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Fin-De-Siecle Vienna in Arthur Schnitzler's Drama

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Fin-De-Siecle Vienna in Arthur Schnitzler's Drama BRUTALITY UNDER THE MASK OF ELEGANCE: FIN-DE-SIECLE VIENNA IN ARTHUR SCHNITZLER'S DRAMA COBIBORDEWIJK At the end of the nineteenth century, everywhere in Europe dramatists and directors turned away from the well-made play structure and the rigid wing-dominated stage with its artificial lighting, mise en scene and prescribed acting style. A new kind of drama emerged which wanted to show everyday reality through observation of human behaviour: drama as a slice of life, une tranche de vie. Through analysis of human behaviour, explanations could be found for its motivations and the situations created by it. One author was more explicit in his efforts than the other: Ibsen emphasized that children must suffer from the sins of their fathers and that suppression of women must lead to female self-liberation. Strindberg satirized the man-woman relationship in suffocating marital circumstances, Chekhov restricted himself to showing the behaviour of his contemporaries in a gently detached and occasionally critical understanding of it, leaving the final interpretation to his audiences. Schnitzler reported in his dialogues how the Viennese nobility and bourgeoisie passionately adopted externals, affected social manners and an aestheticism full of weariness of life and melancholy. Each one played his part in the game of life. The game was more real than life itself, than emotions, than ideals, than expectations. It was a commonly accepted mask to hide socially unacceptable erotic desires and a general sense of boredom. Arthur Schnitzler was a friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud. They represented that intense spirit of experimentation and melancholic atmosphere we have labelledfin-de-siecle, which manifested itself nowhere as clearly as in Vienna. In science and all kinds of art, experiments were carried out and discoveries were made: in music by SchOnberg and Alban Berg, in painting by Kokoschka, Schiele and Klimt, in literature by Von Hofmannsthal and in drama by Arthur Schnitzler. Arthur Schnitzler was born in 1862 as the first son of the Vienna laryngologist Prof. Johann Schnitzler. He studied medicine and became assistant in his father's hospital in the sections psychiatry and syphilis. In 250 Cobi Bordewijk 1888, when he was 26 years old, he travelled to London, Paris and Copenhagen where he witnessed the innovations in the theatre (liberal theatre, theatre libre) and saw the plays of Shaw, Strindberg and Ibsen. In those days he published articles, poems and prose for various magazines. In 1891 he met the Berlin stage manager Herman Bahr and became a close friend. Bahr would help him to get the plays performed which he wrote between 1890 and 1914, a difficult task because they were often censored, or created scandals after the first performance. However, when Schnitzler died in 1931 he was almost forgotten. It is still difficult to find something on his work in general histories of drama and theatre. After his death the Munich Volkische Beobachter wrote on October 27th, 1931: Urn 1900 konnte ein Klassiker der "siisse Madel" -Dramatik allenfalls imponieren, heute interessiert er nicht einmal mehr. Die durchweg auf erotische Effekte abgestimmte Werke Schnitzlers waren - abgesehen von dem bosen Reigen - nicht ohne einen gewissen Scharm .... Adolf Bartels zahlt Schnitzler zur feineren jiidischen Dekadenz, und damit ist im Grunde alles gesagt. Da dem gesundenden [sic] deutschen Volke weder jiidisches noch dekadentes Schaffen liegt, wird Schnitzlers Name bald vergessen sein. 1 Before 1900 Schnitzler mainly wrote episodic sketches and one-act plays, which can be looked upon as exercises for his later full-length plays.2 The theme of these early plays is the man-woman relationship in which emotions are hidden under an outward game of fidelity and infidelity, truth and lies, reality and illusion. This game was felt to be necessary if one wanted to survive the relationship and not be annihilated by it. The main character in Schnitzler's first play is Anatol, the prototype of a Viennese bourgeois, such as the intellectual, the doctor, or the lawyer. In seven sketches Anatol has all sorts of relationships with women, and in all cases the paradox is emphasized that love can only be real in the game. 1. Reinhard Urbach, Anhur Schnitzler (Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheaters, LVI), Velber bei Hannover, 1968, 15. "Around 1900 a classic of 'innocent girl' drama could perhaps still make an impression, but today it is no longer of interest. The works of Schnitzler, always aiming at erotic effects, were, with the exception of the evil Reigen, not without a certain charm .... Adolf Bartels reckons Schnitzler among the finer Jewish decadence, and in this way has stated basically everything. Since neither the Jewish nor the decadent creations agree with the healthy German people, Schnitzler's name will soon be forgotten" (trans. by the author). 2. All texts of the plays analysed in this article can be found in Arthur Schnitzler, Die dramatischen Werke, 2 vols, Frankfurt am Main, 1962. .
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