作者
《一个陌生女人的来信》的作者斯蒂芬·茨威格（Stefan Zweig，1881-1942）出生于维也纳一个富裕家庭，与佛洛依德是好友。该部短篇小说主要以书信体的形式，从女性的视觉，描述了一个“心悦君兮君不知”的故事。
整体观感
不知道茨威格先生是否对女性关于暗恋的想象有什么误解，相信大部分读者都无法理解女主人公耗尽一生的痴情与执迷不悟的心态。如果说成长背景能解释她为何形成如此三观，但后来身边亲人的呵护，已经足以挽救她堕落的一生了。
同样，我不能理解男主人公的脸盲设定，他居然辨认不出一个多次碰面、单独约会且共枕多天的女人。无论他有多风流倜傥，这也并不合理。
然而，作者硬是用其特有的茨威格风格描写，通过女主的独白把这种不合理延展下去。她情窦初开的纯真，暗恋情愫的炽烈，苦苦等待却被多次遗忘的痛苦，均被细腻地描绘出来，让人唏嘘。
触动心灵
故事的荒唐以及对情感的呻吟并非这篇小说最令我印象深刻的地方。最令我感到震撼的，居然是开编女主描述儿子的离世，以及中段对儿子的回忆。这是只有当了母亲之后才萌发的、独有的感受:
My boy died yesterday.
For three days and three nights I have been wrestling with Death for this frail little life.
During forty consecutive hours, while the fever of influenza was shaking his poor burning body, I sat beside his bed.
I put cold compresses on his forehead; day and night, night and day, I held his restless little hands.
The third evening, my strength gave out.
Meanwhile, Death took him.
There he lies, my darling boy, in his narrow cot, just as he died.
Only his eyes have been closed, his wise, dark eyes; and his hands have been crossed over his breast.
Four candles are burning, one at each corner of the bed.
I cannot bear to look, I cannot bear to move; for when the candles flicker, shadows chase one another over his face and his closed lips.
It looks as if his features stirred, and I could almost fancy that he is not dead after all, that he will wake and with his clear voice will say something childishly loving.
But I know that he is dead;
He was good at his lessons, so that he could chatter French like a magpie.
His exercise books were the tidiest in the class.
And what a fine, upstanding little man he was!
When I took him to the seaside in the summer, at Grado, women used to stop and stroke his fair hair.
At Semmering, when he was tobogganing, people would turn round to gaze after him.
He was so handsome, so gentle, so appealing.
Last year, when he went to college as a boarder, he began to wear the collegiates’ uniform of an eighteenth-century page，with a little dagger stuck in his belt—
now he lies here in his shift, with pallid lips and crossed hands.
一个原本活泼可爱，金发英俊，像小喜鹊般叽喳说着法语的小男孩，此时默默躺在床上。四根蜡烛围绕着床的四角，火光的影子在他苍白的脸上和紧闭的双唇跳跃追逐，仿佛他马上就会睁开乌黑的双眼醒来，再说出清脆的童趣之声。然而，他再也不会醒来，那弱小的身躯，从火烫渐渐变得冰冷…
这几段描写让拥有一个男孩的我感到非常痛心，也令我真切领悟到，在人生的不同阶段，随着认知和经历的累积，心灵会被各种不同的情感所碰撞。也许一个情窦初开的少女，最受触动的是小说开端那惊艳的初见；也许一个感情受创的女人，会被女主那坎坷的情感经历所安抚。这就是阅读的魔力，一种能让自己获得更广阔、更纯粹的情感体验的魔力。
