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THE LONELY WAY:
INTERMEZZO:
COUNTESS MIZZIE
THREE PLAYS BY
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
EDWIN BJOeRKMAN
NEW YORK
MITCHELL KENNERLEY
MCMXV
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
THE LONELY WAY 1
INTERMEZZO 139
COUNTESS MIZZIE 261
INTRODUCTION
Hermann Bahr, the noted playwright and critic, tried one day to explain
the spirit of certain Viennese architecture to a German friend, who
persisted in saying: "Yes, yes, but always there remains something that
I find curiously foreign." At that moment an old-fashioned Spanish
state carriage was coming along the street, probably on its way to or
from the imperial palace. The German could hardly believe his eyes and
expressed in strong terms his wonderment at finding such a relic
surviving in an ultra-modern town like Vienna.
"You forget that our history is partly Spanish," Bahr retorted. "And
nothing could serve better than that old carriage to explain what you
cannot grasp in our art and poetry."
A similar idea has been charmingly expressed by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
in the poem he wrote in 1892--when he was still using the pseudonym of
"Loris"--as introduction to "Anatol." I am now adding a translation of
that poem to my own introduction, because I think it will be of help in
reading the plays of this volume. The scene painted by Hofmannsthal
might, on the whole, be used as a setting for "Countess Mizzie." For a
more detailed version of that scene he refers us to "Canaletto's
Vienna"--that is, to the group of thirteen Viennese views which were
painted about 1760 by the Venetian Bernardo Belotto (who, like his more
famous uncle and model, Antonio Canale, was generally called
Canaletto), and which are now hanging in one of the galleries of the
_Kunsthistorische Hofmuseum_ at Vienna. The spirit of those pictures
may be described, I am told, as one of stately grace. They are full of
Latin joy in life and beauty. They speak of an existence constantly
softened by concern for the amenities of life. It is just what survives
of their atmosphere that frequently makes foreigners speak of Vienna
with a tender devotion not even surpassed by that bestowed on Paris or
Rome.
An attempt to understand the atmosphere and spirit of modern Vienna
will carry us far toward a correct appreciation of Schnitzler's art.
And it is not enough to say that Vienna is one of the oldest cities in
Europe. It is not even enough to say that it preserves more of the past
than Paris or London, for instance. What we must always bear in mind is
its position as the meeting place not only of South and North but also
of past and present. In some ways it is a melting-pot on a larger scale
than New York even. Racially and lingually, it belongs to the North.
Historically and psychologically, it belongs to the South. Economically
and politically, it lives very much in the present. Socially and
esthetically, it has always been strongly swayed by tradition. The
anti-Semitic movement, which formed such a characteristic feature of
Viennese life during the last few decades, must be regarded as the last
stand of vanishing social traditions against a growing pressure of
economical requirements.
Like all cities sharply divided within itself and living above a
volcano of half-suppressed passions, Vienna tends to seek in abandoned
gayety, in a frank surrender to the senses, that forgetfulness without
which suicide would seem the only remaining alternative. Emotions kept
constantly at the boiling-point must have an outlet, lest they burst
their container. Add to this sub-conscious or unconscious craving for a
neutral outlet, the traditional pressure of the Latin inheritance, and
we have the greater part of the causes that explain Schnitzler's
preoccupation with the themes of love and death. For Schnitzler is
first of all Viennese.
* * * * *
Arthur Schnitzler was born at Vienna on May 15, 1862. His father was
Professor Johann Schnitzler, a renowned Jewish throat specialist. I am
told that _Professor Bernhardi_ in the play of the same name must be
regarded as a pretty faithful portrait of the elder Schnitzler, who,
besides his large and important practice, had many other interests,
including an extensive medical authorship and the editing of the
_Wiener klinische Rundschau_. It is also to be noticed that _Professor
Bernhardi_ has among his assistants a son, who divides his time between
medicine and the composition of waltz music.
The younger Schnitzler studied medicine at the Vienna University, as
did also his brother, and obtained his M.D. in 1885. During the next
two years he was attached to the resident staff of one of the big
hospitals. It was also the period that saw the beginning of his
authorship. While contributing medical reviews to his father's journal,
he was also publishing poems and prose sketches in various literary
periodicals. Most of his contributions from this time appeared in a
publication named "_An der schoenen blauen Donau_" (By the Beautiful
Blue Danube), now long defunct.
He was also continuing his studies, which almost from the start seem to
have turned toward the psychic side of the medical science. The new
methods of hypnotism and suggestion interested him greatly, and in 1889
he published a monograph on "Functional Aphonia and its Treatment by
Hypnotism and Suggestion." In 1888 he made a study trip to England,
during which he wrote a series of "London Letters" on medical subjects
for his father's journal. On his return he settled down as a practicing
physician, but continued to act as his father's assistant. And as late
as 1891-95 we find him named as his father's collaborator on a large
medical work entitled "Clinical Atlas of Laryngology and Rhinology."
There are many signs to indicate uncertainty as to his true calling
during those early years. The ensuing inner conflict was probably
sharpened by some pressure exercised by his father, who seems to have
been anxious that he should turn his energies undividedly to medicine.
