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kom, St. Petersburg.
Zykle
4.9. Anatol
(Quellenangabe eine Gewähr).
und
The Shaw of Vienna
Schnitzer:
artists young son. It sounds like a stern
women but still he glorifies them. Day
The Strange Author of
judgment of the tired generation to which
and night he tortures himself with the
question whether his Cora is faithful to Schnitzler himself belongs. Altogether it
Anatol¬
hin, yet when he could hear the truth seems to me that now a better generation is
growing up with more steadiness, mor¬
frei her while she is in a hypnotic sleep,
stability and less intellect. This is a re¬
RTHUR Schnitzler, whose sequence
he does not put the question to fate.
because, after all, the illusion is dearer mark that can reconcile another age, too,
of dialogues called "Anatole are
to be acted at the To Theatre
next weck, das figures that
are carming jumble of soit-
ness and elegante, tenderness and irony,
simplicity and raffinement, pain and play,
life and dreaminess. Lightly woven lyricism
stands side by side with brutal realism. To
love, to play and to die, that is the painful¬
ly sweet, sady merry world of this most
Viennese of all Viennese poets. His
works are wrapped in dulcet music, gentle
melodies which we have all carried in our
hears at some time. "Stimmung" is every¬
where. "Stimmung!" And involuntarily
we think of some of Schumann's melodies
for Heine's songs, or of Schuberts gentle
heaviness of heart; sometimes of Chopin's
sensitively melancholy rhythms. Like
Chopin, he, too, is easily excited and ex¬
ceedingly susceptible, above all he shares
with him that peculiar melancholy lyricism
that is nothing but the subtlest egotism,
which relates everything to itself and puts
forward the conditions of its own self as
the sole and highest standard.
Often Schnitzler deals with an den so
slight that it would just suffice for one of
de Maupassants or Tschechoff's short sto¬
ries. But when we look closer they are
typical. The truth is more deeply and
diversely reflected in them, wider perspec¬
tives are opened than in many a grandly
conceived, harrowing dramatic structure
built with the stones of first causes. He
knows how to snatch out of the tumultu
ous, on-rushing stream of life a delicate,
thoughtful picture which would escape
every eye but that of a poet, which only a
real poet could retain.
Love, a Delightful Diversion
"Love, play and death." These three
problems run all through his works, are
their possibility of being, their beginning
and their end. To be sure, love to him is
not the dream of the sole complement, the
finding of oneself again, nor the mad un¬
controllable longing for union that seeks
annihilation and ends with a death rattle.
It is not the cord with which Satan draws
the chidren of men into hell, not the un¬
fathomable mystery whose flickering light
Arthur Schnitzler
illumines or scorches the very existence
He knows, indeed, no extravagant rap¬
to him than the truth. The actor who with this work of quiet sadness in all
tures in love, no grand pathos. To him it
things.
is often nothing but a fleeting intoxication
plays him must never forget that Anato
The next drama certainly means recovery
from which one awakes again. So it is at
is not only a delightful, very elegant lover
and charmeur," but in the free hours from this sadness and is characteristically
least in his first dramas like "Anatol" and
called "Der Ruf des Lebens ("The Call of
Die Liebelet where love appears as
allowed him by his strenuous occupation
Life.") Here Schnitzler tries to master his
a beautiful, delightful diversion, play,
as an unceasing purger of love, also a
poet. It should be the actors task to oftness, but unfortunately he only suc¬
that ruins him who takes it seriously.
ceeds by writing with theatrical violence
Two people meet, learn to know each bring out this poetic side of his personality,
other, kiss and pass on, or die. But all
which alone can prevent our seeing in and thus denying his own self. Schnitzler
is the son of a Jewish physician who, in
that lies between is tragedy. For behind
Anatol nothing but a "viveur gifted with
his day, was famous throughout Europe,
love crouches death and waits for his vic¬
esprit.
