to subside both purified and enlightened byher kaleidoscopic experiences into the healthy bliss of the quasi-domestic life with a new, honest, and well-meaning lover.
The wild, rollicking humour of this play will perhaps appeal in vain to the more stolid of our English minds. Some help may perhaps be found for the due appreciation of this, and, indeed, of all Wedekind's plays, if it be borne in mind that for a modern woman to live her own life in Southern Germany (sich auszuleben, to employ the technical and official phrase) is not revolutionary but elementary, and is far more of a cliché than a new departure. Further, the play claims to be treated not by the standards of the ordinary drama, but as a problem farce, an Aristophanic modernity, a philosophic extravaganza, a dramatic anomaly, very muchsui generis, and consequently requiring very special critical standards. Judging it by these standards, it is impossible not to be swept away by the high spirits of this strange piece of art. Who, too, can gainsay the practical up-to-dateness of a play where maidens insure against children, wives against infidelity, monarchs against madness? And who will not admire the almost morbid conscientiousness ofFranziska, who, having had one lover of the name of Veit, and another lover of the name of Ralph, and becoming subsequently a mother, determines, out of comprehensive precaution and sheer sense of fairness, to call the little boy by the impartial designation of Veitralph? It is, however, only fair to state, as we have already hinted, that the play finishes up on a note of genuine pathos and semi-conjugal affection.
What, then, is Wedekind's final claim? As a play-wright in the ordinary sense of the word, his pretensions are negligible. One of the most marked features, however, of the last decade and a half has been the evolution of fresh species in the genus drama. Thus, apart from the drama or play of action, with its orthodoxdénouementand climax, we have the "idea" play, as in Mr. Shaw; the "slice of life" play, as in Mr. Galsworthy; or the "æsthetic atmosphere" play, as in Maeterlinck. Whether we call such work drama, or quasi-drama, is as immaterial from the larger standpoint as the surname we choose to give to the individual who did, or who did not, writeHamlet. Even, however, with this extended classification, it is difficult to docket into any definite pigeon-hole so idiosyncratic a temperament. If we have to commit ourselves, we would say that the Wedekind play is the lyric play of irony—irony both comic and tragic. Even making all due allowances for defects, for the superfluous thickness with which sometimes he places his harsh and violent colours, or for occasional amorphous construction, as inFrühlingserwachen, as a master of irony he is indisputably a genius. Nosœva indignatio, it is true, lends its ethical sanction, no Hellenicεἰρονείαits delicate grace: it is for his own fiendish delectation that he plies his knout on that world of abnormalities called into existence for this express purpose, and writhing prettily in the most ingeniousof dances. Yet with what art and dexterity does he operate, finding with unerring aim the raw place of his victims, and drawing from these apparent grotesques the blood of genuine humanity. Your specialist will no doubt diagnose him a decadent, yet he is tense with a frenzied virility. It is, as we have said before, the very exuberance and violence of his energy that leads him plumb the abyss. He has himself well expressed his whole outlook on life, and indeed the whole Nietzschean standpoint, in the following lines:
"For them your kind and gracious face,For me the sword smiles sweet,For me the savage bear's embrace,For them old Bruin's meat.The brutal foe's own strife I choose,They the humanities of truce."
[1]Cf.the lines of Ricarda Huch to life: "Denn du bist suss in deinen Bitternessen."
[1]Cf.the lines of Ricarda Huch to life: "Denn du bist suss in deinen Bitternessen."
[2]It is curious to notice that almost identical words were used inIrene Wycherley.[3]"Volksfiend" (sic); German is "Volksfeind", Norwegian is "Folkefiende"—transcriber's note—M.D.
[2]It is curious to notice that almost identical words were used inIrene Wycherley.
[3]"Volksfiend" (sic); German is "Volksfeind", Norwegian is "Folkefiende"—transcriber's note—M.D.
[3]"Volksfiend" (sic); German is "Volksfeind", Norwegian is "Folkefiende"—transcriber's note—M.D.
"My dear friend, as far as that grotesque realism is concerned, which considers it its duty to get along without stage management or prompter, that realism in which a fifth act frequently fails to be reached because a tile has fallen upon the hero's head in the second act—I am not interested. As for myself, I let the curtain go up when it begins to be amusing, and I let it go down at the moment which I consider fit."
"My dear friend, as far as that grotesque realism is concerned, which considers it its duty to get along without stage management or prompter, that realism in which a fifth act frequently fails to be reached because a tile has fallen upon the hero's head in the second act—I am not interested. As for myself, I let the curtain go up when it begins to be amusing, and I let it go down at the moment which I consider fit."
In these words, touched with a delicate flippancy which is thoroughly characteristic, Arthur Schnitzler endeavours to summarise that technique which, though it has lifted him to the summit of the Austrian drama, is as yet comparatively unknown to the English public, if one excepts the recent performance by the Stage Society ofThe Green CockatooandCountess Mizzi, and the production ofAnatolat the Palace Music Hall.
It is, in fact, because Schnitzler's plays combining, and on the whole combining efficiently, the psychological interest of pure "problem" with the emotional interest of pure "drama," afford specimens of a type novel to, at any rate, the majority of our theatre-goers, that they provoke something more than a cursory examination, not only of themselves, but of the standpoint and method of the man who wrote them. Above all is this the case in a country like England, where the problem play is hampered by so many handicaps. The exaggerated officialdom of our English propriety, beneficial though it may be from the moral aspect, produces artistically unfortunate results. Many first-class problem plays are exiled from the stage, but that is not where themischief ends. Even when they are produced, it is only to be looked on with suspicion as eccentric symptoms of dangerous, not to say anarchistic tendencies. When, however, official and "respectable" dramatists (i.e. dramatists of the stamp of Mr. Pinero or of Mr. Sutro) produce so-called problem plays before official and "respectable" audiences (i.e.audiences of a calibre other than that of those who patronise the Little Theatre and Stage Society performances), it will be usually found (if, indeed, the play is not an innocuous family drama, or simply a comedy of intrigue, for in many cases the word "problem" has degenerated into a mere euphemism for some slight forgetfulness of the Seventh Commandment) that the dramatist has sacrificed the duty of working out his problems logically and artistically to the still more paramount duty of appeasing the moral consciousness of his audience.
Further, it is one of the precepts of our dramatic technique, most honoured in the observance, that the action should take place among people of high social position; as, however, it so happens that it is rather among the more intellectual and introspective of the middle classes that genuine problems tend to arise, the scope of the dramatist becomes automatically narrowed. Of course we have our dramatic left wing, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Barker, our ultra-modern exponents of the drama of ideas and the drama of psychology. But here, again, our revolutionaries overshoot the mark in their reaction from the orthodox. Mr. Shaw will bombard us with ideas till we can hardly stand. When, however, we have recovered our balance, we observe that, however indisputable may be his pre-eminence as a thaumaturgic apostle of a successfully dechristianised Christianity, his characters are marked bycomparatively few traits of individual psychology, and participate in comparatively little dramatic action. It is, indeed, with profound appreciation of his weakness that "talking" is set by Mr. Shaw as a final seal on theSuperman. Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Barker, it is true, do give us not only elaborate discussion of social problems (though not infrequently an airy discussion of things in general is dragged in forcibly with no, or little, reference to the action of the play), but also refined and delicate delineations of individual character. But with the possible exception of the grandiose and monstrousWasteand the statuesque thesis and antithesis of the sociologicalStrife, their plays are not dramatic. To express it with almost childish implicity, their plays are not "exciting." With a few exceptions, they are charged with no atmosphere and abut at no climax.