To a practical and outwardly successful man like the elder Schnitzler,
his own profession must have appeared by far the more important and
promising. While there is no reason to believe that his attitude in
this matter was aggressive, it must have been keenly felt and, to some
extent at least, resented by the son. One of the dominant notes of the
latter's work is the mutual lack of understanding between successive
generations, and this lack tends with significant frequency to assume
the form of a father's opposition to a son's choice of profession.
This conflict cannot have lasted very long, however, for the younger
Schnitzler proved quickly successful in his purely literary efforts.
The "Anatol" sketches attracted a great deal of attention even while
appearing separately in periodicals, and with their publication in book
form, which occurred almost simultaneously with the first performance
of "A Piece of Fiction" at a Viennese theater, their author was hailed
as one of the most promising among the younger men. From that time he
has been adding steadily to his output and his reputation. When his
collected works were issued in 1912, these included four volumes of
plays and three volumes of novels and stories. Since then he has
finished another play and two volumes of prose sketches.
It is rare to find an author turning with such regularity from the epic
to the dramatic form and back again. And it is still more rare to find
him so thoroughly at home and successful in both fields. In
Schnitzler's case these two parallel veins have mutually supported and
developed each other. Time and again he has treated the same theme
first in one form and then in another. And not infrequently he has
introduced characters from his plays into his stories, and vice versa.
A careful study of his other works would undoubtedly assist toward a
better understanding of his plays, but I do not regard such a study
essential for the purpose. It is my belief that Schnitzler has given
himself most fully and most typically in his dramatic authorship, and
it is to this side of his creative production I must confine myself
here.
* * * * *
"Anatol" is nothing but seven sketches in dramatic form, each sketch
picturing a new love affair of the kind supposed to be especially
characteristic of Viennese life. The man remains the same in all these
light adventures. The woman is always a different one. The story is of
the kind always accompanying such circumstances--one of waxing or
waning attraction, of suspicion and jealousy, of incrimination and
recrimination, of intrigue and counter-intrigue. The atmosphere is
realistic, but the actuality implied is sharply limited and largely
superficial. There is little attempt at getting down to the roots of
things. There is absolutely no tendency or thesis. The story is told
for the sake of the story, and its chief redeeming quality lies in the
grace and charm and verve with which it is told. These were qualities
that immediately won the public's favor when "Anatol" first appeared.
And to some extent it must be counted unfortunate that the impression
made by those qualities was so deep and so lasting. There has been a
strong tendency observable, both within and outside the author's native
country, to regard him particularly as the creator of _Anatol_, and to
question, if not to resent, his inevitable and unmistakable growth
beyond that pleasing, but not very significant starting point.
And yet his next dramatic production, which was also his first serious
effort as a playwright, ought to have proved sufficient warning that he
was moved by something more than a desire to amuse. "A Piece of
Fiction" (_Das Maerchen_) must be counted a failure and, in some ways, a
step backward. But its very failure is a promise of greater things to
come. It lacks the grace and facility of "Anatol." Worse still, it
lacks the good-humor and subtle irony of those first sketches. Instead
it has purpose and a serious outlook on life. The "piece of fiction"
refers to the "fallen" woman--to the alleged impossibility for any
decent man to give his whole trust to a woman who has once strayed from
the straight path. _Fedor Denner_ denounces this attitude in the
presence of a young girl who loves him and is loved by him, but who
belongs to the category of women under discussion. When he learns her
history, he struggles vainly to resist the feelings of distrust and
jealousy which he had declared absurd a little while earlier. And the
two are forced at last to walk their different ways. Unfortunately the
dialogue is heavy and stilted. The play is a tract rather than a piece
of art, and the tirades of _Fedor_ are equally unconvincing when he
speaks for or against that "fiction" which is killing both his own and
the girl's hope of happiness in mutual love. Yet the play marks a step
forward in outlook and spirit.
Schnitzler's interest in hypnotism, which had asserted itself in the
first scene of "Anatol," appears again in the little verse-play,
"Paracelsus," which followed. But this time he used it to more purpose.
By the help of it, a woman's innermost soul is laid bare, and some very
interesting light is shed on the workings of the human mind in general.
"Amours" (_Liebelei_) may be regarded as a cross, or a compromise,
between "Anatol" and "A Piece of Fiction." The crudeness of speech
marking the latter play has given room to a very incisive dialogue,
that carries the action forward with unfailing precision. Some of the
temporarily dropped charm has been recovered, and the gain in sincerity
has been preserved. "Amours" seems to be the first one of a series of
plays dealing with the reverse of the gay picture presented in
"Anatol." A young man is having a love affair with two women at the
same time, one of them married, the other one a young girl with scant
knowledge of the world. Yet she knows enough to know what she is doing,
and she has sufficient strength of mind to rise above a sense of guilt,
though she is more prone to be the victim of fear. Then the married
woman's husband challenges the young man, who is killed. And the girl
takes her own life, not because her lover is dead, not because of
anything she has done, but because his death for the sake of another
woman renders her own faith in him meaningless.
