I’ve read two Arthur Schnitzler’s now, first his 1924 novella Fraülein Else and now his earlier 1895 novella Dying. Having read both, I’ve become something of a fan.

I wrote up Fraülein Else here, it is an extraordinary novella that pulls off the difficult trick of being written entirely in the form of a teenage girl’s stream of consciousness when she is faced with a terrible dilemma. It’s a remarkable book. Dying, written 29 years earlier, for me doesn’t have quite the sheer wow factor Fraülein Else did (which was partly a result of the sheer technical skill that later work showed), but it too is remarkable.

Dying is the story of two lovers, Felix and Marie, both young and both passionate about each other. As it opens, Marie is meeting Felix for the evening and finds him distracted and upset, he reveals that he has been diagnosed as having less than a year to live, that he will in fact be dead by next Spring. Marie, devastated, swears to die with him, a promise that will become less romantic and more burdensome as the year continues. Will she keep to her promise, will he hold her to it? Those questions add drama throughout, but the real tension comes from the ebb and flow of emotions, the strains Felix’s approaching death puts upon them, the sheer horror of their situation.

Here, Felix tries to get Marie to understand his news, the reality of his situation:

“I know it’s hard to believe, darling. At this moment I don’t believe it myself. It’s hard to grasp, isn’t it? Just think, here I am walking along beside you, speaking words out loud, words that you can hear, and in a year I’ll be lying cold in the ground, perhaps already rotting away.”
“Stop it, stop it!”
“And you’ll look as you do now. Just as you look now, perhaps still a little pale from weeping, but then another evening will come, and many more, and summer and autumn and winter, and another spring – and then I’ll have been dead and cold for a year – what’s the matter?”
She was weeping bitterly. Her tears ran over her cheeks and down her throat.
A despairing smile passed over his face, and he whispered through his teeth, hoarsely, harshly, “I’m sorry.”

At the outset, Felix sets out to be stoical, resigned, philosophical about his fate. He intends to leave a will that will be a “quiet, smiling farewell to the world over which he had triumphed.” Triumphed, because he believes that by the end he will have learned to despise it, to have become detached, to accept the inevitable with an equanimity which the common run of man never achieves.

At the outset, of course, death is still a year away and his health still good.

As the novella continues, Marie tries to bolster Felix’s spirits, and to deny the facts of the situation. She looks desperately for each of his better days, hailing it as the start of a recovery and downplaying the days where he is weaker. She seizes on any sign of hope. Felix himself tries to disdain hope, to face up to the facts, but even so fear smuggles hope in however much he knows it no longer has any place in his life.

Much of the novella deals in the play of the pair’s emotions: Marie’s desire to sacrifice herself to ensuring Felix’s survival, her fears for him, her growing concern that he may hold her to her promise and her own shame that she might not wish to be held to it, her increasing wish to just go outside and live; Felix’s desire to die with pride and dignity, to die in accordance with his sense of himself as a sophisticated and cultured man, his increasing dependence on Marie, his jealousy of her continuing health, his growing resentment of how much he must rely on her and most of all his raw anger that she will outlive him so that her mere presence becomes a constant reminder of his own extinction. Felix’s attitude to death changes as it comes nearer, it is one thing to be phlegmatic when oblivion is yet a year away, as it grows closer however the terror becomes overwhelming:

“I’ll tell you straight out, people falsify the psychology of the dying, because all the great figures of world history of whose deaths we know anything felt duty-bound to put on an act for posterity. And what about me? What am I doing? If I talk calmly to you about all kinds of things that are no longer anything to do with me, what exactly am I doing?”
…
“I too feel in duty bound to pretend, whereas in reality I’m prey to a boundless, raging fear of a kind that healthy people can’t imagine. They’re all afraid, and that includes the heroes and the philosophers, only they make the best play-actors.”

Part of the sheer power of this novella is its portrait of the fear of death. Not just the natural and general fear that most of us have as a matter of course, few of us want to die. Rather, Schnitzler shows the specific yet inchoate fear of death held by those for whom it is no longer an abstract, no longer something to happen on some distant future day, those for whom it is now to come within the foreseeable future.

Also powerful is the increasing hopelessness Felix feels, the pointlessness. Felix is a writer, but why write when he will likely never finish what he is writing? Why read the news, when he will not be there to see how it turns out? As he comes to question, if you are dying, why do anything at all?

As time continues, everything becomes a mockery: an evening concert is a reminder that those attending will continue while Felix will not; an evening stroll is filled with crowds of the oblivious living: and as Felix’s health declines Marie of course remains a vibrant and healthy young woman, with her own desires however she may try to suppress them:

I shan’t of course speak to how it resolves, to what choices are made at the end or their outcomes, but it is no spoiler to say that as time continues the pair go through the full gamut of emotion, including of course for Marie the (to her) shameful desire to live again, to go out and dance and see crowds and not to spend her days ministering at a sickbed. At the same time, Marie is sick with grief, worn down literally by care:

She felt miserable, unutterably miserable. She would have liked to shed tears, but her emotion had something dry and withered about it. There was no comfort to be found anywhere, even in her own pain. And she envied him, for the tears flowing down his cheeks.

The novella captures brilliantly the guilt and conflict Marie feels, because she does love Felix, she does genuinely want to care for him, but it is a terrible burden and part of her cannot help but wish to have her life back, preferably with him but if that cannot be then without:

If only it were over! Yes, over! She no longer shrank from the idea, and those treacherous words that made hypocritical pity out of the most dreadful wish of all came to her mind. “If only he were at peace!”

