Why are we not shipping as quickly as we used to?
As you’ve probably been notified, eBay no longer allows a seller to use PayPal for receipt of funds: sellers must have a bank account to which deposits are made in order to sell on eBay, now. This means that eBay receives your funds and holds them for a period of three to five days before they are deposited to the seller’s account and the transaction may be considered consummated.
In brief, eBay is now “floating” and earning interest on millions of dollars every day until it is distributed to their sellers, like us, and probably, you too.
So, although we indicate that we will ship within a period of time that is normal for us – nearly always within 24 hours except weekends – that cannot happen any longer.
While it will probably do no good at all, if this policy offends you, you may wish to contact eBay and lodge your consternation.
A RARE OPPORTUNITY. DISCOUNTED BY 75%
by internationally known artist, Greta Warren-Hill
This is the beginning of a homogeneity of art termed, BuchKunst (or אמנות הספר) or the amalgam of Book and Art created by the artist to meld both a passion for books and art into one coherent statement. The title, Der Letzte Akt von Herr und Frau Stefan Zweig captures the final act a moment after the closing curtain of Zweig's Drei Leben.
You will be proud to display this most unique work of art in your library or other living space.
A Complete description of this unique work follows from the editor of TheIndependentDaily.com:
On that evening I was God. I had created the word, and lo! It was full of goodness and justice…
On that evening I was God. But I did not look down coldly from an exalted throne upon my works and deeds…
On that evening I was God. I had calmed the waters of unrest and driven the darkness from their hearts.
(Lieutenant Hofmiller’s rather exultant self-assessment.)
Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity
At the conclusion of Beware of Pity, Edith, the young woman on whom Lieutenant Hofmiller’s pity fell in scattered and intense showers, in a moment of darkness had thrown herself from the tower roof of her father’s estate after her ovation of love was not reciprocated. She had mistaken his pity of her paralyzed condition, for an avowal of amour.
Later, back from war, his uniform laden with medals testifying to his bravery (undeserved from his perspective), he is quietly alone in the aftermath wrapped in the remnants of his life, yet still a young man.
I myself forgot my guilt. For the heart is able to bury deep and well what it urgently desires to forget. – ibid
Hofmiller attends a performance of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice.As he lingered before the beginning of the performance, having adjusted himself in his seat expecting to remain without movement for the duration of the first act, he was awakened from his thoughts by the presence of Dr. Condor, who had unsuccessfully treated Edith for her paralysis. For the moment, Hofmiller remained unnoticed; soon he surreptitiously spirited himself out of the theater to avoid…
…likely a stifling and crippling reminder of his guilt; the shame for his forsaking Edith’s exclaimed love; unreciprocated, painfully so, by the Lieutenant.
Now, if you like, click here or paste this link into another window (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Iy2jjWYkRU) and listen to Nelson Freire playing Death of Orpheus in the background while you read on.
Herr Zweig’s Beware of Pity was published in 1939. The book immediately made it to the short list of Hitler’s banned books, some of which (constituting his earlier writings) found their way to the literary pyres of May 10, 1933 throughout Germany, as a brilliant, thoughtful, artistic people bowed to the whip of ignorance and deceit retailed by Hitler and his minion of cretins comprising his inner circle and highest echelon.
In total there may have been as many as 25,000 books burned on that one day throughout Germany. (A very good resource for the event and other related data can be found at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum online.)
The list of internationally recognized authors banned is formidable and includes some very surprising writers of early 20thCentury America, including Jack London, Hemingway, et cetera. Europeans include Proust, Einstein, Wells, Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich, Kafka, Freud, and many others whose thinking could have conceivably, inasmuch as Hitler was concerned, impaired the Reich’s good people from embracing Aryan supremacy and its necessary and associated hatred by the corruption of Internationalism, Individuality, so called Jewish Science, and other assorted philosophical approaches to existence that did not fit the formulated catena that was to be ultimately known as Nazism.
The list, Liste des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums, (roughly, List of Harmful and Unwanted Literature) was issued December 31, 1938. Ergo, anyone whose scribbling appeared on the list was likewise, Harmful and Unwanted, but the Nazis were too late for Zweig. He, like others before and shortly after him sought refuge in another world, leaving behind his very beloved Austria, the place of his birth and understanding of all that comprised a literate, enlightened, fully-awakened human, in the Gurdjieff sense.