"Outside the Game Laws" (_Freiwild_) is another step ahead--the first
play, I think, where the real Arthur Schnitzler, the author of "The
Lonely Way" and "Countess Mizzie," reveals himself. It has a thesis,
but this is implied rather than obtruded. In style and character-drawing
it is realistic in the best sense. It shows already the typical
Schnitzlerian tendency of dealing with serious questions--with questions
of life and death--in a casual fashion, as if they were but problems of
which road to follow or which shop to enter. It has one fault that must
appear as such everywhere, namely, a division of purpose. When the play
starts, one imagines that those "outside the game laws" are the women of
the stage, who are presented as the legitimate prey of any man caring to
hunt them. As the play goes on, that starting point is almost lost sight
of, and it becomes more and more plain that those "outside the game
laws" are sensible, decent men who refuse to submit to the silly
dictates of the dueling code. But what I have thus named a fault is
mostly theoretical, and does not mar the effective appeal of the play.
What must appear as a more serious shortcoming from an American
viewpoint is the local nature of the evil attacked, which lessens the
universal validity of the work.
"Change Partners!" (_Reigen_) was produced about the same time as
"Outside the Game Laws," but was not printed until 1900, and then only
privately. Yet those ten dialogues provoked from the first a storm
which seriously threatened Schnitzler's growing reputation and
popularity. When Vienna finds a work immoral, one may look for
something dreadful. And the work in question attempts a degree of
naturalism rarely equaled in France even. Yet those dialogues are
anything but immoral in spirit. They introduce ten men and as many
women. The man of one scene reappears with a new woman in the next, and
then that woman figures as the partner of a new man in the third scene.
The story is always the same (except in the final dialogue): desire,
satisfaction, indifference. The idea underlying this "ring dance," as
the title means literally, is the same one that recurs under a much
more attractive aspect in "Countess Mizzie." It is the linking together
of the entire social organism by man's natural cravings. And as a
document bearing on the psychology of sex "Change Partners!" has not
many equals.
In "The Legacy" (_Das Vermaechtnis_) we meet with a forcible presentation
and searching discussion of the world's attitude toward those ties that
have been established without social sanction. A young man is brought
home dying, having been thrown from his horse. He compels his parents
to send for his mistress and their little boy, and he hands both over
to the care of his family. That is his "legacy." The family tries hard
to rise to this unexpected situation and fails miserably--largely, it
must be confessed, thanks to the caddish attitude of a self-made
physician who wants to marry the dead man's sister. The second act ends
with the death of the little boy; the third, with the disappearance and
probable suicide of his mother. The dead man's sister cries out:
"Everything that was his is sacred to us, but the one living being who
meant more to him than all of us is driven out of our home." The one
ray of light offered is that the sister sees through the man who has
been courting her and sends him packing. It is noticeable in this play,
as in others written by Schnitzler, that the attitude of the women is
more sensible and tolerant than that of the men.
The physician is one of the few members of that profession whom the
author has painted in an unfavorable light. There is hardly one
full-length play of his in which at least one representative of the
medical profession does not appear. And almost invariably they seem
destined to act as the particular mouthpieces of the author. In a play
like "The Lonely Way," for instance, the life shown is the life lived
by men and women observed by Schnitzler. The opinions expressed are the
opinions of that sort of men and women under the given circumstances.
The author neither approves nor disapproves when he makes each
character speak in accordance with his own nature. But like most
creative artists, he has felt the need of stating his own view of the
surrounding throng. This he seems usually to do through the mouth of
men like _Dr. Reumann_ in the play just mentioned, or _Dr. Mauer_ in
"The Vast Country." And the attitude of those men shows a strange
mingling of disapproval and forbearance, which undoubtedly comes very
near being Schnitzler's own.
The little one-act play "The Life Partner" (_Die Gefaehrtin_) is
significant mainly as a study for bigger canvases developing the same
theme: the veil that hides the true life of man and woman alike from
the partner. And the play should really be named "The Life Partner That
Was Not." Another one-act play, "The Green Cockatoo," is laid at Paris.
Its action takes place on the evening of July 14, 1789--the fall of the
Bastille and the birth of the Revolution. It presents a wonderful
picture of social life at the time--of the average human being's
unconsciousness of the great events taking place right under his nose.
"The Veil of Beatrice," a verse play in five acts, takes us to Bologna
in the year 1500, when Cesare Borgia was preparing to invest the city
in order to oust its tyrant, Giovanni Bentivoglio (named Lionardo in
the play), and add it to the Papal possessions. All the acts take place
in one night. The fundamental theme is one dear to Schnitzler--the
flaming up of passion under the shadow of impending death. The whole
city, with the duke leading, surrenders to this outburst, the spirit of
which finds its symbol in a ravishingly beautiful girl, _Beatrice
Nardi_, who seems fated to spread desire and death wherever she
appears. With her own death at dawn, the city seems to wake as from a
nightmare to face the enemy already at the gates. The play holds much
that is beautiful and much that is disappointing. To me its chief
importance lies in the fact that it marks a breaking-point between the
period when Schnitzler was trying to write "with a purpose," and that
later and greater period when he has learned how to treat life
sincerely and seriously without other purpose than to present it as it
is. That was his starting point in "Anatol," but then he was not yet
ready for the realism that must be counted the highest of all: the
realism that has no tendency and preaches no lesson, but from which we
draw our own lessons as we draw them from life itself in moments of
unusual lucidity.
