| Since I seem to be
the only person who owns a copy, here is a
summary of Traumnovelle, a
1925 novel by Arthur
Schnitzler. It may not be completely precise,
because I wrote the summary in English after
reading it in German, and my German is not as
good as it should be for this task. (Any corrections of my
translation would be welcome)
Schnitzler is a
turn-of-the-century (1862-1931) Viennese author,
possibly best known in his own time as a
playwright, although he also wrote many prose
works and a comprehensive diary. Traumnovelle is
one of his later works, and it takes place in
Vienna in the time of horse-drawn carriages and
gaslight.
=====
Fridolin was a
successful 35 year old physician, with a wife
(Albertina) and a six year old daughter. One
night he and his wife attended a masquerade ball.
No sooner had they entered the ball than Fridolin
was greeted and whisked away by two women
costumed as red dominoes. They completely
absorbed his attention and invited him up to
their box, but then as suddenly as they had
appeared, they abandoned him in the box.
Returning to the ballroom, Fridolin was greeted
by his wife, who had been in the company of a
mysterious Polish stranger whose easy charm had
at first fascinated her until he had frightened
her with an impertinent suggestion.
The talked about their
experiences, and confessed themselves glad to
have escaped from what was obviously a typical
masquerade prank. Glowing in enjoyment of each
other, they ate and drank too much and hurried
home to make the most ardent and blissful love
they had made in a long time.
The next night, they
discussed their experience, and this led to an
argument. First there was some light teasing
about the previous night, in which each of them
exaggerated the charm of the previous night's
flirtation, denied any jealousy, and made fun of
the obvious jealousy and denials of the other.
Their irritation with the other's lack of candor
led to a deeper discussion of the hidden wishes
inside every soul, and the temptations which
affect everyone. Each realized that the others'
susceptibility to the seductions of the previous
night implied that more could have happened under
slightly different circumstances, or perhaps had
happened in the past. They probed each other for
confessions, and each produced one.
Albertina confessed to
an obsession with a Danish sailor they had
spotted while on holiday on the Danish seashore.
Although she had never acted on the fantasy, her
attraction was so strong that she considered
going up to the stranger and offering herself to
him, irrespective of the impact on her marriage.
When she discovered that he had left the resort,
she was both crushed and relieved.
Fridolin confessed that
he had watched a young girl on the shore, that
she had noticed him and smiled, that he had
actually reached out to her, mistaking her smile
for an invitation, but that she had waved him
away. He never saw the girl again, yet when
trapped in her glance, Fridolin had felt an
emotion so intense that he had nearly fainted.
Albertina then
remembered Fridolin's experiences before he had
met her, and confessed that she had been a virgin
on her marriage bed only because a certain young
man had never asked when she was willing. As it
turns out, that man was Fridolin, but he is upset
because it might just as easily have occurred with
another man on another summer night.
Their discussion was
interrupted by a medical emergency. The Privy
Councilor had a very serious heart attack, and
Doctor Fridolin had been summoned. When he arrived,
however, his patient had already died, and he
found himself alone with the patient's daughter.
In the process of consoling the patient's
daughter, he became very bored and uncomfortable
and wished for someone else to arrive. Suddenly,
the girl fell to the ground and kissed his feet,
then threw herself sobbingly into his arms
confessing not grief for her father, but love for Fridolin. This represented a betrayal of the man
she was about to marry. Fridolin was repelled by
the faithlessness, which reminded him of his own
wife's potential for betrayal, and rather
repelled by her unwashed hair and "unaired
dress", as well as the presence and smell of
death. He took his leave as soon as he could,
slowed only by his legal responsibility to fill
out the death certificate.
