[In the following essay, Swales explores elements of tragedy and comedy in Liebelei and Zwischenspiel.]

Liebelei is the nearest Schnitzler comes to writing tragedy. Here, he explicitly measures the sexual behaviour of the young man-about-town, of the Anatol figure, against the possibility of total and passionate surrender to love, and judges the young man accordingly. In this play Schnitzler takes issue with many of the moral conventions of his time. In this sense Liebelei recalls Ibsen, although it lacks the resolute social purpose of Ibsen at his most passionately critical. It must, however, not be forgotten that Schnitzler's concerns are somewhat different from those of his great Norwegian predecessor. In a play such as Pillars of the Community, Ibsen attacks the way society is run, the powers of social administration and, with them, specific concrete forms of social abuse. Schnitzler attacks above all prevailing social attitudes; he is concerned with the way people confront and formulate personal, private experience, rather than with social activities as such. He documents the extent to which personal experience is embedded in the social reality and class-structure of his time. Schnitzler's characters inhabit a different world from Ibsen's. Where Ibsen is concerned with the stifling, self-righteous world of the small provincial town, Schnitzler is concerned with a capital city which in its sophistication would repudiate self-righteousness as being in bad taste. One feels the difference of Ibsen's world even in those plays where he is concerned with the private sphere of experience, with marriage, family life. There is, for example, in Schnitzler no equivalent to the relentless certainty of Torwald Helmer (A Doll's House), and hence there is no equivalent to the final head-on confrontation between him and his wife. The all-pervasive Viennese irony, which concedes its own inadequacy and thrives on its disarming self-awareness, is a much more elusive organism for the would-be giant-slayer to confront than Ibsen's self-explanatory and often self-satisfied world. Where Ibsen is concerned with the juxtaposition of truth and falsehood, Schnitzler is concerned with their intermingling.¹ For the most part, Schnitzler is content to enter the minds of his characters and to imply that standard by which they are to be judged. Just occasionally, however, he does make his characters confront a world which lives by totally different and more genuine standards. Once Schnitzler admits such a confrontation, the comedy of the undisturbed baseness of the individual mind gives place to the new and rare possibility of tragic confrontation.

The figure of the ‘süßes Mädel’ appears frequently in Schnitzler's work. Very often she is seen in terms of the response she elicits from the man (one things of Anatol's famous description of her in Weihnachtseinkäufe). This means that she tends to play a passive role. She, like the actress, is ‘Freiwild’; she is sexually accessible, grateful for any taste of romance and glamour, however brief, that is brought into her limited, practical existence by the young ‘Lebemann’. Furthermore, she is socially undemanding. She has to accept the few hours allotted to her, to accept that she is accorded only a peripheral role in the life of her lover. In many of his works, Schnitzler focuses on the ‘Lebemann’ himself. In Liebelei, however, the ‘süßes Mädel’ is a figure equal in importance to the young man. Schnitzler here confronts two social worlds and their attendant attitudes towards human relationships. Although the confrontation itself, the relationship between Fritz and Christine is seen essentially in personal and psychological terms, the difference in social background is nevertheless an important factor. In this sense one could describe Liebelei as an example of Schnitzler's psychological Naturalism, in which even the most private and intimate sphere of personal experience is seen to partake of and reflect the social situation that surrounds it.

The confrontation between the two worlds, the central theme of the play, is articulated at the simplest level in the scene setting. Act I plays in Fritz's rooms. Schnitzler gives us no specific stage directions, as he does in most of his early dramas (Das Märchen, Freiwild, Das Vermächtnis). All we know is that the room must reflect Fritz's way of life, the kind of social existence which his independent means allow him, it must be ‘elegant und behaglich’ (D, i. 216). The last two acts are to play in a totally different environment, in a room that is, quite simply, ‘bescheiden und nett’ (240).

