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10 THE SOUTHERN ISRAEL I T E When A Great Author Dies Marginal Notes On Arthur Schnitzler s Death By MIRIAM STERNER “Arthur Schnitzler, Austria’s leading novelist, poet and dramatist, died tonight of a stroke suffered a few hours earlier. He was 69 years old. . . In thousands of newspaper offices rewrite men tapped out the item with a blank expression on their faces; compositors irritated at the late cable, set in hundreds of languages; presses turned out billions of copies with this obituary tucked away in some corner; newsboys sold it, yelling out the big head line of Laval’s visit to the United States; readers overlooked it searching for the latest stock exchange reports; street clean ers swept it—with a bored look—into the gutter; Jewish editors ordered articles on Schnitzler, the Jew. Millions of people made motions directly and indirectly be cause of the news item on “Schnitzler died’’. Worldwide fame, Final curtain. The Viennese dramatist had finished his last act. “Let’s have an article on “Schnitzler and the Jews”, shouts the managing edi tor. We face the typewriter. It would be easy to dash out the stuff. So much has been printed about the “Skeptic of Vien na”. His biography was published time and again. Who does not know that Schnitzler’s grandfather was a fine Jew ish gentleman by the name of Zimmerman? That his father was a well-known laryn gologist and university professor, Dr. Jo hann Schnitzler (he changed the Zimmer- mann to Schnitzler) ? And then after the usual opening: “Schnitzler’s death removes from the world of literature . . . blah . . . blah . . .” one could go on with Schnitz ler’s youth, his medical studies, his liter ary beginnings as a poet. In no time the space of an article would be filled. Still our sheet is blank. There is no tragic note in the cable re porting Arthur Schnitzler’s death. It is invisible—somewhere between the lines. In this country of ours Schnitzler was noth ing but a more or less successful Continen tal author. In the Europe of pre-war days he represented a literary era, a distinct chapter in the cultural or, rather, emo tional education of the intelligentsia. It will be Vienna who will mourn him most. The old Hapsburg citadel was the scene of most of his novels. Not the prole tarian quarters. The old, distinguished streets with their quiet unobtrusive houses of beautiful large rooms with heavy car pets, fine pictures and luxurious furniture. The old Vienna which lives so wistfully in Schnitzer’s works and affects you like a Schubert Lied, delighting and saddened. In the cafes of the Danube city there is a hush. Schnitzler died. The Viennese gri- settes, the Anatols, the witty flirters and whoever remains of the elegant officer era and pre-war intelligentsia will whisper it, and wipe a furtive tear away. Sentimen tal. Sure, Schnitzler belonged to the senti- Arthur Schnitzler’s death removes from the scene of world literature one of its acknowledged masters. Nobody is more qualified than Miss Sterner, resident cor- resporulent in Vienna of the Seven Arts Feature Syndicate, to write this article. An American journalist, living in the very city which Schnitzler made so famous, Miss Sterner muses on the tragedy of fame, and speculates on the chances of Schnitzler’s immortality. Miss Sterner, just now a visitor in this country, will urrite several more articles on Sidelights of Jewish life in Central Europe in the forthcoming is sues of The Southern Israelite. mental era, when young girls dreamt of love and loved dreamingly, when lieuten ants fought duels and authors took pride in the small sale of their books. Today we smile at all this. Childish, naive, Vic torian. But to those who lived their youth in the Schnitzlerian period, the Viennese author personified the transition period from the fin the siecle to the Twentieth century jazz age. But that will be in Vienna. . . . In New York, on Times Square, the elec tric news bulletin of the Times races around the old Times building and spells out in flamboyant letters: “Arthur Schnitz ler, noted Austrian poet and dramatist, died today”. Nobody cares. A young, red lipped, red-fingernailed flapper asks her escort: “Who is this Schnitzelr guy?” And the New York Anatol, quick at repartee steering her into a movie house to see the latest “it-girl” answers: “We should worry, baby, I suppose he’s the fellow who discovered the Vienna Schnitzel” . . . World-wide fame, the newspaperman wrote. The Yiddish dailies carry Schnitzler’s picture on the front page. They speak in glowing terms about the “German Jewish author”. For the last quarter of a century they have taken pride in his success and growing prestige in world literature. r I rue Schnitzler was not a Zionist. He was dis tant from any religious concepts of life. True also that he abhorred the chauvi nistic separatistic tendencies of modern Jewry, that the only reason why he spoke up as a Jew was because of his pride and courage; his sportsmanship demanded that he identify himself with a persecuted race That does not concern our Yiddish editors. He makes swell copy, even if their readers never read “Riebelei”, “Der Weg ins Freie”, “Fraeulein Else”. What of it? He was a great Jew, give him a three column head, he is good copy. Reuben Brainin, on the occasion of Ar thur Schnitzler’s sixty-ninth birthday, wrote: “Schnitzler’s is a light sort of writing, in form and in content. Dia logues : between people of elegant man ners and well-manicured ideas; between graceful and polite sentimentalists; be tween people disappointed in love but still hunting for the supreme thrill; between intellectual esthetes unfit for the hard ships of life; between women who avidly seek the perfect lover and try to escape the every-day drabness of their prosaic existence. Above the tribulations and often petty tragedies of Schnitzler’s puppets there always hung the cloud of inevitable death, which whipped them into life and yet, at the same time, paralyzed them. The thought of the end, which made them realize the futility of love and yet drove them on to find that elusive something which might cheat the Grim Reaper of a complete victory. This is the essence ot Schnitzler’s first literary decade”. And then the same literary critic adds: “But to that should be added the fine, skeptical, often ironical smile of Arthur Schnitzler, who instead of pitying his contemporaries just looks at them sadly as they struggle against their fate. A smile that makes us weep”. Here you have Schnitzler and the reason why he was so little read in this country except by those who suspected him of being a pornographist, because the Society for the Suppression of Vice had confiscated a few of his American editions. “Schnitzler”, as some Austrian patrA. expressed it, “was a combination ot a violin tune of Hebbel, a smile of Ibsen, a Vienna dream of Guy de Maupassant, the finest essence of Austrian culture. Our poet, this Austrian chauvinist ex claims passionately. And perhaps he . . . But Schnitzler, the Austrian- ' : artist was a combination of the European intellectual currents of the 19th cent > . he had the Latin grace of a Maupaus and the ruthless logic of the Nordic I [ n Was he perhaps all that because he w; rootless Jew, a cosmopolitan withm fatherland? Sometimes we think ol as a solitary man, standing silently on balcony of his (Please turn to page