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CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter One Navigare Necesse Est
Chapter Two Magellan in the East Indies
Chapter Three He Renounces Allegiance to Portugal
Chapter Four Realization of an Idea
Chapter Five Will Overcomes Obstacles
Chapter Six Departure
Chapter Seven Fruitless Search
Chapter Eight Mutiny
Chapter Nine The Great Moment Comes
Chapter Ten Discovery of the Philippines
Chapter Eleven Magellan’s Death
Chapter Twelve A Voyage without a Leader
Chapter Thirteen The Return and the Sequel
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Stefan ZweigStefan Zweig
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Magellan: Conqueror of the Seas Kindle Edition
by Stefan Zweig (Author), Eden Paul (Translator), & 1 more Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (357)
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Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), the first to circumnavigate the globe, sailed on behalf of the Spanish monarch from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and discovered the straights that now bear his name and the Philippines.
“Magellan is written in a tone of astonished wonder... a persuasive and crisp portrait of Magellan... Stefan Zweig brings the story of Magellan to life.” — Charles Poore, The New York Times
“[A]n extremely well-written narrative, fired by a keen sense of justice, and with its dramatic and emotional qualities well sustained... [Zweig’s] own passion for his subject carries the story well.” — R. L. Duffus, The New York Times
“A superb piece of reconstruction, intensely interesting first as a record of one of the greatest achievements in human history, and second, as a live picture of a tragic figure, Magellan, lonely and misunderstood and cheated at the end of the reward in recognition of the stupendous and courageous task he had envisioned and achieved. Fascinating reading, and enlightening as a minutely detailed picture of the problems faced and met, from the first step to the last. A book which will last...” — Kirkus Review
“Zweig’s story opens with a fascinating chapter on spices. He explains the reasons for Magellan’s sailing under a Spanish flag after a youth spent in the service of Portugal. Such matters as the making of Magellan’s will, the absurd circumstances of his death, the reception of the 18 who returned, the corruption at court, are told in the light of present-day psychology and with an understanding of human nature that makes this tale of an adventurer excellent and provocative reading.” — The English Journal
“Zweig’s accumulated historical and cultural studies, whether in essay or monograph form, remain a body of achievement almost too impressive to take in... Full-sized books on Marie-Antoinette, Mary Stuart, and Magellan were international best sellers.” — Clive James, Cultural Amnesia
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177 pages
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"What did Zweig have that brought him the fanatical devotion of millions of readers, the admiration of Herman Hesse, the invitation to give the eulogy at the funeral of Sigmund Freud? To learn that, we would have to have a biography that illuminated all aspects of his work, that read all of his books, and that challenged, rather than accepted, the apparent modesty of his statements about his life and work." - Benjamin Moser, Bookforum
Zweig's readability made him one of the most popular writers of the early twentieth century all over the world, with translations into thirty languages. His lives of Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette were international bestsellers." - Julie Kavanagh, The EconomistIntelligent Life
'Zweig's accumulated historical and cultural studies, whether in essay or monograph form, remain a body of achievement almost too impressive to take in... Full-sized books on Marie-Antoinette, Mary Stuart, and Magellan were international best sellers." - Clive James, Cultural Amnesia
'Stefan Zweig cherished the everyday imperfections and frustrated aspirations of the men and women he analysed with such affection and understanding." - Paul Bailey, Times Literary Supplement
"To read Zweig is to be in the presence of a properly mature writer, for all that his characters are often in the grip of highly inappropriate desires. (...) These are unforgettable stories, beautifully translated. Anthea Bell is a first-rate translator; she brings out the humour as well as the anguish that make Zweig's work so sympathetically acute." - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
"Touching and delightful. Those adjectives are not meant as faint praise. Zweig may be especially appealing now because rather than being a progenitor of big ideas, he was a serious entertainer, and an ardent and careful observer of habits, foibles, passions and mistakes." -- A.O. Scott, The New York Times
About the Author
Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a translator and later as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoying literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. A
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From other countries
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
Reviewed in India on 13 October 2019
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Legible print, good quality paper and timely delivery.
