The Road into the Open

Arthur Schnitzler, Viennese playwright, novelist, short story writer, and physician, was a sophisticated writer much in vogue in his time. He chose themes of an erotic, romantic, or social nature, expressed with clarity, irony, and subtle wit. Reigen, a series of ten dialogues linking people of various social classes through their physical desire for one another, has been filmed many times as La Ronde. As a Jew, Schnitzler was sensitive to the problems of anti-Semitism, which he explored in the play Professor Bernhardi (1913), seen in New York in a performance by the Vienna Burgtheater in 1968. Henry Hatfield calls Schnitzler "second only to Hofmannsthal among the Austrian writers of his generation and one of the most underrated of German authors... . He combined the naturalist's devotion to fact with the impressionist's interest in nuance; in other words, he told the truth" (Modern German Literature). In his most famous story, Lieutenant Gustl (1901), Schnitzler employs the stream-of-consciousness technique in an exposition of the follies and gradual disintegration of society in fin de siecle Vienna. Schnitzler has also been linked with Freud (see Vols. 3 and 5) and is credited with consciously introducing elements of modern psychology into his works. 020