Mere ideas, however, will not make the dramatic world go round, and mere psychology often only makes it go flat. Few words are mouthed with such fluent irresponsibility as "technique," but it may be said—and said, we think, truly, and without affectation—that no play can be a success without a certain minimum of "technique"; that is to say, either one continuous thread of dramatic interest on which successive acts are strung, or some particular arch-effect to which (especially if a one-acter) the whole play abuts, and to the atmosphere of which all the elements are harmoniously toned.
The vice of the English drama, then, is this: plays of good technical mechanism possess little or no "problem" interest; plays of "problem" or psychological interest possess little or no technical mechanism.
Let us, consequently, glancing first at his plays, and perhaps later at those short stories which stand in the most intimate relation to his one-acters, ascertainto what extent Schnitzler has solved successfully the great "problem of the problem."
Liebelei, which was produced first in 1895, is an excellent example both of Schnitzler's powers and of Schnitzler's limitations. Themotifof the play is the problem of the refined middle-class girl, who stands, if we may borrow the terminology of popular melodrama, at the cross-roads. Which turning is it better for her to take—the right turning, or the wrong turning?
Fritz, a sentimental young Viennese student, is discussing in his rooms the affairs of his heart with the saner and more practical Theodor. Fritz is melancholy. He has been sustaining a grand passion for a married woman, but the looming shadow of the husband obsesses him. Are his nerves playing him tricks, or has the husband ascertained?
Theodor advises him to sail in shallower and less troubled waters. "You must go for your happiness where I did—and found it, too—where there are no great scenes, no dangers, and no tragic developments, where the first steps are not particularly hard and the last, again, are not painful, where one receives the first kiss with a smile and parts finally with the softest feeling."
Scruples are out of place on the principle, "Better myself than someone else, and the someone else is as inevitable as Fate."
Theodor, moreover, has not only prescribed the cure, but has ordered the medicine. Enter Mizzi, the actual "happiness" of Theodor, and Christine, the prospective "happiness" of Fritz. Mizzi the practical prepares supper, while the sweetnaïvetéof the genuinely unsophisticated Christine captivates the jaded soul of ourfin de siècleromantic. There ensues a scene of the most delicate gaiety and camaraderie.All is health and goodwill. Even Mizzi the prosaic shows her passion for the picturesque on learning that Fritz is in the Dragoons:
MIZZI. Are you in the yellow or the black?FRITZ. I'm in the yellow.MIZZI. (dreamily). In the yellow.
MIZZI. Are you in the yellow or the black?
FRITZ. I'm in the yellow.
MIZZI. (dreamily). In the yellow.
Could there be a more subtle probing into the soul of the novelette-reading shopgirl?
Then, at the zenith of the feast, when glasses are clinking and souls are flowing, enter the skeleton. The company is packed into the next room, and Fritz is left to arrange a duel with the man whom he has wronged. Exit the skeleton, re-enter the revellers; yet the shadow of the looming death casts a gloom even over the unconscious minds of the others. The girls bid a gay farewell to the young men, but the aftermath of the old love is already poisoning the sweets of the new.
The next scene is in the lodgings of Christine on the eve of that duel of which the love-stricken girl is in blissful ignorance. Christine,bien entendu, in contradistinction to the casual and heart-whole Mizzi, is taking her love-affair with the maximum of seriousness. Katherine, a benevolent busybody of a neighbour, puts Weiring, the musician father of Christine, on his guard. Weiring, however, having been the uncomplaisant brother of his sister, is determined, on the strength of his experience, to be the complaisant father of his daughter.
WEIRING. I became, Heaven knows, proud, and gloried in my conduct—and then, little by little, the grey hairs came and the wrinkles, and one day went by another till her whole youth was gone—and gradually, so that one could scarcely notice it, the young girl became an old maid, and then I first began to suspect what I had really done.KATHERINE. But, Herr Weiring....WEIRING. I can see how she often used to sit with me in theevening by this lamp in this room, with her silent smile, with a strange kind of devotion, as if she still wished to thank me for something, and I—the one thing I wanted most to do was to throw myself on my knees and ask for her forgiveness for guarding her so well from all dangers and from all happiness.
WEIRING. I became, Heaven knows, proud, and gloried in my conduct—and then, little by little, the grey hairs came and the wrinkles, and one day went by another till her whole youth was gone—and gradually, so that one could scarcely notice it, the young girl became an old maid, and then I first began to suspect what I had really done.
KATHERINE. But, Herr Weiring....
WEIRING. I can see how she often used to sit with me in theevening by this lamp in this room, with her silent smile, with a strange kind of devotion, as if she still wished to thank me for something, and I—the one thing I wanted most to do was to throw myself on my knees and ask for her forgiveness for guarding her so well from all dangers and from all happiness.
The act ends with a love-scene between Christine and Fritz, poignant in its irony. He is all-in-all to her, she is just something to him; but he goes off to fight a duel on account of another woman without so much as bidding her a real farewell.
In the third act the news of Fritz's death is broken to Christine, and here comes the most subtle and delicate touch of all. Poignant as is her grief at his death, her grief at the casual flippancy of his treatment is even more poignant. Ourfin de siècleOphelia rushes madly out of the house to commit suicide in the nearest brook, or perhaps more probably under the nearest train, to point the philosophic moral, "A bas la grande passion! Vive l'Amourette!"
The play, however, should be read or seen to obtain an adequate appreciation of the precision with which each character is drawn, the spontaneity with which the dialogue flows, and the lyric pathos with which the whole is invested. The limitations, such as they are, simply lie in the fact that each act is self-complete in itself. However good they may be, three consecutive one-acters never made a drama. To compare great things with low, each act of a drama, like each instalment of afeuilleton, should leave, as it were, the hanging tag of some vital interrogation. The dramatic banquet should not only regale the mind of the spectator during, but titillate it with the aftermath between the acts.
As we shall see later, when he comes to dramatise on the larger scale, Schnitzler not infrequently exhibits the defects of those very qualities which make him so supreme in the sphere of the one-acter.
InMärchen(the Fairy Tale), on the other hand, the problem is brought more officially into the foreground of the play, while each act is more closely connected with those which follow or precede it. Fedor Denner, a romantic young journalist (nearly all Schnitzler's young men are highly romantic), is in love with Fanny, a young actress on the threshold of theatrical success, and of those dangers which follow so closely in the wake of theatrical success. Fedor, moreover, is not only romantic, he is modern—ultra-modern. And so, in the inspiring atmosphere of Fanny's home circle, where the mother bustles about with the refreshments and the "good" piano-teacher of a sister discourses music for the edification of the journalists, painters, and students who frequent the house, he gives an impassioned little lecture on the "Fairy Tale of the Fallen Woman" and on the "washed-out views and dead-beat ideas" of which the fairy tale is composed. The little lecture, however, goes off just a little too successfully. In a climax, marvellous in its tacit concentration, Fanny takes an opportunity of kissing his hand. Fedor is revolted, however, by the revelation implied in this pathetic gratitude. He had contemplated marriage, but now——. For the time being he nurses in solitary misery all the pangs of retrospective jealousy. Then Fanny, unable to bear the separation, rushes headlong into his arms. Then comes the great act of the play. We are back once more in the house of Fanny's mother. The young actress, having scored a brilliant success on the Vienna stage, has been offered a splendid contract in St. Petersburg by Moritzki, the agent. If, however, she goes to St. Petersburg, she will have to face the pains and pleasures of life unsheltered by the respectability of a family. The problem isacute. Fanny, however, places the Fate of her life on the knees of—Fedor. And Fedor shuffles and vacillates.
