The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/Much Ado About Nothing
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
The Shepherd's Pipe. By Arthur Schnitzler. 16mo. 169 pages. Nicholas L. Brown. $1.50.
THE ordinary observer is a phrase ill-favoured in most eyes, because people have linked the essentially revolting trio; ordinary, common, and vulgar in an overwhelming slur. The ordinary observer is not always the ultimate criterion of all creative effort. There are works of cabalistic appeal to which the ordinary observer can never do justice, but they are, by their very nature, eternally esoteric, and sleep well on library shelves. The ordinary observer is an intelligent, decently educated person who demands that a book exhibit some excuse for his reading it.
The ordinary observer is perhaps faintly at a loss in regard to Arthur Schnitzler. He has the cabalistic appeal; he cannot be classified, being a little of everything from realist to symbolist to romanticist. He lies thwart the canons of the schools, helping himself impartially. Now the ordinary observer knows that it is a serious mistake to suppose that rules are hampering things. Even Boileau, who was very near being hampered by them, knew better, and proposed that hypothesis more important than all his alexandrines; rules are a short cut to excellence. Arthur Schnitzler happens to be one of those people who attain excellence inevitably, and short cuts do not interest him. The ordinary observer realizes that, but he realizes just as acutely that Schnitzler’s work has flaws, brutal and exasperating flaws. A quotation from The Shepherd's Pipe indicates their nature:
"Suddenly melodious sounds became disengaged from the silence of the valley which lay gray in the dawn. Dionysia opened her eyes and listened, her expression which had been relaxed in despairing weariness assumed new life. Erasmus noticed it, and immediately released Dionysia from his embrace.
"'Do you recognise the sound that is rising to us?' he asked, 'They are the notes of a shepherd's pipe. And see, without wishing to confess it to yourself and without being really quite aware of it, curiosity stirs you who a moment ago sought death, to discover whose lips touch the pipe from which those sounds rise. . . .'"
There is no co-operation between the writer and his characters. The second paragraph is distressing in its expatiation; the reader knows what Erasmus tells Dionysia before he tells it; he is a martyr to a curious sort of reality (for it is undeniably reality) a vividness of such sort as to defy analysis even as it defys synthesis. That much may be said in defence of one who needs no defence. It is his privilege to indulge in the obvious, and his power is unimpaired by weakness which would well-nigh wreck another writer.
Keen wit, linked to this indescribable and inimitable gift, can well save Schnitzler. His stories are not good; the disjointed and rather clumsily contrived wanderings of Dionysia, the trivially incidental tale of The Murderer, the petty affair of the blind brother, are neither clever nor compelling. Oddly enough, it takes a good deal of thought to realize this. They are written in such a way that they become tremendously important. Dionysia as the symbol of Woman—she is highly Viennese in her capacity for adultery—is conducted through assorted aspects of life with a cleverness which actually fascinates; it is the sort of amazing skill which one is conscious of in a marksman who can spin quarters with one hand and put revolver bullets into them with the other, it is hopelessly inimitable. The ordinary observer cannot escape a reverent admiration for Schnitzler.
Chiefly it is his absolute command of the art of making reality which places him surely in the ambiguous class called geniuses. That is no matter of voluminous and insanely accurate note books of a Goncourt; it results only in truth to life, a not over interesting thing in many cases. Schnitzler's characters are not copies of actual types, they are actual types. Alfred in The Murderer is nothing more than an amazingly intricate psychological study; he doesn't exist. But Schnitzler creates him much in the manner of God creating Adam; he breathes on the dust. It does not at all matter that Alfred is an impossible character in trivial circumstances; he is made not only possible, but probable and even necessary, and what he does becomes of the highest importance, all by a mere act of arbitrary creation on the author's part. This is very difficult to explain if it can be explained at all; it doesn't happen once in a hundred years of writing; there are no terms to cover it and it is realizable only in the reading. It is enough to make the ordinary observer correctly sceptical, even as he will be blindingly convinced, and the critic is in a fair way to become a salesman.
Unfortunately there can be no money back guarantee. The editor in his introduction points out the fact that Schnitzler's philosophy is not pleasant, all the more not pleasant because he can endow what he chooses to create with a crushing convincingness. There is a monotone of pessimism which pervades his work and which will prevent it from capturing a large audience. Like the traveller in the story of The Blind Geronimo, life appears unexplained, inexplicable, precipitating tragedy with flawless nonchalance. The ordinary observer, who will be filled with a holy joy by the sheer niceness and powerful excellence of The Blind Geronimo, will be at the same time reluctant to accept the dejecting doctrine which is Schnitzler's offering to later reflection. He is intelligent enough to estimate the best of all possible worlds accurately, but he is wise enough to dislike such breath-taking emphasis on the unavoidable. He is also wise enough to know that such an impertinence as mediocre Continental philosophy cannot affect his sincere appreciation of ability which must be universally recognized. So while the ordinary observer is not going to like The Shepherd's Pipe and Other Stories as well as Casanova's Homecoming, he is going to understand the genius of Arthur Schnitzler very much better, and no one can do that without admiration.