The Road to the Open: a prophet without wrath

Previous posts on The Road to the Open:
Fin-de-siècle Vienna
My art is mediocre and so is my character
Grotesque and repulsive peculiarities

The version of the book I read was the translation by Horace Samuel, which can be found here. (Note that a couple of pages are missing in the scan)

I’ve finally finished The Road to the Open by Arthur Schnitzler and while Blogger is temporarily allowing me into my account I’ll try to post about it. I’ll start with the end of the review by Carl E. Schorske in Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Vintage, 1981):

The novel has no real end, the hero no tragic stature. Schnitzler was a prophet without wrath. The scientist in him avenged itself on both the moralist and the artist. As social observer and psychologist he drew the world he saw as necessitous, but not—like the true tragedian—as justified. Morality and the dynamics of both instinct and history were incompatible. Schnitzler could neither condone nor condemn.

Yet, as a proclamation of the death of a cultural idea, his novel has power. The break-up of Georg and his artist-sweetheart symbolizes the end of a half-century’s effort to wed bourgeoisie and aristocracy through aesthetic culture. Schnitzler shows that the historical force compelling recognition of this failure was the rise of anti-liberal mass politics. Appropriately, the pure and aesthetic Anna’s own brother is a vicious anti-Semite. While she is doomed to a humdrum petit bourgeois existence by her aristocratic lover’s weakness, her brother embarks on a promising if hideous political career. As for Georg, he is paralyzed by his own hypertrophied sensibilities, conscious of being driven by instincts within and an irrational society without. The social aristocrat can no longer control the reality; the aesthetic aristocrat cannot understand it. He can but feel his own impotence in a bourgeois world spinning out of orbit.

Aspiring to tragedy, Schnitzler achieved only sadness. One of his characters observes that there is no Weg ins Freie [Road into the Open] except into the self. Schnitzler, caught between science and art, between commitment to old morals and new feelings, could find no new and satisfying meaning in the self, as did Freud and the Expressionists; nor could he conceive a solution to the political problem of the psyche, as Hofmannsthal was to do. A despairing but committed liberal, he posed the problem clearly by shattering illusions. He could not create new faith. As an analyst of Viennese high bourgeois society, however, Schnitzler had no peer among his literary contemporaries. Like Ravel, he understood not merely the traditions of the world of the waltz but also the psychology of its individuals in their increasingly eccentric relation to the dissolving whole. He described as no other has done the social matrix in which so much of twentieth-century subjectivism took for: the disintegrating moral-aesthetic culture of fin-de-siècle Vienna. (pages 14 – 15)

Schorske packs a lot more into his short review and I highly recommend his book in addition to Schnitzler’s novel. I think his review is pretty much spot on except for a few minor quibbles…or maybe not so minor. I want to look at the struggle between the generations because I think that is one part Schorske touches on but doesn’t follow up on the implications. He notes that the title “refers to the desperate attempt of the cultivated younger generation of Viennese to find their way into the clear, their road out of the morass of a sick society to a satisfactory personal experience. After noting that many of the young Jewish characters turn “from the path which a just society might have left open” (but clearly Vienna didn’t) he turns to a look at the older generation. “Schnitzler views them positively now. It is as if he had made peace with his father. Though their values are anachronistic, no longer relevant to the social-psychological facts of life, the older characters still offer an example of stability, a basis for engagement in constructive work, and even a certain ground for human sympathy.” Yet the poisonous picture of Vienna Schnitzler paints comes from which generation? The younger generation lives in it and accelerate it, but the trends started earlier.

The disintegration of moral codes ushers in a freedom that opens possibilities, good and bad. “Anna is freed from negative repercussions about her pregnancy out of wedlock, yet that liberation also frees George from any commitment to her. Freedom is a double-edged sword, as Schnitzler presents here and in other situations. Schorske notes the struggle Schnitzler finds himself “between a renewed allegiance to traditional values and a scientific view of modern social and psychological reality which makes those values inapplicable. But Schnitzler takes pains to show the older generation loosened the traditional values while not providing anything to replace them. I don’t think it is a coincidence the book begins shortly after George's father’s death and George is shown unmoored, drifting even more than usual because of the loss. The father allowed George and his brother to abandon their university studies, amplifying George’s natural tendency to drift. Schnitzler seems caught between admiring and condemning the older generation. It’s nice that George is allowed to pursue his musical studies because of his talent but not everyone is a baron, treated deferentially by the bourgeois despite limited achievements.