Dying deals in issues which are genuinely painful. Felix and Marie’s predicament is a ghastly one, made all the worse for its credibility. It is in that sense not an easy read, though in quite another sense it is an effortless read being beautifully written and, in the Pushkin Press edition I enjoyed, being ably translated by Anthea Bell.

Dying has also been the subject of excellent writeups by John Self of the Asylum here and by Lizzy Siddal of Lizzy’s Literary Life here. Lizzy also wrote up Fraulein Else at that same link. Lizzy criticises Dying for “a tendency to melodrama in some places”, which is probably fair though I think it’s only a slight flaw. She notes too though that it is never maudlin, a point I firmly agree with.

For me, Dying was a remarkable work by a novelist with genuine insight into some of the most painful emotions any human being might ever have to experience, the loss of a loved one, the shame and guilt when love is not enough to make things better, our fear of letting each other down, our fear of losing each other, the anger and pettiness that gets between us, the horror of death, the unthinking joy of life.

Dying is a novel about a terminally ill Nineteenth century Viennese man, put like that it sounds a fairly unappealing read. Pushkin Press have though, as they’ve had with other titles, my thanks for putting this back into print as it’s a work that for all the specificity of its setting and characters is human and universal. I look forward to buying and reading more of Schnitzler’s work, and of his contemporaries, and I’m delighted that Pushkin Press is bringing these writers to our attention.

Dying

“Ella tacque. Fridolin aveva la gola asciutta, nell’oscurità della stanza notò che Albertine si teneva il viso come nascosto tra le mani.

“Uno strano sogno” disse. “E’ già finito?”. E poiché lei fece cenno di no: “Allora continua”. “Non è così semplice” riprese Albertine. “Certe cose non si possono quasi esprimere a parole. Dunque… avevo l’impressione di vivere una serie innumerevole di giorni e notti, non esisteva né tempo né spazio, non mi trovavo più nella radura chiusa dal bosco e dalla roccia, ma in una pianura ampia e sconfinata, ricoperta di fiori variopinti, che si perdeva da tutti i lati all’orizzonte.

Intanto da molto tempo – strano questo “da molto tempo”! – non ero più sola con quell’uomo sul prato.”

Tratto da Doppio Sogno di Arthur Schnitzler  

Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut was shrouded in secrecy and hype for so long (and compounded by Kubrick’s unexpected death last March) that it was probably destined to disappoint critics and moviegoers. Predictably, the film had a stupendous opening weekend, but the few positive reviews it garnered weren’t enough to overcome bad word-of-mouth that sent the box-office grosses plummeting 70% within two weeks.

Warner Books has now published the screenplay (by Kubrick and Frederic Raphael) in a paperback edition that also includes a new translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella, Dream Story, upon which Eyes Wide Shut is based. While it isn’t likely to revive the film’s moribund box-office numbers, this is nevertheless the kind of snazzy little volume that one wishes were published more often. It’s wonderful to have a copy of Schnitzler’s novella, which heretofore hasn’t been easy to obtain, and having the opportunity to compare it closely with the screenplay should be a treat for any Kubrick film buff.

The book is being marketed as a fast-buck “movie tie-in” and includes 16 pages of cheesy black and white production photos, with particular attention given to the slinky shots of Nicole Kidman that have been reprinted ad nauseam.

Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was an Austrian playwright and novelist who  wrote about lust and adultery among the bourgeoisie in turn-of-the-century Vienna. A man of prodigious sexual appetite, Schnitzler kept meticulous diary accounts of his female conquests, as well as a monthly tally of his orgasms. He was preoccupied, if not obsessed, with sex, and this is the landscape he wrote about in his plays and fiction. It’s not surprising to learn that Freud was fascinated by Schnitzler’s work and that the two men corresponded off and on over the years. Peter Gay, in his magisterial Freud: A Life for Our Time, writes that Schnitzler “secured Freud’s unequivocal applause for his penetrating psychological studies of sexuality in contemporary Viennese society.”

Kubrick reportedly was interested in making a movie of Schnitzler’s Dream Story as far back as the late 60s, but the project didn’t begin in earnest until 1994 when Frederic Raphael was hired to write the script. Raphael has recently published a memoir about working with Kubrick titled Eyes Wide Open, which is comprised of the screenwriter’s self-absorbed journal entries and unlikely “transcripts” of telephone conversations with Kubrick.  The memoir shows all the cut-and-paste signs of having been written quickly and rushed into print. (Its publication was timed to coincide with the release of the film, which Raphael had not yet seen.) Unfortunately, there’s just enough worthwhile and interesting information in Eyes Wide Open to make it required reading for anyone curious about the process of adapting Schnitzler for the screen.

The novella and film derive similar flourishes from pulp genres such as murder mysteries and melodramas, not to mention James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, a hugely influential Victorian study of arcane religious folklore and fertility cults. The film’s narrative is updated from fin de siècle Vienna to modern-day New York, yet the shape and story line of the novella remain intact. In both stories, a wife taunts her husband with a sexually-charged memory of her desire for another man. The jealous husband then embarks on a late-night smorgasbord of urban erotica in an futile attempt to assuage his hurt pride and to satisfy his own unfulfilled urges.

