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A thesis written by Malorie Spencer, examining the parallels between the narrative structures, thematic elements, and poetic styles of Stefan Zweig's writings and Wes Anderson's film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. The thesis argues that Anderson's film is 'zweigesque' despite not being a direct adaptation of any one Zweig work, and explores the ways in which Zweig's writings continue to be relevant today. The document also discusses Anderson's use of frame narratives and autobiographical elements in the film, and the influence of Zweig's writings on Anderson's artistic style.
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Malorie Spencer
A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2018 Committee: Edgar Landgraf, Advisor Kristie Foell
ii ABSTRACT
Edgar Landgraf, Advisor
This thesis examines the parallels between narrative structures, including frame narratives and narrative construction of identity, as well as poetic and thematic parallels that exist between the writings of Stefan Zweig and the Wes Anderson film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. These parallels are discussed in order to substantiate Anderson’s claim that The Grand Budapest Hotel is a zweigesque film despite the fact that it is not a direct film adaptation of any one Zweig work. Anderson’s adaptations of zweigesque elements show that Zweig’s writings continue to be relevant today. These adaptations demonstrate the intricate ways in which narrative devices can be used to construct stories and reconstruct history. By drawing on thematic and stylistic elements of Zweig’s writings, Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel raises broader questions about both the necessity of narratives and their shortcomings in the construction of identity; Anderson’s characters both rely on and challenge the ways identity is constructed through narrative. This thesis shows how the zweigesque in Anderson’s film is able to challenge how history is viewed and how people conceptualize and relate to their continually changing notions of identity.
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"...ich bin noch heute überzeugt, dass man ein ausgezeichneter Philosoph, Historiker, Philologe, Jurist und was immer werden kann, ohne je eine Universität oder sogar ein Gymnasium besucht zu haben…So praktisch, handlich und heilsam der akademische Betrieb für die Durchschnittsbegabung sein mag, so entbehrlich scheint er mir für individuell produktive Naturen, bei denen er sich sogar im Sinn einer Hemmung auszuwirken vermag."
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INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I NARRATIVE STRUCTURES ........................................................................ 7 Frame Narratives ........................................................................................................ 9 Narrative Construction of Identity ............................................................................. 22 CHAPTER II POETIC AND THEMATIC ELEMENTS ..................................................... 30 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 49 WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................... 51
figure to whom Anderson attributes much of his inspiration for the film, but that important figure is not immediately mentioned. Approximately ninety-three minutes after having first been drawn into the movie, the viewer is made privy to whose works provided the impulse for the film and resulted in the birth of such a stunningly captivating cinematographic work. As the yodeling of the soundtrack continues, the screen turns black and the words “Inspired by the Writings of Stefan Zweig” appear. But who is this Stefan Zweig fellow? Why is his name so unfamiliar despite the fact that his writings were the inspiration for a film as vivid and captivating as The Grand Budapest Hotel? Although most American viewers have probably not stumbled across the writings of this Austrian Jew who lived from 1881 to 1942, Zweig was one of the most widely-read and extensively translated authors of his time. To assist curious viewers in filling in this gap in their knowledge of 20th century Austrian literature, Wes Anderson gathered English translations of the Stefan Zweig writings to which he attributes the greatest amount of significance for The Grand Budapest Hotel, and they were published together in the collection entitled The Society of the Crossed Keys. This book is prefaced by an interview between Wes Anderson and George Prochnik, the author of the biography The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World. In this interview Prochnik makes the following statement: When I was first reading Zweig…I would ask very educated friends of mine in the United States about him, and none of them knew who he was. Part of what really got me to also write a book about him was the sense that his erasure was so violent. I came to know slightly Zweig’s step niece…I remember at one point she told me that he would be completely forgotten. ( The Society of the Crossed Keys 21 )
