Montaigne

Resumen del libro

'He who thinks freely for himself, honours all freedom on earth.'Stefan Zweig was already an emigre-driven from a Europe torn apart by brutality and totalitarianism-when he found, in a damp cellar, a copy of Michel de Montaigne's Essais. Montaigne would become Zweig's last great occupation, helping him make sense of his own life and his obsessions-with personal freedom, with the sanctity of the individual. Through his writings on suicide, he would also, finally, lead Zweig to his death.

With the intense psychological acuity and elegant prose so characteristic of Zweig's fiction, this account of Montaigne's life asks how we ought to think, and how to live. It is an intense and wonderful insight into both subject and biographer.

Biografía del autor

Stefan Zweig es un bio grafo peculiar. Escoge personajes poco probables, figuras extremas, movidas por obsesiones y lacerantes contradicciones internas. Personajes que, como Fouche o Magallanes, se encuentran envueltos en momentos cruciales, cuyas decisiones desencadenan, de una forma u otra, consecuencias imprevisibles con repercusiones enormes. Tambie n la de otros, como von Kleist o Nietzsche, en cuya hondura, soledad y melancoli a parece que retrata Zweig la suya propia. En el caso de Nietzsche, el retrato de los tormentos del genio, el sentido moral con el que mira a la verdad, captan parte del drama interno del autor y del que este percibe en el destino de la Europa de posguerra que tiene ante si .