Beware of Pity (novel)
The novel Beware of Pity, which was published in 1939, is the only completed novel by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.
Content
The young lieutenant Anton Hofmiller is invited to the castle of the Hungarian magnates of Lajos Kekesfalva. He meets his paralyzed daughter Edith and developed affection, but especially subtle deep pity for them. He makes the terminally ill who falls in love with him, hopes for a speedy recovery and eventually becomes engaged even with her. But since he is only out of compassion, not out of love, the disaster takes its course. For fear of ridicule and contempt, he is not entitled to their connection to the public. When Edith learns that he denied the engagement in front of others, she takes her own life. Overwhelmed by guilt, he plunges into a meaningless escape the fighting in the beginning of the First World War.
First edition
- Beware of Pity. Novel, Bermann -Fischer, Stockholm / Allert de Lange, Amsterdam, 1939, 443 pp.