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Viennese Idylls
Viennese Idylls
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INTRODUCTION
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
While a comparison of Guy de Maupassant with Arthur Schnitzler may at first seem extravagant, still the Austrian writer has brought his short story to a level high enough to dare comparison with any modern author. While de Maupassant's eroticism is very evident, Schnitzler's is far more delicate, subtle, and not so much on the surface, and there is in the French author a sameness of treatment not to be found in Schnitzler. The latter occupies a place in modern Austrian literature comparable only with the position held by Sudermann and Hauptmann in Germany.
Arthur Schnitzler was born in Vienna in 1862. The son of a physician, he followed his father's career and took his degree in 1885. His first literary attempt was made the following year, but it was not until six years later, in 1892, that he came into prominence with the publication of "Anatol" This series of episodes, which still enjoys a great vogue in Europe, has recently attracted wide attention both in England and the United States with the publication of Mr. Granville Barker's paraphrase. Some of these episodes have also been staged by the Toy Theater of Chicago. Schnitzler's masterful psychological novelette, "Dying," was also published in 1892. "Flowers" followed the next year, and "The Farewell" appeared in 1896. From that time on short stories, plays, dialogues, and several novels have come from his versatile pen.
There is a certain grace in Schnitzler's stories and plays that distinguishes him from most German and Austrian writers; a grace that is usually incompatible with the German language. His lines are filled with delicate nuances, and a subtle, and almost sensuous beauty breathes forth from his pages. Unlike Wedekind, there is something of the mystic in the Austrian master, which, had it continued to develop, might have reached the supreme heights of a Maeterlinck. But this mysticism seems to have disappeared in his later works, and it would be almost fruitless to look for any of it in such a book as "Frau Beate und Ihr Sohn," or in his latest play, "Professor Bernhardi." The following quotation from Pollard's "Masks and Minstrels of New Germany" appears to be an adequate summing up of the typical Schnitzler short story: "No grim questions of right and wrong are allowed to assail us. How, most smoothly, most politely, most delicately, is this lover to say good-by to that sweetheart; or how is this lovely lady to inform her cavalier that she is tired of him — to all appearances we are never witnessing any problems any deeper than those. We move in a realm of beauty; ugliness is never allowed to obtrude. Neither He nor She ever vows constancy; as long as the romance lasts, until the bloom of novelty and wit is off, in short, there is no more in these little love affairs than that. The etiquette of the liaison, in short, is nowhere more charmingly expressed than in Schnitzler.... For Schnitzler the essential is always make-believe of one sort or another — playing at love, playing at death, playing at comedies. His materials are slight, but he uses them with finesses of artistic grace and charm that give them dignity and distinction. He voices Vienna and its refinement, as well as the simpler sentiment of the Austrian people.... In most of Schnitzler's plays and stories the prevailing question is just how to be off with the old love and on with the new. It would be hard to imagine any variation in this large problem that this writer has not elaborated. I do not think that either Marcel Prevost or Henri Becque has gone farther in the finesse of the philandering mind Yet, by this very charm Schnitzler does carry danger. His eroticism is far more insidious than the brutalities of Wedekind. His pictures of the patrician fastidiousness in amatory etiquette which characterizes peculiarly the last and staunchest stronghold of aristocracy in the modern world, Vienna, are so enchanting that they lure us toward licentiousness far more temptingly than do the ruffianism and the grimaces of the author of "Princess Russalka."
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
While a comparison of Guy de Maupassant with Arthur Schnitzler may at first seem extravagant, still the Austrian writer has brought his short story to a level high enough to dare comparison with any modern author. While de Maupassant's eroticism is very evident, Schnitzler's is far more delicate, subtle, and not so much on the surface, and there is in the French author a sameness of treatment not to be found in Schnitzler. The latter occupies a place in modern Austrian literature comparable only with the position held by Sudermann and Hauptmann in Germany.
Arthur Schnitzler was born in Vienna in 1862. The son of a physician, he followed his father's career and took his degree in 1885. His first literary attempt was made the following year, but it was not until six years later, in 1892, that he came into prominence with the publication of "Anatol" This series of episodes, which still enjoys a great vogue in Europe, has recently attracted wide attention both in England and the United States with the publication of Mr. Granville Barker's paraphrase. Some of these episodes have also been staged by the Toy Theater of Chicago. Schnitzler's masterful psychological novelette, "Dying," was also published in 1892. "Flowers" followed the next year, and "The Farewell" appeared in 1896. From that time on short stories, plays, dialogues, and several novels have come from his versatile pen.
There is a certain grace in Schnitzler's stories and plays that distinguishes him from most German and Austrian writers; a grace that is usually incompatible with the German language. His lines are filled with delicate nuances, and a subtle, and almost sensuous beauty breathes forth from his pages. Unlike Wedekind, there is something of the mystic in the Austrian master, which, had it continued to develop, might have reached the supreme heights of a Maeterlinck. But this mysticism seems to have disappeared in his later works, and it would be almost fruitless to look for any of it in such a book as "Frau Beate und Ihr Sohn," or in his latest play, "Professor Bernhardi." The following quotation from Pollard's "Masks and Minstrels of New Germany" appears to be an adequate summing up of the typical Schnitzler short story: "No grim questions of right and wrong are allowed to assail us. How, most smoothly, most politely, most delicately, is this lover to say good-by to that sweetheart; or how is this lovely lady to inform her cavalier that she is tired of him — to all appearances we are never witnessing any problems any deeper than those. We move in a realm of beauty; ugliness is never allowed to obtrude. Neither He nor She ever vows constancy; as long as the romance lasts, until the bloom of novelty and wit is off, in short, there is no more in these little love affairs than that. The etiquette of the liaison, in short, is nowhere more charmingly expressed than in Schnitzler.... For Schnitzler the essential is always make-believe of one sort or another — playing at love, playing at death, playing at comedies. His materials are slight, but he uses them with finesses of artistic grace and charm that give them dignity and distinction. He voices Vienna and its refinement, as well as the simpler sentiment of the Austrian people.... In most of Schnitzler's plays and stories the prevailing question is just how to be off with the old love and on with the new. It would be hard to imagine any variation in this large problem that this writer has not elaborated. I do not think that either Marcel Prevost or Henri Becque has gone farther in the finesse of the philandering mind Yet, by this very charm Schnitzler does carry danger. His eroticism is far more insidious than the brutalities of Wedekind. His pictures of the patrician fastidiousness in amatory etiquette which characterizes peculiarly the last and staunchest stronghold of aristocracy in the modern world, Vienna, are so enchanting that they lure us toward licentiousness far more temptingly than do the ruffianism and the grimaces of the author of "Princess Russalka."
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