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Pedro Serrano
4.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read
Reviewed in the Netherlands on 29 July 2017
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Pesents the facts in a precise way, but at the same time interesting and cativating. Well written. Although already old, still up to date writing.
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Erez Davidi
5.0 out of 5 stars Zewig and Magellan
Reviewed in the United States on 19 October 2013
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Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who led the first expedition to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. He is the one who named the Pacific Ocean (“peaceful sea”) for the calmness of its water and the lack of wind. Although he wasn't alive to complete the entire journey himself after he was killed in a rather unnecessary battle with a local king in the Philippines, the expedition that he once led resulted in the first circumnavigation of the earth. Needless to say, the journey wasn't smooth and clear skies all along otherwise there would hardly be a reason to write a full book about this expedition. Magellan had to overcome the Portuguese king who tried to sabotage this voyage, the mutiny of his crew, hunger, thirst and very harsh weather. Oh, yeah, he also lost his life.
Zweig and his stirring prose style seem well suited for the task of writing about this dramatic expedition. Just consider this, for example: “His native country left him in the lurch; his ties with office and duty had been severed. So much the better, now he was free. As so often when a man seems to be at the mercy of the winds, he is in reality being blown back upon his own self.”
In his novels, Zweig tends to focus in the psychological aspects of his characters. What drove them and why they acted the way they did. This shows in his biography of Magellan. He portrays him as a quiet introvert and as a very calculated man who rarely made any decision without considering the long term; he was also fairly harsh (at least according to our standards today), but yet very fair.
Zweig doesn't dwell too much into to the details of each and every small thing that happened. Along with his dramatic and enjoyable prose style, "Magellan" reads more like one of Zweig’s novels.
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Will Martin
5.0 out of 5 stars Genuinely masterful in its lyrical appreciation of the magnitude of one of the greatest recorded human adventures
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2018
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Zweig presents us with an acutely perceptive and elegantly knowledgeable narrative of one of the greatest recorded human adventures. While in certain respects Zweig's account feels dated, for example its lack of scholarly footnotes and certain nationalistic sensitivities, and perhaps he does not let us feel fully the Catholicism, wonder and despair that variously animated the adventurers, it is genuinely masterful in its lyrical appreciation of the magnitude of the adventure, particularly the psychological strength and leadership of Magellan and the spectacular, cataclysmic nature of the circumnavigation and its various attendant 'encuentros de dos mundos'.
Magellan, like Columbus before him, had an iron conviction about his navigational objective but based in a faulty understanding of very poor maps. Like Columbus, he persevered even when the maps had let him down, and as Zweig emphasises, Magellan's iron-willed pressing onwards into the unknown was a feat of immensely greater risk than that of Columbus, and necessitated leadership by Magellan of incredible resolve and skill.
Zweig emphasises Magellan's utter dedication to his task, his Napoleonic energy, what we might call today his extraordinary, consummate professionalism. He ensured that the motley ships he was given were exhaustively caulked and refitted, the stores meticulously planned down to the last nail for a journey of unknown duration and hardship. When disappointed by the the Rio de la Plata and the Golfo San Matias, when he knew that his maps were wrong and the southern winter was battering, and his lieutenants and crew restless, he did not flinch from anchoring in Puerto San Julián for 5 months to ride out the winter, knowing he would have to face down almost inevitable mutiny, which duly materialised. When in the paso itself, he was tireless in exploring each and every inlet and channel, trusting nothing to chance, lest he miss the one true passage. And on the desertion of the largest and best provisioned of his ships, the San Antonio on the cusp of the Pacific, the moment, as Zweig tells us, of his greatest triumph and despair, Magellan drew deep into his resolve and pressed on, to avoid by only the very slimmest of fates starvation or shipwreck.