Dream Story reads like Kafka with sex, and this is precisely the disorienting and eerie tone that Kubrick brings to the film. Even the truly odd masked orgy scene that critics like Michiko Kakutani have labeled “ludicrous” in the film, is taken wholesale from Schnitzler. In the novella, the protagonist Fridolin (Tom Cruise’s Bill Harford in the movie) wonders to himself: “Have I strayed into the gathering of some religious sect?” The novella’s orgy—just like the film’s—mingles mystical music, cult rituals, hooded figures, and naked women.

In some respects, Dream Story goes further than Eyes Wide Shut. When Fridolin returns home from the bizarre orgy, his wife Albertine (Kidman’s role of Alice) wakes up from a dream that curiously parallels Fridolin’s unnerving experience. The nightmare that Kidman tearfully relates in the film—involving intercourse with an endless crowd of strangers—is only a fraction of the elaborate 10-page dream that unfolds in Dream Story and which culminates on a chilling note: Albertine laughs while an angry mob prepares to torture her husband and nail him to a cross. Of course, the notion of Tom Cruise as a sacrificial Christ-figure is probably more than any movie audience would wish to endure, so perhaps Kubrick was wise to dispense with this.

A rumor circulated prior to the film’s release that there was a scene of Cruise kissing a woman’s corpse and being titillated by the “forbidden” allure of necrophilia. In reality, the morgue scene in Eyes Wide Shut doesn’t go this direction (instead Cruise seems to express a sort of mute compassion toward the dead woman who may have lost her life in order to help save him), but Schnitzler’s novella does indeed go the more lurid route of necrophilic attraction:

…[H]e intertwined his fingers with the dead woman’s as if to fondle them, and, stiff as they were, they seemed to him to be trying to move and to take hold of his; indeed he thought he could detect a faint and distant gleam in the eyes beneath those half-closed lids, as if trying to make contact with his own; and as if drawn on by some enchantment he bent down over her.

Undoubtedly there will be arguments for years to come over the artistic merits of Kubrick’s film. Where Schnitzler is overheated, Kubrick is clinical. One could almost imagine that Eyes Wide Shut was directed by Freud himself. Yet both Schnitzler and Kubrick are effective at suggesting something primal and unsettling lurking beneath the surface of middle-class complacency. As long as we have the capacity to be haunted by dreams of lost love and nightmares of inexplicable compulsions, then Eyes Wide Shut and Dream Story will no doubt have the power to disturb and move us.

August, 1999

… ist folgende Kontakt-Anfrage eingegangen:

An:
blogozentriker@yahoo.com
Von:
Bettina pleer, bettina.pleer@gmx.de

Anfrage:
Herzliche Einladung zu Theaterproduktion am Wochenende. Wir spielen Arthur Schnitzlers “Reigen” – ein vergnüglicher Abend mit Barbiefotostrecke, Vaginaworkshop und Unterwasserküssen.

Wann: 17.-19.7. jeweils um 20 Uhr, am 18.7. zusätzlich um 17 Uhr
Wo: ESG Hagen, Bismarckstr. 46 (hinter Philosophischer Fakultät, Littfasssäule vor dem Haus)

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Bettina Pleer

— Ende der Mail —

Ich schaute vom Bildschirm auf, hinüber in die richtige, echte Welt.
- Was ist das?
Donna hatte mir eine Metalldose in die Hand gegeben. Ich schüttelte sie sacht. Ein leises Rascheln, ein papierenes Klappern. Nach einer Schlange klang es nicht. Auf dem Deckel der Dose stand: “In einem fernen Land”.
- Das ist mein Reisetagebuch, sagte Donna.
Ich mochte Donna nicht besonders, obwohl sie blond und gut gebaut ist. Mein Job ist nicht unanstrengend. Ich muss den ganzen Tag den Blödsinn, den die Blogozentriker-Redakteure sich ausdenken, abtippen. Vervielfältigen und ins Netz stellen. Ich muss außerdem ein Auge darauf haben, dass inhaltlich alles stimmt, die Namen richtig geschrieben und die Adressen zutreffend sind. Meist stimmt nichts von alledem.
Mein Job ist nicht unanstregend, wie erwähnt.

- Wo hast du das her? fragte ich.
- Das hab ich in dem kleinen Papierladen bei mir ums Eck gekauft, sagte Donna, ihre Tasche auf einen Stuhl werfend. Du weißt, dieser kleine Laden, den diese alte Dame führt.
Ich mochte Donna nicht, weil sie so energievoll war. Von ihr ging ein Strahlen aus. Sie konnte einen innerhalb von 15 Minuten glatt aussaugen, das war mein Eindruck. Ein Kollege hatte mir gesagt, sie sei eine Kanone im Bett. Sie fahre voll auf Rollenspiele ab und schrecke auch vor Fesselungen nicht zurück. Mir war’s egal. Ich wollte nur meine Ruhe haben, mein alkoholfreies Bier trinken und fernsehen.
Ich schaute auf Donnas verschmutzte Turnschuhe. Sie war immer unterwegs, selbst wenn sie nur auf einem Stuhl saß.
- Für deine Reise?
- Wahnsinn, sagte sie und schüttelte ihren Kopf.
- Vietnam, sagte ich.
- Du hast den Artikel schon bekommen?
- Liegt hier, sagte ich und patschte mit der flachen Hand auf den Stapel Blätter, der noch auf Bearbeitung wartete.
- Wann stellt ihr ihn online?
- Fürs Wochenende. Samstagsausgabe.
- Geil.
Ich fragte:
- Mal was anderes. Würdest du eine Ankündigung für Schnitzlers “Reigen” ins Netz stellen?
- Wer macht das denn?
- Die Evangelische Studentengemeinde Hagen.
- Hagen, sagte Donna. Wo liegt Hagen?
Ich zuckte die Schultern.
- Ich werd’s wohl einfach löschen.
Donna war nicht verkehrt, und sie sah wirklich ganz gut aus. Aber sie ist eine von diesen Frauen, deren Gegenwart laut “Trouble!” schreit. Wenn Sie verstehen, was ich meine. Sie war eine hervorragende Reisejournalistin. Wenn sie ein Mann wäre, wäre sie bei der Fremdenlegion gelandet.

