An Annotated Arthur Schnitzler Bibliography by Richard H. Allen (review)

322 MODERN DRAMA December Expectedly, he discusses the leading playwrights and their major works. But the book is also a compendium of history, church and state politics, and fascinating information about a number of actors, actresses, stage managers, producers, etc. Here, for instance, from the River Plate, is the Podesta family: acrobats, clowns, actors, impresarios. Here is an introduction to that special genre, the gaucho theater, worthy of book-length treatment by itself. Here is Micaela Villegas, the fabulous Peruvian chola~ who inspired Offenbach, Merrimee, and Thornton Wilder. The unavoidable tedium of many names and dates is often relieved by the author's wit. For example, the Bolivian playwright, Ricardo Jaimes Freyre, is described appropriately as "a medieval soul with a huge moustache." And Guatemalan Miguel Angel Urrutia's later plays are called "recurrences of his ambition to become a dramatist." Even in the quarrelsome area of critical comparison and judgment, Jones has done a sensible job. Following Jose Juan Arrom, he seems to favor the works of Ram6n Sanchez Varona over those of fellow-Cubans Jose Antonio Ramos and Gustavo Sanchez Gallarroga, which will irritate some readers. Further, this reviewer would prefer more emphasis on Mexican drama, less on Argentine. But these are minor criticisms of a work that is generally fair and well-balanced. The book contains a valuable bibliography and a good reading list of plays. There is also a good index, although the type size used for it is too small. Finally, unless the reader likes brilliant orange in his library, he should preserve the dust jacket. ROBERT J. BARNES Lamar State College of Technology AN ANNOTATED AR.THUR SCHNITZLER. BIBLIOGRAPHY, by Richard H. Allen, University of North Carolina Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures No. 56, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1966, 151 pp. Price $5.50. Richard Allen's Arthur Schnitzler bibliography is the latest proof of the imposing scholarship devoted to the Austrian dramatist and novelist in this country during the last two decades. While it is probably true that the average American student of the theater remembers Schnitzler only as the frivolous author of a few impressionistic dialogues under the name of Anatol or of some erotic sketches on which the French film La Ronde was based, a serious reappraisal of Schnitzler's stature by American professors of German literature has been under way for some time. Of the thirty six dissertations that have been completed about him so far, only eight were written in his native Austria, whereas sixteen originated in American and Canadian universities. An "International Arthur Schnitzler Research Association " was founded in 1961 during the annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference at Kentucky. It published a volume of Studies in Arthur Schnitzler in 1963, and this new first complete bibliography by Professor Allen has also been aided by the IASRA. Whatever the reasons for the meagerness of German and Austrian scholarshipone sadly suspects that the author's Jewishness has something to do with it-, American and emigre professors of German have prepared the way for an overdue revaluation of a literary artist whose "interior monologue" precedes Joyce's more daring technique by more than two decades and whose exploration of sex on the stage makes him one of the pioneers of modern theatrical history. The full image of Schnitzler will not emerge until his drafts, letters, and posthumous 1967 BOOK REVIEWS 323 works (so far unpublished) will have become accessible. However, there is enough now at hand to direct new attention to one of the early urban prose writers and stage practitioners of depth psychology who intuitively probed what his fellow Viennese, Freud, researched analytically. Professor Allen's bibliography will be a welcome tool. Clearly and practically organized, it lists all of Schnitzler's writings and the major secondary literature about him through 1965 in German, English, and French. It is as complete as can be expected with the resources of American library facilities and the assistance of European correspondents. It is not fully annotated but, whenever Allen makes capsule judgments, they are helpful and to the point. The major value of this admirable bibliography lies in its intelligent organization. It should be a boost to future...