FANNY. Come, and you—what do you say yourself?FEDOR. After you have received Herr Moritzki at the house you can scarcely seriously mean to refuse him.FANNY. Herr Denner, I consider you an exceptionally shrewd man, I ask you for your advice.FEDOR. Yes, I think ... I would accept.Fanny. Good! [ToMoritzki.] Herr Moritzki.
FANNY. Come, and you—what do you say yourself?
FEDOR. After you have received Herr Moritzki at the house you can scarcely seriously mean to refuse him.
FANNY. Herr Denner, I consider you an exceptionally shrewd man, I ask you for your advice.
FEDOR. Yes, I think ... I would accept.
Fanny. Good! [ToMoritzki.] Herr Moritzki.
Woman-like, however, having signed the contract, she craves time to reconsider. Fedor looks at it again.
FANNY. Fedor—you gave me the contract back.FEDOR. Well, yes.FANNY. You should have torn it up, dear. Why didn't you do it?FEDOR. You should not have signed it, Fanny.FANNY. Fedor! It is unbearable—you're driving me out of my senses.FEDOR. But you yourself don't quite know your own mind. There's something in you which craves for adventures.FANNY. Fedor—if you would only put me to the test—I will do anything you want—only tell me.
FANNY. Fedor—you gave me the contract back.
FEDOR. Well, yes.
FANNY. You should have torn it up, dear. Why didn't you do it?
FEDOR. You should not have signed it, Fanny.
FANNY. Fedor! It is unbearable—you're driving me out of my senses.
FEDOR. But you yourself don't quite know your own mind. There's something in you which craves for adventures.
FANNY. Fedor—if you would only put me to the test—I will do anything you want—only tell me.
And then, eventually, Fedor owns up.
FEDOR. Would I not still have to kiss away from your lips the kisses of other men?
FEDOR. Would I not still have to kiss away from your lips the kisses of other men?
And so Fanny forsakes the life of domesticity for the life of the actress.
The chief defect, however, in this play is that, in spite of all its dramatic compound of psychology, pathos, and problem, the problem is not fairly presented, in that Fanny, being of inferior social status to Fedor, the question of whether he shall marry her must inevitably be influenced by purely snobbish considerations. It is only when the woman is of equal, if not slightly superior, rank to the man that the real problem of her ante-nuptial chastity can be discussed with real sociological fairness.
InDie Vermächtniss(produced in Berlin in 1898), the problem which our dramatist has made the centre of his play is the relation to the family of the mistress and child of the dead son of the house. The dashing young cavalry officer is brought home fatally wounded from a fall from his horse. Realising his approaching death, he informs his parents of his responsibilities. Death raises the home circle to a pitch of more than ordinary humanity. In spite of their poignant jealousy at the existence of other affections and another home life, they send for their son's household, and accede to his dying request to incorporate it into the family.
Act II shows the mistress installed in the bosom of her lover's family. Modernity, however, though satisfying to the heroic pose, has its penalties. Our ultra-modern family finds itself confronted with social ostracism. Still, they love their grandchild, and the mother of the grandchild is the price that they must pay. But the grandchild dies. The semi-official daughter-in-law consequently becomes a somewhat unprofitable luxury, and in the final act is given hercongé. Even more than inLiebelei, however, the claim to merit lies almost exclusively in the precision with which each successive phase of the problem is portrayed. As a series of family pictures, the play succeeds, and succeeds brilliantly; as a drama of continuous interest, it fails, and fails hopelessly.
The next play of Schnitzler isThe Veil of Beatrice.This "tragedy of sensualism" has qualities too arresting to be lightly disregarded. The dramatist has forsaken his problems to portray how the fatal temperament of a young girl of the Italian Renaissance works out its own destruction.
In the first act, we are shown the garden of Filippo, a poet of Bologna, which is on the eve of beingplundered by the enemy. The heads on Bolognese shoulders are worth little purchase, and who leaves not the town to-night will never leave the town at all. The Duke invites Filippo to the palace to recite his poems. Filippo refuses, so that he may leave the city of doom with his beloved Beatrice, a daughter of the people. On learning, however, that Beatrice has dreamt of the Duke, he spurns her in an egoistic paroxysm of refined jealousy, typical in its subtlety more of the twentieth century than the Renaissance.
"So much I give thee, more than thou canst dream,So much that to be worthy of my love,Loathing should fasten on thee at the thoughtThis earth is trod by other men than I."
Beatrice leaves him with the vague intimation—
"Feel I that without thee I cannot liveAnd have desire for death, I come againTo take thee with me."
In the second act, Beatrice is on the point of marrying her legitimate suitor, Vittorino, and escaping from the town, when the Duke appears and proposes to exercise thejus ultimæ nodis. Owing to the remonstrances of her brother Francesco, he generously offers to relinquish his intentions. Beatrice is bidden to go on her way, but stands riveted to the spot by a fatalistic impulse to realise her dream. And what is more, she insists on being the wife of the Duke. Her wish is granted. The nuptials are celebrated by a giganticfêtein the palace, whose doors are thrown open to rich and poor. Beatrice, however, with the placidnaïvetéof her will-less temperament, flies to Filippo.
"What boots it,Were I this eve an empress to whom worldsBowed, or the callat of a fool? For IAm with thee now to die by thine own side."
Filippo pretends to poison both her and himself, and on her discovering the ruse, commits suicide in earnest. Beatrice rushes back to the palace, but discovering that she has left behind that priceless veil which was the wedding-gift of her husband, leads back the Duke to the chamber of love and death. The living is confronted with the dead rival, and the indignant Francesco slays his sister.
The power of this tragedy, however, lies not so much in the actual plot or even in the marvellous delineation of Beatrice, gracefully and innocently childish in the very irresponsibility of her fated sin, as in the rich tints of the picture and the gorgeous frame in which the picture is set. All the multicoloured elements of the Renaissance take their place in the vivid scheme—poets, sculptors, courtiers, courtesans, soldiers, and populace. Annihilation and vitality grow each more grandiose from their mutual juxtaposition, and the red blood of life flows but the quicker and the warmer beneath the black shadow of doom. Few more eloquent tragedies have been written on the great twin themes: "In the midst of life we are in death; in the midst of death we are in life."
Reverting back to prose, we come toDer Einsame Weg(The Lonely Way, 1903). If, however, the tendency to import the methods of the short story and the long novel were apparent inLiebeleiandVermächtniss, it is even more marked in this play. A son, finding a sire in the shape of the middle-aged lover of his now dead mother, repudiates the natural for the putative father; a neurotic and over-sexed young girl, finding that her lover, unknown to himself, is suffering from an incurable disease, dies by her own act. These are the twomotifs, knit together by no shred of logical connection, which form the threads on whichthe drama is hung. Yet, if here we have Schnitzler at his worst, the many excellences even of this play attest by implication the merits of Schnitzler at his best. The scene between father and son is a sheer masterpiece. How delicately does the father intimate that "mothers also have their destinies like other women." And how complete is his rejection.
