The Royal Game, Amok, Letter from an Unknown Woman / Stefan Zweig

추천으로 읽게 된 슈테판 츠바이크의 단편집. 술술 읽히는 문장과 흡입력있는 설정. 한국어로는 '체스/아내의 불안'이라는 단편집으로도 나와있다는데, 겹치는 작품인 체스를 제외하고는 어디서 나머지 작품을 찾아야 할 지 모르겠다.
 


The Royal Game / Stefan Zweig

"A room to oneself in a hotel -- sounds pretty decent, doesn't it? ... they housed us in tolerably heated hotel rooms, each by himself. For the pressure by which they planned to compel the needed testimony was to be exerted more subtly than through common beating or physical torture by the most conceivably complete isolation.

They did nothing to us; they merely deposited us in the midst of nothing, knowing well that of all things the most potent pressure on the soul of man is nothingness. ... one was alone with oneself, with one's body and four or five inanimate things, rescuelessly alone with the table, bed, window, and basin; ... There was nothing to do, nothing to hear, nothing to see; about one, everywhere and without interruption, there was nothingness, emptiness without space or time.

One walked to and fro, and with one went one's thoughts, to and fro, to and fro, ever again. But even thoughts insubstantial as they seem, require an anchorage if they are not to revolve and circle around themselves; they too weigh down under nothingness. "

"The Royal Game" / "Letter from an Unknown Woman" / Amok