There is so much more that can be explored in the novel. One area I think would provide a fun paper or post would be the importance of Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde in the story. What aspect of the opera did Schnitzler want to stress? The unachievable desires (driven by Schopenhauer’s influence)? The musical innovation? The topic of frustrated love? Other fun topics could be the importance of dreams. But all of these are secondary to Schnitzler’s study on the role of class warfare and anti-Semitism during the decline of turn-of-the century Vienna. So-called secondary characters provide a rich range of responses to the poisonous atmosphere around them. The metaphor of George and Anna’s stillborn child feels heavy-handed, yet it still works (think of Tolstoy’s use of the thistle in Hadji Murad for a similar example). My final quibble with Schorske: I’m not sure Schnitzler was “aspiring to tragedy”. Rather he seems more intent on documenting the social disintegration of Vienna and its impact, psychological and political as well as societal. Highly recommended.

The Road to the Open: grotesque and repulsive peculiarities

Even though I’ve only been able to read through Chapter 4 of The Road to the Open by Arthur Schnitzler I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Schnitzler paints a complex and conflicted portrait of fin-de-siècle Vienna. People defer to the main character, George von Wergenthin-Recco, because of his title yet he feels out of place in either aristocratic or bourgeois social circles. He had originally studied law but when his father allowed him to pursue general studies George worked on a musical career. “Worked” may not be the right word. Despite showing great promise, George is a dilettante, rarely finishing anything he begins. That flightiness carries over into his personal life. He is unable to commit to anyone or anything. His happiness when with his lover is replaced by his happiness in being alone the second he leaves her. He feels he leads a double life in his affair with Anna, the lower-middle class woman he gets pregnant. The responsibility of fatherhood sounds “oppressive, almost sinister” to him.

The actual oppression comes from the anti-Semitism on display by many characters as Schnitzler presents a complex and multifaceted picture of the toxic atmosphere. Jewish characters face many questions on assimilation and identity. Summing up how many Jewish characters feel, especially in the younger generations, is Nürnberger: “I’m not baptized,” replied Nürnberger quietly. “But on the other hand I am certainly not a Jew either. I’ve ceased to belong to the congregation for a long time, for the simple reason that I never felt myself to be a Jew.” At the other extreme lies a burgeoning Zionist movement, yet few people can agree on what their goals should be. Many in the older generation feel homesickness for a land they haven’t seen but they identify with it much more than the younger generation (in general). Heinrich Bermann, one of George’s friends, proves to be abrasive but more insightful than most characters. He expounds on part of the problem as he sees it:

“But I will not deny that I am particularly sensitive to the faults of Jews. Probably the only reason is that I, like all others—we Jews, I mean—have been systematically educated up to this sensitiveness. We have been egged on from our youth to look upon Jewish peculiarities as particularly grotesque or repulsive, though we have not been so with regard to the equally grotesque and repulsive peculiarities of other people. I will not disguise it—if a Jew shows bad form in my presence, or behaves in a ridiculous manner, I have often so painful a sensation that I should like to sink into the earth. … One gets embittered at being always made responsible for other people’s faults, and always being made to pay the penalty for every crime, for every lapse from good taste, for every indiscretion for which every Jew is responsible throughout the whole world.”

