In 1936, the Jewish-Austrian author Stefan Zweig was invited to attend a writers’ conference in Buenos Aires. Travelling by ship from his place of exile in England, Zweig used the opportunity to stop off in Brazil, a visit he described as leaving “one of the most powerful impressions I received all my life”.
In the shimmer of electric lights hanging like “strings of pearls” across Rio de Janeiro’s skyline, Zweig could imagine the possibility of a universe that wasn’t based on the fascist ideologies of 1930s Europe. As his ship pulled away, he vowed that one day he would return and experience “the fantastic expanse of this realm”. But it was only in 1940 that he managed to leave for Brazil again, “to save myself for a while from a world that was destroying itself”.
Zweig’s travelogue, Brazil: A Country of the Future, is an ode to a place of “bewildering opulence”, his lyricism embodied in his image of a nation “shaped like a huge harp”. Shortly after the book’s publication, various Brazilian intellectuals suggested that his idealisation of their country was in fact an agreement between Zweig — by this time, a literary celebrity — and the Brazilian authorities in exchange for giving the exiled writer residency.