and he himself was a doctor before he be¬
tim. The dark curtain before which all
came altogether a writer. Many of his ad
hase great and little love stories play, the
Schnitzler's First Success
mirers think they see in his scepticism, in
mighty mystery, the nearness of which
Schnitzler's first real stage success, ho¬
his quiet, objective manner, the doctor who
Schnitzler always makes us feel even in
ever, was the Liebele." The first act is
does not feel with pain but only observes it
the most humorous scenes, transfigures
Anatol over again, but then follows the
When the poet tries to do that, however
them and makes them holy
simple tragedy of a young girl's heart
and he does so seldom enough, he loses
Playing a comed that is the other
as it may occur today or at any time until
idea on which the poet ever dwells, fond¬
all womanhood shall be emancipated. Her
ling it, sounding it in every possible key
for the first time, das süsse Mädel
and manner. But he takes the words in
stopped upon the stage, thoroughly naive
their idest sense, not only with the mean-
tender, restrained, joyless and yet blissful
ing that they have in the Grüne Kakadu,
in her dumb surrender. She never appears
where comedy and reality fall into each
again so pure in type is in this play. Once
box 9/1
touch with the public, loses all sympathy.
We admire his wonderful technique, his
mind, but inwardly we rebel at being led
with force to an operating table in the
theatre.
His next, and except for Professor
Bernhard his latest effort, „Der junge
Medardus is generally recognized, if not
as his most important work, yet as his
most effective drama. As a matter of fact
Schnitzler never before aimed so high. The
play is composed of three tragedies which
are interwoven with and embrace one an¬
other; the drama of Medardus, Napoleon in
Vienna and the Duke of Valis' dream of
being king. The first is the kernel which
the other two envelop. God wanted to
make a hero of Mears; the course of
events made a fool of him," says one of the
characters, Many an unguarded mo¬
ment, however, whispers the question in
our car, whether such a fool as an
right to be the title-hero and the central
figure of a great traged. Here undeniably
there is a defect in this eminent work of
art; the hero is a half-man who never him¬
self intervenes in the action, but is always
simply driven and led in reality the hero
of a novel. But the crimson background
of the work is grand, the rushing torrent
of episodes, the abundance of living
figures, the artistic combination of grea¬
and petty human destines. Over despair
and death, hope and salvation, executioner
and victim, naked pain and wounded souls
Schnitzlers gentle, hand has woven a fas¬
cinating magic veil of poesie which helps
us easily and gladly over the defects. With
inward joy we see here a pot who has al¬
was moved in an ascending line, who
never made sacrifices to the vogue of the
day and from whom we still although he
and the German people have this year
celebrated his fiftet birthday — may ex¬
pect his most mature and richest work.
Playwright and Problemist
Of the more serious aspect of Schnitzler,
as compared with the dramatists about
him, Horace B. Samuel has written in the
Forightly Review. What are his che¬
claims, his chier excellences, le che¬
defects? It seems to us that the essence
of his merit lies in the fact that he handles
problems neither as ends in themselves, as
do the more advanced of our own dra¬
matist, nor yet, like Sudermann, as mere
pegs on which to hang violently theatrica
stage effects. Some problem may constitute
the centre of most of his plays; yet, with
a few exceptions, this problem is not pre¬
sented too rakedly or without sufficient
relief. Each problem is bathed in an ar¬
tistic atmosphere and each character in
the picture limned with the most subti¬
psychology.
It is true that, as has already been plat-
ed out, many of the acts in his longe
dramas exhibit to on tendency
form self-independent pictures; yet
this defect which forms the chief charm
of his one-act pieces. It is true that early
all his characters are Bohemian-artists.
fleurs actesses jours, doctor
painter yet each author created as of
right the population of his own individua
world; and is it not rather a claim to glory
to have attained such heights of dramatic
celebrity and yet scarcely ever to have
written a single play specifically devoted
to fashionable life?
It is true that the ethics of these plays
with their chronic and inevitable intrigues,
may strike the English mind as somewhat
unusual: yet Schnitzler enjoys the reputa¬
tion of being the most brillant and accu¬
rate portrayer of contemporary Viennes
life. After all, from the standpoint of dra¬
matie art, that which counts is not the
ethics, but the presentation of the problem
Yet, with all his subtlety and all his
problems, he is never happy. Vienna stand¬
intellectually nearer to Paris than to Berlin
so that the Teutonic introspection and senti¬
mentalism are touched with a Galli¬
sprightness and a Gallic grace. No
dramatist has written traged with so light
a hand, or comedy with so fronically pa¬
thetic a smile, as has Arthur Schnitzler.