The literary society “Enthusiasm” ’s self-imposed abstention from anything that smells of life, anything embarrassingly redolent of “monotonous employment,” is unmasked in the novella as merely a pose affected by young artists. The story’s comedy derives from the ironic distance between, on the one hand, the characters, who believe themselves to be intelligently discussing art, and, on the other, the nuanced and psychologically detailed voice of the narrator, who reveals the superficiality and triteness of their ideal of “true and chaste art” and mercilessly strips away their clichés and slogans: “Ultimately, all lyrical poems are either morning moods or evening moods,” one of their number pronounces, “Or night moods.” Just as subtly constructed are the parallels, the structural correspondences between the petty bourgeois regulars at the Pickled Pear and the young artists’ circle: in both there are toasts and laudatory speeches, in both they are “talking and shouting over one another,” and with neither does Saxberger truly fit in. The bright yellow raincoat mentioned in a speech by Grossinger, a delicatessen owner whom Saxberger views with scorn, is subject to a transference that all but begs to be interpreted in the terms of psychoanalysis: the light yellow gloves and particularly the “yellow spring jacket” worn by the eccentric actress Fräulein Gasteiner are seen by Saxberger, whom she reveres with libidinous undertones, as intensely unpleasant.
•
To what extent should Schnitzler’s portrait of literary bohemianism, the Young Vienna of the novella, be understood as a parody of the literary circle that met in the Café Griensteidl in the center of the city?[4] “Young Austria. In the Griensteidl,”[5] noted Schnitzler in his diary on 26th February 1891. Alongside the inner circle—Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Felix Salten, Hermann Bahr and Schnitzler—many other, mostly long-forgotten writers, journalists and artists gathered in an open, fluctuating and heterogeneous group—“12 people in the c-h,”[6] noted Schnitzler on, for example, 3rd December 1892.
The Young Viennese and the “Enthusiasts” are bound together by their idea of themselves as staying “apart from those following the beaten track,” the literary mainstream, by keeping their distance from the “careerists” who simply follow what is fashionable, and also by the concomitant conundrum: “The newspapers take no notice of us. [. . .] Who’s ever heard of our ‘Enthusiasm’ society?” And the solution is: “We have to put on readings.” The Young Viennese, too, feared they would founder on a lack of recognition and so Hofmannsthal talked “as systematically as a military strategist about the necessity of conquering the major papers and forcing the old men, the opponents of this young literature, out of the foremost positions in the leading publications,”[7] as Salten remembered.
A recital by a society for modern literature, “Wiener Freie Bühne,” in autumn 1891 offered a podium both to a programmatic speech by Friedrich Michael Fels, the chairman, and to Arthur Schnitzler. The dismayed Schnitzler, however, summarized it as: “Much applause, meaningless evening”[8]—which would also be an accurate description of the recital put on by the Enthusiasts.
Late Fame is certainly not a roman-à-clef, but many of the Enthusiasts’ parodically drawn character traits and physiognomic characteristics may well conceal hints at the historical members of Young Vienna. Winder, a “pale little blond boy,” who is referred to by the others at the table, once mockingly, once affectionately, as “child,” is reminiscent of the young Hofmannsthal who, while also just a school student, attended the coffee house “in short trousers,”[9] as Stefan Zweig put it. But the young Hofmannsthal was seen from the first as a “significant talent,” as Schnitzler noted of the newcomer—“Knowledge, lucidity and, it seems, a real artistic sense; it’s unheard of at that age”[10]—whereas Winder is the only one of the group to be overlooked as a writer. And so the “dark-haired, slightly snobbish schoolboy Hofmannsthal, who liked the sound of his own voice” is, as Reinhard Urbach points out, transformed in Schnitzler’s novella “into his opposite, a shy ‘little blond boy.’”[11] Linsmann, “a rather more mature man,” exhibits some characteristics of Peter Altenberg, the “brilliant eccentric”[12] and self-proclaimed sponger.[13] “One of life’s invalids”[14] is how Altenberg introduced himself in a letter to Schnitzler in July 1894, in a phrase that applies equally to the bald Linsmann: “they squashed me, just squashed me flat.” And nor does Linsmann make any bones about being a scrounger, one who borrows money “even from little Winder.”
