Ein Abschied: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe by Arthur Schnitzler (review)

In the summer of 1895, Arthur Schnitzler, on an extended retreat in Ischl, began composing a short story that would be published six months later in the Neue Deutsche Rundschau under the title of "Ein Abschied." The work appeared three years after the publication of Anatol and shortly after his first theatrical success, Liebelei. "Ein Abschied." was an immediate success and in the following year, it appeared in the first volume of Lothar Schmidt's Meisterwerke der zeitgenössischen Novellistik. The work was also included in the first collection of the author's prose works printed under the title Die Frau des Weisen: Novelletten (1898).

Part of the Arthur Schnitzler Society's major publication series Arthur Schnitzler: Werke in historisch-kritischen Ausgaben under the editorial supervision of Konstanze Fliedl, this is the eighth of the ten volumes to date, and it shares the same high-quality, large-sized format of the series, consisting of full-size facsimiles of the original manuscript paired with a detailed transcription on the facing pages. Also included is a thoroughly researched introduction tracing the work's genesis until publication. The volumes include at the end the text of the first appearance in print, maintaining the original text page and line placement. This allows ample room on the page for footnotes indicating variations in subsequent publications within the lifetime of the author. The volumes conclude with a "Kommentar" providing definitions to foreign words, antiquated idioms, and words unique to Austrian or Viennese German. The final pages provide an explanation of the abbreviations used to indicate the various source texts, archives, and secondary sources. One of the admirable features of this historical critical series is the interconnection between the volumes. For example, in this volume, the editor, Anna Lindner, in discussing the difficulty of deciphering Schnitzer's handwriting, picks up on the discussions in other volumes about various peculiarities, such as dropping word endings or the superfluous addition of the "round s" after the "long s" for clarity's sake. Lindner also comments on the nature of the changes indicated within the manuscript, with marked-out passages and text variants added above the lines. She identifies Schnitzler's tendency to strike out specific names and details, replacing them with general descriptors. This occurs not only in the manuscript but also when comparing passages from the manuscript to the printed versions. She labels this tendency as "Entkonkretisierung."

Fascinating also for those familiar with "Ein Abschied" is the alternative ending found in a handwritten text, labeled by the editor as "Hv." This variant, assumed to be older, does not appear in any printed versions, which end the story with the protagonist, Albert, leaving the deathbed of his lover. In the printed texts, Albert meets his lover's husband at her deathbed and leaves, without revealing to the husband that he, Albert, was his wife's true love. He feels taunted by the smile on the corpse, which seems to demand an open confession from his own lips. He departs the house with a feeling that he is being driven out by his dead lover for having somehow betrayed her in his silence. The juxtaposition of the wife's betrayal of her husband through her clandestine trysts with Albert's strong feelings of betrayal over keeping the selfsame affair a secret leaves the reader pondering to what extent unexpected death changes the dynamics of human interaction and self-perception.

In "Hv," Albert considers going back in and revealing his truth, but doesn't. A pitiful creature fleeing in the rain, he heads home and then quickly packs and boards a train—traveling far enough to take a sleeping car. In the morning, as his train speeds ("lustig und rasch") through foreign territory, Albert's mood brightens, and he sees his whole life ahead of him. He considers it rare to have such an "adventure" conclude so definitively and cleanly. In his mind, he begins to separate his lover from the corpse, considering them...