JULIAN. It is now absolutely impossible for you to forget that you are my son.FELIX. Your son—it is nothing but a word—it is a mere empty sound—I know it, but I don't realise it.JULIAN. Felix!FELIX. You are further away from me since I know it.
JULIAN. It is now absolutely impossible for you to forget that you are my son.
FELIX. Your son—it is nothing but a word—it is a mere empty sound—I know it, but I don't realise it.
JULIAN. Felix!
FELIX. You are further away from me since I know it.
Interesting, again, is the Nietzschean sanction for intrigue: "One has the right to exploit to the completest extent all one's life with all the ecstasy and all the shame which is involved."
Far superior, however, toDer Einsame Weg, with its heavy Ibsenite atmosphere, isZwischenspiel(1905), where that problem of the quadrangle, compared to which that of the triangle is from the more advanced standpoint butvieux jeu, is treated with the most delicate and biting raillery. Victor Amadeus, the pianist, and his wife Cecilie, the singer, love each other with as much genuine constancy as can be expected from normal persons of the artistic temperament. Victor Amadeus, however, philanders with a countess, and his wife with a prince. Mutual jealousy! Too civilised, however, to interfere by any display of primitive emotion with the sacred love of the new modernity, they grant each other, on general principles,carte blanche. And so, at the end of Act I, they separate for their mutual holiday. Henceforward the husband and wife are to be the most Platonic of comrades. The necessities of their professional engagements, however, bring about their meeting intheir old home. But the affair with the countess is dead, and the affair with the prince has apparently not yet matured. Then do Victor Amadeus and Cecilie forget the ultra-modern theories which they are bound in duty to exemplify, and only realise that they are man and woman. Bursting with his new humanity, Victor Amadeus begins in the third act to be quite jealous of the prince. His astonishment can consequently be imagined when his Serene Highness presents himself to ask the husband formally for the hand of the wife. On the situation being explained to him, the prince gracefully retires, gallant gentleman that he is. But the reunited pair cannot live happily ever after. Cecilie, it is true, had been faithful, but faithful, she explains, by the narrowest of margins. She cannot guarantee the future; and does not history repeat itself? True, they had loved each other, but what love can be proof against the theories of the newer sexual ethics?
"If we had only before," says Cecilie, "shrieked into each other's faces our rage, our bitterness, our despair, instead of posing as superior people who never lost their heads, then we should have been true to ourselves—and that we never were."
And so that parting, taking place, as it does, when all barriers but their two selves have disappeared, rings down the curtain on this most brilliant of satires on the ultra-modern.
On almost as high a level isFreiwild[1], a piece which gains an added interest from the fact that it has not only been censored because an army officer is given a box on the ears, but that the actors on one occasion refused to play it till solemnly assured by the author that the apparent realism of the portrayal of theprocurer-impresariowas, after all, merely poetic licence. The play is a vehement satire on the duel.In a scene marvellous in its ingenious stagecraft and airy atmosphere, we are shown the picturesque gardens of an Austrian pleasure resort. Close by is the local theatre, where musical comedy is performed for the entertainment of officers. One of the actresses, however, Anna, shocks all orthodox traditions by refusing to participate in that social life which, according to the manager, is the sacred duty of the efficient chorus girl. For Anna, Paul Rohring, an analytical painter, entertains feelings which are quixotic, and Karinski, a heavy bully of a fire-eater, feelings typical of a less exalted Don. But the overtures of Karinski are rebuffed ignominiously. Rohring[2]cannot repress the smile of sarcastic triumph. The discomfited lady-killer, aspersing the name of Anna with an insolentgaucherie, has his ears boxed for his pains. The inevitable challenge is brought to Rohring by one Poldi, the complete exponent of punctilious aristocracy, the past-master in all the intricacies of theduelli codex, the super-gentleman. But Rohring, who is anxious to marry Anna and live a long and happy life, rejects the inevitable challenge. Genuine consternation on the part of Poldi, who explains that the unpurged shame of the box on the ears spells ruin to Karinski's military career. Poldi proposes a compromise—the solemn farce of a bloodless duel. Rohring, however, disdains playing dummy parts in solemn farces. It is all madness. It is in vain that the incarnation of military honour expostulates.
"For you it is madness, but others have grown up in this madness; what is madness to you is for others the very element in which they live."
Finally, Rohring is given to understand that, unless he flees, the outraged Karinski will shoot him at sight. But with a somewhat human perversity our heroic painter refuses to run away. An encounterà l'Américainetakes place in the gardens, but Rohring, drawing just a second too late, is shot dead. And now, as orthodox applause to the red-handed, cold-blooded murderer, comes from the mouth of Karinski's own friend in six words the indictment of the duel, irrevocably damning in the cold subtlety of its satire: "And now you have won back your honour."
If, however, in this play Schnitzler proved his ability to write a problem drama which should be something more than a mere series of isolated phases, we find again in his next play,The Call of Life, in spite of its many excellences, the old taint of the one-acter.
Themotifof the play is the claim of the desire for life to ride rough-shod over all other claims. A beautiful daughter is wasting the best years of her life in the care of a querulous father, incurably ill, but never dying. The little garrison town is agog with the excitement of a newly declared war. This war, moreover, has a special interest, in that the local regiment, the Blue Cuirassiers, had in the last war, by ignominious flight, branded itself with shame. Though this episode took place over thirty years ago and none of the actual renegades are now in the regiment, the Blue Hussars, with that inflated idea of honour only found in Teutonic countries, resolve to purge the disgrace by dying gloriously in the front of the fray. Among the officers is Lieutenant Max, who has cast on Marie, the beautiful daughter, eyes of admiration. Irony, moreover, sharpens the situation when the bedridden father, who was once a member of the Blue Cuirassiers, explains he himself was responsible for the historic flight.
"What was the good of it? Who would have thanked me? They would have put me in a grave with a thousand others and piled the earth on top, and that would have been the end of it.And I wouldn't have it. I wanted to live—to live like others. I wanted to have a wife and children and live. And so I rushed from the field; and so it has happened that the young men whom I don't know are going to their death and that I still live on at seventy-nine and will survive them all—all—all."
"What was the good of it? Who would have thanked me? They would have put me in a grave with a thousand others and piled the earth on top, and that would have been the end of it.And I wouldn't have it. I wanted to live—to live like others. I wanted to have a wife and children and live. And so I rushed from the field; and so it has happened that the young men whom I don't know are going to their death and that I still live on at seventy-nine and will survive them all—all—all."
The old soldier, however, is unduly sanguine as to the protraction of his life, for the same call of life which ordered him from the battle orders his daughter to pour poison into the water for which he now craves.