Heinrich goes into detail on the Jews he really hates, those “who try to offer themselves to their enemies and despisers in the most cowardly and cringing fashion, and think that in that way they can escape from the eternal curse whose burden is upon them, or from what they feel is equivalent to a curse.” There is so much more and I realize I’m barely scratching the surface on the dysfunctional society Schnitzler presents. Schnitzler also prepares the groundwork to delve into generational conflict and poisonous politics, preventing any possibility of normal relations in Vienna at this time. But that will have to wait for another post…

(All quotes from the translation by Horace Samuel)

The Road to the Open: my art is mediocre and so is my character

I just finished the first chapter of Arthur Schnitzler’s The Road to the Open and I’m enjoying the immersion into the world of early 1900s Vienna. "Enjoy" might not be the right word, though, since the world he describes can be a brutal place, especially for Jews. Anti-Semitism permeates society, as one character adroitly decries “those people who gorge themselves sick at Jewish houses and then start slanging the Jews as soon as they get on the door-steps. They ought to be able to wait till they got to the café.” (All quotes are from the Horace Samuel translation.) Another character resigns his political seat for the abuse he receives for inquiring into questionable official actions (“Be quiet, Jew!” “Hold your jaw, Jew!”). The breaking point for him, though, was when those shouting insults expected him to be friends away from the floor of parliament. He doesn’t take the insults personally, realizing the society’s “indignation is as little genuine as our enthusiasm. The only things genuine with us are our malice and our hate of talent.”

The main character, George von Wergenthin-Recco, displays melancholy and ennui, partially because his father died a few months earlier. But it’s clear that those characteristics are part of his normal state. The first chapter takes place in one afternoon and evening as George wanders, unfocused, around the city. “A feeling of the dreamlike and purposeless character of existence came over him,” a state that seems to characterize him in more than just the one setting. At one point he comes to the conclusion that “his life was slipping away from him on the whole in far too quiet and monotonous a fashion.” George enjoys a reputation as a composer although he admits he hasn’t worked on anything in six months.

At the end of the chapter George is shocked that he “had enjoyed the whole day with such full gusto, without any painful memories of the beloved man who now lay beneath the ground.” Much of his day involved reflections on earlier times, both with friends and family, and it would be difficult to say that they brought him any pleasure, either. So far, George just *is*, an object for others to do with as they please. One acquaintance George runs into accurately sums up the people seen around him so far: “My so-called art in particular is more or less mediocre, and a good deal too could be said against my character.” We’ll see where these mediocrities and Vienna’s poisonous atmosphere lead George…

The Road to the Open: fin-de-siècle Vienna

I’m not sure what my posting schedule will be like the next few weeks. Work is going to take most of my time and I’ll be travelling with the family when I can, so posting will be hit or miss depending on time and access. I enjoy writing about what I read because it makes me think twice (or more) about the book, giving me a chance to articulate what I just experienced.

In addition to the ancient texts I’m currently reading, I wanted to work in some time for turn-of-the-(20th)century Austrian works. To start things I began reading The Road to the Open by Arthur Schnitzler (translation by Horace Samuel). I’m only a few pages into the work but I can see much of the framework defined by Carl E. Schorske in his notable book Fin-de-siècle Vienna. A few quotes from Schorske to help provide structure for Schnitzler and for other books in this setting:

Two basic social facts distinguish the Austrian from the French and English bourgeoisie: it did not succeed either in destroying or in fully fusing with the aristocracy; and because of its weakness, it remained both dependent upon and deeply loyal to the emperor as a remote but necessary father-protector. The failure to acquire a monopoly of power left the bourgeois always something of an outsider, seeking integration with the aristocracy. The numerous and prosperous Jewish element in Vienna, with its strong assimilationist thrust, only strengthened this trend. … The traditional culture of the Austrian aristocracy was far removed from the legalistic, puritanical culture of both bourgeois and Jew. Profoundly Catholic, it was a sensuous, plastic culture. … If the Viennese burghers had begun by supporting the temple of art as a surrogate form of assimilation into the aristocracy, they ended by finding it in an escape, a refuge from the unpleasant world of increasingly threatening political reality.

Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Vintage, 1981), p. 7-8.

I’m only half-way through Schnitzler's first chapter and Schorske’s description of the era encapsulates the world I’ve seen in the novel so far. I realize I’ve shortchanged Schorske’s description, but I’d have to quote the entire chapter to do it justice. Both Schnitzler and Schorske will be covered as I read the book and both are highly recommended.