"Hours of Life" (_Lebendige Stunden_), which has given its name to
a volume of four one-act plays, may be described as a mental duel
between two sharply opposed temperaments--the practical and the
imaginative. An elderly woman, long an invalid, has just died, and a
letter to the man who has loved and supported her during her final
years reveals the fact that she has taken her own life because she
feared that the thought of her was preventing her son, a poet, from
working. The duel is between that son and the man who has befriended
his mother. The play constitutes a scathing arraignment of the artistic
temperament. Bernard Shaw himself has never penned a more bitter one.
"Even if you were the world's greatest genius," the old man cries to
the young one, "all your scribbling would be worthless in comparison
with a single one of those hours of real life that saw your mother
seated in that chair, talking to us, or merely listening, perhaps."
The most important of those four one-act plays, however, is "End of the
Carnival" (_Die letzten Masken_). An old journalist, a might-have-been,
dying in a hospital, sends for a life-long friend, a successful poet,
whom he hates because of his success. All he thinks of is revenge, of
getting even, and he means to achieve this end by disclosing to the
poet the faithlessness of his wife. Once she had been the mistress of
the dying man, and that seems to him his one triumph in life. But when
the poet arrives and begins to talk of the commonplaces of daily life,
of petty gossip, petty intrigues, and petty jealousies, then the dying
man suddenly sees the futility of the whole thing. To him, who has one
foot across the final threshold, it means nothing, and he lets his
friend depart without having told him anything. There is a curious
recurrence of the same basic idea in "Professor Bernhardi," where the
central figure acquires a similar sense of our ordinary life's futility
by spending two months in jail.
To what extent Schnitzler has studied and been impressed by Nietzsche I
don't know, but the thought underlying "The Lady With the Dagger" is
distinctly Nietzschean. It implies not only a sense of our having lived
before, of having previously stood in the same relationship to the
people now surrounding us, but of being compelled to repeat our past
experience, even if a sudden flash of illumination out of the buried
past should reveal to us its predestined fatal termination. This idea
meets us again in the first act of "The Lonely Way." The fourth of
those one-act plays, "Literature," is what Schnitzler has named it--a
farce--but delightfully clever and satirical.
Those four plays, and the group of three others published under the
common title of "Puppets" (_Marionetten_), are, next to "Anatol," the
best known works of Schnitzler's outside of Austria and Germany. They
deserve their wide reputation, too, for there is nothing quite like
them in the modern drama. Yet I think they have been over-estimated in
comparison with the rest of Schnitzler's production. "The Puppet
Player," "The Gallant Cassian" and "The Greatest Show of All" (_Zum
grossen Wurstel_) have charm and brightness and wit. But in regard to
actual significance they cannot compare with plays like "The Lonely
Way," for instance.
The three plays comprised in the volume named "Puppets" constitute
three more exemplifications of the artistic temperament, which again
fares badly at the hands of their author. And yet he has more than one
telling word to say in defense of that very temperament. That these
plays, like "Hours of Life" and "Literature," are expressive of the
inner conflict raging for years within the playwright's own soul, I
take for granted. And they seem to reflect moments when Schnitzler felt
that, in choosing poetry rather than medicine for his life work, he had
sacrificed the better choice. And yet they do not show any regrets, but
rather a slightly ironical self-pity. A note of irony runs through
everything that Schnitzler has written, constituting one of the main
attractions of his art, and it is the more acceptable because the point
of it so often turns against the writer himself.
"The Puppet Player" is a poet who has ceased writing in order to use
human beings for his material. He thinks that he is playing with their
destinies as if they were so many puppets. And the little drama shows
how his accidental interference has created fates stronger and happier
than his own--fates lying wholly outside his power. The play suffers
from a tendency to exaggerated subtlety which is one of Schnitzler's
principal dangers, though it rarely asserts itself to such an extent
that the enjoyment of his work is spoiled by it.
His self-irony reaches its climax in the one-act play which I have been
forced to name "The Greatest Show of All" because the original title
(_Zum grossen Wurstel_) becomes meaningless in English. There he
proceeds with reckless abandon to ridicule his own work as well as the
inflated importance of all imaginative creation. But to even up the
score, he includes the public, as representative of ordinary humanity,
among the objects of his sarcasms. And in the end all of us--poets,
players, and spectators--are exposed as mere puppets. The same thought
recurs to some extent in "The Gallant Cassian," which is otherwise a
piece of sheer fun--the slightest of Schnitzler's dramatic productions,
perhaps, but not without the accustomed Schnitzlerian sting.
