Faksimile

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36
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Finsternis
Tines
Akron (
Nov 3-31
Summaries
TANHATTAN SIDE-SHOW“ by Konrad Bercovici
IVI (Century) is filled with great names but it is
mediocre alongside, some of the author’s other work.
Sins of Americà—As Exposed by the Police Gaz¬
ette,“ by Edward Van Every (Stokes), is a companion
volume to Sins of New York.“ Thomas Beer does
the introduction.
New York reviewers are cheering lustily for Clem¬
ence Dane's" Broome Stage.“
Simon & Schuster have just brought out Arthur
Schnitzler’s last short novel, Flight Into Darkness.“
Robert Ripley's second Believe It or Not“ book is
not as interesting as the first.
Nevs Tribune
Duluth Ninn
Nov 8-31
In striking commemoralien, a
week or so after the death or
Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian novel¬
Ist and dramatist, comes the pub¬
lication of his last novel, Flight
Into Darkness.“
Schnitzler spreads bare before
us the later life and thoughts of a
man who is afraid of going mad.
The story begins when Robert
senses the shadow of a mental dis¬
turbance. He notices that his left
eyelid droops lower than the right,
and fears that this is a symptom
of mental disease.
Through the complexities of
self-doubt and slackening mental
control, and through a labyrinth
of introspection, Schnitzler traces
Robert’s gradual breakdown.
BECOMES MOODY
Early in life, after brooding over
a friend’s insanity, Robert had
given his brother, Otto, a document
authorizing Otto, a physiclan, to
kill him painlessly, should he show
signs of madness.
When the terror actually begins
to close around him, Robert de¬
velops a dread that Otto will carry
out this request.
Robert becomes more abnormal,
in action and reasoning. Realizing
this, and no longer wishing to die
if he becomes insane, Robert’s fear
that Otto wilt kill him grows into
a persecution-mania.
The dark and fantastic powers
of this mania press him to des¬
peration, and carry him on to a
elimax that is superb in its in¬
evitability.
Flight Into Darkness“ is a mas¬
terful psychological study. Schnitz¬
ler’s clear, simple style and his
naturalness of approach also cre¬
ate a story that grips attention.
Though a short novel, the book is
dramatically intense.
FINIS
In its penetration into a man's
character and mind, its clear pre¬
sentation of a subtle and involved
situation and its highly sustained
interest," Flight Into Darkness,“
stands as a worthy final mark of
Schnitzler’s fame.
box 6/3
Jecrhal-Post
kansas City mo
Nov 8-31
Great
European Writer,
Lately Dead
·FLIGHT INTO DARKNESS.
By Arthur Schnitzler (Simon an
Schuster) 82.
Reviewed by
PIERRE LOVING.
V THE recent death of Arthu
1 Schnitzler in his sixty-eightl
year, European literature has los
one of its outstanding contempo,
rary talents and one whose work
in novel and play, is surely bound
to endure. He began his career as
a physician and turned exclusively
to writing after his amazing suc¬
cess with Anatol, a series of witty
dialogues embroidered onthetheme
of the Vpermanent fugacity' of love.
This was in 1892 and since then
there has steadily poured from his
unstinted pen some of the most
perfect prose of our time. Nor was
his an ivory-turretted and self¬
willed style; but, rather, one that
was pervaded and inspired by a
brilliant penetration of the human
consciousness; its changeable phases
and moods and its untiring search
for logic in a seemingly chance¬
ridden universe.
If you will pick up almost any
one of Schnitzler’s plays or novels
— Light-o-love,
ntess Mizzi.“
The Green Cockatoo
e
oun¬
try of the Sou
Beatrice,“None Bu
E
Bertha Gar
01 Wi
ar-
pressed wit
T
natur
nearly alway
nver
every¬
acts
that their ou
day, indeed
hand,
he otl
sensibility is,
1
ening.
simply tremendous and fr
How
And you are moved. to
could such ordinary people feel so
deeply? How could they, leading
quite humdrum lives such as any
one of us might lead, grope to the
perilous edge of the abyss, the
outer void? The answer, of course,
that Schnitzler, although by repu¬
tation a naturalist (it would be
more fitting to call him a naturalist
of souls, I have always thought),
was one of the finest sensoria of
our age. This being so, it need
cause us no surprise to find that in
many ways he anticipated both
Proust and James Joyce.
What is now called the “stream of
consciousness,“ as employed by
both Proust and Joyce, was used
many years ago by Schnitzler and
Edouard Dujardin, the early Paris
friend of George Moore. It is worth
nothing, however, that, as Schnitzler
uses it in None But the Brave,“ it
is about a thousand times moré
vital and significant than in Dujar¬
din's Les Lauriers sont coupes.“
It is far more than just fine-spun
theory, I think, to say that all of
Schnitzler’s work is autobiographical
in the deepest sense—in the sense
perhaps in which Flaubert referred
to Emma Bovary as a portrait of
himself. The inner life of Schnitz¬
ler’s characters, no matter how com¬
monplace on the outside, is but a
parallel chroniche of the author’s
kaleidoscopie consciousness. That,
in a word, is why the Viennese
novelist and dramatist seems