Jugend in Wien: Eine Autobiographie by Arthur Schnitzler (review)

1970 BOOK REVIEWS 101 of Morell." I am of course flattered to see that Carpenter admits that my "interpretation of the play has been highly influential" and to note that I am the only critic he discusses at length and by name in his analysis of any of his ten plays. But I still stick to my conclusions that Shaw's own definitions and comments justify classifying Candida as a Shavian Philistine, Morell as a Shavian idealist, and Marchbanks as a Shavian idealist who in the course of the play becomes a Shavian realist in his attitude toward Candida, Morell, and marriage. Perhaps Mr. Carpenter has a little of the Shavian idealist in himself! I should also like to call his attention to the fact that although my own feelings toward Charteris in The Philanderer are much like his own ambivalent ones, Shaw himself did not share them, since not only did he obviously write much of himself into the character, but he also defended Charteris against Archibald Henderson's attack. by saying vehemently, "Charteris is not passionless, not unscrupulous, and a sincere, not a pseudo, Ibsenist." I also find it a little hard to accept Lady Cicely Wayneftete in Captain Brassbound's Conversion as fitting into Carpenter's third category of "Humanizations of Heroic Types of Drama" or to bracket her with Julius Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra as "impressive thinkers" who use thought "to discover practical means of fulfilling the will." (p. 32) She has none of Caesar's essential, self-admitted selfishness, practicality, intellect, or awareness of the truth of many human motives, but is purely emotional and intuitive. It is impossible to make her into a "heroic type" who would belong with Caesar, Napoleon, and Dick. Dudgeon. She is, as I have classified her in my book, a Philistine of the "mother woman" type. Carpenter is right in asserting that "characters who voice ideal points of view, situations that show ideals punctured by facts, and arguments that reduce ideals to absurdity . . . occur less frequently and centrally" in Shaw's later plays, but Shaw's concern with his three basic types-idealist, realist, and Philistine -persisted until the end of his life. It did not turn up later only in The Doctor's Dilemma and The Millionairess, where its presence is admitted by Carpenter , but also bulks large in Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah, Too True to Be Good, Geneva, and many others. These things, I think, are more than mere matters of opinion, but it is nevertheless through a conflict of opinions, as through a conflict of ideals, that we eventually come nearer the truth, even though we may sometimes share Pontius Pilate's wonder as to whether we can really discover it. ARTHUR H. NETHERCOT Northwestern University lUGEND IN WIEN: EINE AUTOBIOGRAPHIE, by Arthur Schnitzler. Vienna: Verlag Fritz Molden, 1968. I believe that I should begin by a recital of the highly tenuous claim I may have to discuss Arthur Schnitzler. I was probably no more than twelve years old, growing up in Vienna. A lady visitor to our house asked me to take an envelope to a nearby address. I was told to ring the doorbell and leave the papers for Dr. Schnitzler. The house was set in a well kept garden fenced off from the street by decorative ironwork. I followed my instructions and rang; a buzzer sounded and the gate leading into the garden yielded to my push. An imposing old man stood in the doorway and waved me in. I remember distinctly that I stared at his beard; in my family, only Great-grandfather had a beard and he was over ninety and sort of odd. 102 MODERN DRAMA May It was over two hours later before I returned home. Where had I been all this time? Arthur Schnitzler had spent all this time talking to a twelve-year old? A likely story. But a week later our lady visitor returned: she had seen Schnitzler (she was working on a French translation of some of his works) and he had volunteered that he had enjoyed his visit with the boy she had sent over. What was...