Act I opens with a dialogue between Fritz and Theodor. The latter reproaches his friend for his continued—and dangerous—relationship with a married woman, a relationship which in its insecurity and furtiveness brings both parties nothing but unhappiness, but which Fritz seems quite incapable of breaking. Theodor suggests that his friend should get away from Vienna for a few days. He points out how much good their brief stroll in the country has done him. He goes on to refer to another context in which Fritz has recovered all his former gaiety and good humour: ‘Du weißt nämlich gar nicht, wie fidel du da draußen gewesen bist—du warst geradezu bei Verstand—es war wie in den guten alten Tagen …—Auch neulich, wie wir mit den zwei herzigen Mädeln zusammen waren, bist du ja sehr nett gewesen …’ (217). For Theodor, these two experiences function on the same level. In relation to the social world which both he and Fritz inhabit, both experiences take place ‘da draußen’: in this sense, both experiences represent a pleasant change. Theodor goes on to develop a whole theory of erotic relationships. Women are there as relaxation for man, and one only needs to look to a specific kind of world for happiness and distraction, ‘wo es keine großen Szenen, keine Gefahren, keine tragischen Verwicklungen gibt’ (219). The world to which Theodor refers is that of the ‘Vorstadt’, and Fritz is won over. He joins Theodor in the unanimous slogan of ‘Erholung’. Theodor, delighted to have convinced his friend, issues an ultimatum: ‘Ich hab’ deine Liebestragödien satt. Du langweilst mich damit. Und wenn du Lust hast, mir mit dem berühmten Gewissen zu kommen, so will ich dir mein einfaches Prinzip für solche Fälle verraten: Besser ich als ein anderer. Denn der Andere ist unausbleiblich wie das Schicksal’ (220). This opening dialogue of the play summarizes the spirit in which the two men receive Christine and Mizi, and crystallizes the framework of personal and social attitudes which encompasses the relationship between Christine and Fritz. Theodor argues that the relationship with Christine will finally put an end to Fritz's ‘Liebestragödien’; in actual fact, however, the relationship with Christine is the nearest Schnitzler's world gets to yielding a love tragedy. Furthermore, Theodor sounds a theme that runs through the play, when he urges Fritz not to be troubled in his conscience about any relationship he may experience: the lover might just as well be he as anyone else, for fate decrees that lover will succeed lover in an almost unbroken chain. This notion of ‘fate’ is at the heart of the moral attitudes of the socially dictated code of behaviour: no one relationship must be allowed to acquire the aura of something uniquely valuable. No relationship is unique; love is the general name for a series of experiences. It is not an absolute, it is, like all experiences, repeatable. Ultimately, this sense of being one of a series, this ‘Ahnung der Wiederholbarkeit des Unwiederholbaren’² produces the total heart-break in Christine. Thus psychologically and thematically the scene is set and ready for the appearance of that other world ‘da draußen’—the world of the ‘Vorstadt’. Mizi is the first to arrive. She is attractive to Theodor in her spontaneity, in her full-blooded enjoyment of life ‘ohne Liebestragödien’. Mizi does indeed correspond to Theodor's depiction of the ‘Mädel aus der Vorstadt’, to borrow the title of the Nestroy play in which, arguably, the figure of the ‘süßes Mädel’ has her origins. Mizi has no illusions about her relationship with Theodor; she knows it cannot last, but she accepts it with both hands for the pleasure it can give:

THEODOR:
Ja, richtig—so lange währt die ewige Liebe nicht.
MIZI:
Wer wird denn im Mai an den August denken. Ist's nicht wahr, Herr Fritz?

(222)

Mizi guarantees the kind of unproblematical relationship such as Theodor has praised.

It is against this background that Christine enters. In contrast to Mizi, she identifies the whole purpose and beauty of her life with her love for a man—and specifically, of course, with her love for Fritz. She expresses the simple truth of her feelings to Fritz: ‘du bist aber mein Alles, Fritz, für dich könnt' ich …’ (225). Fritz cannot respond to the unadorned intensity of her emotion. His reaction is typical of him:

FRITZ (unterbricht):
Kind, ich bitt' dich … so was sag' lieber nicht … die großen Worte, die hab' ich nicht gern. Von der Ewigkeit reden wir nicht …
CHRISTINE (traurig lächelnd):
Hab' keine Angst, Fritz … ich weiß ja, daß es nicht für immer ist …

(225)

Fritz mistakes uncomplicated intensity of feeling for ‘große Worte’, for a false dramatizing of feelings which are of necessity transitory. Fritz applies the moral—and linguistic—standard of his own social class to a girl who comes from a different social class, who has different presuppositions about love relationships. Fritz and his whole world are so distanced from the immediate realities of feeling that he mistakes genuine passion for a kind of childishness. It is significant how often he addresses her as ‘Kind’ in the course of the play. In so doing he relentlessly asserts a discrepancy between their emotional beings, a distance which always makes itself felt in the actual relationship. It is an implicit assertion of distance which does not escape Christine. She knows that they belong to different worlds, and hence she demands almost nothing in terms of the actuality of the relationship. But she gives—and demands—everything in terms of the emotional commitment from which it springs. This combination of passion and reticence, of being emotionally demanding yet socially undemanding, makes Christine's position such a paradoxical one. As J. P. Stern has said of the ‘süßes Mädel’: ‘[she is] only too ready to value herself no more highly than she is valued by the society to which she does not belong’.³ Over and over again Christine is confronted by, and has to accept, the fact that the world in which Fritz moves is closed to her. The process begins, in this, their first scene together. She has seen him the previous evening in a theatre box together with a man and a woman. She asks who these people were—just as she will ask who ‘der Herr’ is later in the first act. And the only reply she receives is that she does not know these people: they are ‘Bekannte—es ist ganz gleich, wie sie heißen’ (224).

