I, Erzählende Schriften 35, Therese. Chronik eines Frauenlebens, Seite 30

Therese
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RECENT GERMIAN FICTION
THERESE. Von Akrnvn Scuarrzuxa. (Berlin:
S. Fischer.)
STEPPENWOLF. Von IInnaanN HrssE. (Berlin:
S. Fischer.)
Makrix Ovekarck. Von FEiäK SALTEN.
(Vienna: Paul Zsolnay.)
Dek Kaurr prn Tearia. Von WILHELM
SPEYER. (Berlin: Ernst Rowohilt.)
In his latest novel Arthur Schnitzler has
abandoned the technique of his two previous
works,“ Traumnovelle“’ and“ Fräulem Else,
which ean briefly be deseribed as psychological
realism, and has returned to the carlier style
which earned himn, not unjustly, the title of
the Austrian Maupassant. Tlns is a natural¬
istic novel, such as might have been written at
any time between 1880 and 1900. Someone
has said that the dividing line in recent
German literary history has been mnade not so
much by the War as by the speculations of
Dr. Freud." Therese? emphatically belongs
tothe pre-Frendian class, but it is not the less
interesting reading on that acconnt. It is, as
the sub-title announces, the* Chronik eines
the
Frauenlebens.? Therese Fabiam is
daughter of a pensioned Austrian officer, He
becoines insane, and his idle, gossiping wife
takes to keeping what is scarcely less than a
disorderly house, and ineidentally attempts
to marry off her daughter to an elderly Graf.
She fails, but Therese, in reaction against her
mnother'’s obvious plan, begins her long series of
amours. After a“ boy-and-girl affan? with
Alfred Nüllheim comes a more -serious en¬
tanglement with a young officer. He deserts
her—in fast, Therese, for soine psychological
reason on which the writer does not enlighten
us¬such subtleties do not belong to bis
method—seems to have the faculty of attract¬
ing and reciprocating the desires of all sorts
and conditions of mien without the power of
winning the permanent, or even fairly durable,
love of any one of thei.
After leaving her native Salzburg for Vienna,
Thierese continues her succession of transitory
passions. The last word seeins an exaggera¬
tion to apply to so passive a creature. Only
when she is about to have a child by one of
her lovers, a down-at-heel musician and artist,
does Die novelist allow deep emnotion to
appear. Therese tries to destroy the child, but
after its birth maternal instinct asserts itself;
and the next years—for Franz’s father also
proved unfaithful—are occupied with a weury¬
ing series of attempts to earn money to keep
her son. Weurying, that is, to Therese, not to
the reader; it is a proof of Herr Schnitzler’s
mastery of technique that he can make all
Therese’s ninmerous adventures as nurse or
governess so differentiated as to hold our
interest. On two occasions a more cheerful
future seeins about to dawn for her. First she
reaily falls in love with a young officer, but he
connnits stlieide; then she lives with the father
of her favourite pupil, and is about to marry
hin when he dies suddenly. Her son had, in
the mneantime, become a eriminal and moral
degenerate, for ever blackmailing his mother,
and, when her patience fails, he attacks her
and causes her death. After this summary it
is obvious that there are no light touches in
this narrative; no character shows any eleva¬
tion, any nobility. In the method there is no
reflection, no analysis, no problein awaiting
solution as in" Fräulein Else?'; the story is a
simple chronicle; and that such a sombre
acconnt can retain the reader’s interest
throughout its considerable length is to he
reckoned as an achievement of Herr
Schnitzler’s naturalistie technique.
1r. Hesse's novel. by contfast. I8