The Austrian Stefan Zweig (Vienna, 1881 - Petrópolis, 1942) is a writer who has been a source of great interest to publishers. After a period of obscurity, the success he enjoyed during his lifetime was revived at the turn of the century, making him a regular feature. long-seller, in a reference to the "world of yesterday" and in an iconic example of the skill of the late Jaume Vallcorba (Barcelona, ​​1949-2014), founder of the publishing houses Quaderns Crema and Acantiladoto consolidate a stellar catalog with the right mix of rediscovered and new releases. Therefore, it was logical to expect that, from January 2023 onwards, with his work entering the public domain, many stamps would follow Vienna's lead in its collection. Small pleasures with (for the moment) five titles, but also publishing houses such as Ediciones de 1984 and La Segunda Periferia, would incorporate his name.

"The Mediocre Internationale." The expression is Georges Bernanos's, and he would have uttered it in conversation with Stefan Zweig in 1942, in Brazil, a few days before the Austrian committed suicide. Bernanos survived him by a few years. Bernanos and Zweig had fled Hitler's war: their world—the civilized and idealized "world of yesterday" described by Zweig—had collapsed. Europe had entered a mad decline. In the book ZB (Ed. Mèl·loro Rosso), the Majorcan philologist and writer Jaume Capó, through the texts of both intellectuals, recreates in the form of a play a meeting that would have taken place in Barbacena, in the farm where Bernanos had settled. [The book includes the Catalan and Portuguese versions.]

"Humanity has never submitted to the patient and just, but always only to the great monomaniacs." This wasn't written today with Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin in mind. It was written by Stefan Zweig almost a century ago, surely thinking of Hitler but referring to the fanatic John Calvin (1509-1564), the man who transformed the Protestant Reformation initiated by Luther (a movement for spiritual and religious freedom) into a theocratic dictatorship in Geneva. Educated at the same college as Erasmus and Ignatius of Loyola, Calvin didn't profit much. From persecuted to persecutor, he tortured his society and tortured himself: he slept a maximum of four hours and ate only a meager meal a day; no distractions, no relaxation, no pleasure. The ascetic, says Zweig, "is the most dangerous type of despot."

It may seem that the fight for respect for freedom of thought and expression is more necessary than ever. And yet, in retrospect, it has always been necessary, and it is a struggle that has no end. I say this after reading Castellio vs. Calvin. Awareness against violence, by Stefan Zweig. Beyond the literary style and the extraordinary documentation, I was impressed by the burning relevance of this work.. Published in 1936, it has been opportunely edited this year in Catalan by La Segunda Periferia with a very readable translation by Marc Jiménez Buzzi.

Stefan Zweig's beautiful book The world of yesterday. Memoirs of a European Remember and evoke, in 1941, when Nazism was on the verge of winning the war it had provoked, how much better the world was before the Great War, fascism, communism and Nazism, when there was faith in progress and humanity. Are we beginning to think like Stefan Zweig? Have we been so disoriented in recent weeks that we feel the vertigo that everything we had believed in will be frowned upon or even banned and persecuted?