Stefan Zweig, literary criticist

Abstract

Zweig is not a professional literary critic; when he does it, he seems not to have set out to do it. His aim is not to justify a work of art, discovering or pointing out its merits or noting its demerits. His purpose is wider and higher: he obeys a plan of beautiful and gigantic proportions, which he develops methodically and affectionately. He intends to vindicate the creative feeling of the great spirits achieved in his works; he intends to point out the imperishable work of the "architects of the world" in that series of characteristic studies that he calls "The Builders of the World, Typology of the Spirit.