It is outside the purpose of this essay to argue the ethics of this precipitation of the inevitable. Suffice it that it constitutes a most efficient curtain—a curtain, however, so efficient that there seems no compelling necessity for a continuation of the play. A continuation, however, there is, and in the rooms of Max, which are visited at night by Marie, who ensconces herself behind a curtain. She sees the major's wife come to urge a vain prayer that he should desert the army and elope with her. They are discovered by the major, who, shooting the wife, spares the lover. It is, however, when the major leaves that we understand the intense hypertrophy of life evoked by imminent death. Marie, knowing all, yet presents herself. Max can only realise that his life has but a few remaining hours, and that these remaining hours stand now before him. Another curtain, strong, if slightly crude, yet followed by a third act, which is nothing but an epilogue.
This somewhat exaggerated scorn, however, of such of the more complicated effects of theatricalism as are manifested in the ingenious concatenation of the plot, or the representation of sensational incidents which have no justification but their own inherent dramatic force, fails absolutely to affect Schnitzler's position as a writer of one-act plays. Indeed, it ishis subordination of plot to atmosphere that constitutes in this sphere his paramount excellence. As, moreover, Mr. Henry James in hisEmbarrassments and Terminationswrote short stories independent in themselves yet harmonising with some permeatingmotif, so has Schnitzler in hisAnatol,Marionetten, andLebendigen Stundengiven us symmetrical one-act sequences.
Let us deal first with the Anatol-Cyclus, a series of one-acters portraying the amoristic vicissitudes of afin de sièclesentimentalist, flitting prettily from heart to heart, till he is eventually encompassed by the matrimonial net. Little action weighs down these delicate pieces. Anatol and the flame of the moment participate in a dialogue, or Anatol appeals to the worldly wisdom of his friend Max to rescue him from some dilemma in which he has been landed by his own weakness or his own folly. That is all. Yet each piece sheds a little more light upon the holy of holies of Anatol's heart, and illumines with equal clarity and colour the charm and individuality of each successive priestess of the temple. Though no doubt the chief effect of the cycle lies in its accumulative force, some idea of the general airiness and brilliance may perhaps be obtained by a short sketch of two of the most striking. InThe Question to FateAnatol confides to Max his anxiety. Does the flame of the moment burn true and for him alone? By hypnotism he proposes to extract from his unconscious love that answer which will make him either the happiest or the most miserable of mankind. Cora enters, and is duly soothed into a hypnotic trance. Anatol, however, insists on being left alone with her at this critical moment of his fate, so Max retires into the adjoining room. And now, when the helpless girl is ready to answer every question, and, what is more, to answer it with automaticaccuracy, and the book of truth lies ready in his trembling hand, the seeker of knowledge has not the courage to know. Waking her up with a kiss, he expresses complete reassurance to the re-entering Max. Cora, however, manifests a perhaps intelligible anxiety as to the nature of her answers.
In theFarewell Supper, the scene of which is laid in thecabinet particulierof a Viennese restaurant, Anatol describes to Max the ineffable woes of being on with the new love before he is off with the old. What a strain it is, moreover, to be compelled to eat two suppers every night! However, he and Anna (the old love) had at the initiation of their romance arranged to confide to each other the first symptom of approachingennui. To-night at this supper he will tactfully intimate that she is no longer indispensable to his soul's happiness. He implores Max to stay as the helpful buffer in an inevitable scene. Enter Anna, fresh from the stage and hungry for oysters. The pangs of starvation temporarily appeased, Anna announces that she has something important to communicate. She has grown tired of Anatol and fallen in love with another. She hopes he will not mind, but better she should tell him now than when it was too late. Collapse of Max into uproarious laughter. With pique mingling with his relief, Anatol rises to the occasion, professing the righteous indignation of a wounded spirit. To vindicate hisamour-propre, he contemptuously informs her that he too has fallen in love with another, but as far as he is concerned his confession does come too late. "Only a man could be so brutal," retorts Anna; "a woman would never be so tactless as to say anything so crude." And so the comedy ends with the girl carrying off the remains of the supper to her cavalier round the corner.
The whole cycle, however, should be read toappreciate the racy ripple of the dialogue, the subtle malice of the characterisation, and the general verve and irony of these most sparkling of comedies.
Perhaps at this moment it may be convenient just to mention the audacious psychology of the super-BoccacianReigen. English decorum, no doubt, for-bids anything but the most casual allusion to this sequence of duologues, where all the members of the social hierarchy are linked together by participation in the same eternal plot.
Yet in its way, this book, written originally for a select circle and subsequently published by universal request, is one of the most refined feats of intellectualism which Schnitzler has ever performed. For the delicacy of the style is in inverse ratio to the delicacy of the subject-matter, and the various nuances of social technique are described and differentiated with the masterly touch of combined experience and intuition. Scarcely suited, no doubt, as a Sunday School prize, the book will, none the less, well repay perusal by modern men and women of the modern world.
The seriesMarionetten, to which allusion has already been made, has for itsmotifthe ironic tragedy of those who essay to manipulate the lives of others. The best of three plays isThe Puppet-player. To the happy fireside of Eduard and Anna there is introduced an old friend, George Merklin, whom the husband had casually encountered. Merklin is a picturesque, if battered, Bohemian who encircles himself somewhat showily with a halo of alleged mysticism. The whole art of the dramatist, however, in this little piece is devoted to creating an atmosphere of light melancholy, in which the poetic isolation of the second-rate genius, Merklin, stands in vivid contrast to the prosaic happiness of his lessgifted friend. The climax comes when it transpires that Merklin had loved Anna in the past and had brought the two together by way of a psychological experiment at a Bohemian supper.
"The little girl who was so nice to you simply did what I wished. You two were the puppets in my hand. I pulled the strings. It was arranged that she should pretend to be in love with you. For you always roused my sympathy, my dear Eduard; I wanted to awake in you the illusion of happiness, so that you should be ready for true happiness when you found it."
"The little girl who was so nice to you simply did what I wished. You two were the puppets in my hand. I pulled the strings. It was arranged that she should pretend to be in love with you. For you always roused my sympathy, my dear Eduard; I wanted to awake in you the illusion of happiness, so that you should be ready for true happiness when you found it."
And so this shoddy superman goes out into this lonely world, having played with the fates of others only to have played away his own life's happiness.
Perhaps, however, Schnitzler's most characteristic series of one-acters is the one headedLebendige Stunden. Life should be weighed as much by quality as by quantity. One man can traverse more life in a few seconds than another in whole years. It is typical, however, of Schnitzler's method that he essays not merely to lead up to a violent climax by artifices of calculated stagecraft, but to set the vivid hour in an harmonious and poetic frame. The most striking of the series is the extraordinary fantasia,The Woman with the Dagger.
Leonhardt, a seriously romantic youth, in apparently the full flush of his first grand passion, meets the wife of a dramatic author in the Renaissance saloon of a picture gallery. Pre-eminent among the pictures on the wall is that of a woman robed in white, holding a dagger in her uplifted hand, and gazing at the floor as if there lay someone whom she had murdered. It is then in this atmosphere that our gallant urges his suit to the unresponsive Pauline, who coolly informs him that she has confessed to her husband that she is in danger, and that they are travelling away to-morrow.And then, as she is on the point of saying farewell, she stands before the picture.
PAULINE(looking closer). Who lies there in the shadow?LEONHARDT. Where?PAULINE. Do you not see?LEONHARDT. I see nothing.PAULINE. It is you.LEONHARDT. I? Pauline, what an extraordinary jest!
PAULINE(looking closer). Who lies there in the shadow?
LEONHARDT. Where?
PAULINE. Do you not see?