Many - most- of those who did not leave the sprawling dread and vile corruption of Nazism, particularly Jews, were never heard from again.
The reason I quoted Beware of Pity (Ungeduld des Herzens) rather than any of the other volumes on hand is owing to Zweig’s lamentations at the loss of hisVienna: the Vienna of his youth, of his earliest poetry, his essays, his fiction, his drama, his libretto for his dear friend and guardian Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau(The Silent Woman), his abundant and often superlative other works, his loves gained and lost, as a young man and moving into his middle years.
In his screenplay The Third Man, Graham Greene opens with the words, “I never knew the old Vienna before the war with its Strauss music, its glamor and easy charm…” Zweig did, and the loss of that Vienna haunted him to his end in Petropolis in February 1942.
But it was more than only Vienna: it was Europe, as well. It was the loss of a culture, an ideal, an expression, an awakening, an avenue to the growing approaches to life and art and science. It was the closing of a grand portal through which her citizens were encouraged to walk and open their minds to anything that could be. Then, suddenly for most, Light became Darkness.
In his Drei Leben (Third Life) as he called it, his travels and wanderings took him ultimately to Brazil where his notoriety leant him, whenever he chose, the peace he needed to contemplate his biographical masterpiece, The World of Yesterday, summarily reviewed earlier in this publication (see below). Yet his contemplations led him ultimately to take his own life, while nearlysimultaneously leading to the suicide of his second wife, Charlotte (or Lotte, as she was commonly called).
In The World of Yesterday (Die Welt von Gestern), Zweig mourns what he sees as the impending loss of Europe: He was tormented, disillusioned, and lost in a world he could not comprehend, cast into an abyss of depression - wrecked spiritually by the loss of his country. Yet, in 1942, at the time of his suicide the tide of war was reversing, and not too much later a clear signal could be heard: one of coming peace and a chance at resurrection.
But to start everything anew after a man’s 60th year requires special powers, and my own power has been expended after years of wandering homeless. I thus prefer to end my life at the right time, upright, as a man for whom cultural work has always been his purest happiness and personal freedom — the most precious of possessions on this earth.
Stefan Zweig, Excerpt from Suicide Letter
It is a loss to Austria, to Europe, to the world that Zweig did not refuse to yield to his darkest passion. He could have done much to bring Europe out of the ashes of conflict.
Ironically, Herr Zweig’s nomadic existence, which served only to unsettle him deeper later in life, was of his own doing: He travelled much seeking out opportunities in which he could present himself and speak to those things he held most dearly: the larger the crowd the better, as in his many audiences in the United States where one-thousand, two-thousand or more would attend. He reveled in the attention, and swam seemingly nearly breathlessly in approbation. Perhaps during his confidential sessions with his friend, Freud, this “malady” was addressed, but we will never know.
The artist, and our publisher, Greta Hill-Warren has recently completed her creation in Oil on linen from an amalgam of the various deathbed photographs of Stefan and Lotte Zweig who con-completed suicide in February 1942 in Petropolis, Brazil.
It was several months in completion: of work, of research, of reading, of immersing herself in creating the perfect image. It is a highly detailed, exacting, mesmerizing portrait of the Moment After.
There is much to say about Greta’s interpretation of the historic yet nebulous and confusing series of images in Black and White wherein the subjects are posed and re-posed to the taste of, one presumes, various deathbed photographers, but, from extensive research she has “filled in the blanks” lending color to clothes, texture of skin, expression in death, peacefulness of mind and soul, and a far more-than-photographic detail based on hundreds of color images of them in life, mostly before their exodus to South America, yet to a lesser extent of their time in Brazil, as well.
This masterful depiction is Oil on stretched linen: The book’s dimensions are 25 inches by 28 inches by 2-1/4 inches. The inset canvas measures 20 inches by 24 inches; signed and dated by the artist. It is entitled, Der Letzte Akt von Herr und Frau Stefan Zweig (The Final Act of Mr. and Mrs. Stefan Zweig).
