Arthur Schnitzler: A Chronicle of Loneliness
Citations Over Time
Abstract
It is the time-honored privilege of any critic to misunderstand and misinterpret the artist whose works he analyzes. Rarely, however, has this privilege been more frequently and more flagrantly abused than in the case of Arthur Schnitzler. Ever since the publication of Anatol in 1892, has been looked upon as a Viennese de Maupassant-witty, slightly naughty, amusing to be sure, but without any social, philosophical, ethical, or, for that matter, lasting literary merit. During the past sixty years this early groove of criticism has been worn into a deep, comfortable rut. Today, is still considered primarily either as a physician-author, whose works are mere psychoanalytical case histories of the Freudian school, or else as a decadent eroticist, interested almost exclusively in the pathological aspects of sex and death. What little literary value has been granted to him, is found predominantly in his gift of evoking nostalgic reminiscences of a bygone era, and of re-creating the charming atmosphere of Old Vienna, complete with Strauss waltzes, Ileurigen, and Kajfee mit Schlag. As an illustration, one needs to look only at some of the opinions expressed in a Schnitzler Symposium, a collective eulogy published in Books Abroad in 1932 to commemorate the seventieth
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