The scene between the two pairs of lovers is interrupted by the arrival of ‘der Herr’. Critics, most recently Heinz Politzer,⁴ have pointed out that the arrival of the husband in the middle of the convivial evening is the modern equivalent of a supremely baroque moment, where Death summons Man to leave the good things of life. Only a few years after the appearance of Liebelei Hofmannsthal was to re-create explicitly the spirit of the baroque in his mystery play Jedermann. One cannot help agreeing with Heinz Politzer that Schnitzler's reinterpretation of this baroque topos within a modern context is more powerful and persuasive than Hofmannsthal's conscious attempt at cultural reinstatement. It should be stressed that Schnitzler has very carefully rethought the whole atmosphere of the scene. The booming church bells have become the doorbell, the allegorical Death figure has become the jealous husband with the authority of the duelling code behind him, the opulence of Jedermann's banquet has become the hastily organized evening meal during which the coffee boils over and Mizi drinks so much wine that she falls asleep. And yet dramatically the whole scene is as powerful and rich in its implications as is Hofmannsthal's overtly allegorical confrontation. The short scene between Fritz and ‘der Herr’ is one of the most terse and powerful that Schnitzler ever wrote. It is a significant tribute to the laconic power of this one page of dialogue that the great Viennese actor Mitterwurzer chose to play the small part of ‘der Herr’ at the play's first performance—and with stunning effect. Behind the icily polite exchange of formal courtesies, the automatic implementation of the time-honoured convention of the duel, there throbs an anger and despair that threatens to break through to the surface. The tension between the polite formulas and the rage and disgust behind them gives the scene a horrific power.

Acts II and III are set in Christine's room, the world of the ‘Vorstadt’. Once again, Schnitzler's stage direction could hardly be simpler: ‘Zimmer Christinens. Bescheiden und nett’ (240). The stage directions evoke a mood rather than a specific room with furniture, properties, precisely indicated exits and entrances, and so on. The first few scenes of the act, however, serve to underpin the atmosphere of life in the ‘Vorstadt’, and above all to suggest commonly held attitudes towards human experience. The physical barrier between ‘Innenstadt’ and ‘Vorstadt’ can be bridged, as when, in Act II, Fritz arrives in Christine's room. But the psychological barriers are much more resilient: they make themselves felt almost every time Fritz and Christine speak to each other.

Act II opens with a dialogue between Christine and Frau Binder, a neighbour. The latter's husband has a cousin who is very much attracted towards Christine. Frau Binder describes him in glowing terms, terms by which the ‘Vorstadt’ measures the suitability of relationships between the sexes: ‘Wissen Sie, Fräulein Christin’, daß er jetzt fix angestellt ist? … Und mit einem ganz schönen Gehalt. Und so ein honetter junger Mensch’ (240). Christine tries to terminate the conversation at this point, but Frau Binder persists. She recounts at length a three-cornered conversation that took place. Her husband reported seeing Christine in the neighbourhood escorted by an elegant young man. Frau Binder relates her own, highly revealing, reply to this comment by her husband: ‘Das Fräulein Christin’, die ist keine Person die mit eleganten jungen Herren am Abend spazieren geht, und wenn schon, so wird's doch so gescheit sein, und nicht grad in unserer Gassen!’ (241). Here she becomes very much a mouthpiece for ‘Vorstadt’ attitudes. She is prepared to concede the possibility that a young woman could associate with men of higher social station, but then at least, it must be done discreetly. But to show oneself openly in the ‘Vorstadt’ with an elegant young man amounts to breaking the rules. One of the reasons, of course, why Frau Binder launches into this lengthy narrative is that she wishes to show Franz, her husband's cousin, in a good light: Franz was angry with Herr Binder and leapt to Christine's defence. He refused to hear a word against her good name and went on to defend her spiritedly in terms that constitute a ‘Vorstadt’ ideal of domesticity: ‘Und wie Sie so für's Häusliche sind und wie lieb Sie alleweil mit der alten Fräul'n Tant' gewesen sind’ (241). At this point Christine's father enters, and she slips away in order to meet Fritz. A conversation ensues between Weiring and Frau Binder and once again the topic is love and marriage. She mentions the cousin again, and all his good points, but Weiring surprisingly does not agree with the attitudes expressed: ‘Ist denn so ein blühendes Geschöpf wirklich zu nichts anderem da, als für so einen anständigen Menschen, der zufällig eine fixe Anstellung hat?’ (243). Frau Binder is not, however, to be put off, and she praises the certainty of such relationships over against the ‘other kind’ of relationships, which she describes as follows: ‘Auf einen Grafen kann man ja doch nicht warten, und wenn einmal einer kommt, so empfiehlt er sich dann gewöhnlich, ohne daß er einen geheiratet hat’ (243). Weiring does not, however, give way. He even goes so far as to defend the kind of relationship that Frau Binder has described. It may be impermanent, but at least the girl experiencing it is richer in her memories: ‘Na, und was bleibt denn übrig—wenn sie—nicht einmal was zum Erinnern hat—? Wenn das ganze Leben nur so vorbeigegangen ist (sehr einfach, nicht pathetisch) ein Tag wie der andere, ohne Glück und ohne Liebe—dann ist's vielleicht besser?’ (244). The scene goes on to reveal why Weiring should hold such views which, on the face of it, are completely out of keeping with the social class to which he belongs. The decisive experience has been his looking after his sister. On the death of her parents he took her to live with him, and he kept an anxious watch over her behaviour in the early years when she was a young, attractive girl: ‘Aber dann später, wie so langsam die grauen Haar' gekommen sind und die Runzeln, und es ist ein Tag um den andern hingegangen—und die ganze Jugend—und das Mädchen ist so allmählich—man merkt ja so was kaum—das alte Fräulein geworden,—da hab' ich erst zu spüren angefangen, was ich eigentlich getan hab'!’ (245). Either way, it would appear, there is only regret at the end of the road. Regret at having never experienced happiness and love or, as is implicit in one or two of Frau Binder's remarks, regret at having once experienced it, only to be subsequently deprived of it.