After hearing this, Anderson goes on to express his distress at the thought of what it would be like “to be erased in his mother tongue” ( The Society of the Crossed Keys 21 ). The level to which Zweig was erased within the German-speaking world is slightly exaggerated by Prochnik and Anderson, but there was certainly an attempt to erase Zweig. Having been deemed “degenerate” like all other Jewish authors, books written by him were burned during the Nazi era. Despite the fact that it was well-received by the public, the Strauss opera Die schweigsame Frau ( The Silent Woman) for which Zweig wrote the libretto was banned by the Nazi Regime shortly after its premiere because Strauss insisted upon continuing to credit Zweig in the program as the librettist despite the fact that Zweig was a Jew ( The Society of the Crossed Keys 21 ). An author as important as Zweig could not be completely erased from Austrian Literature, and his Schachnovelle (Chess Story) is still commonly read in schools in the German-speaking world today. Additionally, there have been many German-language film adaptations of his works. The most recently-released film related to Zweig is the 2016 biographical film Vor der Morgenröte (Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe) by director Maria Schrader. Stefan Zweig would, without a doubt, have remained an even stronger presence in the world of international literature had there not been such efforts to erase him, but thanks to the avid appreciation of many admirers, Stefan Zweig’s works were ultimately able to weather even the harshest efforts to eliminate him from literary history. Wes Anderson’s film The Grand Budapest Hotel continues to expand that effort to restore and preserve Zweig’s writings for a worldwide audience. Anderson happened to stumble across the Stefan Zweig novel Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity) in a Paris bookstore (Crothers Dilley 52). That particular novel is an example of Zweig’s use of the frame narrative. Among the many topics and themes of Ungeduld des Herzens that can also be found in The Grand Budapest Hotel are its tragic ending,
Budapest Hotel. There are many similarities between Zweig and Anderson that contribute to their artistic compatibility, but at the same time, they are two unique artists. In writing and directing The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson was not, however, attempting to be Stefan Zweig. It is important to note that the remark at the end of the film is not “Based on the Writings of Stefan Zweig.” “Inspired by” and not “based on” might seem like a slight difference in word choice that makes all the difference. The Grand Budapest Hotel is still undeniably a Wes Anderson film that drew inspiration from Zweig. Anderson manages to intertwine many core elements of Zweig’s works with elements that are ever-present in all of Anderson’s films. He seeks to bring out the similarities between his artistic style and Zweig’s artistic style, but rather than merely creating a film adaptation of one of Zweig’s works, Anderson recognized the uniqueness of Zweig’s writings and instead sought to find inspiration in Zweig’s style of writing, thus creating a film that pays homage to Zweig while maintaining its own Wes Anderson uniqueness. In Chapter One, I will discuss the narratological parallels between The Grand Budapest Hotel and the writings of Stefan Zweig, paying particular attention to the writings to which Wes Anderson specifically attributes inspiration for the film in the collection The Society of the Crossed Keys. The first elements I will discuss are elements of intertextuality as outlined by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette. This discussion will provide context for the subsequent discussion of how the use of frame narratives, autobiographical elements, and other narrative structures contribute to the construction of identity in Zweig’s writings and Anderson’s film. This relationship is central to Zweig’s writings, and its adoption in The Grand Budapest Hotel confers a zweigesque style upon the film.
In Chapter Two, I will discuss the zweigesque poetic and thematic elements of the film. Anderson’s strategic use of poetry throughout the film not only lends it a zweigesque nature by being reminiscent of Zweig’s oftentimes excessively poetic and flowery writing, but the actual content of these poems often alludes to Zweig himself and events in Zweig’s life as well. Other zweigesque elements that will be discussed in Chapter Two are the underlying themes of darkness and death that lie beneath the surface of a seemingly comic and “confectionary” story (Zoller Seitz 9). This discussion of the zweigesque elements that Anderson uses in The Grand Budapest Hotel will contribute to a greater understanding of why narrative is importance for individuals and, consequently, why a zweigesque narrative is appealing to audiences today.