Ich schüttelte ihre Metalldose wie eine Rassel.
- Was ist da drin?
- Eng beschriebene Blätter. Handgeschöpft. Ich hab einen Gänsekiel zum Schreiben verwendet und Waterman-Tinte.
- Und was soll ich damit tun?
- Abtippen?
Ich warf die Dose auf den Schreibtisch.
- Alles klar, sagte ich.
Sie packte ihre Tasche, stand auf. Dann hielt sie inne.
Sie fragte:
- Was machst du heute Abend?
Sie stand dabei halb von mir abgewandt, zur Tür gedreht.
- Heute Abend?
Ich würde alkoholfreies Dosenbier trinken und “Derrick” sehen.
- Keine Ahnung. Meine Stimme klang fremd. Ich schaute nicht auf. Warum?
- Wir könnten einen Wein trinken gehen, schlug Donna vor.
Sie hatte die Beine ganz mädchenhaft verdreht, merkte ich, und ich ließ meinen Blick an ihren Beinen hochwandern, zum Gesicht, um zu sehen, ob sie tatsächlich verlegen war?
An ihrem Gesicht war nichts abzulesen.
- Ja, wohin denn? fragte ich also.
- Ins “Chaco’s”?
Ich dachte an Diana. Donna, Diana. Diana, Donna. Meine Güte. Manchmal kam ich mir vor wie eine Figur, die Friedrich Nietzsche sich ausgedacht hatte, um seine Ewige Wiederkehr zu illustrieren.
- Stimmt was nicht?
Ich raffte mich auf. Meine Beine versagten mir ihren Dienst.
- Ich muss wohl ohnmächtig geworden sein, sagte ich. Meine Worte kamen nicht besonders deutlich heraus.
Auf der anderen Seite des Schreibtischs grinste Georg mir zu.
- Da war ein Anruf für dich, Bob, während du kurz … weg warst!
- So? Wer denn?
Donna hatte ihre Arme um meinen Oberkörper geschlungen. Ich spürte, wie ihre Finger sich an mich pressten. Ich machte mich frei und räusperte mich.
Georg hob ein Post-it direkt vor seine Augen und las:
- Ein gewisser Holger von Weimloch.

Das nächste Mal, dass ich wieder zu mir kam, fragten mich Donna und Georg wie aus einem Mund:
- Sag mal. Was ist denn mit dir los, heute?

Am Donnerstagabend begaben G. und ich uns um 19.30 Uhr ins kleine Haus des Wiesbadener Staatstheaters. Zu sehen gab es “Das weite Land” von Arthur Schnitzler, inszeniert von Hermann Schmidt-Rahmer.

Umgeben von einer grauhaarigen Masse (nur um das klar zu stellen, ich habe nichts gegen Menschen über 60, aber es war auffällig, dass so niemand jünger schien), nahmen wir Platz. Rechts von G. eine Dame, sie sich noch über störende Töne von der Bühne beschweren und deren Schuhsohle noch ein Gesprächsthema für uns sein würde. Links von mir ließen sich dann doch noch zwei weibliche Gestalten unterhalb des Rentenalters nieder, die wohl gleichzeitig auch die halbe Fanmeile von Florian Thunemann bildeten.

Das Stück… was soll ich sagen… es wollte mit seinen 2 1/2 Stunden wohl viel mitteilen, was meiner Meinung nach allerdings auch in einer wesentlich kürzeren Zeit hätte gelingen können. Hermann Schmidt-Rahmer hatte mir schon in seiner Version von Gerhart Hauptmanns “Vor Sonnenuntergang” gezeigt, dass sich ein Theaterstück mitunter ordentlich ziehen kann.

Gut, es war nicht schlecht, die Kostüme waren super, das Bühnenbild ebenfalls gelungen (nur wozu wurden die ganzen Bäume gefällt?), die Schauspieler taten ihr Bestes… für mich besonders hervorzuheben: Uwe Kraus in der Hauptrolle als Friedrich Hofreiter, Evelyn M. Faber als Frau Wahl, Lars Wellings als Natter und Florian Thunemann als ständige Unterhaltung, allein schon aufgrund seiner wechselnden Kostüme, Paul Kreindl.

Wäre das Stück noch länger gewesen, hätte meine Nachbarin, links von mir, wohl keine Finger mehr gehabt, die wurden nämlich permanent bearbeitet, ansonsten war es ein netter Abend da im kleinen Haus, mit meiner Lieblingseinlasskontrolle (Parkett, rechts)… einzig die Klasse, die zur Besichtigung des Stücks aufgefordert worden war, war vermutlich spätestens nach einer Stunde vollkommen dem Theater abgeneigt… leichte Kost ist anders.

© Bild: Staatstheater Wiesbaden

Fraülein Else is a 1924 novella by Austro-Hungarian author Arthur Schnitzler, now perhaps most famous for writing the work that would eventually become Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut.

