Desire and Delusion: Three Novellas [Hardcover]

Arthur Schnitzler (Author), Schaefer Margret (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 2003

"Life," Arthur Schnitzler famously said, "is what happens between love and death." This second collection of Schnitzler's prose fiction follows on Night Games, Margret Schaefer's earlier translation of the Viennese writer's tales, which won acclaim in the New Yorker and among critics generally. In Desire and Delusion, Ms. Schaefer has translated three of Schnitzler's greatest novellas—Dying, Flight into Darkness, and Fräulein Else. They reveal the depths of his psychological and moral understanding of life as well as the masterful storytelling techniques that immerse the reader into the very center of his characters' thoughts and emotions. Acknowledged masterpieces all, these novellas span Schnitzler's entire career from 1895 to 1931. They testify to his stature as depth psychologist, a doctor-writer fascinated by illness and very much at home in what Susan Sontag has called "the country of the sick." In all these novellas, Schnitzler uses point of view, interior monologue, and stream of consciousness in a radically modern way reminiscent of Joyce and Proust, only earlier.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The tales of Arthur Schnitzler—especially as rendered in Margret Schaefer's clear, uncluttered translations—are many suggestive, allusive, and dreamlike things. But they are most certainly not the work of a period writer. (Chris Lehmann Washington Post Book World )

This extraordinary portrayal of psychic shock and disintegration is, simply, one of the greatest modern short novels. (Kirkus Reviews )

In Margret Schaefer's superb translations Arthur Schnitzler re-emerges as a riveting storyteller. (Sandra M. Gilbert )

These three dark novellas show Schnitzler's mastery as a guide to the neurotic, death-obsessed world of fin-de-siècle Vienna. (Robert Alter )

Schnitzler and Schaefer–a perfect marriage, made in Vienna. (Frederick Crews )

One reads the stories with suspense, pleasure, amusement.... [Schnitzler] can be read with pleasure and ease. (New York Times Book Review )

She is readable, relaxed and on the whole the best guide for English readers to the nondramatic works of the man whom Freud admired and held in awe as his literary doppelganger. (Peter Heinegg America )

Translator Margret Schaefer [offers a] concise and informative introduction.... Schnitzler's characters—abrim with sensibility, but devoid of common sense—seem so contemporary. (New Haven Register )

Beautifully translated. Each novella offers rich examples of the darkly introspective and self-destructive stream of consciousness Schnitzler employed. (E. Wickersham Choice )

Clear and accessible versions of these haunting, riveting stories. (Toronto Globe and Mail )

About the Author

Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931), Austrian physician, dramatist, and novelist, was among the most sophisticated writers of his time. Margret Schaefer, who has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois, Chicago, has written on Wilde, von Kleist, and Kafka as well as on the history of psychoanalysis and psychology. She lives in Berkeley, California. Her translation of Arthur Schnitzler's Night Games won the 2002 Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award for a book of translations published by a Northern California author.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (September 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156663542X
• ISBN-13: 978-1566635424
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,129,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Darker Schnitzler, January 20, 2004

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Desire and Delusion: Three Novellas (Hardcover)

Until recently Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was known outside German-speaking countries primarily for his cycle of one-act plays, 'Reigen,' often called--even in English translation--'La Ronde' because of the deservedly famous movie version of that name by Max Ophuls. More recently though, his name has occasionally been heard because another of his works, 'Traumnovelle,' ('Dream Novella') served as a basis for Stanley Kubrick's last film, 'Eyes Wide Shut.' In this book we have three novellas in sparkling translations by Schnitzler scholar, Margret Schaefer, who had earlier translated several of the shorter stories (including 'Traumnovelle') in a volume called "Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas." Her translations are vernacular and swift.

Schnitzler came of age in the Vienna of the period christened memorably by Frederic Morton 'A Nervous Splendor.' This was the fin-de-siè'cle Vienna in the waning days of its glory and power, a city consumed by social ritual, death, art, gossip. It was the city of Mahler, Freud, Klimt, and the tragic murder-suicide of Crown Price Rudolf and his mistress, Mary Vetsera, at Mayerling. The three novellas here--'Flight into Darkness,' 'Dying,' and 'Fräu'lein Else'--are very much concerned with those subjects that consumed the city. Indeed, they are very much darker than the rather more light-heartedly sophisticated, even frivolous (if sometimes ominous) subjects of 'Reigen' or 'Anatol' or 'Flirtation.'

A brief comment about each of the three novellas (without giving too much away):

'Flight into Darkness' describes the gradual and never straight-line psychological disintegration of its protagonist, Robert. It is said that Schnitzler himself served as model for his hero although he certainly was never clinically insane. Still, he had an obsessive nature and a tendency towards jealousy and paranoia. Stylistically, the novella, which took Schnitzler over two decades to put the finishing touches to, has an omniscient narrator privy to Robert's sometimes reeling ruminations.

'Dying' is about a man who may or may not be dying; we're never quite sure and that's part of the fascination. There are elements that remind one of Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress, but it is not quite THAT story. Ms Schaefer comments that its applicability to our present day concern over AIDS is entirely apt, although Felix's illness is never specified.

'Fräulein Else' is remarkable in that it is a full-fledged example of stream-of-consciousness, the inner life of a 19-year-old girl, in writing that is entirely convincing and manages to be charming, amusing, shocking all at the same time. Ms Schaefer, in her excellent foreword, makes the claim that Schnitzler's stream-of-consciousness technique antedates that of Joyce or Woolf since it was first used in his earlier story, 'Lieutenant Gustl,' published in 1900.

This collection makes a strong case for Schnitzler as a writer who understands the human psyche as well as most later writers, and better than any of his contemporaries except Freud who, of course, was not a writer of fiction (most people would say). His ability to conjure up the physical environs and social milieu of Vienna is near unmatched. These are engrossing and disturbing stories leavened with wit--after all it was Schnitzler who said 'The way of wisdom is to take everything seriously, but nothing too seriously'--and informed by perspicacity.

Scott Morrison