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Review
Darien Conn
Nov 12-31
Flight Into Darkness,“ by Arthur
Schnitzler, Simon & Schuster 52
By the recent death of Arthur
Schnitzler in his sixty-eighth year,
European literature has lost one of
its outstanding contemporary 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 success with Anatol, a series
of witty dialogues embroidered on
the theme of the 'permanent fuagcity'
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 turreted and self-willed
style; but ,rather, one that was per¬
vaded and inspired by a brilliant pen¬
etration of the human consciousness;
its changeable phases and moods, and
its untiring search for logic in a
seemingly chance-ridden universe.“
Flight into Darkness’ is written
with all of Schnitzler’s skill and ini¬
mitable charm.“
When his life is seen at last in
true retrospect, I believe his work
ing tale. Her novels, although they
will be recognized as the fruit of an
important movement in the European
consciousness. He is, beyond doubt,
one of the great moderns; and with
his going a little more of the tran¬
sitional dusk settles down on the
world of lesser men.“
box 6/3
Cetiock & Independent
Nov 11-31
Some unusual crea¬
Flight into Darkness
By Arthur Schnitzler
tions are coming out
Simon & Schuster, 82.00
of Europe. Arthur
Katrin Becomes a Soldier
By Adrienne Thomas Schnitzler’s Faghr
Littie Brown, 32.50 Lnto Darkness
(Sinon & Schuster, 52) is onc, Adrienne
Thomas’s Katrin Becomes a Soldier
—TLittle Brown, §2.50) is another. Since
Schnitzler died on October 20, his quite
short story, published here as à full novel,
may attract many readers. Since Fräulein
Thomas’s is the first war book of sig¬
niticance to have been written by a
weinan, its publishers, Who are also re¬
sponsible for the American edition of
41 Quiet on the Western Front, may
reap the proverbial follow-up harvest.
Schnitzler’s story is not wholesome; it is
another case study made by the noted
physician. A quarter of a century ago he
wrote his drama entitled Paracelsus, in
which he made it clear that we know but
little about ourselves, virtually nothing
about each other, and no-mind's-land is
alwars just around the corner. A little
later Schnitzler gave us his story Ieisa¬
zung (Prophecy''), in which one man's
life is all cut out for him; he is neither
the master of his fate nor the captain of
his soul. But that story had no ending;
von have to work it for yourself. Flight
Into Darèness has a very real ending:
Herbert shoots his brother Otto, who was
trying to defend him against his own
manias; and then Herbert dies at his
own hands. The story is of immense in¬
terest as reading matter, and it may
prove useful to the normal minded if it
makes them aware of the fact that they
never can tell what interpretation their
auditor is giving to their words and deeds.
It is a real diary of persecution. The
Thomas book is the formal diary of one
Catherine Lentz from May 27, 1011,
when she was fourteen, to her death as
a war nurse at Metz in December, 1016.
It has undeniable valuc because of its
Alsace-Lorraine origin. It shows how
the Franco-German soldier there blessed
his day when he was transferred from
the French to the Russian front, how
the German Empress failed to visit the
Jewish hospitals in Mletz, how France
might possibly have escaped war alto¬
gether had Jaurès not been murdered,
how many a soldier was relieved of his
agony when the attending physician saw
that there was no hope for recovery, and
—but whr rehearse all the horrors of a
warthe end of which is not yet anywhere
in sight! The theme is a worn one, but
despite the fact that Katrin is largely an
acconnt of love and gangrene, it throws
a lot of new light on a period that this
obscure but gifted Lorrame woman has
thus far passed over in silence after hav¬
ing passed through it in grief.
ALLEN W. PORTERFIELD.