《一个陌生女人的来信》写作手法分析

摘要

斯蒂芬·茨威格生于奥地利，《一个陌生女人的来信》是其代表作，这部作品讲述了一个女人终其一生爱着一个风流成性、游戏人间的小说家，但在小说家的世界里，她只是一个过客，所以对这个男人来说，她永远是一个陌生的女人；她在生命的最后时刻，拖着病体用一封信记录下了自己悲惨的一生。在这篇论文中，研究了茨威格对女性形象的独特描写手法以及我们能从中得到的有用的写作技巧；从小说女主人公可悲的人生经历中反思人道主义悲剧、找寻自我存在的价值；文学作品普遍具有象征意义，在爱情的掩映下，其实是作者内心的自述，这篇小说就是作者的代言人，我们能在其中看到世界大战之后知识分子迷茫的、难以捉摸的精神状况。

本论文共分为五章，分别从作者的身世经历与作品的故事情节、女性形象分析、人物心理描写、人道主义悲剧和作者茨威格的内心世界五个角度对这部小说进行了解读。

关键词：情感；象征手法；女性形象；潜意识

The Analysis of the Writing Techniques of Letter from an Unknown Woman

ABSTRAST

Stefan Zweig was born in Austria, Letter from an Unknown Womanis his representative work. The novel tells the story of a woman loves a romantic and dissolute novelist all her life, but in the novelist’s world, she is just a passer-by. So for this man, she will always be an “unknown woman”. At the end of her life, She dragged her sick body with a letter to record her miserable life. In this paper, Zweig’s unique depiction of female images and useful writing skills can be researched. From the tragic life experience of the heroine of the novel, we can reflect on the humanitarian tragedy and find the value of our own existence. Literary works are generally of symbolic significance. Under the shadow of love, they are actually the author’s inner narration. This novel is the author’s spokesman, in which we can see the confused and elusive mental state of intellectuals after the world war.

The thesis has five chapters in all. To understand and read the novel from the author’s life experience and the plot of the work, the analysis of female image, the psychological description of characters, the humanitarian tragedy and the author Zweig’s inner world five perspectives.

Key words:emotion; symbolism; female image; subconscious

I. Introduction

1.1 Author’s Status

Stefan Zweig is an outstanding Austrian writer. His novel Letter from an Unknown Womanis popular with readers from all over the world, because of its poignant and amazing love story, elegant language narrative, delicate and complex emotional description and other artistic features.This is a masterpiece across the times and the country. The tone of Zweig’s works is realistic, and the best technique is the delicate psychological description.

Someone recognized that Zweig’s novels scored not with “numerous characters, vast historical backgrounds, ”colorful pictures of customs and intricate storylines”, but “with vagaries of fierce inner struggle, that is, the vagaries of emotional ups and downs”.The above characteristics, together with the author’s extraordinary life, provide basis for the multi-interpretation of Zweig’s novels.

In this paper, through the study of the writing techniquesin Letter from an Unknown Woman, it explores the narrative structure of Zweig’s novels and the techniques of depicting the characters and psychology. It also embodies the humanitarian thought in Zweig’s works and his own spiritual appeal.

1.2 Author’s Background

Zweig’s creation and life is a paradox. He is known as the world’s most woman-knowing writer, but has so far made feminists unhappy; he was hailed as “the world’s leading writer”but never won any literary prizes; he wrote 12 biographies closely related to politics, but called himself “don’t ask politics”. His works are exquisite in the character shaping and psychological portrayal of the character, write the human pride, vanity, jealousy and hatred, but still cannot overcome the fragility of human nature, let his own life fall in an instant. On February 23, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a drug to suicide in Brazil.

Born in 1881 in Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Zweig educated from an early age, he published poetry in a journal in Vienna at the age of 16. From 1907 to World War I, he matured in his creation. During the First World War, many well-known European writers failed to shake off the influence of narrow nationalism and chauvinism, and only a few people who kept their heads down and stuck to their anti-war stances, Zweig was one of them. The 20 years after World War I were Zweig’s period of golden writings and he also wrote other popular novels such as biographies of celebrities such as Roman Roland and Letter from an Unknown Woman.

The tone of Zweig’s work is realist, and the best technique is the delicate psychological description. Gorky gives the crown of “the world’s most women-savvy writer”to Zweig, “I was deeply moved by this short —- Letter from an Unknown Woman, the surprisingly sincere tone, the supreme warmth of women, the originality of the subject, and the expressiveness that only real artists have”, he wrote in his letter to Zweig.