The scene constitutes an absolutely overt discussion of the central theme of the play. Indeed, one could argue, particularly as regards Weiring's statements, that the scene becomes rather too overt and thematically ‘loaded’. This is indeed a fault in many of Schnitzler's plays. He cannot resist forcing a moral issue in that all the characters in a particular play or story are made to take part in an explicit discussion of that issue. It is, of course, largely a stylistic question. The first act of Liebelei with its casual opening discussion between the two men illuminates the central theme and establishes at the same time a powerful sense of the social normality of such views, of the way they are expressed, and of the whole context in which they are expressed. The overtness of the scene between Frau Binder and Weiring loses this kind of contact with social normality which in Liebelei is inextricably bound up with the articulation of moral attitudes.

Despite its faults, the scene between Weiring and Frau Binder does add a further layer to the thematic centre of the play. If Act I has evoked the attitudes of the ‘Innenstadt’ towards love relationships, the exposition of Act II reveals the attitudes of the ‘Vorstadt’ towards such relationships.

It should be added here—with reference to the whole question of socially typical attitudes—that Liebelei operates not simply with the contrast between Fritz and Theodor on the one hand, and Mizi and Christine on the other, i.e. between ‘Innenstadt’ and ‘Vorstadt’. There is also the contrast between Theodor and Mizi on the one hand, and Fritz and Christine on the other. Both axes of contrast do, of course, relate to the basic tension of social attitudes with which Schnitzler is concerned. Theodor and Mizi function as uncomplicated representatives of the relationship between ‘Innenstadt’ and ‘Vorstadt’. They are aware of the rules of the game, and they are careful to confine both their actual behaviour and the attitudes which motivate that behaviour to the pre-established code of behaviour. Fritz and Christine are, however, different in that they bring an individuality, a specific personal involvement to the question of human relationships, and both, in a sense, are destroyed by the code of which they partake, but which has not taken full possession of their being. Fritz is, of course, much more conditioned by the code to the point that his individual capacity for feeling all too often degenerates into a kind of sentimentalizing process. Even so his capacity for personal involvement is much greater than Theodor's. Fritz has become far too involved with the married woman for Theodor's taste. Furthermore, Fritz has forgotten one of the crucial rules of the game, despite Theodor's constant reminders—he has written letters to her. Fritz gets caught in the machinery of the game and acquiesces helplessly in the duel as being the only way out. However imperfectly and sentimentally, Fritz, as we see in Act II, does respond in some measure to Christine's being. Theodor may be able to talk him round, to persuade him to uphold the rules of the game, but this does not alter the fact that Fritz potentially is capable of a response that just does not exist in Theodor. Similarly, Christine does attempt to adhere to the rules of the game; she reminds herself over and over again that her relationship to Fritz cannot last. But this reminder simply does not correspond to the fact of her being; she can only love on her own terms, and these terms are those of a passionate, complete surrender that demands everything in return.

The contrast between Christine and Mizi—and the common denominator of social experience that unites them—is revealed in the short scene which precedes Fritz's entry in Act II. The discrepancy between the two girls' attitudes is straightforward. Mizi counsels caution where men are concerned. They are not to be trusted, and one must never allow oneself to become completely involved with one. Her advice falls on deaf ears: Christine is completely and irrevocably in love with Fritz. The conflict of attitudes is succinctly summarized in the following lines:

MIZI:
… Ich sag's aber immer! Den Männern soll man überhaupt kein Wort glauben.
CHRISTINE:
Was redst du denn—die Männer—was gehn mich denn die Männer an!—ich frag' ja nicht nach den anderen.—In meinem ganzen Leben werd' ich nach keinem andern fragen!

(248)

Mizi's experience focuses on men in general—on a series of relationships which represent, as it were, safety in numbers. Christine asserts the uniqueness of love experience with one man, and this intensity excludes any notion of repetition, of seeing the specific relationship as one of a series.