LEONHARDT. I see nothing.
PAULINE. It is you.
LEONHARDT. I? Pauline, what an extraordinary jest!
And then, as they look and look, they fall into an hypnotic trance and the clock of the world goes back some five hundred years. Pauline has become Paola, and Leonhardt, Lionardo, while the racy Viennese idiom is turned to classical blank verse. It is early dawn in the studio of the Master Remigio, and Remigio is away on his travels. Lionardo arrogates the claims of love on the strength of the favours which he has just enjoyed. Paola spurns him as the mere mechanical toy of her passion. She loves and has always loved her husband. That this is no mere pose is apparent from the fact that on the sudden entrance of the husband she immediately elucidates the situation. Remigio, however, with a sublime tolerance, perhaps more typical of the husband in Mr. Shaw'sIrrational Knotthan of a hot-blooded Italian, pardons Paola on the general principles of twentieth-century philosophy. Lionardo, however, piqued and insulted as being regarded as
"The glass, the poor mean glassFrom which a child drank a forbidden draught,The merest pitiful tool of a chance and fate,"
vows vengeance on Remigio. Paola anticipates this vengeance by killing Lionardo on the spot with a dagger, thus exemplifying the pose of the picture. Remigio rises to the occasion and seizes on this splendidly tragic attitude to complete an unfinished portrait of this loyalest of wives.
And then they awaken from their trance. But the magnet of destiny draws them inexorably. Pauline grants the assignation, with an air, however, of mystic fatality, which shows only too well with what precision the present must once again mirror the past.
But perhaps the most sustained and elaborated specimen of our author's method is the ironic tragedy of the French Revolution,The Green Cockatoo.The "Green Cockatoo" is an underground tavern where brilliant, if disreputable, actors give, for the edification of their aristocratic audiences, impromptu representations of crime and vice.
Henri, the star-man, moreover, has just married the actress Léocadie, not for the sake of paradox, but in all seriousness. When his turn comes, he rushes on to the stage shouting out that he found his wife, Léocadie, with her lover the duke, and killed her. Such a calamity being not apparentlyprimâ facieimprobable, even the manager is almost as alarmed as the audience, till he realises that the whole thing is but an histrionictour de force. And then, as the play progresses, the atmosphere becomes more and more lurid with impending gloom. Jest and reality intermingle in the subtlest of ironies. It is part of the entertainment that the ragamuffins should lavish on their patrons the freest of insults. But is there not a paradox within the paradox, when one remembers that the Bastille has fallen that very day? The various types, moreover, of an aristocracy exhibiting the levity of people who are shortly going to be hanged are delightfully portrayed—theviveur, "for whom every day is lost in which he has not captured a woman or killed a man," the pretty young noble whose corrupt flirtation is so deftly adumbrated, and the lasciviousgrande dame, who, in spite of herhusband's anxiety, is very far from shocked at these spectacular novelties. And then Henri snaps up the truth from the demeanour of the manager and his colleagues. The Duke comes on to the stage and the actor then gives yet another representation of the avenging husband—and this time he surpasses himself, for he is but acting the truth.
Less sensational, but of equal psychological grimness, is the playThe Mate, which is in the same series as theGreen Cockatoo. The theme is the pathetic irony of the illusion of a middle-aged professor, who gives an almost paternal benediction to what he fondly imagines to be the grand passion of his young and temperamental wife. When, consequently, his wife dies suddenly, the husband is prepared quite honestly to condole with the lover, for after all has he not a right to be pitied even more than himself? When, therefore, he learns from his young colleague that he has just become engaged to another girl with whom he has been in love for some time his righteous indignation is unbounded.
"I would have raised you from the ground if you had been broken by grief. I would have gone with you to her grave, if the woman who is lying over there had been your love; but you have turned her into your wanton, and you have filled this house with lies and foulness right up to the roof till it makes me sick—and that's why—that's why, yes, that's why I'm going to kick you out."
"I would have raised you from the ground if you had been broken by grief. I would have gone with you to her grave, if the woman who is lying over there had been your love; but you have turned her into your wanton, and you have filled this house with lies and foulness right up to the roof till it makes me sick—and that's why—that's why, yes, that's why I'm going to kick you out."
But there is an anti-climax within an anti-climax, for the man learns from a mutual woman friend of the dead woman and of himself, that the imaginedgrande passionhad been even from the standpoint of the lady nothing more or less than a miserable trumpery adventure.
Reverting now to Schnitzler's longer plays, somemention should be made ofKomtesse Mizzi,Der Junge Medardus, and, above all,Das Weites Land.
Komtesse Mizzi, entitled, appropriately enough, "A Family Day" is in form a one-acter, though of sufficient length and substance to have obtained separate publication. There is little, if any, action. The play is based on character, dialogue, and situation. Yet it possesses distinct psychological titillation in its presentation of a daughter who takes a filial interest in her father's "actress-mistress," and who is sensible enough, aristocrat though she is, to meet the lady herself with all friendliness, and chat with her as woman to woman without the slightest affectation. This feminine freemasonry, however, is perhaps explained by the fact that the countess herself has lived her own life, to such good effect that she is the mother of a grown-up boy by her father's best friend, Prince Egon. When, consequently, the prince introduces the boy as his own natural child by an unknown mother, the atmosphere becomes somewhat rare. At first highly irritated, she treats with frigid indifference the frank exuberant youth, who divines the truth with instinctive intuition, only, however, shortly afterwards to consent to marry the prince, and thus become the official stepmother of her own long-lost child. The racy worldly optimism of this play is particularly characteristic of the essentially benevolent malice of the Schnitzlerian cynicism.
Of a totally different order isDer Junge Medardus, a long play of historical patriotism, specially written for the respectable and official Burg Theater of Vienna. It might seem indeed at first sight that Schnitzler, the refined, ultra-modern analyst, would be somewhat out of his element amid all the blood and thunder of the Napoleonic campaigns, whichprimâfacieoffer but small scope for psychological subtleties. Thetour de forceconsequently becomes all the more creditable when the author, in spite of all his trappings of patriotic melodrama, manages successfully to execute his own favourite tricks. The canvas on which this drama is portrayed is so vast as to render any synopsis necessarily inadequate. The idyll, however, and double suicide of the young French prince Franz and the bourgeois girl Agatha, is one of the purest and sweetest love episodes which Schnitzler has ever written. But it is Agatha's brother, the young, brave, and picturesque Medardus, who provides the most precious examples of recherche psychology. The suicide of the dead couple, Agatha and Franz, had been occasioned by the refusal of Franz's family to consent to the marriage. When, consequently, Franz's sister, Helene (a character somewhat analogous to Mathilde de la Môle in Stendhal'sLe Rouge et le Noir) wishes to put flowers on the graves of the dead pair, Medardus refuses to allow her. Helene has him challenged by her suitor, but Medardus emerges triumphantly from the duel. Anxious to carry the war into the enemy's camp, and to redress the balance of the family account, he succeeds, by the dashing conquest of the most perilous difficulties, in becoming the lover of Helene, with the eventual object of rousing the whole household and flaunting to her own family the haughty girl's dishonour. Helene, however, is erratic in her favours. Medardus, like Julien, is scorched by his own fire. The ending, moreover, of the play, though extremely effective theatrically, strikes us from the psychological standpoint as distinctly false. Helene and Medardus both plot to assassinate Napoleon. Hearing that Helene is Napoleon's mistress, Medardus kills her instead of Napoleon.So far, so good. But when our quixotic hero, when offered a free pardon on the sole condition that he undertakes to make no further attempt against Napoleon's life, obstinately refuses to give the required word, one can only say that he is observing the etiquette neither of melodrama nor even of life, but solely of patriotic tragedy.
