34
1 1
Mordengrauen
box 6/1
Spie. II 1. 6—
Rwtkkais-
GRTBINE
November 18, 1927
SCHNITZLER AT HIS BEST
If you believe that the content of a story counts
for anything at all you are likely to get only a tepid
pleasure out of Viennese literature; if Vienna produces
cnaracters worth writing about, as so large a city must,
Viennese authors rarely vrite about them.Daybreak“
(Simon and Schuster), Schnitzler’s latest, deals with
the last forty-eight hours in the life of Lieutenant
willi Kasda, the average sensual Austrian officer, fet,
as you read on, you forget that it is about so trivial a
person as willi Kasda in admiration for Schnitzler's per¬
fect handling of the story; and then suddenly the plot
explodes like a skyrocket, and in the light of dropping
stars you see all the life of willi Kasda suddenly 11¬
Lumined, and a good many more lives with it. For the
act that ruined Willi was comnonplase and ordinary
even, it might have seemed at the moment, almost gen¬
erous; the sort of thing that in one form or another
is done half a dozen times a week by ordinary, thick¬
witted, well meaning human beings And then
the light goes out and Vil11 Kasda with it and you are
left shivering in the dark, rather wishing that Schnitzler
had never let the Lieutenant be so ilIumined by the par¬
ticular