Fritz then arrives, and the scene that ensues between him and Christine is one of the most revealing in the whole play. Part of the scene is devoted to a discussion of Christine's room. Here, the general aura of ‘Vorstadt’, which has hitherto been implicitly revealed in terms of psychological attitudes, is evoked by means of the actual décor of Christine's room. The stage direction at the beginning of the act refers to Christine's room simply as ‘bescheiden und nett’. It is this aura which surrounds Christine, and Fritz on seeing the room exclaims: ‘Bin ich wirklich zum erstenmal da—? Es kommt mir alles so bekannt vor! … Genau so hab' ich mir's eigentlich vorgestellt' (250). What then follows is a page of dialogue in which specific details of the room are discussed. Schnitzler thereby evokes not only the actual physical details of the room, but also the way in which two people respond to and evaluate these details. Three specific features are picked out. Fritz looks first at the pictures—‘Abschied—und Heimkehr’—and Christine describes another picture which hangs in her father's room: ‘Das ist ein Mädel, die schaut zum Fenster hinaus, und draußen, weißt, ist der Winter—und das heißt “Verlassen”’ (250). All the pictures show domestic scenes—or, in the final case, domestic betrayal. They all embody situations involving home and, by implication, there is in each picture a considerable emotional loading of the situation. Farewell, return, betrayal are the conceptual patterns which generate an emotional response. Fritz can say nothing about such pictures—beyond a laconic ‘so’. To him they speak volumes, and implicit in the pictures is a sentimental attachment to the home. He then looks at Christine's books. She has copies of some of the classics—Schiller, Hauff—the ‘Konversationslexikon’ which ‘geht nur bis zum G …’ (250), and a kind of compendium of articles of general interest, ‘Das Buch für Alle’. The final detail of the room is a small bust of Schubert. This detail, too, generates an aura of simple domesticity. Christine goes on to explain that her father is a great lover of Schubert, that he used to compose songs himself. We know from earlier references in the play that Christine herself plays the piano and also sings to her father's accompaniment. The bust of Schubert comes, then, by a process of subtle association to suggest home music-making, the kind of music that links father and daughter, the kind of music that has both a domestic register and yet also expresses pathos and tragedy, longing and despair.

As the conversation develops, Christine reproaches Fritz for the fact that he tells her so little about himself, that he is always keeping things from her. She asks Fritz how he spends his day, to which he replies: ‘Aber Schatz, das ist ja sehr einfach. Ich geh' in Vorlesungen—zuweilen—dann geh' ich ins Kaffeehaus … dann les' ich … manchmal spiel' ich auch Klavier—dann plauder' ich mit dem oder jenem—dann mach' ich Besuche … das ist doch alles ganz belanglos. Es ist ja langweilig, davon zu reden.—Jetzt muß ich übrigens gehn, Kind …’ (251). Fritz's answer is evasive—largely because he does not know what he does with his days. He does very little with them, and such things as he does are ‘ganz belanglos’. But Christine wants to know more. She articulates what she feels about their entire relationship—that she only knows a tiny segment of Fritz's experience, that she is relentlessly excluded from whole areas of his life: ‘Schau', mich interessiert ja alles, was dich angeht, ach ja … alles,—ich möcht' mehr von dir haben als die eine Stunde am Abend, die wir manchmal beisammen sind. Dann bist du wieder fort, und ich weiß gar nichts … Da geht dann die ganze Nacht vorüber und ein ganzer Tag mit den vielen Stunden—und nichts weiß ich’ (252). Fritz argues that partial possession of the self is all that is possible. He rejects her demands as being too exclusive, too total—not only on himself, but also on her own being. He answers that no one can know himself sufficiently well to be able to make the kind of total statement that Christine makes: ‘Du weißt ja doch nur eins, wie ich—daß du mich in diesem Augenblick liebst … (Wie sie reden will) Sprich nicht von Ewigkeit. (Mehr für sich) Es gibt ja vielleicht Augenblicke, die einen Duft von Ewigkeit um sich sprühen.—… Das ist die einzige, die wir verstehen können, die einzige, die uns gehört …’ (252). Christine answers him instinctively. She misses completely the kind of philosophical argument he has used—i.e. that man cannot perceive himself or other people in such a way as to make statements of total and lasting certainty. She simply reassures him that she is not trying to possess him entirely—that she is not asking him to abandon his freedom:

Du bist ja frei, du bist ja frei—du kannst mich ja sitzen lassen, wann du willst … Du hast mir nichts versprochen—und ich hab' nichts von dir verlangt … Was dann aus mir wird—es ist ja ganz einerlei—ich bin doch einmal glücklich gewesen, mehr will ich ja vom Leben nicht. Ich möchte nur, daß du das weißt und mir glaubst: Daß ich keinen lieb gehabt vor dir, und daß ich keinen lieb haben werde—wenn du mich einmal nimmer willst

(253)

Here explicitly are the terms which Christine offers Fritz. She asks for no undertaking of permanency; she recognizes such factors as social unsuitability for marriage. But what she does insist on is the intensity and permanence of her own feelings—and that at this level Fritz can meet her, can reciprocate genuineness and commitment of actual emotion.

