Struggle with Madness. Hölderlin. Kleist. Nietzsche

Stefan Zweig is a classic of Austrian literature, the author of magnificent psychological novellas and fictionalized biographies, translated into all languages of the world. "Struggle with Madness" is perhaps one of the most emotional, vibrant, and poetic books by Zweig,... which presents portraits of three word artists who ended their lives in a "deadly intoxication of feelings." "Not connected with their era, not understood by their generation, they flash like a meteor and rush into the night of their destiny. They themselves do not know their path, their mission, for their path is from infinity and into infinity." Closely examining the lives and works of Hölderlin, Kleist, and Nietzsche, the author discovers something common in their fates: a fatal demonic essence that, endowing its charges with the magical gift of words, simultaneously generates in them an irresistible urge toward self-destruction.