Zweig’s works, especially his novels, mainly focus on the theme of “emotion, passion, eroticism, women and tragedy”. By describing the inner world of the characters, Zweig shows various sentiment and rich emotional activities and psychological states, which are in harmony with the aesthetic expectations of Chinese readers. These novels either focus on the psychological analysis of the budding youth of young boys and girls, or record the painful and miserable confession of the hearts of adult men and women who commit the crime of passion driven by passion, or describe the bitter memories of the intense emotional process of old men and women. In Zweig’s works, the reader finds a strange and attractive emotional world”and resonates with them.

1.3 The Content of Letter from an Unknown Woman

Zweig’s novel describes the unattached love, the protagonist’s lifelong obsession reflects her unique aesthetic care, from which we can experience the infinite tragic sentiment. Zweig recorded in a delicate and plaintive style, like an electrocardiogram. From the curious mind of an innocent girl, to the shy and frightened infatuation of awakening love, to the anxiety of encounter, the joy of commitment, the secret love of contempt for losing one’s virginity, to the loneliness of raising a child and the humiliation and bullying of poverty. The unknown woman took this unrequited love to the extreme. The whole reason for her curiosity, infatuation, and unrequited love in the emotional world lies in the irrational unconscious control of her heart. The unconscious is something one is not aware of, but it affects people’s psychology and behaviour. Driven by instinct and desire, the unknown woman acts unconsciously, regardless of the consequences, goes her way, until she bumps her head in front of the cruel reality, still refuses to look back.

This novel is one of the mazes of the minds of many characters created by Zweig’s use of psychology and realism. The novel tells the story of an unknown woman loves a strange novelist R from her 13-year-old childhood to 30-year-old womanhood, but in the novelist’s world, she is just a passer-by. So for this man, she will always be an “unknown woman”. At the end of her life, She dragged her sick body with a letter to record her miserable life.The story is in the form of a first-person letter. In the novel, an unknown woman gives her life to a novelist who knows nothing about it. When the son of the unknown leaves and she dies soon after, she writes to the novelist who has never known herself, tells him about her short life’s love for R.

“As a reader, I lack the patience, any words that are out of place, complicated, exaggerated, any vague, redundant rap, and plot-by-plot passages that make me angry. Only those books that kept the plot running high, page by page, and that were thrilling and breathless until the last page what can gave me the fullest enjoyment.”Zweig once said. And he is also using such a standard to ask his own works, Letter from an Unknown Womanlike a skit that’s concise without losing the taste. In the letter, the woman’s words and phrases reveal the sadness and strength of love; the woman’s tone is sad, because her story in the life of her loved one is not worth mentioning. However, the process of love is so passionate, hit the depths of the heart.

At the end of the story, the child died and the woman’s fire of life went out. The author put down the letter, “he shuddered, feeling as if an invisible door had been suddenly opened, a door through which a chill breeze from another world was blowing into his sheltered room. An intimation of death came to him, and an intimation of deathless love”. The heartrending story, like a ricer, dried up in Zweig’s quiet pen.

II. Female Image Analysis

2.1 Adolescence — Curiosity

Freud believed that children began to seek sexual objects from the outside world during the period of object selection of sexual development. For young children, this object is first and foremost a parent.

The heroine’s father died young, and her mother was depressed all day; there was no trusted person around to care for her, listen to her thoughts. In this way, the heroine developed an unconscious but very strong longing for father’s love or the tenderness of men. In that case, R appeared. In the face of a handsome, strange man’s arrival, the heroine watched his every move from the beginning. After a chance encounter, R’s unconscious caressing eyes, bright smile, kind words of thanks were like a key to the heart of a 13-year-old girl. His gentle and attentive attitude towards women made the heroine feel different tenderness compared with maternal love. The deep tenderness of a seductive man exactly satisfied a girl’s unconscious desire and longing. At the same time, it found a breakthrough for the emotional vent of the heroine’s deep resentment. “Henceforward in my restricted world, you were the only thing that interested me; that my life revolved round yours with the fidelity proper to a girl of thirteen, I watched you, watched your habits, watched the people who came to see you—-and all this increased instead of diminishing my interest in your personality.”From that moment, her life was just for him.