When, after reading all the preceding plays, one reaches "The Lonely
Way" (_Der einsame Weg_), it is hard to escape an impression of
everything else having been nothing but a preparation. It is beyond
all doubt Schnitzler's greatest and most powerful creation so far,
representing a tremendous leap forward both in form and spirit. It has
less passion than "The Call of Life," less subtlety than "Intermezzo,"
less tolerance than "Countess Mizzie." Instead it combines in perfect
balance all the best qualities of those three plays--each dominant
feature reduced a little to give the others scope as well. It is a
wonderful specimen of what might be called the new realism--of that
realism which is paying more attention to spiritual than to material
actualities. Yet it is by no means lacking in the more superficial
verisimilitude either. Its character-drawing and its whole atmosphere
are startlingly faithful to life, even though the life portrayed may
represent a clearly defined and limited phase of universal human
existence.
The keynote of the play lies in _Sala's_ words to _Julian_ in the
closing scene of the fourth act: "The process of aging must needs be a
lonely one to our kind." That's the main theme--not a thesis to be
proved. This loneliness to which _Sala_ refers, is common to all
people, but it is more particularly the share of those who, like
himself and _Julian_, have treasured their "freedom" above everything
else and who, for that reason, have eschewed the human ties which to a
man like _Wegrath_ represent life's greatest good and deepest meaning.
Again we find the principal characters of the play typifying the
artistic temperament, with its unhuman disregards of the relationships
that have primary importance to other men. Its gross egoism, as
exemplified by _Julian_, is the object of passionate derision. And yet
it is a man of that kind, _Sala_, who recognizes and points out the
truer path, when he say: "To love is to live for somebody else."
The play has no thesis, as I have already said. It is not poised on the
point of a single idea. Numerous subordinate themes are woven into the
main one, giving the texture of the whole a richness resembling that of
life itself. Woman's craving for experience and self-determination is
one such theme, which we shall find again in "Intermezzo," where it
practically becomes the dominant one.
Another one is that fascinated stare at death which is so
characteristic of Latin and Slav writers--of men like Zola, Maupassant,
and Tolstoy--while it is significantly absent in the great Scandinavian
and Anglo-Saxon poets. "Is there ever a blissful moment in any decent
man's life, when he can think of anything but death in his innermost
soul?" says _Sala_. The same thought is expressed in varying forms by
one after another of Schnitzler's characters. "All sorrow is a lie as
long as the open grave is not your own," cries the dying _Catharine_ in
"The Call of Life." It is in this connection particularly that we of
the North must bear in mind Schnitzler's Viennese background and the
Latin traditions forming such a conspicuous part of it. The Latin
peoples have shown that they can die as bravely as the men of any other
race or clime, but their attitude toward death in general is widely
different from the attitude illustrated by Ibsen or Strindberg, for
instance. A certain gloom, having kinship with death, seems ingrained
in the Northern temperament, put there probably by the pressure of the
Northern winter. The man of the sunlit South, on the other hand, seems
always to retain the child's simple horror at the thought that darkness
must follow light. We had better not regard it as cowardice under any
circumstances, and cowardice it can certainly not be called in the
characters of Schnitzler. But the resignation in which he finds his
only antidote, and which seems to represent his nearest approach to a
formulated philosophy, cannot be expected to satisfy us. One of his own
countrymen, Hermann Bahr, has protested sharply against its
insufficiency as a soul-sustaining faith, and in that protest I feel
inclined to concur.
With "The Lonely Way" begins a series of plays representing not only
Schnitzler's highest achievements so far, but a new note in the modern
drama. To a greater extent than any other modern plays--not even
excepting those of Ibsen--they must be defined as psychological. The
dramas of Strindberg come nearest in this respect, but they, too, lag
behind in soul-revealing quality. Plots are almost lacking in the
Schnitzler productions during his later period. Things happen, to be
sure, and these happenings are violent enough at times, but they do not
constitute a sharply selected sequence of events leading up to a
desired and foreshadowed end. In the further development of this
period, even clearly defined themes are lost sight of, and the course
of the play takes on an almost accidental aspect. This is puzzling, of
course, and it must be especially provoking to those who expect each
piece of art to have its narrow little lesson neatly tacked on in a
spot where it cannot be missed. It implies a manner that exacts more
alertness and greater insight on the part of the reader. But for that
very reason these later plays of Schnitzler should prove stimulating to
those who do not suffer from mental laziness or exhaustion.
"Intermezzo" (_Zwischenspiel_) might be interpreted as an attack on
those new marital conventions which abolish the old-fashioned demand
for mutual faithfulness and substitute mutual frankness. It would be
more correct, however, to characterize it as a discussion of what
constitutes true honesty in the ever delicate relationship between
husband and wife. It shows, too, the growth of a woman's soul, once she
has been forced to stand on her own feet. Viewed from this point, the
play might very well be classified as feministic. It would be easy, for
one thing, to read into it a plea for a single moral standard. But its
ultimate bearing goes far beyond such a narrow construction. Here as
elsewhere, Schnitzler shows himself more sympathetic toward the female
than toward the male outlook on life, and the creator of _Cecilia
Adams-Ortenburg_ may well be proclaimed one of the foremost living
painters of the woman soul.