The canvas is framed in an artistically created “Book” (from our frame shop) bearing the title of the work, date of “publication” and artist’s name shown as Illustriert von(or Illustrated by) since her focus of thought was to bring a true and passionate illustration of the first moment following after many years of only faint, blurry images of one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century. Her work is the book – the illustrated edition of a very brief moment in time.
The frame simulates a hardbound book from the early 1900s with faux leather spine. The image is recessed and held firmly by the framing process, but removable if needed. Between the boards the artist has crafted simulated page edges. The back of the book is covered in cloth, as well. It does not have a hanging device affixed, although you may apply one if you wish, but is designed to be displayed on an easel or suitable shelf.
Then, included under the canvas in an interior pocket of the frame, printed on canvas in purple ink (Zweig’s preferred ink color – nearly fanatically so) is a reproduction of the original suicide note (entitled, Declaração in Portuguese to insure its recognizability by local officials). What follows the title is in German. It is a painstakingly reproduced duplicate of the note, itself consuming hours of computer manipulation working from a master image of the original. An additional canvas copy, exactly as that held within the frame, is included in a protective sleeve separate from the art work.
Read Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, and you will come away nearly breathless from the intensity of his descriptions on the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and in his homeland, Austria. For more than just entertainment, read, Amok, Jeremiah, Volpone, and, for that matter, nearly everything else he wrote (although he did tend to overwrite occasionally).
Of the artist, her favorite stories by Zweig are, The Invisible Collection and The Miracles of Life.
Read Zweig’s Beware of Pity and come to understand the parallels of emotions in the human heart.
Read Zweig’s Messages from a Lost World, and pursue the author’s soul as he mourns the beginning of the end, through a collection of shorter writings encompassing the years leading to his death.
Read Oliver Matushek’s very in-depth biographical look at Zweig along the complete spectrum of his life in his book, Drei Leben, or Three Lives: a reference to Zweig’s appellation for the distinct segments of his life, from youth to exile. From it you will uncover the bases of the characters of those within his work as well as the places and events that influenced his writings.
Visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museumand learn about Hitler’s attempt to eradicate wisdom, knowledge, compassion from the souls of Europeans, and eventually the world, and consider how his dark legacy lives on today.
And in this way, let us work to keep Hate from entering our lives.
Offers are welcome, but those falling below a minimum will not be sent through eBay and you will receive an automatic notification as such. Thank you. Of course, the work comes with a Certificate of Authenticity attesting to its original oil status, un-reproduced in any other form.
Excerpt from related listing Strauss Conducts Einstein:
(Herr Maestro Richard Strauss conducts Herr Doktor Albert Einstein on the Violin:
Salon Gathering in Caputh, Brandenburg, Germany, 1930s.)
Greta Warren-Hill: Latest original oil. Strauss and Einstein were never to be found in Caputh (or elsewhere) together at a Salon gathering of writers and musicians, to our knowledge, yet arguably they represented the two most influential architects of Science and Music at that time in Europe.
Prolific and gifted to the level of genius, both men achieved an enduring recognition for their specific disciplines internationally and among peers, so it is only fitting that they should have the opportunity, so many years postmortem, to join in an intimate performance of Strauss’ Die schweigsame Frau (Silent Woman), libretto by Stefan Zweig, although it is unclear whether Strauss and Einstein were vocally accompanied: perhaps somewhere next to you, the viewer…someone sang.
Just think! It's evening and the fire is cold.
You'll feel lonely, you'll feel old.
It's sad, it's awful, it's frighteningly still.
As if death were on the window sill.
- The Silent Woman. Richard Strauss & Stefan Zweig
Buy both and save.
GL Warren is the Publisher of TheIndependentDaily.com and a frequent Editorial contributor to same. She is also the Producer of the feature length independent film, The Abduction and Trial of George Bush, found on IMDB, and various short films. An accomplished artist she focuses primarily on the faces of women in the world, lending her interpretation to their sometimes-dire predicament at the hands of Man-made aggression.
Her studio is in Arizona. Editorial offices are also in Arizona.
Warren-Hill Productions: a collective of artists and writers based in Kingman, Arizona at the Historic Cohenour House. Publishers of TheIndependentDaily.com