But let’s not hold that against him (actually, I think highly of Eyes Wide Shut, but popular opinion has I think moved against me on that one), Fraülein Else is a complex psychological novella written almost entirely in the form of the stream of consciousness of a young woman of respectable family staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa. In just over a hundred pages (and small pages at that) it manages to be as gripping as many thrillers, while having much to say about sexuality, the brutal realities underpinning polite society and loss of innocence (or worse, realisation that innocence was only ever a comfortable illusion).

I read the excellent F.H. Lyon translation of Fraülein Else, published by Pushkin Press. For those unfamiliar with them, Pushkin Press is a publisher of literary fiction with particular strengths in European literature (especially, from what I have seen, mitteleuropean literature). My wife, Emma, has read a number of works published by Pushkin Press and the general quality of their choices is very high. The books are published on a smaller than usual format, clearly printed on high quality paper, and although paperback with slightly stiffish card covers. Physically, they are very attractive, easy to hold and a pleasure to read. Even if ebooks do become the norm, there will I think always be a place for books as well produced as the Pushkin range.

Going back to Fraülein Else, the essence of the story is a simple one. Else is a young woman of good but not aristocratic Viennese family, her father is a lawyer and a successful one, she is on holiday with her aunt and attractive cousin at a spa when she receives a telegram from her mother, informing her that her father faces ruin and that only 30,000 gulden can save him. Her father has already approached all those who have lent him money in the past, all that is left therefore is for Else to approach family acquaintance Herr von Dorsday who is also on holiday at the spa and ask him for the money.

We soon learn that Else’s family is not as good as it appears, her father has embezzled trust funds and this is not his first brush with possible ruin, he has needed saving before. Else has holes in her stockings that she hopes will not be noticed and, although it is clear until now she has avoided thinking too much on the subject, the telegram leaves her unable to avoid the truth that her family is not so respectable after all.

Else approaches Herr von Dorsday. In return for the money he requires that she pay an improper price. For the course of an evening Else thinks on whether or not to pay that price, and on what her alternatives may be.

And that, in its most simplistic essence, is the book. It is the stream of consciousness of a young woman, forced by family exigency to consider matters she would prefer not to and exposed to the truth that even in polite society the good manners on show merely conceal the reality that everything still has its price. Else’s innocence is lost merely by the fact of the request from her mother to approach Herr von Dorsday, his request simply cements her understanding of the crude nature of the world she inhabits, a world that until then had seemed much prettier.

The drama of the novel comes from Else’s consideration of what to do, for much of it I was genuinely uncertain how events would play out and there is a real tension as one watches her thoughts flow to acquiescence, to rebellion, to escapist fantasy, to acquiescence again and so on. More powerful though is the character of Else herself, beautifully realised (as it must be, for the novel to work at all). Schnitzel shows Else’s initial innocence, its later resurgence as she dreams of ways out of her dilemma, he shows too her new understanding of her world – which seems always to have been present but heretofore unacknowledged, her despair and her savage hope. Schnitzel paints a subtle and wholly persuasive psychological portrait which made me empathise with Else and be fascinated by her situation.

Because it’s essentially an unbroken stream of consciousness (though far easier to read than that suggests), it’s difficult to pull out particularly representative quotes. I’ve tried, with the following two passages, to give some sense though of Else’s internal monologue and the style of the work. In this first excerpt she has received the telegram and is considering how to approach Herr von Dorsday:

I must turn on the light. It’s getting chilly. Shut the window. Blind down? No need. There’s no one standing on the mountain over there with a telescope. Worse luck … ‘I’ve just had a letter, Herr von Dorsday’ … Perhaps it’ll be better to do it after dinner. One is in a lighter mood then. Dorsday will be too … I might drink a glass of wine first. But I should certainly enjoy my dinner more if I finished the whole business first. Pudding à la merveille, fromage et fruits divers. But what if Herr von Dorsday should say no? Or if he’s downright impudent? Oh no; no one has ever been impudent to me. Well, Lieutenant Brandel was, but he didn’t mean any harm. I’ve got a bit thinner again. It suits me … The twilight stares in. It stares in like a ghost – like a hundred ghosts. Ghosts are rising out of my meadow. How far off is Vienna? How long have I been away? How alone I am! I haven’t a girl friend, nor a man friend. Where are they all? Whom shall I marry? Who would marry a swindler’s daughter? …

In this second excerpt, Else is returning to the hotel after thinking matters over for some time:

He’s waiting. Herr von Dorsday is waiting. No, I won’t see him. I can’t see him any more. I won’t see anyone any more. I won’t go back to the hotel, I won’t go home. I won’t go to Vienna, I won’t go to anybody, to anyone at all, not to Father, not to Mother, not to Rudi, not to Fred, not to Bertha, not to Aunt Irene! She’s the best of them, she’d understand everything. But I’ve nothing more to do with her or with anybody else. If I were a magician, I’d be in quite another part of the world. On some splendid ship in the Mediterranean, but not alone. With Paul, perhaps. Yes, I can imagine that quite easily. Or I’d live in a villa by the sea and we’d lie on the marble steps that run down into the water, and he’d hold me tight in his arms and bite my lips, as Alfred did at the piano two years ago, the impudent wretch. No, I’d lie alone on the marble steps by the sea and wait. And at last a man would come, or several men, and I’d choose one, and the others whom I’d rejected would throw themselves into the sea in despair. Or they’d have to be patient and wait til next day. Oh, what a delicious life it would be!

