Stefan Zweig - The Society of the Crossed Keys

Wes Anderson is an American director and screenwriter. His films include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom. He directed and wrote the screenplay for The Grand Budapest Hotel, his latest film.

George Prochnik is the author of The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World. He is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine.

GEORGE PROCHNIK: I thought your film did a beautiful job of transposing Stefan Zweigs actual life into the dream life of his stories, and the stories into the fabric of his actual life. You showed how deeply implicated they were in one anothernot in the sense that Zweig was necessarily writing directly about his own experiences, but in the way his own experiences had a fairy-tale dimension, confectionary and black by turns. This dream-like aspect of his work and existence seem central to understanding him. I wondered if you could say anything about these qualities and how Zweig became an inspiration for you.

WES ANDERSON: One thing that struck me, after I had read a few of Zweigs books, is that what I began to learn about him personally was quite different from what I felt I understood about him from his voice as a writer. So much of his work is written from the point of view of someone whos quite innocent and is entering into kind of darker territories, and I always felt that Zweig himself was a more reserved person who was exploring things in his work that he was drawn to but that werent his own experiences. In fact, the truth seems to be completely the opposite. He seems to be somebody who more or less tried everything along the way.

PROCHNIK: I agree, and Im curious whether this quality of Zweigs character resonates with the intriguing title you gave this collection, The Society of the Crossed Keys.

ANDERSON: Well, that just refers to a little made-up secret guild of European hotel concierges in our movie. Many of the ideas expressed and/or explored in Grand Budapest we stole directly from Zweigs own life and work; and then, also, maybe the membership of the Society itself might hint at hidden, secret corners of Zweigs world which we are only now starting to pull back the curtains on.

I had never heard of Zweigor, if I had, only in the vaguest waysuntil maybe six or seven years ago, something like that, when I just more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I loved this first book, and immediately there were dozens more in front of me that hadnt been there before. They were all suddenly back in print. I also read the The Post Office Girl, which had been only published for the first time recently. The Grand Budapest Hotel has elements that were sort of stolen from both these books. Two characters in our story are vaguely meant to represent Zweig himselfour Author character, played by Tom Wilkinson, and the theoretically fictionalised version of himself, played by Jude Law. But, in fact, M. Gustave, the main character who is played by Ralph Fiennes, is modelled significantly on Zweig as well.

PROCHNIK: Zweigs stories are always nesting stories within stories and confessional revelations of deep secrets within secrets. The action of observing other peoples secrets becomes the occasion for personal disclosures by the observer. The way that your film seems to work on that grid of multiple overlapping and proliferating story lines was very striking.

ANDERSON: We see this over and over again in Zweigs short stories. Its a device that maybe is a bit old-fashionedI feel its the kind of thing we might expect to find in something by Conrad or Melvillewhere somebody meets an interesting, mysterious person and theres a bit of scene that unfolds with them before they eventually settle down to tell their whole tale, which then becomes the larger book or story were reading. I love that in Zweigyou describe it as confessional, and they do have that feeling, and theyre usually secret. One of his novellas is even called Burning Secret. Anyway, that sort of technique is such an effective way to set the stage, to set a mood. It draws you in before you say, Now I will tell you my story. It creates this kind of a gather around feeling.

PROCHNIK: When you were speaking about the device as a convention, I was thinking also about Freud. You probably know that Zweig was a good friend of Freudsand a huge admirer of his theories. Theres one letter Freud wrote Zweig in which he praises Zweigs work and remarks that theres an astonishing quality to his novellas whereby they seem to grope closer and closer to the most intimate inner core of their subject matter, the way that symbols accumulate in a dream. This idea calls to mind as well what you did with Zweig and his work. Reading his fictions I often feel that while on the one hand theyre formalised and traditional, theres also something so peculiar and subverted.

ANDERSON: I agree. Theres a word I use to describe it, which is psychological. When Ive occasionally said that to describe Zweig I always want to say, Now, what do you mean by that? Because I dont really know what I mean by this. But the stories feel psychological. It feels like there are contradictions within the characters that are being explored and theres something unconscious thats always brewing, and the behaviour that people dont really want anyone to know about is kind of forcing its way into view.

PROCHNIK: I think thats exactly right. Theres a strange, compulsive quality to that process of revelation. And whatever the psychological quality to his fiction is, it definitely has something to do with the unconscious. He was so concerned with states of complete immersion and concentration, like the powerful moment in his memoir when he describes watching Rodin begin to touch up a sculpture hes working on and forgetting that Zweig is even there in the studio with him. Zweig was fascinated by fascinationlosing yourself in that way. I think when his fictions work you can feel him going after some kindred process.

ANDERSON: Like the state in which he worked. He liked absolute quiet and seclusion in his workthis was a particular issue for himand I could see that need for silence tying into this. Think about the novella Confusion. Zweig is both of the main characters there. Because I can see the student who kind of goes off the rails in Berlin and enters into this wild life as one aspect of Zweigs experience; and then theres the academic, whos sort of distant, and whose relationship with his wife is full of secrets. I feel hes represented in both these characters. I mean I guess thats probably normal. Writers are inside all kinds of characters.

PROCHNIK: But I think the split is particularly true to his nature. Many of Zweigs friends characterised his social persona as that of the voyeur who would never quite take part in the dance-hall actionhe would sit there and watch. But then at the same time there are odd stories about himfor example of his possibly having been a flasher when he was a young man. There were rumours that Zweig used to go to a park in Vienna and expose himself. And Freud of course saw these kinds of desires on the same axisthat need to expose oneself and to be hidden he saw as very linked.

ANDERSON: There are other stories by Zweig I think of that might relate to this as well. Theres the story where a guy starts going to red light districts in a Kasbah-type place each night