But of all the longer plays of Schnitzler, the best and most distinctive in that erotic "General Post" entitledDas Weite Land(The Wide Country). This drama, which is the only full-dress drawing-room comedy which Schnitzler has written, belongs to what we have already designated as the "slice of life" school. It depends for its convincingness neither on any particularly drastic situation nor on the disproportionate merit of any individual act. The author simply takes a group of representative modern people, rich, intellectual, and energetic, and shows the respective crossings and intertwinings of their various lives. The complexity of the intrigue is overwhelming, not to say bewildering, for practically every character, from the prolific Aigon to the virginal Erna, and from the active business man Friedrich to his polyandrous wife Genia, is subject to one or more erotic moods, with whose more or less simultaneous conjugation in the past, present, and future tenses the play specifically deals. Though, too, all the characters lead emotional lives, they deserve credit in that they none of them wear their souls upon their sleeves, or carry their temperaments in their pockets with the ostentatious affectation of those Sudermannic personages who never for a moment lose the consciousness that they are living in an atmosphere of "high problem." For the people with whom we have now to deal are so occupied with the concrete acts of their actual lives that they have little time to waste in mere airygeneralities. When consequently they do philosophise, shortly, crisply, and in the light of personal experience, they are for that very reason all the more convincing. The wholemotifof this play, where the spirits of Congreve and Henry James seem to amalgamate in so strange but yet so harmonious a compound, is well crystallised in the following quotation: "Love and deception—faithfulness and unfaithfulness—adoration for one woman and desire for another woman or several others, yes, my good Hofreiter, the soul is a wide country."
As can be seen from these tolerant words, which have all the greater force in that the man who speaks them is at any rate temporarily more or less in love with his friend's wife, the mood in which the problem of promiscuity is treated is less one of indignant satire than of an ironic charity, which, while finding the complications at once comic and tragic, yet assigns to every phase of love from the kiss Friedrich gave to Erna three thousand metres above the sea, to Otto's nocturnal escalades of Genia's room, its own specific emotional value, even though the final verdict is to be found in the words of the middle-aged Friedrich, refusing to elope with the twenty-year-old Erna: "Everything's an illusion!"
From the point of view, also, of concentrated crispness of dialogue and characterisation, Schnitzler has never achieved anything better than this play. How telling in particular is the dialogue between the mutually unfaithful spouses, Genia and Friedrich. The husband is interrogating his wife about a young Russian virtuoso who had just blown out his brains.
GENIA. He was not my lover. I'm sorry to say he was not my lover. Is that enough for you!
GENIA. He was not my lover. I'm sorry to say he was not my lover. Is that enough for you!
Or take again the passage between Friedrich andGenia after Friedrich has just fought a fatal duel with the twenty-five year old naval officer, Otto.
GENIA. But why? If you cared the least bit about me—if it had been a case of hate—if it had been jealousy—love—FRED. No—I feel at any rate damned little of all that. But no man likes to be made an ass of.
GENIA. But why? If you cared the least bit about me—if it had been a case of hate—if it had been jealousy—love—
FRED. No—I feel at any rate damned little of all that. But no man likes to be made an ass of.
In his new asexual play,Professor Bernhardi, Schnitzler strikes out an entirely new line, leaves that light, airy sphere which he had made so peculiarly his own, and embarks into the grim realms of pure problem. The play is an avowed and deliberate tract in the manner of Granville Barker, Galsworthy, or Brieux. Yet however devoid it may be of those qualities which one is accustomed to label Schnitzlerian, it is the most earnest, the most ethical, the most convincing of all his plays.
Put shortly, the piece deals with an "affaire Dreyfus" in the medical profession. Professor Bernhardi, a great Jewish doctor, has in the face of numerous obstacles succeeded in building up the prosperity of a new hospital, the Elisabethinum, treating mainly Catholic patients, but supported mainly by Jewish funds. A substantial percentage of the staff are Jewish, and it is instructive to observe how almost instinctively the Jews and Catholics range themselves into two camps. In the first act a Catholic girl is dying of septic poisoning as the result of some outside doctor's clumsy attempt to help her to escape the consequences of her own indiscretion. The patient herself, however, in a state of blissful delirium, confident of recovery, and expecting the speedy advent of her lover, is deriving the maximum of enjoyment out of the few minutes she has yet to live. Under these circumstances there arrives a Catholic priest, sent for, not by the girl but by a nurse, with the object of administering the last sacrament. Out of sheerhumanity and medical conscientiousness, Professor Bernhardi is reluctant to have his patient's last hours marred by the realisation of her death and the shattering of her happy dream. The Catholic priest is insistent. The Professor is politely firm. There is an animated dialogue in the course of which the Professor touches the priest very lightly on the shoulder, though there is nothing in the nature of an assault. In the meanwhile the patient dies comfortably. The Clerical and Anti-semitic parties exploit the incident with inaccurate though artistic journalistic embellishments. There is a tremendous uproar. The Governors of the hospital threaten to resign. Under pressure from his friends, the Professor is willing to tender, not indeed an abject apology, but a polite explanation. The Clerical party thereupon blackmail him by threatening to raise the question in Parliament, if he does not secure the election to a vacant post on the hospital staff of a Catholic candidate who is on the one hand the protégé of the cousin of their leader, and on the other hand incompetent. Refusing to be a party to the job, Bernhardi secures the election to the post of a man who is both competent and a Jew. Bernhardi, moreover, relies on the personal assurance of Flint, the Minister for Education and Public Worship, that he will help him by his support in Parliament. When, however, matters came to a head, Flint, scenting in the middle of his speech with the divine flair of the true politician the actual state of public opinion, throws Bernhardi to the wolves and himself suggests a prosecution for sacrilege. The Executive Board of the hospital are divided as to what course they shall pursue. Shall they pass a vote of confidence in their chief, or, on the other hand, suspend him until the determination of the proceedings. By a fine stroke of irony Bernhardi realisesthat he will be in a minority through the vote of the very Jew through the conscientious insistence on whose election to the Board he had lost the proffered opportunity of bribing the Clericals and squaring the whole matter. He consequently resigns from the Board. The trial takes place. The priest himself denies that there was any assault. Bernhardi, however, is defended by a converted Jew, who, sinking the advocate in the Catholic, conducts the case so lukewarmly that Bernhardi is convicted on the perjured evidence of a vindictive colleague and a hysterical lay sister. During the trial the priest is convinced that Bernhardi was morally right in the course which he adopted, but, as he feels subsequently driven as a matter of conscience to inform him, refrained out of sheer religious duty from telling the truth. Bernhardi serves his term and becomes, much to his disgust, a political hero and a popular martyr. The hysterical lay sister eventually confesses her perjury and Bernhardi is finally righted, though the final note in the play is that Bernhardi was really rather a fool to have involved himself in such grave consequences for the mere sake of a quixotic principle. Some portion possibly of the effect produced by this play depends on the full appreciation of its personal allusions and some knowledge of the circumstances on which it was substantially founded. Nevertheless, present symptoms would appear to indicate that this play will have especial interest, not only to Jews and Anti-Semites, but to impartial students of ethics and sociology. Though, moreover, "pure problem" and studded with long didactical speeches, the dramatic interest is well sustained, at any rate up to the fourth Act, while the different characters are distinguished with the sharpest precision. We would refer in particularto Flint, that delightfully bland opportunist, that benevolently unscrupulous politician, that perfectly conscientious hypocrite who honestly believes that there is a higher and larger duty both in politics and in life than the observance of one's own principles and the keeping of one's given word.