It is perhaps hard to appreciate today that there was no institutionalised military training of the officers and men. There was no ingrained culture of obedience and professionalism, no clear covenant to the mission understood by all. The ships' captains had their own understandings of their honour and their duties, or not, to their Portuguese admiral Magellan, and to the crown of Spain. When the moment of duress came, when it seemed clear Magellan's hunch was wrong, but that he would press on anyway, 3 of the captains mutinied in order to take the fleet back home. Because of its eminent justifiableness against a possibly mono-maniac deluded leader, the mutiny was prosecuted too delicately, with a view to exoneration back home in Spain, and hence Magellan was able to defeat it with a ruthless counterstroke where he did not hesitate in ordering assassination, and the subsequent execution or abandonment of mutineers as castaways on the desolate Patagonian shore.
Zweig rightly references 'The Tempest' at various points, and there is something elementally dark about the mirror this discovery of new worlds holds up to European 'civilisation'. Zweig praises Magellan for his determination to treat peaceably encountered peoples, and in both the bay of Rio de Janeiro and initially in the Philippines, there appears to be an idyllic encounter with tribes who were remarkably welcoming and trusting, and whose lifestyles it seems clear were startlingly free of internecine conflict. But then there is the heartless trapping (and eventual starving) of a Patagonian 'giant', a devastatingly symbolic act of sacrilege that would presage many more breaches of faith, and the eventually extensive rape practised by the surviving crew on the Philippine islanders. Zweig suggests it was Magellan's inability to control this rape that began to undermine the trust the Pacific chiefs had in him. The drama of the Spanish encounter with islanders of Cebú is epic and extraordinary - their immediate obeisance and almost ecstatic conversion to Catholicism, turning suddenly, on Magellan's death and the rupturing of the aura of the conquistadors, to revulsion, rejection and destruction - a fitting but albeit short-lived overturning of Montezuman tragedies elsewhere.
The coda is dramatic too. Magellan's own journal and that of Pigafetta are lost, almost certainly deliberately destroyed in order to protect the reputation of the mutineers, and only Pigafetta's outrage at the writing-out from history of Magellan's epic heroism led him to insistently set the record straight in a subsequent Report on the voyage. And the famous Strait of Magellan itself became a graveyard for ships and mariners, so treacherous were its rocky, squall-battered channels that it never became a heavily used navigational route, the crossing of the Panama isthmus by land, and then, after its discovery one hundred years later, passage via Cape Horn being preferred instead.
5 people found this helpful
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Patrick Sullivan
5.0 out of 5 stars Magellan`s Incredible Story
Reviewed in Canada on 21 November 2018
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Magellan`s voyage was the first to circumnavigate the globe. Yet modern western history seems to have forgotten his great accomplishment. Novelist Stefan Zweig sets out to reintroduce Magellan to western readers. Zweig`s novel writing skills soon become apparent to the reader. The author digs into Magellan`s character. The book has the feel of a gripping novel, as opposed to a history lesson. The reader gets exposed to all the emotional ups and downs of Magellan and the sailing crew. The voyage will test both the physical and mental strengths of everyone involved.
Zweig is an outstanding writer. Readers of this book will enjoy one of Mankind's greatest exploration stories.
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Dr. John H. Lawson
4.0 out of 5 stars Very informative
Reviewed in Canada on 13 November 2024
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I enjoyed learning more of Magellan’s trip and the difficulties he had in making it a reality. I did find the descriptions very convoluted but I guess this was either Zweig’s style or the translation from German. I was, however, an excellent read.
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A H G
1.0 out of 5 stars Carisimo por 17,80 por la mitad seguiria siendo caro
Reviewed in Spain on 12 October 2024
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Es un robo cobrar 17,80 eur por este libro que es prácticamente de bolsillo, lo compré para disfrutar leyendo y debido al tamaño de la letra no se disfruta, mas bien se sufre.Una autentica pena su presentación ya que está escrito por Stefan Zweig autor muy versado con el tema.Cuando lo recibí me sentí bastante defraudado.Le doy una estrella porque si no no me deja valorar.
