My current afflictions--shingles--have led me think about stories where the protagonists conquer or succumb to malady. Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain comes immediately to mind, but it is a huge book and not one that I'm likely to pick up again. Canadian writer Timothy Findley also delves into illnes in his Pilgrim, which is heavy on Jungian psychology and its physical manifestations. But as l Iimp around--the nerves involved include one of the motor ones in my left leg and foot--I begin to understand the special problems of people with "mobility problems," as they say politely now.
Stephan Zweig's Beware of Pity has a title which sounds very un-politically correct. Shouldn't pity be something any sensitive person brings to a friendship with someone who has health problems? Advocates for "differently abled" people might say "no" because pity undermines dignity, but that won't stop them for fighting for more wheel chair access and non-discriminatory hiring policies.
Zweig, however, is not talking about good intentioned condescension. His hero allows himself to become involved with the crippled daughter of a rich landowner. His intitial motivation is a more or less genuine pity for the girl, but he soon is in over his head, in large part because he can't stop himself from taking advantage of the situation.
This means, I think, that the title is to be taken ironically, that the narrator ( in one translator it is the protaganist, although in another the framing narration is deleted) is as unreliable as the one in Ford Madox Ford's "saddest story" The Good Soldier. Zweig, a German Jew, was poised on an escape to Brazil when he published the novel in 1938, so it's tempting to read political commentary into it. Doing that, though, robs a fascinating tale of its subtleties. Better to read it without a political manifesto in mind, and ruminate on ambition, disability and love.
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