In the character of Christian, who, “with his long hair, errant tie and somewhat unsteady eyes, most distinctly embodied the old stock figure of an ‘artist,’” Schnitzler seems to have portrayed his own younger self. The insignias of the archetypal artist also appear in his unfinished autobiography: “Until my first years at university I carried myself with a certain not entirely unwanted carelessness. Rembrandt hat, flapping tie, long hair. Quiet disdain for anything that was considered elegant.”[15]
In the no-longer-quite-so-young actress Fräulein Gasteiner, who is the only woman in the coffee house circle and who likes to play the coquette around the venerable poet, one is tempted to see, as in other works of Schnitzler’s from this period, the actress Adele Sandrock, a lover of Schnitzler’s between the end of 1893 and the start of 1895, i.e. at the time when he was working on Late Fame. Like Gasteiner, Sandrock in 1894 played the role of Jane Eyre in The Orphan of Lowood, a stage adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel completed in 1853 by the German actress and writer Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer.
And Sandrock, too, was pleased to see herself in the role of seductress, very much to the displeasure of Schnitzler, who in his diary soon recorded discomfiture at her “adventures [. . .] her deceptions.”[16] “If you’ve been untrue to someone—console yourself, so have I,”[17] she let Schnitzler know in December 1893; on 2nd April 1894, he notes: “Coquetry Dilly with Salten”—it famously didn’t stop at coquetry.[18] The diva-ish charms of Sandrock, who was under contract at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna in the early 1890s and became the source of repeated scandals, are brought to mind by the temperamental, capricious and, above all, overblown thespian manner of Gasteiner, who is considered too “eccentric” to fit into “regular theater life.”
•
Ultimately, the whole literary circle is exposed as a society of charlatans, as the venerable poet is told that practically none of them have read the Wanderings that they hail as a masterpiece. And in this way, as so often with Schnitzler, lies and truth, seriousness and play, and, at the end of the novella—with Saxberger’s return “from a short, troublesome journey to a home that he had never loved but in which he now rediscovered the soft and muffled comforts of before”—comedy and tragedy, too, flow into and are merged with one another.
•
The novella lay in Arthur Schnitzler’s archive in the form of a typescript with handwritten corrections[19] and would presumably never have reached its readership had his literary estate not been rescued from the Nazis after the “Anschluss” of Austria to the Third Reich in 1938. “All the material was in my house in Vienna,” the author’s son Heinrich reported after the war in the periodical Aufbau, founded by exiles in New York. “As my father was one of the authors singled out in 1933 to have his work publicly burnt, there was an immediate danger that his books would be confiscated and destroyed. But the British consulate in Vienna made a dramatic intervention. A decisive role in this was played by the English student Eric Blackall.” Blackall was in Vienna finishing his doctorate on Adalbert Stifter under Josef Nadler and was in touch with Olga Schnitzler, who had been divorced from the author in 1921. “Through his mediation,” Heinrich Schnitzler continues, “the seal of the British government was placed on the door of the archive room, which put my father’s estate under the protection of the British consul.”[20]
A few weeks later, eight boxes containing manuscripts of completed and incomplete pieces, preliminary work, sketches, notes and extensive correspondence, along with four locked cupboards containing several thou
sand newspaper clippings and reviews of Schnitzler’s publications and plays, were taken to England by the hauliers Austro-Transport Fliedl, Heimerl & Co., and handed over to the Cambridge University Library—with which this part of the story seems to reach a happy conclusion.[21]
From the perspective of Heinrich, however, things looked rather different. His father’s heir and executor, Heinrich was an actor and director and had “left Vienna three weeks before the so-called Anschluss to meet a film commitment in Brussels,”[22] and so could not exert a direct influence on what his mother was doing with the estate. The correspondence between the two[23] initially mentions the preparations to save the material only obliquely, “in that secret language that the Nazis have forced on us,” as Olga Schnitzler later said, so as not under any circumstances to jeopardize their plans.[24]
But after the papers had arrived in Cambridge—Olga, too, had meanwhile left Austria—the open but often also contentious exchange between mother and son unmistakably shows that Heinrich wanted at almost any cost to have the estate sent on to New York and deposited at Columbia University.[25]
But in line with Heinrich’s fears for unpublished parts of the estate, the typescript “Story of a venerable poet,” which forms the basis of this book under the title first envisaged by Arthur Schnitzler himself (Late Fame), remained “buried” in the archive.[26] Arthur had died on 21st October 1931. In his will, he instructed that after his death his substantial journals be transcribed by his long-standing “typewriter,” Frieda Pollak, who had been continuously employed by him since 1909, all with a view to eventual publication. The will also left Heinrich free to publish parts of the estate at any time.[27] Indeed, archive texts, particularly short stories, started to appear not long afterwards in newspapers and periodicals.[28] But it was soon feared that too much would be released: “some things have to be held back—so as to always have the possibility of income from newspapers—otherwise things will look bleak one day,” Olga warned her son on 16th December 1931.[29]
Among the unpublished works was the novella presented here. The typescript of the finished piece is in a capital italic face throughout, produced almost entirely without typographical errors, and contains a few cursive handwritten corrections (which have been taken in in this edition).[30]
Various typescripts in capital italics, most of them with a short note from Heinrich on the envelope, are preserved in the archive. “Typescript February 1932/unpublished,” he wrote, for example, on the cover of the story “Das Himmelsbett,”[31] from 1893, while on that of, say, the story “Belastet,”[32] written in 1885/86, he marked: “Read on 3rd April 1933/not for publication.” And the novella presented here also remained unpublished, albeit without a corresponding remark on the cover.
