Modernization of biographical narratology: Reflections on Arnold Zweig’s artistic novella Symphonie Fantastique

Abstract

This article is devoted to the German-Jewish writer Arnold Zweig’s (1887–1968) biographical novella Symphonie Fantastique (1943), told from the perspective of a young musicologist participating in World War II, applied to the life and work of French composer Hector Berlioz. Arnold Zweig not only writes the biography of one of the most prominent French composers for Harold Breton, but he also confronts the Vichy Regime. The aim of this article is to capture the technique of Arnold Zweig, who combines history and the identification of an artist with a given object.