Beware of Pity (German: Ungeduld des Herzens, literally “Impatience of the Heart”) was published by Bermann-Fischer Verlag in Stockholm in 1939 — Zweig’s only completed novel (as opposed to the novellas that were his natural form). Written in exile as Europe descended into war, it is a study of moral cowardice disguised as compassion: how a well-meaning but weak person can destroy another through kindness that is really self-protection.
Lieutenant Anton Hofmiller, a young cavalry officer stationed in a garrison town near the Hungarian border in 1914, is invited to the castle of the wealthy Kekesfalva family. At dinner, not knowing his host’s daughter Edith is paralyzed, he asks her to dance. The humiliation is terrible — for her, for the room, for him. In shame and guilt, he sends flowers, visits again, becomes a regular presence. Edith falls in love with him. He does not love her. But he cannot say so — because saying so would be cruel, and he cannot bear to be cruel.
The novel’s analysis of pity is devastating: Zweig distinguishes between two kinds of compassion. One (genuine) shares the other’s suffering and acts to relieve it regardless of personal cost. The other (the pity Hofmiller feels) cannot bear the sight of suffering because it causes the observer discomfort — and acts to relieve that discomfort rather than the sufferer’s pain. Hofmiller’s every kind gesture is motivated not by love for Edith but by his inability to endure his own guilt. He promises what he cannot deliver. He retreats, returns, retreats again — each return raising hopes he will dash.
The consequences are catastrophic and Zweig traces them with the precision of a clinician documenting a disease. Published months before the war that would destroy everything Zweig loved, the novel reads as an allegory for the failures of European liberalism: people of goodwill who could not bring themselves to act decisively against evil because decisive action required a capacity for cruelty they lacked.
Collecting Beware of Pity
First edition (Bermann-Fischer Verlag, Stockholm, 1939): In German. Published in exile.
First English edition (Cassell, London, 1939; Viking, New York, 1939): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- German first edition (1939): $150–$400
- Viking first US edition in dust jacket: $50–$150
- Cassell first UK edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- NYRB Classics reissue (2006): $8–$15
The NYRB reissue introduced Zweig to a new generation and sparked the current Zweig revival. First editions of all his works have appreciated significantly since 2010.