The story of the text’s origins goes back to the last decade of the nineteenth century. A note surviving in a typescript of a list of “characters” records: “An old poet currying favor with the young generation.”[33] Schnitzler then wrote in one of his papers: “Old writer who finally finds a circle of young people who ‘appreciate’ him. A touching figure (perhaps also incidental characters).”[34] “The impulse to start work always came from his being struck by something,” is how Reinhard Urbach explains Schnitzler’s typical modus operandi: “a character, a feeling, an idea, a situation, an act; a detail, a phrase, a point”—elements thrown down cursorily onto the page and then developed into a treatment, a sketch, usually several pages long and already being imagined in detail. This, too, survives: a four-page typescript[35] fully mapping out the content of the novella with some minor variations in plot development, especially towards the end. Schnitzler’s “gift was not for the single stroke, but for the laborious path from the first note-making to the final draft. His talent was for revision,” writes Urbach.[36]
The genesis and precise draft phases of Late Fame can no longer be reconstructed, as the typescript is the only surviving version in Schnitzler’s estate. The process of its creation, however, can be at least rudimentarily pieced together from entries in Schnitzler’s diary: “Started Late Fame,”[37] he writes on 30th March 1894, and, three weeks later, on 19th April: “Am hard at work on my novella.”[38] Then, after only a few months, on 7th September, he seems to have completed a draft: “Read through Late Fame; seems to have turned out not at all badly.”[39] Schnitzler next mentions the text on 8th December 1894 and records that he is considering a different title: “This afternoon read my novella ‘Story of an Old Poet’ to myself.”[40] That this is the same text is clearly indicated by the four-page treatment mentioned above, which still carries the title “Late Fame.” On Boxing Day of the same year, the diary entry reads: “Loris, Schwarzkopf, Rich[ard Beer-Hofmann], Salten at mine. Read out ‘Story of an Old Poet.’ More than 3 hours—went down very well; some longueurs, some styl[istic] sloppinesses, end not sad enough.”[41] But Schnitzler kept working on it. Half a year later, on 22nd May 1895, he writes that he has “finished correcting” his novella “Story of an Old Poet.”[42]
On 5th July 1895 in Prague, Schnitzler read the end of the story to his friend and lover Marie Reinhardt, who played a greater role than anyone else in his work and in whose judgment he had almost limitless faith. It is the ending that in the final version differs most from the initial sketch. Indeed, there were evidently further, last-minute changes, as is revealed by a letter written to Reinhardt from Bad Ischl on 17th July 1895: “This morning, darling, I finally finished my tale of the venerable poet, have cut some more and already sent it to Bahr.”[43]
Schnitzler considered the novella ready to go into print and wanted Hermann Bahr to publish it serially in the periodical Die Zeit, of which he was one of the founders and editors. Bahr had already asked Schnitzler for a contribution in a letter of 19th June 1895: “I would very, very much like to have something from you for Die Zeit. Ideally a short story, not more than eight columns of the paper.” If necessary, however, he would also take something longer, albeit with the proviso that “being pulled apart into installments kills even the strongest pieces.” On 17th July 1895, Schnitzler sent the desired contribution from Ischl: “so here is the novella. I’ve cut a lot, but still fear that it’s too long. [. . .] If you find sections that you consider dispensable, perhaps point them out to me, but do not cut any yourself. And if a more powerful title occurs to me, I’ll be very grateful.”[44] Once Bahr had read the novella, first upon its arrival and then again after a few days, he responded with criticisms and asserted “as an editor” that “dismemberment into, say, eight parts, with breaks of a week” would “damage the novella and rob it of all its force.”[45] Bahr suggests “shortening it by a third”—something that was never done. And so the novella sank, as Heinrich had feared for other parts of the estate, into “the long slumber of a Sleeping Beauty.”[46]
—WILHELM HEMECKER and DAVID ÖSTERLE
NOTES
1. University Library, Cambridge (ULC), Schnitzler Papers, Folder A 212,6. Cf. Gerhard Neumann and Jutta Müller, Der Nachlass Arthur Schnitzlers (Munich, 1969), p. 67.