This scene between Fritz and Christine is important, particularly as regards the issue of sentimentality. Clearly, both Fritz and Christine are capable of sentimentality, and in this scene Schnitzler shows two kinds of sentimentality interacting. The scene itself is as a result balanced on a knife edge between being an illumination and exploration of sentimentality on the one hand, and succumbing to sentimentality on the other. Christine's notion of beauty (as in her description of the pictures) is unmistakably sentimental—viewed in any kind of objective terms. The pictures are, presumably, worthless in themselves, and yet they strike a chord of genuine response in Christine. Her existence is narrow and restricted, and yet within it there is an intense capacity for feeling. Inevitably, therefore, this intensity of feeling is poured out within a highly domesticized context. The discrepancy between experiential content on the one hand and intensity of emotional response to it on the other produces the kind of sentimentality that Christine displays here. But there is a certain genuineness about it. It is not simply a kind of cerebrally contrived substitute for feeling. And in the final act Christine shows that she is prepared to take the consequences of her emotional situation.

Fritz, however, is different. He is attached to Christine, and yet beside her he is an emotionally impoverished being. His capacity for feeling has, presumably, been largely dissipated by a series of affairs. His desperate infatuation with the married woman, which is referred to in the first scene of Act I, is perhaps very largely a sentimental forcing of the squalid, illicit affair to the proportions of a fatal fascination for the unattainable. In the crucial scene with Christine in Act II, Fritz becomes aware of a quality in her being and environment that he vaguely apprehends as precious. And yet it is only a vague apprehension. Fritz's inability to respond to this on its own terms is reflected in the quality of his language. I have already drawn attention to the frequency with which he addresses Christine, and by implication conceives of her, as a child. Fritz is often patronizing towards Christine. When he confronts her, he is obliged to sentimentalize, to force his feelings to sound more than they are. He describes his sudden decision to come and see her as follows: ‘plötzlich hat mich eine solche Sehnsucht gepackt, eine solche Sehnsucht nach diesem lieben süßen Gesichtel …’ (249). He then goes on to praise the beauty of her room and the view from the window. Fritz does respond to the whole atmosphere of Christine's existence, but his response is limited because he sees himself as a complex, tormented figure entering a simple, secure, homely world. Ultimately, such moments are sentimentalization of a given situation. Potentially, however, there is in Fritz a capacity for feeling which is utterly foreign to the world of which he is part. It is this—albeit residual and ultimately questionable—response to the intensity of Christine's love that makes Fritz more of an individual than the terms of the code allow.

The interaction of kinds of sentimentality in this scene and in the play as a whole is one of Schnitzler's most impressive achievements. He shows how sentimentality can be very much part of real feeling, and also how sentimentality can obscure real feeling. It is this complexity of illumination which prevents the play from succumbing to the sentimentality which it depicts.

Theodor appears and confirms that Fritz has to ‘go away’ for a few days. He teases Christine when she asks Fritz to write, describing her request as ‘sentimental’ (254). Theodor's intervention convinces Fritz again of all the presuppositions of the social class from which he comes. He is persuaded to distrust his feelings: ‘o Gott, wie lügen solche Stunden!’ (254). Passion is by definition a suspect commodity because it cannot last: there are intense moments and no more. Whether the moments with Christine lie or not, Fritz makes them lie. Hence his way out is unreal as well: the sentimental leave-taking after the moment of anguished heart-searching.

Act III confronts Christine with the truth of her relationship to Fritz. As the curtain rises, we see her fearful of the imminent end of this relationship. She is forced to conceive the present actuality of what she said she knew would inevitably happen—and is unable to: ‘nicht für immer, ich weiß ja—aber auf einmal hört ja das nicht auf!’ (257). The ‘auf einmal’ gives the key to the point at which her attempt at being sensible breaks down. For her the relationship must continue to exist because of her continued emotional commitment to it. The end therefore will be incomprehensible and sudden. Weiring enters, obviously knowing what has happened: ‘sie weiß noch nichts, sie weiß noch nichts …’ (258). Such a statement seems very much out of place in the play, and savours, if anything, of melodrama. Schnitzler is here forcing the emotional charge by making it abundantly clear early on that everybody knows what has happened—apart from Christine. This is a crude device to heighten the emotional tension, and a moment such as Weiring's muttered aside is so obviously contrived that it disturbs the kind of laconic impact that Schnitzler intended with his brief third act. Weiring tries to console Christine, to suggest that the relationship with Fritz was not a happy one. The point of the scene is perhaps reached when Weiring says: ‘ich weiß, daß ich dich lieb hab', daß du mein einziges Kind bist, daß du bei mir bleiben sollst—daß du immer bei mir hättest bleiben sollen’ (260). Here Weiring in his despair retracts his earlier remark about love, that the young girl must taste the joys of passionate love, even if it does not last. This pattern of argumentation about human experience is a familiar one: it is, once again, the sequence of Hofmannsthal's Gestern: ‘im Anfang stellt der Held eine These auf, dann geschieht eine Kleinigkeit, und zwingt ihn, diese These umzukehren.’⁵ Here, however, the process is peripheral to the main action. Weiring is not the centre of interest in the play, and this scene has a retarding function which may heighten the tension, but in some ways does so to the detriment of the central confrontation which is the only necessary concern of the third act.