Part of what impresses me here, is how easily Schnitzel captures Else’s immaturity, her flights of childish fancy, but intercuts them with her dawning realisation of her actual situation. Schnitzel is also excellent in a number of passages in bringing out Else’s own burgeoning sexuality, suppressed by societal dictat but by virtue of this situation brought (only part unwillingly) to the forefront of her mind.

Other characters in the work are seen largely through Else’s eyes, the few times Else speaks to someone during the evening it is presented in italics and rarely are the words of the conversation on their own very revealing. Despite this, Schnitzler manages to capture Else’s aunt’s concern for propriety, Herr von Dorsday’s self-interest,self-regard and essential hypocricy, the tension between Cissy Mohr – possible lover to Else’s cousin Paul – and Else herself. We see only through Else’s eyes, and she does not appear a particularly unreliable narrator, but because suddenly she sees much so too do we and the work is full of small psychological truths.

An irony with Fraülein Else, compared to other works I have written about here, is in one sense I have relatively little to say about it. It is well written, shows great insight and is both an enjoyable and rewarding read. Pushkin Press have, once again, brought to English readers a novelist whose works might otherwise go ignored, and certainly without them I wouldn’t have read this particular work. The plot however is so simple, the essential dilemma faced by Else so easily grasped, the truth of her society so depressingly familiar, that it is hard to write at length about it. I am left then saying that this is a fine piece of Austro-Hungarian literature of a sort too little now recognised, and that I am extremely grateful to Pushkin Press for publishing this translation and giving me access to it.

Fraülein Else (also available directly from the publisher here). I note that John Self over at Asylum has written up a different Arthur Schnitzel here, which may also be of interest.

Olá a todos os Shakespeares,

Na 6ª Feira passada, dia 22, o meu dia foi péssimo, stressante até dizer chega, mas a noite… a noite foi excelente, banhada com uma peça de teatro espectacular.

“Dança de Roda” de Arthur Schnitzler
Apresentada pelo 4º ano do Curso de Teatro e Educação da Escola Superior de Educação de Coimbra, no Pólo II da ESEC.

Esta peça retrata as relações inter-pessoais, lícitas e ilícitas e consegue de uma forma leve, humorística e actual, mostrar que nem sempre as coisas são o que parecem, nem sempre a aparente felicidade é devida à nossa “cara metade” mas talvez seja devida a outra relação extra-conjugal.
Todas as personagens participam em duas cenas – duas relações – numa espécie de “dança de roda” até que termina com a personagem inicial.
Esta é sem dúvida uma peça que está sempre actual desde há séculos e assim continuará enquanto as pessoas continuarem a relacionar-se umas com as outras de forma às vezes apaixonada e outras vezes por comodismo.

A peça foi 5 estrelas e o melhor é que há probabilidades de voltar a estar em cena noutros locais. Vale a pena ver.

–>Ficha Técnica<–

A noite foi o melhor do meu dia…

Adeus e beijinhos em cena

Fala-se muitas vezes da falsidade inconsciente de certas pessoas. Mas uma falsidade que não é consciente não é falsidade. É uma necessidade arrebatada de desempenhar a comédia, enraizada no mais profundo do ser, e que se aplica tanto às grande como às pequenas coisas.

Arthur Schnitzler
Relações e Solidão

tradução de Manuel Alberto, Relógio d’Água

Maya sitzt im orangenen Bademantel vor mir. Auch bekannt unter Guantanamo-Bademantel. Inzwischen (23 Uhr) maynt Maya, wieder Lebensmittel (flüssig und fest) zu sich nehmen zu können. Die verkaterte Nuss knabbert an Erdnüssen im Teigmantel. Nebenher – obwohl ihr Sprachzentrum stark und für lange geschädigt scheint – notiert sie schon Lieder zur nächsten Compilation. Aber davon hernach, da fürderhin relevant.

Weiland fingen drei zum U-Bahn fahren zu betrunkene Freunde ein Taxi im Schneetreiben ab. Es lief klassische Musik und wir eröffneten den Diskurs über Musik am Arbeitsplatz, als nach Mozart (Chloe chlaubt es sei Mendelssohn gewesen) Bach lief. Tabangan schmuggelte schwäbisch eine Flasche Rum im Hosenbein in den Roten Salon. Maya und Chloe haben mit solchen illegalen Machenschaften sicherlich nix zu tun und hoffen, weiterhin vom Roten Salon über myspace auf die Gästeliste gesetzt zu werden. Tabangan lockte die tanzenden SpreeSees mit dem Spruch “folgt mir in fünf Minuten an die Bar” zu folgeschweren Shots. Als das Licht anging, gingen wir. Draußen lag noch mehr Schnee und Maya kam fast um beim Versuch, ein Taxi zu ergattern. Sie muss einen wahren Schutzengel haben. Jedenfalls fluchten die Taxifahrer auf türkisch, dass das kleine Mädchen nervt. Maya ignorierte alles, gar ihren Rausch, und gab die nächste Episode “Scala” durch. Sie überschätzte sich und setzte sich nach nur fünf Minuten auf die Stufen: “Ich bin so betrunken, mir ist das so peinlich!” Die funkelnden Lichter und die schnellen Beats waren zu viel für die kleinen Ohren – und vor allem für das kleine kompakte Nervensystem. Zu wenig hatte jedoch Chloe, die sich aus Betrunkenheits-Neid einen Gin Tonic im Plastikbecher als Fahrtbier mitnahm.

