Dramatist Saddened by Tragic
Death of
Daughter
Disavows Gayety
By Pierre Loving
A brief letter from
Arthur Schnitzler, who appeared in the news columns recently as a tragic
figure bowed over the deathbed of a beloved
child, served to recall to me the tender relation between
daughter and
father which I had witnessed
in the
dramatist’s home
several years ago, although my friend’s communication touched on another, a less personal
matter. As I glanced at the words I conjured up the (for me) memorable visit to his
home on
Sternwartestrasse in the fashionable new cottage
section of
Vienna, and the admonition, kindly and
sage, and afterward long pondered, which he then gave me.
I had invited the »finest portraitist of the old
Austrian regime,« as Dr.
Schnitzler
has often been called, to furnish an introduction to a charming racy book of
memoirs by Countess
Hermynia zur
Muhlen, who is a sort of runaway princess, a niece of Archduke
Ferdinand, who was assassinated at
Sarajevo. Countess
zur Muhlen is
always witty and engaging, acerb and thoroughly objective in her revelations of
pre-war
Austria and
Russia, into which country she married; and a tone of
indulgent irony permeates her easy style. This being so, it was but natural to call
on
Arthur Schnitzler, also gentle and ironical
and tout-a-fait
Viennois, to supply an
introduction to the
American edition of the book.
Dr.
Schnitzler in reply to my request pleaded
the urgency of other work, although he admitted that he was strongly tempted. He was,
of course, familiar with the milieu and the characters involved, but his role was
that of the creative artist. He declined gracefully. To the production of novels and
plays he must, he felt, henceforth exclusively devote himself, as in the past. Behind
his prosaic words I glimpsed the phantasmal outline of his grief over a dead
daughter.
His Spirit Crushed
That
daughter, it will be remembered, had but recently married
an
Italian nobleman, and a few weeks after
her wedding she committed suicide
in
Venice. Dr.
Schnitzler chartered a special plane and
flew to her bedside, but it was too late. The
girl was dead. Broken in spirit, his face older and more
tired, his eyes sadder,
Schnitzler returned to
Vienna and withdrew more and more deeply within
himself. Of course, he still has his only
son, a promising young actor, whom he sees nowadays from time
to time. I cannot forget his sigh when he said: »It is hard to work in peace
nowadays, free from crushing anxiety. . . . It is not like
before the war.« And I sometimes wonder if old age and a consciousness of great work
well done will at last bring him the healing gift of millennial peace.
Circumstances had, of course, been relentless toward him, as toward many others,
during the spare and bitter war years and during the inflation of the
Austrian crown and the
German mark. His work was practically at a standstill. The
royalties from the output of a lifetime – about twenty volumes of novels and plays
in
all – amounted to exactly 5. This was his income from the
Fischer verlag, his
German publishers.
Turkenschanz Park, near
Schnitzler’s home, is one of the loveliest spots in
Vienna. As the name indicates, the Turks, during
their prolonged investment of the city, had built a fort there.
A short, stout man with curly brown hair and beard, profusely dusted with gray, came
to meet me. His forehead was narrow, lined, his nose long and well modeled, his lips
thick and full. But his most arresting feature was his eyes – they were deep-sunk
and
had penumbra; they where by no means cynical, as one might perhaps expect from some
of his plays, but weary, self-effacing, asking little of people and things. He was
well past sixty.
Thirty Years After »
Anatole«
He greeted me cordially. The room, oblong in shape and not very large, was lined with
rows of beautifully bound books. Near the window stood a tall desk with a sloping
top
like a shutter, surmounted by a
porcelain figure of
Goethe in Schlafrock. At this desk, he later told me, he had done most of his writing, standing
up. Fully thirty-two years had elapsed since »
Anatole,« subtitled a Comedy of
Seduction,
had been first produced, and more than thirty years since he wrote »
Reigen,«
that devastating cycle of dialogues concerned with the disillusions of love.
Since that time his irony has grown gentler and more mature, but he never gave up his
role, which he filled in those two youthful
works, of a subtle diagnostician of men and women, never shallow, never witty for
wit’s sake alone. Except in »
The Green
Cockatoo,«
Schnitzler has never proved
himself a scintillating dramatist steeped in the waters of the eighteenth century.
He
had written »
Professor Bernhardi,« »
Light of Love,« »
The Country of the Soul,« »
Bertha
Garlan,« »
Lieutenant Gustl,«, »
The Road to the Open,« »
Casanova’s Homecoming« – innumerable plays, novels and short
stories, a small handful of which I had the pleasure of translating into English when
I was something under twenty, and each one dealing with this or that phase of love
of
man’s weakness and man’s inevitable illusions of pride, love and ambition.