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laidler6
4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining read.
Reviewed in the United States on 11 June 2014
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Well researched and highly readable, if somewhat long-winded at times. Stefan Zweig is very attentive to details and unbiased in his description of Magellan's personality.
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Mr. Michael Richard Harris
5.0 out of 5 stars INSIGHT OF A GREAT AUTHOR
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 November 2011
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Zweig is a great author-his 'Beware of Pity' is unsurpassable. His insight as a novelist is well utilised in this history of Magellan. We tend to think of the age of discovery as a golden age, when adventure and daring was a prime motivator for these voyages. Zweig clearly shows that lust for money through the discovery of new trade routes to the spices of the east was the sine qua non of these enterprises. The actual adventure itself ,the negotiation of the passage to the Pacific, the strange and primitive men they found there, and the treachery of the 3 Spanish stooge/captains foisted on Magellan, is wonderfully described. Buy it! One drawback is that the illustrations (about 10) do not reproduce well ,if at all. A warning to that effect is at the front of the book. Personally, it didn't spoil my enjoyment in the least. With all the trash about it makes me wonder why this book isn't in print-it is a true classic...
2 people found this helpful
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From other countries
Elizabeth Frazer
5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting and informative book.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 August 2019
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I always enjoy books by Stefan Zweig. He knows how to keep the narrative flowing in a novelistic way, while still imparting lots of information. He can obviously rack up the suspense too, as I had to stop reading it for a few days when I reached one climax.
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Alexandre
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing reading
Reviewed in Canada on 6 October 2020
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Amazing reading
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Stella
5.0 out of 5 stars real good book
Reviewed in the United States on 21 August 2019
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Enjoyed the book a lot and learned a lot from it. In history classes we get a summary of events, but this book transports us back in time and takes us through many important details giving the events a whole new perspective. All in all, monarchs and governments were good at coating greed for riches and power in ideology, nationalism, religion etc. in order to draft the people to give their life for a "high cause". Nothing changed, the same is true today. Stefan Zweig is very good at pointing out all the details without blemishing the story and making it sound didactic.
4 people found this helpful
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Richard Harrington
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book and be enlightened
Reviewed in the United States on 28 May 2021
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I was amazed at how much I was unaware of when it came to the history of trade throughout the evolution of political empires. This book will reveal to the reader the trials and courage of the navigators who changed the world. Be glad you were not born in the 16th century.
2 people found this helpful
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Rey Valeza
2.0 out of 5 stars Flowery words and not much substance.
Reviewed in Canada on 23 September 2019
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Written in a dated style (1960's?) with a lot of flourish or flowery words that appear awkward today. I cannot find any new research that will widen my view here.
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Eva Stafford
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 January 2014
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Can someone explain to me why so few books of Stefan Zweig are available in English? He was an incredibly prolific writer. In France there are tens of books on the shelves by Zweig but I can only fin d a handful of translations of, for example these brilliant biographies.
4 people found this helpful
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Rodolfo
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 February 2018
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Amazing story and very well written.
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Denis D
2.0 out of 5 stars Acheté par erreur
Reviewed in Canada on 2 April 2018
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Acheté par erreur en version anglaise.
Remboursement s.v.p.
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RadX
5.0 out of 5 stars The best biography of the Great Explorer
Reviewed in the United States on 3 November 2018
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I've read this book several times in the past. Now we decided to have one in our home library. A very good storyteller wrote this book many years ago. It is based on the thorough review of documents and thus is quite accurate. Stefan Zweig is one of the best writers of XX century and I would recommend reading this book to anyone interested in the history of Great Explorations.
4 people found this helpful
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Judith K. Binney
4.0 out of 5 stars Magellan and his Voyage to the of the Known World -- by Mistake!
Reviewed in the United States on 18 January 2016
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Fascinating history + the Zweig style. Very interesting and revealing about the times and personalities of Magellan and his world.
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