He resolved to stop at a
cafe before returning home. As he walked through
the pleasant night, lost in his thoughts of his
wife and the past, he found himself following a
teenaged streetwalker to her quarters, attracted
by her girlish innocence. She could see that he
did not really desire her, so withdrew her
affections even when he feigned interest. She
hinted that he was right to be afraid of sex with
her, but did not specify why. He treated her with
great respect, and made a note of her address,
intending to send by some small gifts the next
day. He thought of the word "afraid",
which the prostitute had used, and the fact hat
he had also backed down from the challenge of a
drunken student in the streets. Was he now a fearful man?
He found himself
wandering still farther from his home, as he
became psychologically distanced from his
everyday life. Instead of going home, he
continued his adventure in a third-rate cafe in a
dubious part of town, where he encountered an old
medical school colleague who was currently
working as a coffeehouse pianist. This medical
school dropout, Nachtigall (Nightengale), spun a
strange story of his current musical career, the
strangest part of which involved playing the
piano blindfolded at a secret society ritual
filled with masked costumed men and masked naked
women, and for which he required a secret address
and a password, both of which changed each time,
and which did not arrive until the last minute.
(Nachtigall knew about the activities because
with his head lowered to the keyboard, he could
peek through the top of the blindfold into a
mirror next to the piano.) Fridolin asked if he
could go, but Nachtigall replied that to do so
would require great courage. This seemed to stir
in Fridolin a need to prove that he was not
afraid. Although he had no costume, and
Nachtigall had not yet received that day's
address and password, Fridolin resolved to
attend, and set a rendezvous with Nachtigall to
pick up the secret information.
The owner of the nearby
costume shop was not at all surprised by a knock
on his door at one in the morning, and managed to
summon an appropriate monk's costume, although the transaction
was interrupted by some shenanigans from his underage daughter
dressed as Pierrette and a couple of French men
dressed as judges. The costumer resolved to call
the police when he discovered this hanky-panky,
and sent his daughter to bed for later
punishment. Strangely, the daughter hid behind
Fridolin, as if she needed his protection, and
could trust the stranger more than her father.
She cast sexual glances at Fridolin as well.
Fearing that the girl was in serious trouble of
some kind, Fridolin offered the costumer his help
as a physician, an offer met with some derision.
Fridolin and Nachtigall
met. Mysteriously enough, the password was
"Denmark", but Nachtigall had no
address, only the coach (a hearse) sent for him,
so Fridolin had to hail his own carriage to
follow the mourning-wagon. His thoughts during
the ride strayed to the events of the night, and
he resolved that he must not turn back from his
adventure, even if it meant death.
When he gained
admittance into the party, he beheld a room full
of masked monks and nuns, and filled with somber
and ponderous church music, and he sensed that
they already knew he was an outsider. A woman's
voice from behind him said "leave while you
still have a chance to get away", but he
resolved to stay. As the ceremony progressed,
the nuns shed their habits, except for masks and
veils. As the ceremony progressed still further,
all the monks disappeared, and returned dressed
in gaily colored knight's clothing and began
dancing with the naked women. Fridolin was
trapped because he was still clothed as a monk.
He was temporarily saved because the woman who
tried to help him earlier had created a ruse in
the room, and had led everyone to believe
Fridolin was one of their acquaintances playing a
trick on them. She again begged him to leave, but
this time the sight of her nakedness had inflamed
his passion beyond the point of return. He was
resolved to have her, no matter the cost. He
reached for her veil, but she drew back in
terror, telling him that a woman who was exposed
at a similar perty some weeks earlier was the very woman in the papers
who "took poison" the day before her
wedding.
The friendly woman was
whisked away to dance, and Fridolin was asked imperiously for the "second password".