Schnitzler, moreover, is not only a dramatist, but a writer of short stories and novels, which stand on practically as high a level as his plays. Like De Maupassant, Schnitzler has only one realmotif. Unlike De Maupassant, however, it is the psychological complications in which he is chiefly interested. In further contrast, his short stories lack that inevitable precision of climax which is the chief mark of the French author. Yet perhaps it is for this very reason that, with their picturesque atmosphere and pathetic simplicity, they obtain an added reality. In the almost clinical minuteness of his psychology, explicable from the fact that he was once a doctor, he is reminiscent of Mr. Henry James, of a Mr. James, however, who writes without preciosity about individuals linked with ordinary human beings by very much more than just some shred of normality. Among his earlier short stories we would mention in particularDie Frau der Weisen, Das neue Lied, and the hypnotic fantasia at the beginning ofDämmerseelen.
The more recent series,Masken und Wunder, also possesses a well-merited claim to recognition for its series of studies, some modern, some symbolical, yet all written with that almost intangible softness, combined at the same time with a certain neat strength, which is the essential mark of Schnitzler's literary style. One of the most striking is the telepathic romance,Redegonda's Diary; but in our view the best short story in the whole book is that MaupassantianDeath of the Bachelorwhere the three intimate friendsof a dead man are summoned to his bedside, only to find their friend dead and to read in a letter addressed to them all, of the three separate yet identical domestic reasons which were responsible for their participation in this superb piece of posthumous buffoonery.
Far more significant than any of his short stories is Schnitzler's comparatively recent novel,Der Weg ins Freie(The Road to the Open), a novel which both by its actual success and its intrinsic merit, stands out conspicuously among modern German literature. This book is an admirable example of what one can perhaps call the "slice of life" novel. Actual plot in the stereotyped sense of the term it has none. Georg von Wergenthin, a young aristocratic Viennese dilettante, has, in the course of an active emotional life, a fairly seriousliaisonwith Anna Rosner, a music-mistress belonging to a good Jewish set. The child to which Anna and Georg had both been looking forward, though in somewhat varying degrees, dies. Georg accepts a post of conductor in a German town. Anna reassumes the normal tenor of her spinster life. Finis. Neither conventional marriage nor even more conventional suicide, but just life, a slice of sheer probable real convincing life. But the book is far more than the history of Anna, and far more than the history of Georg, even though it would appear at first sight that the enumeration of Georg's emotions tends somewhat to swamp the four hundred and sixty pages of this novel which yet reads so shortly. For Georg's soul is a mirror which reflects not only itself but a considerable number of the more interesting characters of a specific modern Viennese set. And the lives of Anna and Georg touch the lives of numerous other persons, personstoo who, at any rate, give the impression of being no mere characters in novels, but of having been honourably plagiarised, and without suffering either caricature or idealisation in the process, from the pages of the book of life itself. And all these various lives are followed up and adumbrated and described at greater or lesser detail. Of course they have nothing to do with the story of Georg von Wergenthin. But they play an important part in the life of Georg von Wergenthin, just as he plays a more or less important part in their existence. And though of course Georg is the nominal hero of the book, it is the modern Jewish set with, of course, its Gentile appanages which constitutes the real subject-matter. And how vivid and interesting on their merits are all these characters—old Ehrenberg, the Jewish millionaire, with his delightful habit of talking Yiddish before smart company, specially to annoy his snobbish son Oskar; Oskar himself, who, on being caught by his father in the flagrant act of posing as a Catholic in front of a church and given a box on the ears by way of reproof, makes an abortive attempt to commit hara-kiri with a revolver; Else Ehrenberg, the temperamental, but unmarried sister of Oskar; Heinrich Bermann, the brilliant self-centred author, with his grand passion for his faithless actress in the foreign town; Leo Golowski, the enthusiastic Zionist; Therese Golowski, the Socialist agitatress, with her temporary trip with that fascinating hussar-officer, Demeter Stanzides; Winternitz, the poet, with his not verysoignéhands and his naïf mania for reciting his own erotic verses; Dr. Stauber, the benevolent modern of the last generation; Anna herself, with her soft wistfulness and her essential dignity; Sissy Wyner, with her high wanton spirits and pretty English accent; and of course Georg himself, Georgthe aristocrat, Georg thegrand amoureux, Georg the composer, Georg the dilettante, Georg the drifter, Georg the ineffectual.
In the technique of this novel Schnitzler marks what we suggest to be a new departure, by the insertion of substantial slabs of past life into the analysis of his hero's thoughts, a process which by a tremendous economy of space and time thus describes simultaneously the inner workings of Georg's mind, and simultaneously narrates important pieces of antecedent history which have no place in the official action of the novel.
Some tribute, also, must be paid to the style, which is at times soft and sweet, at times light and crisp, yet always lucid, always individual, and always possessed of that gracefulness which is so rare a quality in German prose literature.
To revert to Schnitzler the dramatist, what are his chief claims, his chief excellences, his chief defects? It seems to us that the essence of his merit lies in the fact that, speaking broadly, he handles problems neither as ends in themselves, as do the more advanced of our own dramatists, nor yet, like Sudermann, as mere pegs on which to hang violently theatrical stage effects. Some problem may constitute the centre of most of his plays; yet, with a few exceptions, this problem is not presented too nakedly or without sufficient relief. Each problem is bathed in an artistic atmosphere, and each character in the picture limned with the most subtle psychology. It is true that, as has already been pointed out, many of the acts in his early longer dramas exhibit too strong a tendency to form self-independent pictures; yet it is this defect which forms the chief charm of his one-acters. It is true that nearly all his characters are Bohemian—artists,flâneurs, actresses, journalists, doctors, painters—yet each author creates, as of right, the population of his own individual world; and is it not rather a claim to glory to have attained such heights of dramatic celebrity without having written more than one single play specifically devoted to fashionable life? It is true that the ethics of these plays, with their chronic and inevitable intrigues, may strike the English mind as somewhat unusual; yet Schnitzler enjoys the reputation of being the most brilliant and accurate portrayer of contemporary Viennese life. It is, moreover, in the nature of all problem plays that they should be pieces of special pleading, where the other side is allowed just so much of a hearing as will not permit of its convincing. After all, from the standpoint of dramatic art, that which counts is not the ethics, but the presentation of the problem.
Yet, with all his subtlety and all his problems, he is never heavy. Vienna stands intellectually nearer to Paris than to Berlin, so that the Teutonic introspection and sentimentalism are touched with a Gallic sprightliness and a Gallic grace. No dramatist has written tragedy with so light a hand, or comedy with so ironically pathetic a smile, as has Arthur Schnitzler.