Cover

Title page

DRAMA CLASSICS

LA RONDE

by

Arthur Schnitzler

translated and introduced by
Stephen Unwin and Peter Zombory-Moldovan

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

Introduction

Introduction

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931)

Arthur Schnitzler was born in Vienna on 15 May 1862, the eldest child of Louise and Professor Johann Schnitzler, a distinguished laryngologist. His maternal grandfather, Philip Markbreiter, had also been a doctor, and Arthur was expected to follow in their footsteps. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and served as an army medical officer for a year. He took up a junior clinical post at the Vienna General Hospital and edited a medical journal founded by his father.

His interest in medicine was limited from the outset, and after his father’s death in 1893 he confined himself to private practice. He was, however, drawn to the emerging science of psychiatry and wrote a paper on speech loss and its treatment by hypnosis. His interest in Sigmund Freud’s exploration of the unconscious mind also informs much of his literary work.

With anti-Semitism on the rise in Vienna from the 1880s, Schnitzler – who dismissed all religion as dogma – was never allowed to forget his Jewish ancestry. His circle of friends included many of the great literary figures of the day. He corresponded with Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Brandes and Hugo von Hofmannstahl, among many others. He visited London, Paris and Berlin, and called on Henrik Ibsen in Norway in 1896.

His private life was complex. He had relationships with numerous women – often at the same time – including a stormy affair with the actress Adele Sandrock. He fell in love with one of his patients, Marie Reinhard, who gave birth to their stillborn child in 1897. In 1899 he met and married the actress Olga Gussmann, with whom he had a son, Heinrich, and a daughter, Lili; they divorced in 1921. Throughout his life he kept a diary (the manuscript runs to some 8,000 pages) remarkable for its frank descriptions of his many sexual encounters; it includes, for a while, a record of every orgasm.

Schnitzler’s first major dramatic work, Anatol, a cycle of one-act plays, was completed in 1892. This was soon followed by Liebelei (sometimes translated as ‘Flirtations’) in 1894 and Reigen (La Ronde) in 1897; these, along with his study of anti-Semitism, Professor Bernhardi (1912), are the plays for which he is best known. Others include The Green Cockatoo (1899), The Lonely Way (1904) and his last stage play, The Walk to the Fish Pond (1931). He also wrote prose works, including two collections of stories, The Greek Dancing Girl (1905) and Souls in Twilight (1907), as well as a number of novellas; the best known are Dying (1894), Fräulein Else (1924), Dream Story (1926), and Therese: A Chronicle of a Woman’s Life (1928). His Book of Maxims and Doubts, Aphorisms and Fragments appeared in 1927; his memoir, My Youth in Vienna, was published in 1968.