2. guttings
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Akrnun Schwirzur’s Daamarie Wonk 295
of his picture of life in the fatuous belief that he may show
to astruggling humanity the path that leads to happiness and
warn them from the path that leads to misery and woe. To
Sehnitzler, Art is something the glory and beauty of which is
so transcending that is rises far above the domain of morals,
and there is no doubt that the spontaneity and sincerity of
any art must be destroyed if it be subjected to a moral or
ethical purpose. Any such cheap conception of Art must
bring as dismal a failure as that more mercenary conception
which endeavors only to“'split the ears of the groundlings?'
and to flatter the smugness of a self-sufficient generation.
It has been strongly maintained that all Art has its foun¬
dation in the sexual instinct, and we cannot afford to con¬
demn a work because it deals with this important aspect of
our nature. Let it be understood at the first, then, that
Schnitzler'’s work is not immoral, any more than the brilliance
of a spring sunset or the voluptious beauty of a summer
night’s high moon. The relation of lover to beloved is too
natural, too beautiful, and too spontaneous for Schnitzler
to see aught in it that is immoral. Even, however, if the
relation itself were indefensible, the worth of Schnitzler’s art
would not suffer in the least, and his drama would no more
deserve condemnation on account of it than does Oliver Twist
on account of the brutal murder of Nancy Sykes. Schnitzler
neither accuses nor condemns. He attempts merely “to
snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of
time, a passing phase of life'' and to leave the w#rld to form
its own judgement. There can be no impeachment of the
honesty of his Art, and this very honesty makes it impossible
for him to make his Art subservient to the supposed interests
of a prudish morality.
The shortcomings of Schnitzler as a literary artist are more
in the nature of limitations than of actual faults. That is to
say, the greatest weakness of his work is the narrowness of
his scope. What he does he does with a grace and deftness
which approches perfection, but as we shall see, the range of
his activity is not very wide. He has been called Lthe perfect
box 37/7
Akrnun Schwirzur’s Daamarie Wonk 295
of his picture of life in the fatuous belief that he may show
to astruggling humanity the path that leads to happiness and
warn them from the path that leads to misery and woe. To
Sehnitzler, Art is something the glory and beauty of which is
so transcending that is rises far above the domain of morals,
and there is no doubt that the spontaneity and sincerity of
any art must be destroyed if it be subjected to a moral or
ethical purpose. Any such cheap conception of Art must
bring as dismal a failure as that more mercenary conception
which endeavors only to“'split the ears of the groundlings?'
and to flatter the smugness of a self-sufficient generation.
It has been strongly maintained that all Art has its foun¬
dation in the sexual instinct, and we cannot afford to con¬
demn a work because it deals with this important aspect of
our nature. Let it be understood at the first, then, that
Schnitzler'’s work is not immoral, any more than the brilliance
of a spring sunset or the voluptious beauty of a summer
night’s high moon. The relation of lover to beloved is too
natural, too beautiful, and too spontaneous for Schnitzler
to see aught in it that is immoral. Even, however, if the
relation itself were indefensible, the worth of Schnitzler’s art
would not suffer in the least, and his drama would no more
deserve condemnation on account of it than does Oliver Twist
on account of the brutal murder of Nancy Sykes. Schnitzler
neither accuses nor condemns. He attempts merely “to
snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of
time, a passing phase of life'' and to leave the w#rld to form
its own judgement. There can be no impeachment of the
honesty of his Art, and this very honesty makes it impossible
for him to make his Art subservient to the supposed interests
of a prudish morality.
The shortcomings of Schnitzler as a literary artist are more
in the nature of limitations than of actual faults. That is to
say, the greatest weakness of his work is the narrowness of
his scope. What he does he does with a grace and deftness
which approches perfection, but as we shall see, the range of
his activity is not very wide. He has been called Lthe perfect