2.2 Youth — Infatuation

According to Freud, many of people’s wishes, especially their desires, are suppressed into the unconscious because they are not in line with the social moral standards. Therefore, when the examination function is relaxed in sleep, the desires sneak into the consciousness in various and disguised images and thus become dreams. In other words, as one’s desires are not satisfied in reality, one takes a circuitous route to sleep.

In the period of time away from Vienna, the unknown woman’s affection for R has been from the juvenile curiosity to the extent of infatuation. At the age of 18, the unknown woman was already in her prime. She turned down the generous support from her adoptive father and left her stable and comfortable. She returned to Vienna for love and made a living by herself. The first thing an independent unknown woman does was go back to her old place and look for R. From a little girl into a beautiful woman who now exudes feminine breath, the thoughts of unknown woman into the stage of mature woman. Time passed, but the heroine’s love for R did not change. Everything she did for R was of his own free will. She acted without thinking, full of passion and impulsive. The heroine is always with an equal, strong mentality in love with him. She could have told R all this earlier, but she didn’t. She did not want to beg or force it, because it was more important than her life.

Everyone has a shadow personality hidden in the subconscious. The unknown woman will hide her deep affection in her own subconscious, and show it is humble obedience. Therefore, from beginning to end the unknown woman is a single type of giving, this kind of secret love is a typical form of unrequited love. Unrequited love is when the other person doesn’t know you love him or her. It often happens to introverts who feel unattainable when they love the other person. So, after a carefully choreographed encounter, she spends three nights with R, and when R tries to escape in the name of an outing, she quietly leaves without complaining.

2.3 Mature Period — Unrequited Love

Freud points out that in the experience of losing one’s beloved, accepting the attributes of the other, and perpetuating the existence of the other through the magical act of imitation, the loss of one’s desire, the pain of the beloved other, and trying to accommodate that other into the structure of the self through a special act of identification.

The heroine had the novelist’s son, but she did not tell R, for she was afraid that R would be unhappy and disturb R’s mind, thus casting a shadow on their love. She gave up the chance to be a countess in order to remain free at all times, so that she and R could resume their old dream and be a unique lover forever.

The depiction of female image is more detailed than that of other images, and the proportion of psychological depiction is higher.“I love, but none of your business.”This popular Goethe love classic is reflected to the extreme in this novel, the image of women in love is vividly displayed.

“Can’t be able to accept yourself”is a kind of psychological trauma, it is the result of a person’s growing process of sustained denial and damage. The most important lesson in our life is to learn to accept yourself. You can’t love yourself unless you accept yourself.

A person who does not appreciate herself is difficult to be happy. The heart of an unhappy man cannot be free. Unhappy people, please take action! Don’t depend on others to make you happy. We should consciously give ourselves self-confidence. Say to yourself: I love myself, I respect my every thought, I believe in myself, I am worthy, I deserve to be treated well by my lover.

III. Characteristicsand psychological Portrayal Skills

3.1 Emotion

Someone recognized that the novel is an emotional story, it sings beautiful and extreme love. Flower girl falls in love with new neighbor residence secretly —- a “rich, unique, mysterious”young author, with many beautiful books. This “unknownwoman”regards love as life, and the warm pure passion that fills her heart is the driving force of her life. In that age of materialism, playing with love is bad feelings have become commonplace.

From the beginning to end, she loved so purely without impurity, girl’s infatuation is different from greedy love. She loved so passionately and freely that her heart burst into flames when he looked at her. When she grew up, she loved such stubborn and self-respecting. She was tight-lipped when she had his children, for the sake of their children’s bright and cheerfullife of the well-to-do, she would rather sell herself as a rich man’s lover than beg for his help.

3.2 Loyalty

Beratu believes that the mind has three songs, that is, consisting of three parts —- rationality, desire and passion, all three functions are different, each of them do their part. Rationality is used for thinking and reasoning; desire for feeling love, is a variety of satisfaction and happiness partners; passion lies between reason and desire, usually an ally of reason, but sometimes it is on the side of desire against reason. Ideally, in those with high moral selves, passion is aligned with reason, and people will take reasonable and just action. “Unknownwoman”are more in line with Freud’s philosophy of desire, and the rational element of her composition of the mind is diluted.Her pure and unbridled love is all out of passion and will.The unknown woman is driven by the id unconscious all her life, and this unconscious leads people to pay attention to the complexity and hierarchy of the unknown woman’s psychology, to pay attention to the actions behind the consciousness, and to discuss the profound and huge influence of the unconscious on people’s psychology and behaviour.