One important part of the paratext of Anderson’s film is the statement “Inspired by the Writings of Stefan Zweig” at the beginning of the end credits. This particular aspect of the paratext, specifically the peritext, enables readers familiar with Zweig to view the film with an eye for all that is zweigesque. Another notable part of the paratext, specifically a part of the epitext is the book The Society of the Crossed Keys. In addition to this book being prefaced with an interview about the film, this book contains a collection of the writings of Stefan Zweig to which Wes Anderson attributed inspiration for The Grand Budapest Hotel. This declaration provides readers with a more narrowed selection of writings from which to note parallels and potential sources of inspiration. The contents of this book serve to qualify the statement at the end of the film and further specify the context of the film itself. The second element of transtextuality as defined by Genette most relevant to this particular discussion is hypertextuality. Hypertextuality refers to the interrelatedness of one text to at least one other separate and earlier text. In this instance, hypertextuality pertains to the interrelatedness of the screenplay of The Grand Budapest Hotel and the writings of Stefan Zweig that existed prior to the film’s creation_._ The film “transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends” the hypotext, the already existing texts of Stefan Zweig (Simandan^1 ). That means that this relationship can exist even when a screenplay is not a direct adaptation of one particular literary work. The relationship between the hypertext and the hypotext does not have to be as strong as the relationship would be for a direct film adaptation because a “hypertext can be read either for its own individual value or in relation to its hypotext,” (Simandan). That is why the film can be
(^1) Voicu Mihnea Simandan primarily writes fiction novels, but his analysis and understanding of Genette’s discussion of intertextuality was integral to the writing of his Matrix and the Alice Books. intertextual study The
enjoyed and appreciated just as well by viewers who are completely unfamiliar with Zweig. No background information from his writings is integral to understanding the film; a knowledge of Zweig’s works, however, provides a different contextual understanding of the film. Such knowledge just frames the film in a different way. The hypertextual link between Zweig’s texts and The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of the ways in which the zweigesque is able to manifest itself in the film. Inspiration is an abstract concept, so it can be difficult to identify concrete examples of inspiration. Understanding the phrase “Inspired by the Writings of Stefan Zweig” as part of the paratext of The Grand Budapest Hotel and examining the book The Society of the Crossed Keys as a hypotext of the film provides a more concrete basis from which to analyze this inspiration. The manifestations of this interrelatedness can be seen in the form of parallel structures and themes found in the writings of Stefan Zweig and Anderson’s film. These more concrete parallels can now be explored in more detail.
Frame Narratives One particularly noteworthy similarity between the writings of Stefan Zweig and The Grand Budapest Hotel is their usage of frame narratives. Although Zweig does not use frame narratives in all of his stories, their prevalence in his various works is above average and therefore a narrative feature often associated with him. But what exactly is a frame narrative, and what purposes does it serve? The existence of a frame structure is not always immediately apparent in a story. All stories have some sort of narrator who tells the reader about a series of events, but the perspective from which a story is told can change, often by introducing a new narrator. A frame narrative is one method of story-
In his extensive discussion of frame narratives, Andreas Jäggi identifies five factors typically used to define a frame narrative. The first factor is that the outer story is not an independent prose text. The second factor is that a preface, afterword, or other similar varieties of text cannot be counted as a narrative frame. Thirdly, the frame and the story contained within it must be told by different narrators. The fourth factor, although not consistently mentioned as a criterium of this type of narrative, is the oral aspect of the recounted inner story. And the fifth factor is the fact that the (two)layeredness must be a dominant structural element of the narrative. This fifth factor differentiates frame narratives from epic poetry that begins with an epic invocation which is a sort of frame, but not a dominant structural element of the narrative (Jäggi 60 - 61). By the time Stefan Zweig began his literary career, the frame narrative had had over a century to solidify itself in German-language literature. Zweig harnessed the dynamic storytelling components of the frame narrative to add depth and detail to many of his writings. One particular example of Zweig’s usage of a frame narrative, an example that even contains an up and down movement between narrative frames, takes place in the 1927 novella Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau (Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman), which is one of the Zweig stories that Anderson specifically mentioned as one of his sources of inspiration for The Grand Budapest Hotel ( The Society of the Crossed Keys 23 ). The narrator of the story befriends a rather international group of strangers while staying in a guest house on the Riviera. The group gossips about another guest, a married mother, who suddenly ran off with a Frenchman. The narrator expresses an unexpectedly sympathetic and understanding view toward the woman’s actions. One of the gossipers, an English woman referred to as Mrs. C., is intrigued by the narrator’s reaction, and she asks him if he will come to