The man who, in "Anatol," saw nothing but a rather weak-minded
restlessness in woman's inconstancy, recognizes in "Intermezzo" woman's
right to as complete a knowledge of life and its possibilities as any
man may acquire. The same note is struck by _Johanna_ in "The Lonely
Way." "I want a time to come when I must shudder at myself--shudder as
deeply as you can only when nothing has been left untried," she says to
_Sala_ in the fourth act. This note sounds much more clearly--one might
say defiantly--through the last two acts of "Intermezzo." And when
_Amadeus_, shrinking from its implications, cries to _Cecilia_ that
thereafter she will be guarded by his tenderness, she retorts
impatiently: "But I don't want to be guarded! I shall no longer permit
you to guard me!" In strict keeping with it is also that Schnitzler
here realizes and accepts woman's capacity for and right to creative
expression. It is from _Cecilia's_ lips that the suggestion comes to
seek a remedy for life's hurts in a passionate abandonment to work. In
fact, the established attitudes of man and woman seem almost reversed
in the cases of _Amadeus_ and _Cecilia._
Significant as this play is from any point viewed, I am inclined to
treasure it most on account of the subtlety and delicacy of its
dialogue. I don't think any dramatist of modern times has surpassed
Schnitzler in his ability to find expression for the most refined
nuances of thought and feeling. To me, at least, it is a constant joy
to watch the iridescence of his sentences, which gives to each of them
not merely one, but innumerable meanings. And through so much of this
particular play runs a spirit that can only be called playful--a spirit
which finds its most typical expression in the delightful figure of
_Albert Rhon_, the poet who takes the place of the otherwise inevitable
physician. I like to think of that figure as more or less embodying the
author's conception of himself. All the wit and sparkle with which we
commonly credit the Gallic mind seems to me abundantly present in the
scenes between _Albert_ and _Amadeus_.
The poise and quiet characterizing "The Lonely Way" and "Intermezzo"
appear lost to some extent in "The Call of Life" (_Der Ruf des Leben_),
which, on the other hand, is one of the intensest plays written by
Schnitzler. The white heat of its passion sears the mind at times, so
that the reader feels like raising a shield between himself and the
words. "It was as if I heard life itself calling to me outside my
door," _Marie_ says in this play when trying to explain to _Dr.
Schindler_ why she had killed her father and gone to seek her lover.
The play might as well have been named "The Will to Live," provided we
remember that mere existence can hardly be called life. Its basic
thought has much in common with that of Frank Wedekind's "Earth
Spirit," but Schnitzler spiritualizes what the German playwright has
vulgarized. There is a lot of modern heresy in that thought--a lot of
revived and refined paganism that stands in sharp opposition to the
spirit of Christianity as it has been interpreted hitherto. It might be
summarized as a twentieth century version of Achilles' declaration that
he would rather be a live dog than the ruler of all the shades in
Hades. "What a creature can I be," cries _Marie_, "to emerge out of
such an experience as out of a bad dream--awake--and living--and
wanting to live?" And the kind, wise, Schnitzlerian doctor's answer is:
"You are alive--and the rest _has been_...." Life itself is its own
warrant and explanation. Unimpaired life--life with the power and will
to go on living--is the greatest boon and best remedy of any that can
be offered.
The weak point of "The Call to Life" is _Marie's_ father, the old
_Moser_--one of the most repulsive figures ever seen on the stage. It
may have been made what it is in order that the girl's crime might not
hopelessly prejudice the spectator at the start and thus render all the
rest of the play futile. We must remember, too, that the monstrous
egoism of _Moser_ is not represented as a typical quality of that old
age which feels itself robbed by the advance of triumphant youth. What
Schnitzler shows is that egoism grows more repulsive as increasing age
makes it less warranted. The middle act of the play, with its
remarkable conversation between the _Colonel_ and _Max_, brings us back
to "Outside the Game Laws." That earlier play was in its time declared
the best existing stage presentation of the spirit engendered by the
military life. But it has a close second in "The Call of Life." To
anyone having watched the manners of militarism in Europe, the words of
the _Colonel_ to _Max_ will sound as an all-sufficient explanation: "No
physicians have to spend thirty years at the side of beds containing
puppets instead of human patients--no lawyers have to practice on
criminals made out of pasteboard--and even the ministers are not
infrequently preaching to people who actually believe in heaven and
hell."
If "The Lonely Way" be Schnitzler's greatest play all around, and
"Intermezzo" his subtlest, "Countess Mizzie" is the sweetest, the best
tempered, the one that leaves the most agreeable taste in the mouth. It
gives us a concrete embodiment of the tolerance toward all life that is
merely suggested by the closing sentences of _Dr. Schindler_ in the
last act of "The Call of Life." It brings back the gay spirit of
"Anatol," but with a rare maturity supporting it. The simple
socio-biological philosophy of "Change Partners!" is restated without
the needless naturalism of those early dialogues. The idea of "Countess
Mizzie" is that, if we look deep enough, all social distinctions are
lost in a universal human kinship. On the surface we appear like
flowers neatly arranged in a bed, each kind in its separate and
carefully labeled corner. Then Schnitzler begins to scrape off the
screening earth, and underneath we find the roots of all those flowers
intertwined and matted, so that it is impossible to tell which belong
to the _Count_ and which to _Wasner_, the coachman, which to _Miss
Lolo_, the ballet-dancer, and which to the _Countess_.
