11. The Shephendis Pine box 35/10
CUTHBERT WRIGHT
609
curiosity stirs you who a moment ago sought death, to discover
whose lips touch the pipe from which those sounds rise.
There is no co-operation between the writer and his characters.
The second paragraph is distressing in its expatiation; the reader
knows what Erasmus tells Dionysia before he tells it; he is a martyr
to a curious sort of reality (for it is undeniably reality) a vividness
of such sort as to defy analysis even as it defys synthesis. That
much may be said in defence of one who needs no defence. It is
his privilege to indulge in the obvious, and his power is unimpaired
by weakness which would well-nigh wreck another writer.
Keen wit, linked to this indescribable and inimitable gift, can
well save Schnitzler. His stories are not good; the disjointed and
rather clumsily contrived wanderings of Dionysia, the trivially in¬
cidental tale of The Murderer, the petty affair of the blind brother,
are neither clever nor compelling. Oddly enough, it takes a good
deal of thought to realize this. They are written in such a way that
they become tremendously important. Dionysia as the symbol of
Woman—she is highly Viennese in her capacity for adultery—is
conducted through assorted aspects of life with a cleverness which
actually fascinates; it is the sort of amazing skill which one is con¬
scious of in a marksman who can spin quarters with one hand and
put revolver bullets into them with the other, it is hopelessly in¬
imitable. The ordinary observer cannot escape a reverent admira¬
tion for Schnitzler.
Chiefly it is his absolute command of the art of making reality
which places him surely in the ambiguous class called geniuses.
That is no matter of voluminous and insanely accurate note books
of a Goncourt; it results only in truth to life, a not over interesting
thing in many cases. Schnitzler’s characters are not copies of actual
types, they are actual types. Alfred in The Murderer is nothing
more than an amazingly intricate psychological study; he docsn’t
exist. But Schnitzler creates him much in the manner of God creat¬
ing Adam; he breathes on the dust. It does not at all matter that
Alfred is an impossible character in trivial circumstances; he is
made not only possible, but probable and even necessary, and what
he does becomes of the highest importance, all by a mere act of
arbitrary creation on the author’s part. This is very difficult to ex¬
plain if it can be explained at all; it doesn't happen once in a hun¬
6
E
W
CUTHBERT WRIGHT
609
curiosity stirs you who a moment ago sought death, to discover
whose lips touch the pipe from which those sounds rise.
There is no co-operation between the writer and his characters.
The second paragraph is distressing in its expatiation; the reader
knows what Erasmus tells Dionysia before he tells it; he is a martyr
to a curious sort of reality (for it is undeniably reality) a vividness
of such sort as to defy analysis even as it defys synthesis. That
much may be said in defence of one who needs no defence. It is
his privilege to indulge in the obvious, and his power is unimpaired
by weakness which would well-nigh wreck another writer.
Keen wit, linked to this indescribable and inimitable gift, can
well save Schnitzler. His stories are not good; the disjointed and
rather clumsily contrived wanderings of Dionysia, the trivially in¬
cidental tale of The Murderer, the petty affair of the blind brother,
are neither clever nor compelling. Oddly enough, it takes a good
deal of thought to realize this. They are written in such a way that
they become tremendously important. Dionysia as the symbol of
Woman—she is highly Viennese in her capacity for adultery—is
conducted through assorted aspects of life with a cleverness which
actually fascinates; it is the sort of amazing skill which one is con¬
scious of in a marksman who can spin quarters with one hand and
put revolver bullets into them with the other, it is hopelessly in¬
imitable. The ordinary observer cannot escape a reverent admira¬
tion for Schnitzler.
Chiefly it is his absolute command of the art of making reality
which places him surely in the ambiguous class called geniuses.
That is no matter of voluminous and insanely accurate note books
of a Goncourt; it results only in truth to life, a not over interesting
thing in many cases. Schnitzler’s characters are not copies of actual
types, they are actual types. Alfred in The Murderer is nothing
more than an amazingly intricate psychological study; he docsn’t
exist. But Schnitzler creates him much in the manner of God creat¬
ing Adam; he breathes on the dust. It does not at all matter that
Alfred is an impossible character in trivial circumstances; he is
made not only possible, but probable and even necessary, and what
he does becomes of the highest importance, all by a mere act of
arbitrary creation on the author’s part. This is very difficult to ex¬
plain if it can be explained at all; it doesn't happen once in a hun¬
6
E
W