3.3 Struggle

Someone recognized that this is a unrequited love story, it focuses on the heroine’s paranoia and madness. The novelist R in the eyes of many readers, is just an inexhaustible lack of responsibility of the playboy, even she herself is fully aware of the character of this man, but she was willing to use his life to protect this infatuation.

What a love that goes against the norm, the woman whose psychological variation indulges in the utopia of love, regardless of his duality that she had already seen. As a teenager, she would go home every day to hide behind the door, through the small hole in the door to spy on the novelist’s every move. Back to Vienna, she stood under his window after work every day until the lights went out, waiting for a dream that would never come true, a fate that “you would not recognize”. If we don’t follow the principle of moderation, those qualities that make us shine can plunge us into the abyss. In the novel, loyalty, persistence and dedication make the love of the “unknown woman”selfless and great, but she also falls into her own fate.

Through the first person’s love heart song, a lonely unrequited love soul’s most secret place is stripped clearly. This is a “in the crowd,but living lone”soul. The contradiction between the pursuit of passion and emotional suppression has been silenced in her subconscious, leading to change of psychology and love delusion. An “unknown woman”is the lonely walker in life, and only a sympathetic soul can see this paranoid approach to the real “infinite”of life.

IV. The Humanitarian Spirit in the Novel

“Unknownwoman”lives for love and die, her love of death collapsed and she forgets herself.She never stopped loving his. She rushed to meet her fate. After five years of infatuation, she finally became one of the novelist’s lovers. But she showed no remorse. In her love, not in return, only self-devotion.

Since she had his son, she has made a symbolic act of giving him a bunch of white roses on her birthday once a year. And for the sake of his “anther self”, she sold her body and was not ashamed of it. She always treasured an eternal dream, that is, the faithful love of the indulgent, profligate novelist. This is what a tragic contradiction between reality and ideal! Her heart has been suffering from contradictions. She hid everything about herself and their son from him, and how eager she was to be recognized by him. As her son went away, so did her soul and her life. This blood-soaked fate confided in the novelist and sang a noble sad song for our readers.

In his work, Freud pointed out that the human body system consists of three stages. The id is the most primitive and innate impulsive of all kinds of instinct. According to the “Only Happy Principle”, the unconscious is the essence and reality of human psychology, while the theory of the unconscious is mainly related. The ego is the existence and awakening of one’s own consciousness. The superego is the moral branch of the human psychological function that encompasses the ideas we strive for and the expected punishment (guilt) when we violate our own moral code. The unknown woman is driven by the id unconscious all her life, and this unconscious leads people to pay attention to the complexity and hierarchy of the unknown woman’s psychology, to pay attention to the actions behind the consciousness, and to discuss the profound and huge influence of the unconscious on people’s psychology and behaviour.

Love yourself while giving selflessly, for no one will cherish a person who doesn’t love herself. It is very dangerous to get caught up in self-affection.

If a person does not have or lacks love in his heart, he will always build his love and happiness on others. Love yourself before you love others. When you take care of yourself, you will really know how to love others. Love yourself, let your heart full of love and joy, and then have the strength to love others, to bring joy and happiness to each other.

As for me, I’ve thought a lot about the meaning and purpose of life, but the is simple: seek true freedom and enjoy life. Everyone has a different pace of life and different opportunities. When you are not satisfied with who you are at the moment, you realize that you need to make some changes in life. All negative things are the driving force to push you in a better direction.

Fate gives us suffering at the same time, will also give us the opportunity to turn. At this time, if we do not choose the right direction, we will fall into the tragedy. People will always make an unwise choice, let themselves continue to sink in the wrong position. In the end, we are not abandoned by fate, but buried by ourselves.

V. The Inner World Feeling of Zweig

Many believe that “unknown woman”is the author’s self-spokesman. Zweig lived in 19th-century Vienna, the “golden age of peace”. But the smoke of the two world wars of the twentieth century destroyed the legitimacy, humanity and European civilization of yesterday’s world. War turned him into a terrible wast eland for him and his spiritual world, who, like a fugitive, escaped from the burning house in the depths of his life, and he did not know where to go.