When Mizi and Theodor enter, Christine guesses the awful truth that Fritz is dead. And yet—and this is the greatness of the final scene—Christine is made to face not simply a past event—Fritz has been killed in a duel—but also the emotional truth about their whole relationship. She asks if Fritz left some message for her, but there is none. Theodor tries to comfort her: ‘am letzten Morgen, wie wir hinausgefahren sind … hat er auch von Ihnen gesprochen’ (262). Christine picks up the one word that hurts her beyond endurance: ‘Auch von mir hat er gesprochen! Auch von mir! Und von was denn noch? Von wie viel anderen Leuten, die ihm grad so viel gewesen sind wie ich?’ (262). What tears at her heart is not just the fact of Fritz's death, but the realization of the hideous deception that was their relationship. What to her was a unique, all-embracing experience was to him merely one of many. Christine is forced to confront the fact that Fritz never quite believed in the intensity of her love: ‘Ich bin ihm nichts gewesen als ein Zeitvertreib—und für eine andere ist er gestorben—! Und ich—ich hab’ ihn angebetet!—Hat er denn das nicht gewußt? (262).

Time and time again Christine turns to Theodor in order to find out the precise truth about Fritz, and time and time again he gives only evasive answers. She asks, for example, with whom he had his duel. Theodor replies: ‘Niemand, den Sie kennen …’ (261). She asks Theodor why he waited so long before coming to her. He can only offer the lame excuse that he had much to do organizing the funeral:

THEODOR:
Auch hat das … es hat in aller Stille stattgefunden … Nur die allernächsten Verwandten und Freunde …
CHRISTINE:
Nur die Nächsten—! Und ich—? … Was bin denn ich? …
MIZI:
Das hätten die dort auch gefragt.
CHRISTINE:
Was bin denn ich—? Weniger als alle andern—? Weniger als seine Verwandten, weniger als … Sie?

(263)

The process of exclusion, whereby Christine is denied any admittance to Fritz's world, reaches its climax here. Theodor in effect refuses to recognize that she has any right to know about Fritz. The horrifying fact of this exclusion is not simply a past truth which Christine discovers in the final scene, it is also a present situation which is clearly expressed by Theodor and, in a sense, by everyone around her. Theodor is embarrassed by Christine's misery—but no more; he murmurs to Mizi: ‘Schau' Kind, das hättest du mir ersparen können …’ (262).

Finally, however, Theodor capitulates before the intensity of Christine's love, and he blurts out the real reason for his behaviour: ‘Ich bin sehr … (mit Tränen in der Stimme) Ich hab' das nicht geahnt …’ (263). Theodor had seen Christine and Fritz together; he had heard her speak of love, and yet he simply had not believed her. This disbelief is an existential degradation of Christine. And the present world partakes of the same uncomprehending disbelief. Neither of the two worlds evoked in the play, neither the ‘Innenstadt’ (Theodor) nor the ‘Vorstadt’ (Mizi, Weiring) can conceive of the full tragic intensity of Christine's situation. Words of comfort inevitably imply a return to social normality. And such a return is anathema to her: ‘Und in einem halben Jahr kann ich wieder lachen, was—? (Auflachend) Und wann kommt der nächste Liebhaber? …’ (263). Existentially the world has no place for Christine's being, for the kind of experience she craves. At the end of the play she stands in absolute isolation, an isolation that is totally unbearable because her being can only exist in relationship to another fellow being. Christine has loved in a void; she cannot and will not continue to live in that void.

With Christine's exit the play reaches its appointed end. One can only regret that the curtain falls just a few lines too late. Weiring's last words—‘Sie kommt nicht wieder’ (264)—are superfluous, one of those moments which in their thematic underpinning amount to melodramatic explicitness.

The specific tragic quality of Liebelei and, above all, the kind of fascinated clarity with which Christine in the last act perceives her own isolation in many ways remind one of Austria's greatest tragedian, Franz Grillparzer. Several of Grillparzer's plays are concerned with one central experiential pattern: the protagonist is drawn out of the world in which he belongs, most often by the force of love, into a new world. All too often, however, the pressure exerted on the relationship is too great, and the relationship—and with it that new world which the protagonist has sought to enter—disintegrates. At this point, however, there is no return, no simple way back to that framework of existential certainty which has been abandoned. Grillparzer's heroes and heroines perceive with relentless clarity that they are utterly alone, and this moment of existential homelessness is frequently the mainspring of Grillparzer's tragic experience. It is perhaps significant that when Schnitzler turns to tragedy he should produce something which so recalls Grillparzer. For both authors a concern for the existential being of man implies a vision of man in the context of human relationships, of some kind of ‘home’ where he belongs. Human relationships involve a surrender of the self, a preparedness to be changed, and with this process, as Hofmannsthal saw, comes the danger of losing one's self, of losing the ‘home’ within which definition of the self was once possible. Medea's anguished cry ‘Allein wer gibt Medeen mir’⁶ finds its parallel in Christine's helpless ‘Und was bin denn ich?’ (263) of the final act.

