Books: Modern Jinni

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BEWARE OF PITY—Stefan Zweig—Viking ($2.50).

Once upon a time a strong young man found a crippled old man lying in the road, who asked him for a ride on his back.

Out of pity the young man obliged. Where upon the pickaback hitchhiker turned into an evil jinni, clamped naked, hairy thighs around the young man's neck forever after.

That happened in the Arabian Nights.

It also happens, with elaborate variations, in Beware of Pity, first full-length novel of symbolist-minded, 57-year-old Austrian Biographer Stefan Zweig (Marie Antoinette). Told to Author Zweig as the "confession" of an Austrian War hero. Captain Hofmiller, it is a pre-War tragedy which came from Hofmiller's pity for beautiful, crippled Edith von Kekesfalva, daughter of an Austrian pseudo nobleman. Invited for the first time to the Kekesfalvas' big country estate, naïve young Hofmiller, un aware that Edith's fur robe covers withered legs, asks her to dance. She bursts into sobs, hysterical abuse. So begin Hof miller's visits to comfort and cheer this girl, frail, intuitive, passionate, spoiled by every luxury. For Hofmiller, pity is pleasurable until it turns into a jinni which needs his commanding officer, the War and suicide to pry loose.

Built up with detailed analyses, confession within confession, the story moves slowly. Two incidental stories—of Edith's father and her doctor—share almost equal space with that of Edith and Hofmiller.

Author Zweig's characters are often stiff, symbolic, vague, even dull. But their melo dramatic personal histories make Beware of Pity worth reading.