Between the two world wars, Europe was not a peaceful world. Beneath the semblance of security, there was instability. The cloud of war left blood and chaos everywhere. Living in this era, europeans inevitably suffer from the negative results brought by environmental variation: material poverty, environmental depression and spiritual burden.

The chaotic and fragmented living environment and the indifferent relationship between people in the capitalist society have caused a large number of emotional degradation. Their inner loneliness and helplessness have often prompted them to show some actions that overstep their own sense of reason. It is a totally unconscious struggle and a futile attempt. Because of this, Zweig’s characters have an extraordinary courage and pride.

Zweig’s characters often act out of the ordinary, often against the grain of ethics. Once the human mind is overloaded and reaches its limit, the desire to talk will sweep away everything. Those who have been suppressed for a long time and are in a state of aphasia need to be restrained by the right person and the right time, and the language will be overwhelming and irresistible. Zweig knows and grasps this. The long, coherent, urgent, almost neurotic confession is a monologue, a sort of soliloquy is a state of anxiety on the margins of society, a kind of reliving of the past through the medium of strangers.

With this deep understanding and sympathy for those who lived in that era and that troubled world, Zweig chose this form of expression. In other word, only in this way can the emotions of the characters in Zweig’s works be fully and incisively expressed, so that readers can understand the distortion and alienation of the characters in that era through the narration of these characters, which, to some extent, puts the era on the judicial bench.

In different cultural artifacts, the authors also show us the war from different perspectives. When the war comes, the beauty is in front of us, but we can do nothing but watch it dissipate. This powerlessness is what the author wants to express. War is a great magnifier of emotion. And not only the physical damage, the psychological damage is more lasting and painful. Those who have experienced war are unfortunate. The harm brought by war to human beings is not only the loss of family members and homes, but also the psychological trauma. This effect is the same for the victims of war and those who participate in the war. Soldiers go to the front to fulfill their duty, and whatever the political aim of the war may be, they will carry out their orders, even in an unjust war. Maybe the comrade-in-arms who go with you, today is still talking and laughing with you, tomorrow is already gone, maybe you are the only one left in the end. It is a relief for those who have gone to the heaven under fire and bullets. But for those who are lucky enough to survive and return home, is it a blessing or a torment? The trauma of war is etched in the cerebral cortex and will follow them for the rest of their lives. How many soldiers need psychological treatment after they leave the army, and how many can forget those precarious days? War is just like this, but we who call for world peace should often witness the bloodshed brought by war and disputes. Maybe there are many aspirants and politicians’goals behind this, but the so-called pain is still borne by the people at the lowest level.

This inscrutable, helpless spiritual plot is like a repressed unconscious, activated when the writer writes, and through the channel of the work to get a tortuous catharsis. This novel expresses the author’s realistic situation and aspiration by means of metaphor and symbolism, with sobs of lyrical strokes. “Unknown woman”can be interpreted as the author’s ideal world, that is, the symbol of “yesterday’s world”, while the novelist R symbolizes the real world of the author’s life, the world that cause him to lose his homeland. The death of an unknown woman seems to herald the fate of the author’s suicide.

VI. Epilogue

The written word is just lying on the paper, what makes it alive is the spirit and sentiment contained in it.

There are a lot of good qualities in every person that no one else can replace, but if we don’t follow the principle of moderation, those qualities that make us shine can plunge us into the abyss. In the novel, loyalty, persistence and dedication make the love of the “unknown woman”selfless and great, but she also falls into her own fate.

A person who does not appreciate herself is difficult to be happy. The heart of an unhappy man cannot be free. If your love binds you instead of freeing you, it is not true love but your obsession. It’s just you and yourself getting tangled up. We should let rationality dominate our desires and passions, especially for women. Only when we are not attached to anyone can we truly exist in the world as an independent person.

All paintings in the world are self-portraits, and all expressions are the person’s own understanding of the world. No matter what the content of a person’s work is, in fact, all of them are expressing his own heart. Zweig’s extraordinary life experience makes this novel have symbolic significance, it’s more than just about love. The author takes the novel as his spokesman, expressing the spiritual complex of being at a loss and helplessness in a special era. Literature is the product of The Times and must bear the brand of The Times. In different cultural artifacts, the authors also show us the war from different perspectives. When the war comes, the beauty is in front of us, but we can do nothing but watch it dissipate. This powerlessness is what the author wants to express. Through this novel, we also can have a glimpse of the intellectual’s mental state at that era.