her room later; she has a story to get off her chest, a story she is comfortable telling him because of the unjudgmental views he had just expressed. The framed narrative describes a wild twenty- four hours some years earlier when Mrs. C. had ended up sleeping with a desperate, suicidal gambler in a hotel. Although her actions were the result of her doing everything she could to try to help him and prevent him from killing himself, she still felt incredibly guilty, and had refrained from ever telling anyone about the incident. Until she met the sympathetic stranger in the guest house, that is. Mrs. C, the narrator of the story contained within the frame story finds it necessary on multiple occasions to pause during her narration when she reaches particularly embarrassing or distressing events in the plot. The narrator of the outermost frame narrative then takes up the mantle of narration once more to provide commentary and an attempted explanation as to why the old British woman, the narrator of the story within the frame, had to bring her narration to an abrupt halt. He describes things such as her behavior, her facial expressions, and the changes in her voice. Interruptions like this that temporarily bring the reader back into the outer frame of the narrative are typical for frame narratives for the very reason that they can be used to provide outside descriptions (Jäggi 84). Details like these provide the reader with a greater understanding of the old woman and provide the reader with at least some idea of the feelings she might have, feelings she might not have acknowledged in her own narration due to the fact that they were triggered by actions that lay outside the boundaries of social and cultural norms. The altered perspective of narration works against the potential unreliability of the British woman as the narrator. This change in narrator also enables the frame narrator to share thoughts that at this instance Mrs. C., the British woman, would not have been privy to. He says that “Mrs. C. hielt wieder inne und stand
visibility (Müller 84). As far as the narration in The Grand Budapest Hotel is concerned, it is an “active, dynamic narration” that supplies additional information that cannot be gotten just by watching the film and not listening to the dialog (Zoller Seitz 177). On many occasions throughout The Grand Budapest Hotel , Anderson uses narrative frames like the ones Zweig was so fond of using, but the alteration in focalization used to transition into the innermost story told in The Grand Budapest Hotel is particularly zweigesque due to how similar it is to the alteration in narrative frames used in Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau. Like Mrs. C. in Zweig’s novella, the character from The Grand Budapest Hotel, Mr. Moustafa, is brought out of his account of past events by a sudden surge of overwhelming emotions. He says, “You see I never speak of Agatha, because even at the thought of her name I’m unable to control my emotions” ( The Grand Budapest Hotel 45:33- 45:41). At this point in his narration, mention of Mr. Moustafa’s dearly beloved Agatha can no longer be avoided since her cleverness was indispensable to M. Gustave’s escape from prison. Mr. Moustafa must take a moment to compose himself in order to be able to carry on with his narration. As in Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau, the step back into the narrative of the most immediate frame calls for commentary from the narrator of that frame, the young writer. He states “at this point in the story, the old man fell silent and pushed aside his saddle of lamb. His eyes went blank as two stones. I could see he was in distress. ( The Grand Budapest Hotel 45:11-45:22). This narrator’s insights express things that would not have been evident from Mr. Moustafa’s perspective. Anderson expressed his appreciation for the frame narrative by stating, “I loved the way Zweig often sets the stage for his stories by having the narrator meet a mysterious figure who
goes on to tell him the whole novel” (Crothers Dilley 20). Anderson exaggerates this zweigesque use of frame narratives in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and the film contains not just one additional frame of narrative, but three, for a total of four different, temporally separate levels of narration. The previously-mentioned factors that characterize frame narratives within literature also apply to frame narratives used in films, but the visual aspect of films adds an additional method of narration; the images on the screen help to narrate the story, but without words. Although no words are spoken, the outermost frame of The Grand Budapest Hotel can still be considered a layer of narrative. This visual narration where the camera eye plays the role of the narrator is no less powerful than a spoken narrative and frames the inner story just as clearly, perhaps even more clearly than could have been done with words. Anderson’s film also challenges Jäggi’s specification that there must be separate narrators for each frame. The narrators of the second and third frame are technically both the so-called “author,” but in addition to the fact that their lives are separated temporally by 17 years, the fact that they are played by two different actors marks them as distinctly different characters. They could perhaps be viewed as the same character if they remained the narrating and narrated self, but the younger narrator takes over the first person narrative perspective and becomes his own narrating self. The Grand Budapest Hotel begins with a “narrator” walking through a snowy cemetery. This narrator is a young girl who lives in some indeterminate year somewhere “on the farthest eastern boundary of the European continent” in “the former Republic of Zubrowka” which was apparently “once the seat of a great empire” ( The Grand Budapest Hotel 00:39). She is carrying a book as she goes to visit the statue of a beloved but unnamed author where she hangs a set of keys to add to the abundant number of keys that are already hanging there. The plaque on the
