That the play was condemned as ‘pornographic’ by the cultural reactionaries of early twentieth-century Austria and Germany tells us something about those societies, but very little about the work itself. There was undoubtedly a particular fascination in late nineteenth-century culture in Vienna (as elsewhere) with sexuality and ideas of deviancy and perversity – from the fetishist fantasies of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1905) in his novel Venus in Furs (1869), through the Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) of Richard Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), to the ground-breaking work of Freud himself on infantile sexuality. But the charge of pornography does not stick to La Ronde. The play is distinctly anti-erotic – dealing, as it does, with the halting runups to and the deflated comings-down from actual sex. Indeed, theatrical tradition has been to lower the curtain or have a blackout during the passages indicated by a row of dots.

La Ronde: the Struggle for Acceptance

Few plays have caused as much controversy as La Ronde, and the story of its struggle for acceptance is worth recounting.

Schnitzler wrote the play in the winter of 1896-7; two days after finishing it, he commented in a letter that ‘it is quite unprintable, of not much literary importance, but, dug up after a few hundred years, might throw unique light on part of our culture’. He sent the manuscript to the Berlin theatre critic Alfred Kerr, who cautiously advised him to publish but to replace the original title, Ein Liebesreigen (‘A Round Dance of Love’), with the simpler Reigen (‘Round Dance’). Schnitzler’s usual publisher, the distinguished Berlin house of S. Fischer Verlag, declined the work, fearing repercussions. In 1900 Schnitzler had it privately printed, distributing 200 copies among friends and colleagues with a clear indication that it was not to be performed. The play finally received commercial publication (with a few amendments) on 2 April 1903 by Wiener Verlag; the edition sold 40,000 copies.

Despite popular acclaim, most critics expressed disapproval (‘nothing but filth’, said the Neue Bahnen), some dismissing the work as pornography. The right-wing press was predictably hostile, adding anti-Semitic insult to injury. Disregarding Schnitzler’s insistence that La Ronde should not be performed, the drama society of Munich University presented three of the dialogues (the fifth, sixth and seventh) in Munich on 25 June 1903. The production was well attended and politely received; the press reaction was, once again, almost entirely negative, one critic dismissing it as ‘hostile to culture’. This prompted further widespread commentary, largely from journalists and politicians who had not seen the performance. The university was eventually forced to take action and closed down the drama society.

A public reading of the play in Vienna was announced for 8 November 1903, which the authorities promptly banned; a literary society in Breslau (now Wrocław) held a reading later that month. In March 1904, the Berlin public prosecutor had copies of the book confiscated, and in September two booksellers offering it were prosecuted for selling pornography. They were acquitted, but further sales in Germany were banned. Private readings were given in Berlin in 1905 and 1909.