He sketched his beginnings as a writer for me:
how, far back in the eighties and nineties, he and the late
Hugo von Hofmannsthal were closely associated,
Von Hofmannsthal writing exquisite Parnassian
poetry and
Schnitzler emerging as a realistic
satirist, witty and graceful, softening the naturalist current which had reached
Vienna via
Berlin and
Paris.
»I owe my recognition,« he said, »to a young
journalist on the
Neue Freie Presse. He at once perceived the importance of the new movement and my relation to it.
He pointed out that I gazed into the human soul and made people speak as though they
were under the influence of Professor
Charcot,
the
French psychologist, who at that time used
hypnotism in his cures. Professor
Charcot’s
experiments affected me deeply and set me thinking, as they also did Professor
Freud, who was, I believe, his assistant in
Paris then. The direct outcome of this influence may be seen in ›
Anatole,‹ where hypnotism is employed as a dramatic device.
Both as an artist and a physician, however, I felt that hypnotism was inadequate in
the long run. But it did help me in some way to get an insight into the inner life
of
my characters. ›
Reigen‹ was written as a series
of case histories. Does this surprise you? The question I asked myself was this:
Clinically speaking, how do certain people, drawn from all classes, act under the
stress of sexual passion? I have been accused of having produced a kind of sublimated
joke. Ah, not at all. The ›Hands Around‹ idea was best fitted to carry out my
purpose.«
»As a poet he is unequaled, but I find his plays
a little lacking in humanity.
Von Hofmannsthal
is the modern counterpart of
Ben Jonson – if
you will make huge allowances for the differences of temperament and age. You must
remember that his prose comedies have no kinship with his verse. But he is scholarly,
even wonderfully erudite, and he is quick to see the humors in people. This is what
concerns him most and in this trait he comes closest to the
Elizabethan. He is a good example of the playwright of humors;
but realistic comedy, when all is said and done, is not his special field. He is
essentially a poet, a great dramatic poet, as his librettos written for
Strauss’s music show, and one of the finest
Austria has ever produced.«
Since these words were spoken, the two lifelong friends, as everybody knows, have
suffered kindred tragedies, tragedies of fate with nothing less than a
Sophoclean touch, in their own lives.
Schnitzler’s
daughter and
Von
Hofmannsthal’s young
son committed suicide
within a short period of each other. In
Von
Hofmannsthal’s case the shock of the catastrophe was the immediate cause of
the poet’s death.
After talking to
Schnitzler for a half hour or
so, I said to him:
»This is not an interview, Herr Doktor. I shall not use it unless –«
»You may use whatever I say,« he replied, smiling. »But if you are wise you will wait
several years. Interviewers have come to me from all over the world – and
misrepresented me most horribly. I should like somebody who really knows me to write
an interview. Now take this, for example« – and he strode over to his desk and drew
out a newspaper clipping – »here is an interview from
a
New York newspaper. It states, to begin with,
that I am a man-about-town, that I attend all the redouts, that I am invariably to
be
seen at first nights and all important social functions; that I am to be seen at
Sacher’s every single night, drinking champagne or
smoking an after-dinner cigar. This, as you know, is simply tissue of colorful lies.
Of course I may now and then attend a first night – but then I am a dramatist. For
me
the main difference between the pre-war period and the present is this: Previously
I
had leisure and peace in which to work. Now, due to the state of social and political
unrest, I am a good deal distracted, as any writer living in
Vienna must be.«
As I rose to leave I turned to my host and
asked: »Why is it, do you think, that your books have not had a steady sale in
America?«
»I believe I am appreciated in
America,« he
replied, »but so far I do not think I have had a fair chance. But the situation is
about to change. The
American public is waking up
to the value of a psychological method in the delineation of character. Of course,
it
is easier for any audience to swallow light raillery or gay cynicism rather than ripe
irony. Irony implies, as you know, a certain amount of intellectual sophistication.
Perhaps this explains why my
Vienna and
Budapest colleagues are more successful on the
New York stage than I am. . . . While wandering about
Vienna,« he called after me as I was going out, »don’t forget to read
Stifter and
Grillparzer.«
Shortly afterward I called on a well-known
Viennese lady who had figured
brilliantly in pre-war society. I inquired about the authenticity of Dr.
Schnitzler’s characters.
»In
Schnitzler,« I said, »there is always
delicate charm, light amour and so on. Did the sex game, as his plays imply, once
take up a good part of the lives of the
Viennese?«
The
lady laughed, her eyes
suddenly grown youthful and gay. »Oh,
Schnitzler is very, very clever,« she said, extending toward me a platter
heaped up with rich pastry. »He’s profound, and, of course, almost any woman will
recognize herself in one, at least, of his characters. I hear he’s been translated
into every language. And he deserves to be, for he is universal – a great writer.«
She paused. Her eyes
glistened. »But,« she went on »you mustn’t take him too literally. Most of us women,
you know, dream all our lives of those gay infidelities which he so delicately
portrays. But, alas! they never come to us. Ah, well!«
she sighed.