art trade these days, since the value of money started evaporating like gas; all of a sudden people who have just made their fortunes have discovered a taste for Gothic 6Madonnas, and incunabula, old engravings and pictures. You can’t conjure up enough such things to satisfy them—why, you have to be careful they don’t clear out your house and home. They’d happily buy the cufflinks from your sleeves and the lamp from your desk. It’s getting harder and harder to find new wares all the time—forgive me for suddenly describing as wares items that, to the likes of you and me, usually mean something to be revered—but these philistines have accustomed even me to regard a wonderful Venetian incunabulum only as if it were a coat costing such-and-such a sum in dollars, and a drawing by Guercino as the embodiment of a few hundred franc notes. There’s no resisting the insistent urging of those who are suddenly mad to buy art. So I was right out of stock again overnight, and I felt like putting up the shutters, I was so ashamed of seeing our old business that my father took over from my grandfather with nothing for sale but wretched trash, stuff that in the past no street trader in the north 7would have bothered even to put on his cart.

In this awkward situation, the idea of consulting our old business records occurred to me, to look up former customers from whom I might be able to get a few items if they happened to have duplicates. A list of old customers is always something of a graveyard, especially in times like the present, and it did not really tell me much: most of those who had bought from us in the past had long ago had to get rid of their possessions in auction sales, or had died, and I could not hope for much from the few who remained. But then I suddenly came upon a bundle of letters from a man who was probably our oldest customer, and who had surfaced from my memory only because after 1914 and the outbreak of the World War, he had never turned to us with any orders or queries again. The correspondence—and I really am not exaggerating!—went back over almost sixty years; he had bought from my father and my grandfather, yet I could not remember him ever coming 8