Marie antoinette biography by stefan zweig beware

THE MAN of the MONTH

STEFAN ZWEIG

[Viking Press, $3.50]

‘NOT to idolize, not to deify, but to humanize is the supreme task of creative psychological study.’ That is what Stefan Zweig has here attempted ‘in the case of a woman of average character, who owes her long-lasting influence to an incomparable fate, and whose inward greatness was but the outcome of unprecedented misfortunes.’

That he has succeeded to a remarkable degree no one will deny. With the imagination of a poet, the skilled pen of an essayist, and the self-confidence of a psychiatrist, he has produced an exceedingly vivid and interesting picture of one of the most tragic figures in all history. There have been other vivid and interesting pictures of Marie Antoinette, to be sure; but they have tended to be passionately partisan. Adherents of the Revolution, in order to assail the Monarchy effectively, attacked the Queen, and in the Queen the woman, besmirching her character with the mud and blood of Revolutionary