A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 [Mass Market Paperback]

Frederic Morton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1997

From the preface: This book lifts a chunk out of the life of Vienna, July 1888 to April 1889. A limited span -- but to write any history is to put limits on infinity. It seemed tome that by focusing on a brief time I might expose more of its depth, its details, its dailiness. In this dailiness I've looked for the city's pulse, small flutters no less than great poundings. I've tried to trace local tremors that began along a curve of the Danube, then echoed across the world to come thundering down into our century.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014005667X
• ISBN-13: 978-0140056679
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > History > Europe > Hungary
  • #11 in Books > History > Europe > Austria
  • #80 in Books > History > Europe > Western

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A slice of life, a foreshadowing of death., March 29, 2001

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 (Mass Market Paperback)

Concentrating on just ten months of Viennese history between July, 1888, and May, 1889, Morton dissects the life of Vienna vertically, revealing its brilliance and its contrasts--its magnificence but ineffable sadness, its political gamesmanship but resistance to social change, its "correctness" of behavior but its anti-Semitism, and its patronage of the arts and sciences but its refusal to acknowledge true originality. He carefully selects details with which the modern reader can identify to create a full picture, both of the historical characters and the constricted settings in which they try to live and breathe.

Focusing on Crown Prince Rudolf as romantic hero, liberal thinker, and sensitive social reformer, Morton selects details which show Rudolf's resentment of his figurehead position, his lack of power to effect change, and his fears for the future of the monarchy. He is presented as a modern man trying to live within a fusty and stultifying environment. Also chafing against limitations on their creativity are artist Gustave Klimt, writers Arthur Schnitzler and Theodor Herzl, musicians Arnold Schonberg, Gustav Mahler, and Anton Bruckner, and psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund Freud, whose detailed stories of frustration run parallel with that of the Crown Prince and enhance it. Only Baroness Mary Vetsera, age 17 and full of life, is able to escape the bonds of Viennese "correctness," attracting Rudolf, having a brief affair with him, and eventually succumbing with him in a suicide pact at Mayerling.

Morton's scholarship and care for detail are obvious throughout, but he goes far beyond most other historians in his ability to involve the reader and make him empathize with the long-dead people in his book. In his hands the events at Mayerling become understandable--though no less sad. One can only wonder how history might have changed if Rudolf had been a partner with his father, Emperor Franz Joseph, rather than a powerless figurehead. Mary Whipple

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The birth of "angst", April 14, 2001

By 

Peter S. Roland (Irving, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 (Mass Market Paperback)

Morton finds the earliest cultural roots of twentieth century "angst" in early Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. He transects a single 9 month period which offers a cross sectional view of the nascent stems of an organism which will grow into liberalism & communism and which will leaf out as the artistic "revolutions" of german expressionim, atonal music (the "second" Vienesse school), the architectural theories of Loos and the Bauhaus, the theater of Beckett & Brecht, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein and Mach.

Morton focuses his analysis around the death by suicide pact of Kronprinz Rudolph, heir to the Hapsburg empire. The event is intrinsically intriging; Rudolph's suicide and it's aftermath cover an emotional landscape that ranges from the tragic to the bizarre and goulish.

Vignettes in the life of important cultural figures, including Freud, Herzl, Klimt, Brahms, Bruckner, Schnitzler and Mahler, dramatize the trend toward the dissolution of conservatism and the collapse of upper classs domination.

A NERVOUS SPLENDOR is entertaining, informative and well written. Morton's style of writting is sophisticated, elegant and, yet, in a sense that is hard to define, unusual and piquant.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, gossipy cultural history, January 22, 2001

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 (Mass Market Paperback)

This is an extremely readable and enjoyable account of one of the most portentous years in Austrian history: its central story concerns the murder/suicide of the Crown Prince Rudolf and Mary Vetsera at the prince's Mayerling hunting lodge, while orbiting around this are mini-narratives concerning Freud, Klimt, Herzl, Schnitzler, Bruckner, etc.

This is highly recommended for people who have enjoyed similar works such as Roger Shattuck's THE BANQUET YEARS. While Morton's narrative genuinely suffers from the perfect 20/20 hindsight take on history (not only, in his account, is the Empire doomed, but even the Emperor knows at the back of his mind that the Empire is doomed, which seems highly unlikely), and his overwillingness to tell us exactly what famous people were thinking at given moments (when there is no way he could know), the book is informative, exciting, and intelligent.