The Struggle with the Daemon: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche

Download or read book The Struggle with the Daemon: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche written by Stefan Zweig and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stefan Zweig’s literary portraits of three tormented giants of German literature, Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche, contrasts them with Goethe who was anchored in place by profession, home and family. For Zweig, “everyone whose nature excels the commonplace, everyone whose impulses are creative, wrestles inevitably with his daemon” which Zweig describes as “the incorporation of that tormenting leaven which impels our being ... towards danger, immoderation, ecstasy, renunciation and even self-destruction.” In these essays, Zweig depicts the tragic and sublime lifelong struggle by three great creative minds with their respective daemons.