Zu Hause angekommen, kam alles wieder raus. Aus Maya! Chloe hat Maya schon vor zehn Jahren gewarnt, dass sie aufgrund ihres kleinen Körpers weniger Rauschmittel zu sich führen sollte. Die Masse macht’s. Jedenfalls tobte sich die muntere Chloe als Mainzelmännchen neben der komatösen Maya aus. Doch nicht einmal saubere Gläser verhalfen moralisch aus dem Kater. Das Kätzchen blieb liegen und sandte Chloe mit zweifelhaftem Substitut in die Schaubühne.

Zur Inszenierung bleibt mir nur zu sagen: Göttlich! Jule Böwe als moderne “Anatol” hat mich gerührt und geschüttelt! Ihrer einzigartigen Stimme hätte ich ewig zuhören können. Ihre Gestalt versuchten meine Augen kontinuierlich zu fokussieren (zum Glück ist Maya doch zu Hause geblieben. Bei all dem Glitzer der genialen Bühneninstallation wäre ihr nur noch schummriger geworden – ich musste ja schon meinen eigenen windenden Kopf überwinden).

Die Parabel mit der Maus (Das ist doch gar keine Maus! Das ist eine Fledermaus! – Oh, zu mir hat er gesagt, er sei Pilot!) haben wir nie gelesen? Aber herrlich auf der Bühne vorgetragen. Der Liebeskummerausbruch beeindruckte. Ach, diese gereigte Agonie. Zum Abschluss ging ich mit dem Lückenbüßer noch einen Kaffee trinken. Im Lokal lief auf gleich drei Fernsehern der Tatort vom Bodensee.

Als ich Maya von der Friedrichstraße aus fragte, ob man ihr was Gutes tun könne, quetschte sie einen Laugenweckenwunsch aus. Der Bäckerreifachverkäufer von Le Crobag maynte daraufhin nur:

Mädchen, es ist halb Elf am Sonntag. Bei mir gibt es das nicht und wo anders wirst Du das jetzt auch nicht bekommen!

O que mostra até que ponto os crentes se sentem no fundo pouco seguros da sua convicção, particularmente aqueles que fazem da fé uma profissão, ou mesmo um comércio, é muito simplesmente o facto de darem à fé a designação de virtude.

Arthur Schnitzler

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Über den Frieden

Arthur Schnitzler

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So lange der Krieg als eine Möglichkeit überhaupt in Betracht kommt, d.h. also, so lange es Berufszweige gibt, die auf die Möglichkeit eines Krieges gestellt sind, ferner so lange es auch nur einen Menschen gibt, der durch den Krieg seinen Reichtum vergrößern oder solchen erwerben kann und der zu gleicher Zeit die Macht hat oder den Einfluß, einen Krieg herbeizuführen, genau so lange wird es Kriege geben. Und hier ist die Frage des Weltfriedens anzupacken, nirgends anders. Weder in religiösen, noch in philosophischen, noch in ethischen Motiven. Diese spielen absolut keine Rolle. Weder die Vernunft, noch das Mitleid, noch die Ehre dürfen wir mit der geringsten Aussicht auf Erfolg anrufen.

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931)

Es handelt sich ausschließlich darum, die Ordnung der Welt so umzugestalten, daß kein Mensch, auch nicht ein einziger, weder in Freundes- noch in Feindesland, die geringste Aussicht hat, seine persönlichen Verhältnisse durch einen Krieg zu verbessern. Unmöglich? So lange das unmöglich ist, hat die Friedensbewegung nicht die entfernteste Aussicht auf Erfolg. Mit Tiefsinn und mit Sentimentalitäten werdet Ihr weder die Herzen der Diplomaten, noch die der Attachés, noch die der Generäle, noch die der Heereslieferanten rühren.

Aus Arthur Schnitzler, Aphorismen und Betrachtungen, S.Fischer-Verlag, Frankfurt/M 1967

First off, let me say I hate it when people tell me about their dreams (i.e. unwaking dreams, not their deepest hopes and aspirations — well, not to a point).  And I hate it for the regular reasons (i.e. how these exchanges reveal the self-absorption and the obliviousness of the speaker). Now that I’m comfortably in my thirties, I’ve mostly learned to avoid people who wish to relate their oneiric travels to me, but, occasionally, I find myself in their conversational crosshairs.

Some time ago, I’d be caught off guard and flattered by friends who’d approach me and announce, “I dreamt about you last night.”  Of course, even when someone’s dreaming about you, it’s always entirely about themselves.  I once ran into someone who I had, rather coldly, decided I no longer wanted to be friends with.  He said to me, “I had a dream about you.  I came up to you, but you walked right past me.”  I thought to myself, but didn’t say aloud, “I wonder what that dream symbolizes — reality?”

I was going to follow up my post on exclamation marks by writing about another source of irritation in writing workshops, dream sequences.  But, unlike exclamation points, I can’t offer much of a defence on stories that end with the sentence “And then he woke up.”  (As an undergrad, I decided to write a story that began with that line.  I sent it to a lit mag for publication.  The story was returned about six months later, and the only comments on the manuscript were the words “No! No! No!” in the margin next to that sentence.)  In general, I have little patience for writers who like to detail their character’s dreams. Novels already ask us to follow the deeds, words, and thoughts of a set of imaginary people; having to step into the unconscious life of a fictional entity doesn’t so much strain the suspension of disbelief as it is entirely superfluous.  A character’s dreams are as relevant to a story as the terms of his or her laptop warranty or their grade-school social studies mark would be in most cases.  Occasionally, writers will use their character’s dreams to add a symbolic filigree to the narrative.  I think that’s a very lame short cut.

