Vienna’s Foremost Dramatist
By Herman Bernstein
What Henryk Ibsen was to the Norwegian
drama, August Strindberg to the Swedish, Anton Chekhov to the Russian, what Gerhardt Hauptmann is to the German
drama, Bernard Shaw to the English and Maurice
Maeterlinck to the French, Arthur Schnitzler is to the Austrian drama today. Keen and penetrating, brilliant and
subtle, a master of irony and satire, yet sincere and full of optimism, this master
builder of the modern Austrian drama, this Viennese man of letters has impressed himself
profoundly upon the literature of Austria in
the face of innumerable difficulties.
By the sheer force of his art, as it manifested itself in his works, in masterpiece
after masterpiece, Dr. Arthur Schnitzler, a
Jew, has won distinction in Vienna, the very
hotbed of antisemitism. He has surmounted many obstacles, combating prejudice calmly,
yet with firm determination.
Schnitzler is at his best when portraying
women. Painting the mysteries of the enigmatic »eternal feminine« with a master
brush, attacking the actualities of life in terms of life, he scales the heights of
emotions and depicts the depths of depravity, analyzing human frailties and
shortcomings, mercilessly at times, always fearlessly, yet never vulgarizing that
which less gifted and less tactful dramatists and novelists delight in making
vulgar.
Whether it is in his »Anatol,« a series of
dramatic episodes of love affairs, written in the beginning of his career in
1880, but not produced until a few years ago (given here at Maxine Elliott’s Theater, with Doris Keane in one of the characters); whether it is his »Amours« »The
Lonely Way,« »The Intermezzo,« »The Far Away Country,« »The Fairy Tale«; or his one-act plays, »Literature,« »The Green
Cockatoo«; or his more recent work, in the drama as well as in the novel and
the short story, his analytical power, his wit and his brilliant dialogue, lift his
work into a class all by itself in European
literature. All his dramas are full of virility and deep understanding – different
as
they are in theme, varied as they are in treatment, broad as they are in conception.
Schnitzler is never a slave to form or a
servant of traditions and conventionalities. He is unique among Viennese dramatists; he is as characteristic as Vienna itself, as Viennese
life, whose gifted interpreter he is.
Schnitzler is known in America by a number of plays which have been produced here from
time to time – »The Affairs of Anatol,« »The Fairy Tale,« »The Reckoning,« »Literature,« »The Countess Mizzi« and others. Now a volume of three of his characteristic efforts has been published in this
country.
Born in Vienna in May 15,
1862, the son of a physician, Schnitzler first turned to
medicine as his life work, but soon abandoned this for literature. He looks much
younger than his years. Although depressed by the horrors of the European catastrophe, he is nevertheless optimistic as to the
outcome of the war, believing that the universal peace movement will in time make
war
impossible.