2. Arthur Schnitzler’s diary, 17th April 1880, p. 42. Published with the collaboration of Peter Michael Braunwarth by the Kommission für literarische Gebrauchsformen der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. The following references are to the volumes 1879–92 (Vienna, 1897) and 1893–1902 (Vienna, 1989).
3. Schnitzler’s diary, 2nd January 1880, p. 18.
4. See on this Wilhelm Hemecker and David Österle, “Café S. Griensteidl. Loris und das Junge Wien,” in Hofmannsthal Orte. 20 biographische Erkundungen, published by Wilhelm Hemecker and Konrad Heumann (Vienna, 2014), pp. 92–116.
5. Schnitzler’s diary, 26th February 1891, p. 318.
6. Schnitzler’s diary, 3rd December 1892, p. 394.
7. Felix Salten, “Aus den Anfängen. Erinnerungsskizzen,” in Jahrbuch deutscher Bibliophilen-Gesellschaft 18/19 (1932/33), pp. 31–46, p. 36.
8. Schnitzler’s diary, 28th October 1891, p. 354.
9. Stefan Zwei
g, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 64.
10. Schnitzler’s diary, 29th March 1891, p. 321.
11. Reinhard Urbach, “Einen Jux wollt er sich machen,” in Die Presse, 23rd May 2014.
12. Arthur Schnitzler, Jugend in Wien, edited by Therese Nickl and Heinrich Schnitzler (Vienna, 1981), p. 213.
13. Cf. Peter Altenberg, Semmering 1912 (Berlin, 1913), p. 36.
14. Cited in Andrew Barker and Leo A. Lensing, Peter Altenberg. Rezept, die Welt zu sehen (Vienna, 1995), p. 48.
15. Schnitzler, Jugend in Wien, p. 326.
16. Schnitzler’s diary, 11th April 1894, p. 74.
17. Schnitzler’s diary, 6th December 1893, p. 60.
18. Schnitzler’s diary, 2nd April 1894, p. 74.
19. ULC Schnitzler Papers, Folder A 164,2.
20. Heinrich Schnitzler, “Der Nachlass meines Vaters,” in Aufbau (9th November 1951), p. 9f.
21. See Lorenzo Bellettini and Christian Stauffenbiel, “The Schnitzler Nachlass Saved by a Cambridge Student,” in Schnitzler’s Hidden Manuscripts, edited by L. B. and Peter Hutchinson (Oxford, 2010), pp. 11–21.
22. Heinrich Schnitzler, “ ‘Ich bin kein Dichter, ich bin Naturforscher.’ Der Nachlass meines Vaters,” in Die Neue Zeitung (Munich), Nr. 247 (20th/21st October 1951), pp. 9–10 (p. 9).
23. The correspondence has not been published and can be found in the Heinrich Schnitzler Estate in the Österreichisches Theatermuseum (ÖTM) and in the partial Arthur Schnitzler Estate in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach am Neckar (DLA).
24. Letter from Olga to Heinrich of 5th February 1939, DLA, A: Schnitzler, 85.1.5432/3.
25. For a comprehensive account of this, see Wilhelm Hemecker and David Österle, “ ‘. . . so grundfalsch war alles Weitere.’ Zur Geschichte des Nachlasses von Arthur Schnitzler,” in Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 58 (2014), pp. 3–40.
Late Fame Page 10