Bruna Buzzo

Uma das matérias da parte de literatura da Revista BRAVO! de agosto, Sigmond Freud e seu duplo, da psicanalista Noemi Moritz Kon, analisa a relação entre Sigmond Freud e Arthur Schnitzler, dois escritores com teorias muito parecidas, mas que atuaram em campos bastante diferentes da literatura e produção científica.

O texto de BRAVO! foi muito bem escrito e trás informações relevantes na comparação entre a obra dos dois austríacos. Ambos eram judeus e pertenciam à burguesia de Viena, na virada do século XIX para o XX. Como Freud, Schnitzler chegou à cursar medicina, por pressão dos pais, mas assim que seu pai faleceu definiu-se definitivamente como escritor. Os caminhos dos dois autores de entrelaçaram (e poderiam ter se cruzado) em vários momentos, bem como suas profissões.

A matéria nos mostra que as obras destes dois, um partindo do ponto de vista acadêmico e o outro do literário e artístico, apresentam teorias semelhantes com relação ao comportamento e à sexualidade humanas. O leitor é apresentado à diversas obras de ambos os autores, suas semelhanças e pontos em comum.

A reportagem foi ilustrada com gravuras que remetem aos polêmicos temas abordados nas obras destes dois austríacos. Os “box” presentes nas páginas comparam trechos de obras que nos mostram a semelhança que levou Freud a falar de Schnitzler como sendo o seu duplo. Os autores nunca se conheceram, a não ser por algumas cartas que trocaram. A psicanalista e autora de um livro sobre a ligação entre os dois autores, Noemi Kon, nos apresenta este universo de diferentes semelhanças com maestria e direito de fala.

Therese Fabiani, Offizierstochter aus gutem Hause, versucht aus den gesellschaftlichen Zwängen auszubrechen und verlässt das elterliche Haus mit dem Ziel, ihre eigenen Wege zu gehen. Doch ihr Vorhaben ist zum Scheitern verurteilt und ein tragisches Schicksal nimmt seinen Lauf.

DTV

Arthur Schnitzler (* 15. Mai 1862 in Wien; † 21. Oktober 1931 ebenda) war ein österreichischer Erzähler und Dramatiker. Er gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter der Wiener Moderne.

Wikipedia

Das Buch war wirklich fazinierend.
Auf der einen Seite ist Therese eine sehr starke Frau, die es immer wieder schafft, sich nach Rückschlägen (Kündigungen) wie aufzurappeln. Auf der anderen Seite ist sie auch sehr schwach: Sie gibt dem Drängen der Hausherren in den Familien nach und immer wieder auch ihrem Sohn, einem Taugenichts und Dieb. Hätte sie ihn nicht (unehelich) zur Welt gebracht, ihr Leben wäre bedeutend leichter gewesen. Sicherlich, sie war seine Mutter, aber dadurch, dass sie ihm immer wieder Geld und Obdach gewährt hat, hat sie ihn indirekt unterstützt.
Leider ist so ein Verhalten auch ausserhalb der Bücherwelt anzutreffen: Im Bekanntenkreis meiner Eltern gibt es einen Fall, der fast zu 100% genauso ist, wie der, der im Buch geschildert wird. Bei so Kindern kann man einfach nichts mehr machen, da muß man wirklich die Wohnung zusperren, wenn sie nur in die Straße einbiegen, und ihnen nicht immer wieder Geld geben. Auch der Sohn de rbekannten kommt fast ausschleßlich zu Besuch, wenn er mal wieder Geld braucht.

Auf der anderen Seite schildert Arthur Schnitzler wunderbar das Leben der Wiener Oberschicht durch Thereses Augen. Governanten hatten eine seltsame Stellung inne (das fiel mir schon in den Romanen der Bronte-Schwestern auf): Sie gehören auf eine Art zur Familie, erziehen deren Kinder und speisen mit ihnen. Gleichzeitig gehören sie zu den Dienstboten als Lohnempfänger. Als Frauen ohne männlichen Beschützer waren sie oft Freiwild. Auch dieser Konflikt wird von Arthur Schnitzler thematisiert.

Ein sehr interessantes Buch aus einer sehr empfehlenswerten Reihe.

# Broschiert: 380 Seiten
# Verlag: Dtv Juni 2008
# Sprache: Deutsch
# ISBN-10: 3423137037
# ISBN-13: 978-3423137034
# Größe und/oder Gewicht: 19 x 12 x 2,2 cm

Nunca fui camarada de alguém por assumir por acaso a mesma tarefa que eu, nunca fui colega de ninguém por estar sentado no mesmo banco de escola que eu.

De igual modo não amo toda a humanidade; apenas alguns indivíduos isolados.

Não me sinto solidário de ninguém por pertencer por acaso à mesma nação, ao mesmo grupo social, à mesma raça e à mesma família que eu. É qualquer coisa que só a mim diz respeito saber com quem desejo sentir afinidades; não conheço nesse aspecto qualquer obrigação de nascença. Tenho concidadãos em todas as nações, camaradas em todos os grupos sociais e irmãos que não têm nenhuma ideia de que eu existo.

Arthur Schnitzler

in Relações e Solidão – aforismos,
trad. Manuel Alberto (c/revisão dramapessoal)
Relógio d’Água Editores.
À venda na Feira do Livro de Lisboa do ano passado por 5 eur. (promoção)