"Young Medardus" is Schnitzler's most ambitious attempt at historical
playwriting. It seems to indicate that he belongs too wholly in the
present age to succeed in that direction. The play takes us back to
1809, when Napoleon appeared a second time outside the gates of Vienna.
The central character, _Medardus Klaehr_, is said to be historical. The
re-created atmosphere of old Vienna is at once convincing and amusing.
But the play is too sprawling, too scattered, to get firm hold on the
reader. There are seventy-four specifically indicated characters, not
to mention groups of dumb figures. And while the title page speaks of
five acts and a prologue, there are in reality seventeen distinct
scenes. Each scene may be dramatically valuable, but the constant
passage from place to place, from one set of characters to another, has
a confusing effect.
There is, too, a more deep-lying reason for the failure of the play as
a whole, I think. The ironical outlook so dear to Schnitzler--or
rather, so inseparable from his temperament--has betrayed him. Irony
seems hopelessly out of place in a historical drama, where it tends to
make us feel that the author does not believe in the actual existence
of his own characters. I have a suspicion that "Young Medardus" takes
the place within the production of Schnitzler that is held by "Peer
Gynt" in the production of Ibsen--that _Medardus Klaehr_ is meant to
satirize the Viennese character as _Peer Gynt_ satirizes the Norwegian.
The keynote of the play may be found in the words of _Etzelt_, spoken
as _Medardus_ is about to be shot, after having refused to save his own
life by a promise not to make any attempts against Napoleon's: "God
wanted to make a hero of him, and the course of events turned him into
a fool." The obvious interpretation is that the pettiness of Viennese
conditions defeated the larger aspirations of the man, who would have
proved true to his own possibilities in other surroundings. A more
careful analysis of the plot shows, however, that what turns the
ambitions of _Medardus_ into dreams and words is his susceptibility
to the charms of a woman. Once within the magic circle of her power,
everything else--the danger of his country, the death of his sister,
his duty to avenge the death of his father--becomes secondary to his
passion. And each time he tries to rise above that passion, the
reappearance of the woman is sufficient to deflect him from his
purpose. It is as if Schnitzler wanted to suggest that the greatest
weakness of the Viennese character lies in its sensuous concern with
sex to the detriment of all other vital interests. To me it is a very
remarkable thing to think that such a play was performed a large number
of times at one of the foremost theaters in Vienna, and that,
apparently, it received a very respectful hearing. I cannot but wonder
what would happen here, if a play were put on the stage dealing in a
similar spirit with the American character.
"The soul is a vast country, where many different things find place
side by side," says Dr. Theodor Reik in his interesting volume named
"Arthur Schnitzler als Psycholog" (Minden, 1913). Thus he explains the
meaning of the title given to "The Vast Country" (_Das Weite Land_).
And I don't think it is possible to get closer than that. Nowhere has
Schnitzler been more casual in his use of what is commonly called plot.
Nowhere has he scorned more completely to build his work around any
particular "red thread." Event follows event with seeming haphazardness.
The only thing that keeps the play from falling apart is the logical
development of each character. It is, in fact, principally, if not
exclusively, a series of soul-studies. What happens serves merely as an
excuse to reveal the reaction of a certain character to certain
external pressures or internal promptings. But viewed in this light,
the play has tremendous power and significance.
Dr. Reik's book, to which I just referred, has been written to prove
the direct connection between Schnitzler's art and the new psychology
established by Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna. That the playwright must
have studied the Freudian theories seems more than probable. That they
may have influenced him seems also probable. And that this influence
may have helped him to a clearer grasp of more than one mystery within
the human soul, I am willing to grant also. What I want to protest
against, is the attempt to make him out an exponent of any particular
scientific theory. He is an observer of all life. He is what _Amadeus_
in "Intermezzo" ironically charges _Albert Rhon_ with being: "a student
of the human soul." And he has undoubtedly availed himself of every new
aid that might be offered for the analysis and interpretation of that
soul. The importance of man's sub-conscious life seems to have been
clear to him in the early days of "Anatol," and it seems to have grown
on him as he matured. Another Freudian conception he has also made his
own--that of the close connection between man's sexual life and vital
phenomena not clearly designed for the expression of that life. But--to
return to the point I have already tried to make--it would be dangerous
and unjust to read any work of his as the dramatic effort of a
scientific theorizer.
Schnitzler is of Jewish race. In Vienna that means a great deal more
than in London, Stockholm or New York. It means an atmosphere of
contempt, of suspicion, of hatred. It means frequently complete
isolation, and always some isolation. It means a constant sense of
conflict between oneself and one's surroundings. All these things are
reflected in the works of Schnitzler--more particularly the sense of
conflict and of isolation. Life itself is blamed for it most of the
time, however, and it is only once in a great while that the specific
and localized cause is referred to--as in "Literature," for instance.
