Beware of Pity
Layered
Emotional
Heartbreaking

Beware of Pity

Stefan Zweig2013
In 1913 a young second lieutenant discovers the terrible danger of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance - his compensatory afternoon calls relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope. Stefan Zweig's only novel is a devastating depiction of the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love, realised against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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Reviews

Photo of miu
miu@sorvalz
5 stars
Jun 13, 2025

Pity is a fragile state, there is no silver lining.


Incredibly written book that grasp the human condition in regards to pity and the complexity of its nature — there is something so refreshing in confronting thoughts that i frequently think about ; pity, and how it’s a double ended sword. It was suffocating and amicably delusional.

I love the juxtaposition between all of the characters state and how i understood each one of them but empathized with one of them the most.


Although, a bit jarring of a read due to the density of the book, i still ate this up!

+1
Photo of Jini R
Jini R@jiriu
4 stars
Apr 17, 2025

well done, but could have been a novella

Photo of Nica
Nica@maisonnica
5 stars
Apr 6, 2025

read in audiobook

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sam@smrh01
4 stars
Feb 2, 2025

what a book. but it wouldve been better if this was a hundred pages less

Photo of weli
weli @woooodstx
3 stars
Apr 24, 2024

man me and this guilt-fraught body

Photo of Nooshin
Nooshin@nooshin
5 stars
Mar 30, 2022

I might be slightly overrating this one. But Stefan Zweig is such a master storyteller and this novel was so oddly working in spite of its feverishness and confusion that I can't resist a five-star review. It certainly could have been shorter—and would have been, had Zweig had time before WWII to exert upon it his well-known method of cutting a bulky piece of writing so much as to produce a final work that is no longer than a novella. There are indeed a few too many repenting letters and dramatic soliloquies; but, on the other hand, you won't see me complaining about the myriad, pleasant stories-within-a-story scattered in abundance in the 400-odd pages of this novel. Anthea Bell's translation was magnificent and the Pushkin Press paperback was a pleasure to behold. It took me a criminally long time to climb the not-so-steep mountain that Beware of Pity was, but the journey was quite worth it.

Photo of d;
d;@tinkertailorloverspy
5 stars
Dec 28, 2024
Photo of maia
maia@wuthering
4.5 stars
Sep 22, 2024
+8
Photo of aywen
aywen@aywen
4 stars
Sep 20, 2024
Photo of Jing Yi
Jing Yi@jy222
5 stars
May 31, 2024
Photo of cyn
cyn@bookbear
5 stars
Mar 9, 2024
Photo of noa
noa@honhonys
4 stars
Jan 7, 2024
Photo of Ibragimova Renata
Ibragimova Renata@renata_mode
2 stars
Jan 7, 2024
Photo of Ahmet
Ahmet@afusalan
5 stars
Mar 31, 2023
Photo of Aaron McCollough
Aaron McCollough@rondollah
4 stars
Jan 9, 2023
Photo of Clare B
Clare B@hadaly
5 stars
Jan 3, 2023
Photo of Neta Steingart
Neta Steingart@neta_shin
5 stars
Aug 12, 2022
Photo of Yulka
Yulka@cymatic
5 stars
Jun 16, 2022
Photo of Youssef Katamish
Youssef Katamish@ykatamish
5 stars
May 19, 2022
Photo of Esra A
Esra A@bibliosfer
5 stars
Mar 17, 2022
Photo of Moray Lyle McIntosh
Moray Lyle McIntosh@bookish_arcadia
4 stars
Dec 5, 2021
Photo of Marielle de Geest
Marielle de Geest@Marielle
3 stars
Aug 1, 2021

Highlights

Photo of miu
miu@sorvalz

“But, from that moment, I have understood that no guilt is ever truly forgotten as long as the conscience is still aware of it”

Photo of aywen
aywen@aywen

I could no longer understand how it was that I had tortured myself when everything, after all, was so simple. You just sat together and held hands, there was no need for you to force yourselves or to hide your real feelings, you showed that you were fond of one another, you did not struggle against your tender feelings, you accepted the other’s love for you without shame and with sheer gratitude.

Photo of aywen
aywen@aywen

Again and again, day after day, I found fresh opportunities for indulging, trying out, this passion that had suddenly possessed me. And I said to myself: from now on, help anyone and everyone so far as in you lies. Cease to be apathetic, indifferent! Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone’s destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity. And my heart, astonished at its own workings, quivered with gratitude towards the sick girl whom I had unwittingly hurt and who, through her suffering, had taught me the creative magic of pity.

Photo of aywen
aywen@aywen

In all sorts of delightful, obvious ways I was made to realize that I was regarded as one of the family. Every one of my little weaknesses and predilections was anticipated and encouraged; my favourite brand of cigarettes was always laid out ready for me, the book that on my last visit I had happened to say I should like to read I would find lying, as though by chance, the pages carefully cut, on the little stool; one particular arm-chair opposite Edith’s chaise-longue was regarded incontestably as 'my’ chair — trifles, mere nothings, all these, to be sure, but such things as imperceptibly cast a homely warmth over a strange room and, without one’s being aware of it, cheer and lighten the spirit.

Photo of aywen
aywen@aywen

For the first time in my life I had received an assurance that I had been of use to someone on this earth, and my astonishment at the thought that I, a commonplace, unsophisticated young officer, should really have the power to make someone else so happy knew no bounds.

Photo of aywen
aywen@aywen

I realized that to mortify oneself in this way was stupid and useless. I realized that there was no point in denying oneself a pleasure because it was denied another, in refusing to allow oneself to be happy because someone else was unhappy. I realized that all the time one was laughing and cracking silly jokes, somewhere in the world someone was lying at the point of death; that misery was lurking, people starving, behind a thousand windows; that there were such things as hospitals, quarries and coal mines; that in factories, in offices, in prisons countless thousands toiled and moiled at every hour of the day, and that it would not relieve the distress of a single human being if yet another were to torment himself needlessly.

Photo of cyn
cyn@bookbear

‘Talk her out of it? Talk her out of what? Talk a woman out of being in love? Tell her she ought not to feel as she does feel? Not to love when she does love? That would be about the worst thing one could possibly do, and the stupidest into the bargain. Have you ever heard of logic prevailing against passion? Of anyone’s being able to say to a fever: “Fever, cease raging!”, or to a fire, “Fire, stop burning!”

Page 300
Photo of cyn
cyn@bookbear

I was running away because I could not bear to be loved against my will.

Page 288
Photo of cyn
cyn@bookbear

Why worry as to whether I had said too much or too little? Even if I had gone further than in all honesty I should have done, my lies, those lies born of pity, had made her happy; and to make a person happy could never be a crime.

Page 192
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cyn@bookbear

It is never until one realises that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one’s own existence.

Page 66
Photo of cyn
cyn@bookbear

...stroked my sleeve, that one restrained gesture of heart-felt gratitude had sufficed to cause some emotional spring deep down within me to well up and overflow.

Page 64
Photo of cyn
cyn@bookbear

There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another’s unhappiness ...; and the other, the only kind that counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.

Page 14