Exposed as an outsider, he was told to remove his
mask and hear his punishment. He refused to
comply, and was on the verge of physical
confrontation when his mysterious angel
reappeared, dressed again as a nun, and offered
to receive the punishment in his place. He
refused to allow her to do so and insisted he was
willing to face whatever they could mete out, but
they informed him that her fate was sealed
irrespective of his actions. As she dropped her
clothing and said "take me then, all of
you", he was manhandled out of the house and
into the hearse. On the ride back he realized
that the women there had not been prostitutes,
that the other woman who had "committed
suicide" had been an Italian princess, and
that his own savior had also been of
aristocratic bearing. The windows of the hearse
were opaque, so he could not see where they were
going, and he began to panic, but the ride ended
suddenly, both doors sprung open, and he found
himself again in town. At this moment, filled
with feverish thoughts, he thought that he might
actually be in bed dreaming everything, but he
tested himself and appeared to be fully awake.
When he made his way
home, he found his wife in the midst of an
agonized dream, and awakened her. As she
recollected the dream, Fridolin realized that her
dream was more frightening to him than the
reality of the night he had just experienced. Her
dream involved first intense shame at her own
thrill upon being separated from her husband,
then intense happiness in an infidelity with the
Danish sailor and maybe many other men, and ended
with a queen insisting that Fridolin make love to
her, then crucifying him when he insisted on
staying faithful to his wife, an event which
transpired while his wife laughed. And the queen
in the dream was Albertina's conception of the
young girl on the Danish shore. Upon hearing this
dream, Fridolin was filled with rage at his wife,
whom he felt to be revealed by this dream as
faithless and cruel, and he resolved to go back
to all the sexual opportunities he had missed the
previous night - the prostitute, the masked
woman, the Councilor's daughter, the costumer's
daughter - and make love to all of them to punish
his wife. But before falling asleep, he took her
hand gently.
He resolved the next day
to pass off his medical responsibilities, and to
re-trace his steps.
He sought Nachtigall,
but discovered that he had checked out of his
hotel early that morning, accompanied by two men
in disguise, and he had left no forwarding
address although he had tried unsuccessfully to
pass a secret note to the concierge.
He returned the costume
and advised the proprietor to seek medical advice
for his daughter, which the man mistook as a
veiled sexual offering from the doctor, and to
which he surprisingly acceded. While there,
Fridolin saw the Frenchmen who had been with the
daughter the night before, and they were now
completely friendly with the costumer.
He went to the house
where the secret cabal had met, but was handed a
note at the gate which admonished him to abandon
his inquiries for his own good.
He went to visit the
Councilor's daughter, but when he got there he
ended up dealing with her in a quiet and cold
manner as if the night before had never occurred.
She was appalled by this inconsiderate behavior,
and refused his hand as he left.
He went to visit the
prostitute, and found that she had been committed
to a hospital/sanitarium for six to eight weeks,
for reasons implied to be a contagious disease,
but not specified.
He sat in a cafe reading
the paper, and read of the suicide by poison of
an unusually attractive and mysterious Baroness
in a fashionable hotel. The story related that she
had returned to her room at four the previous
morning, accompanied by two mysterious men. He
realizes that this must have been the woman from
the secret party, and that she apparently had
died for him. He made his way to the morgue, and
studied the body. "He bent over her, as if
magically attracted". He could not be sure
if it was the same woman, but whether it was or
not, she stood as a symbol of the previous night,
now dead and decaying.
Upon his return home to
Albertina, he found her in bed, and next to her
on his pillow, his mask from the previous night,
as though the mask were replacing his own face in
their bed, and symbolizing that the man in her
bed was wearing a mask when he should not. He
understood that she or the maid had found it
where he hid it, and that she had placed it there
as a gentle warning that she knew he had secrets,
and also as a statement that it was time for him
to explain, and that she was willing to listen
and forgive.
When he had confessed
everything to her, he asked "what shall we
do now?"
"I think we should
be grateful that we were not harmed by our
adventures, whether real or only a dream. The
reality of one night, nor that of a whole
lifetime, cannot be the whole truth"
"And no
dream," he responded, "is entirely a
dream."
"Now I suppose we
are awake", she said, "for a long time
to come"
And the new day began
with hope and sunshine and normal street-noises,
and the sound of their daughter laughing outside
their door.
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