And even when Schnitzler undertakes, as he has done in his latest play,
"Professor Bernhardi," to deal directly with the situation of the Jew
within a community with strong anti-Semitic tendencies, he does not
appear able to keep his mind fixed on that particular issue. He starts
to discuss it, and does so with a clearness and fairness that have not
been equaled since the days of Lessing--and then he drifts off in a new
direction. The mutual opposition between Jews and Catholics becomes an
opposition between the skeptical and the mystical temperaments. It is
as if he wanted to say that all differences are unreal except those
between individuals as such. And if that be his intention, he is right,
I believe, and his play is the greater for bringing that thought home
to us.
The play is a remarkable one in many respects. It deals largely with
the internal affairs of a hospital. An overwhelming majority of the
characters are physicians connected with the big hospital of which
_Professor Bernhardi_ is the head. They talk of nothing but what men of
that profession in such a position would be likely to talk of. In other
words, they are all the time "talking shop." This goes on through five
acts. Throughout the entire play there is not the slightest suggestion
of what the Broadway manager and the periodical editor call a "love
interest." And yet the play holds you from beginning to end, and the
dramatic tension could not be greater if its main theme were the
unrequited love of the professor's son instead of his own right to
place his duties as a physician above all other considerations. To one
who has grown soul-weary of the "triangle" and all other combinations
for the exploiting of illicit or legitimized love, "Professor
Bernhardi" should come as a great relief and a bright promise.
* * * * *
These are the main outlines of Schnitzler's work as a dramatist. They
indicate a constant, steady growth, coupled with increased realization
of his own possibilities and powers as well as of his limitations. In
all but a very few of his plays, he has confined himself to the life
immediately surrounding him--to the life of the Viennese middle class,
and more particularly of the professional element to which he himself
belongs. But on the basis of a wonderfully faithful portrayal of local
characters and conditions, he has managed to rear a superstructure of
emotional appeal and intellectual clarification that must render his
work welcome to thinking men and women wherever it be introduced. And
as he is still in the flower of his manhood, it seems reasonable to
expect that still greater things may be forthcoming from his pen.
SCHNITZLER'S "ANATOL"
Spearhead fences, yew-tree hedges,
Coats of arms no more regilded,
Sphinxes gleaming through the thickets....
Creakingly the gates swing open.
With its tritons sunk in slumber,
And its fountains also sleeping,
Mildewed, lovely, and rococo,
Lo ... Vienna, Canaletto's,
Dated Seventeen and Sixty.
Quiet pools of green-brown waters,
Smooth and framed in snow-white marble,
Show between their mirrored statues
Gold and silver fishes playing.
Slender stems of oleander
Cast their prim array of shadows
On the primly close-cropped greensward.
Overhead, the arching branches
Meet and twine to sheltering niches,
Where are grouped in loving couples
Stiff-limbed heroines and heroes....
Dolphins three pour splashing streamlets
In three shell-shaped marble basins.
Chestnut blossoms, richly fragrant,
Fall like flames and flutter downward
To be drowned within the basins....
Music, made by clarinettes and
Violins behind the yew-trees,
Seems to come from graceful cupids
Playing on the balustrade, or
Weaving flowers into garlands,
While beside them other flowers
Gayly stream from marble vases:
Jasmin, marigold, and elder....
On the balustrade sit also
Sweet coquettes among the cupids,
And some messeigneurs in purple.
At their feet, on pillows resting,
Or reclining on the greensward,
May be seen abbes and gallants.
From perfumed sedans are lifted
Other ladies by their lovers....
Rays of light sift through the leafage,
Shed on golden curls their luster,
Break in flames on gaudy cushions,
Gleam alike on grass and gravel,
Sparkle on the simple structure
We have raised to serve the moment.
Vines and creepers clamber upward,
Covering the slender woodwork,
While between them are suspended
Gorgeous tapestries and curtains:
Scenes Arcadian boldly woven,
Charmingly designed by Watteau....
In the place of stage, an arbor;
Summer sun in place of footlights;
Thus we rear Thalia's temple
Where we play our private dramas,
Gentle, saddening, precocious....
Comedies that we have suffered;
Feelings drawn from past and present;
Evil masked in pretty phrases;
Soothing words and luring pictures;
Subtle stirrings, mere nuances,
Agonies, adventures, crises....
Some are listening, some are yawning,
Some are dreaming, some are laughing,
Some are sipping ices ... others
Whisper longings soft and languid....
Nodding in the breeze, carnations,
Long-stemmed white carnations, image
Butterflies that swarm in sunlight,
While a black and long-haired spaniel
Barks astonished at a peacock....
HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL,
(_Edwin Bjoerkman._)
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PLAYS BY ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
ANATOL (Anatol); seven dramatic scenes; 1889-91 (1893).
A PIECE OF FICTION (Das Maerchen); a drama in three acts; 1891 (1894).