The comparison of Grillparzer and Schnitzler should not, of course, be allowed to obscure the differences between the two writers. One should stress immediately that Schnitzler very rarely attempts to write tragedy. More typical of his art is the comedy Zwischenspiel. It is perhaps worth noting at the outset that the theme of both Liebelei and Zwischenspiel is the destruction of love. And yet in the latter play neither of the principal characters is the unequivocal embodiment of love, as is Christine. The very completeness of Christine's surrender to her love is what makes her a tragic figure. In total, exceptional form she lives out the full implications of her social situation. In the radical—and untypical—intensity of her being she becomes the paradigm of, and catalyst for, all that is typical in the situation of the ‘süßes Mädel’. She is a type in Roy Pascal's sense of the term: she ‘combines in an extraordinary degree, exceptionally, the various qualities which are usually present only partially’⁷ in the type of the ‘süßes Mädel’.

Zwischenspiel lacks the tragic explicitness of Liebelei. It is concerned with the difficulty of apprehending a relationship for what it is, with the unclarity of human affairs. Both Amadeus and Cäcilie suffer because of this unclarity. And the misunderstandings and betrayals which result are supremely the subject for comedy.

Both Amadeus and Cäcilie are practising musicians, and the demands of their careers mean that they inevitably spend much of their time apart. Act I opens with Amadeus rehearsing a role from the opera Mignon with Gräfin Friederike Moosheim. She is clearly in love with him, and is very determined that they should have an affair. Amadeus reacts with a mixture of urbane scorn and occasional moments of anger. Friederike insinuates that Cäcilie is deceiving him, to which he replies with an assertion of the frankness and understanding that prevails between him and his wife: ‘Zwischen Menschen unserer Art gibt es keine Geheimnisse’ (D, i. 900).

The implications of this scene are important for the subsequent development of the play. Both Amadeus and Cäcilie are surrounded by an indolent, cultured world which accepts marital infidelities as the norm for famous performing musicians. Friederike expects to have an affair with Amadeus, just as she expects Cäcilie to be having an affair with Sigismund. And the strenuousness with which Amadeus insists on the frankness and truthfulness that prevail between him and his wife is the measure of their desperate attempt to retain some kind of fundamental moral integrity within their relationship. Both know of the temptations to which their everyday lives expose them. It is Amadeus's firm conviction that if they admit to these dangers they can arrive at a kind of personal moral code, which may not correspond to any traditional notions of physical fidelity, but which can serve to hold their marriage together.

This kind of attitude towards human relationships is the subject of the scene between Amadeus and Albertus Rhon in Act I. Albertus recognizes the seriousness and integrity behind this new approach to human relationships—but he raises certain objections: first, that complete frankness and ‘understanding’ is not a foolproof basis for a lasting relationship, and secondly, that the individual is capable of all kinds of psychological and physical infidelities, that it is false to assume that the more freedom for sexual adventure the individual has, the ‘truer’ will be his life.

It is in the context of this kind of moral argumentation that one has to view the three main confrontations between Amadeus and Cäcilie which are the high point of each act. In Act I, scene v, they begin by discussing Cäcilie's work schedule, and she asks Amadeus to come to her rehearsal the following morning:

CäCILIE:
Ich fühle mich sicherer, wenn ich dich in der Nähe weiß; das ist dir ja bekannt.
AMADEUS:
Ich werde kommen—ja. Ich werde dem Neumann und der Gräfin absagen.
CäCILIE:
Wenn du damit kein zu großes Opfer bringst——
AMADEUS (absichtlich trocken):
Ich kann sie ja auch für Nachmittag zu mir bitten.
CäCILIE:
Dann kämst du aber gar nicht dazu, für dich zu arbeiten. Lassen wir's doch lieber.
AMADEUS:
Was sollen wir lassen?
CäCILIE:
Komm morgen nicht zur Probe.
AMADEUS:
Wie du meinst, Cäcilie. Ich dränge mich natürlich nicht auf.

(906f.)

This interchange is deeply revealing. It indicates the degree of personal awkwardness that results from Amadeus's and Cäcilie's working arrangement. They see very little of each other and attempt to exorcize the threat of their frequent separations by being completely frank with each other. What results is a curious diffidence, an embarrassment at the emotional and physical demands they place on themselves by being together. Much of their conversation functions as a kind of shadow-boxing. Neither wishes to be seen to make demands on the other, because this would be out of keeping with the sensible—i.e. unemotional—arrangement they have reached. Behind the verbal implementation of this arrangement, however, one hears the voice of feeling, the simple dictates of emotional attachment which drive them to ask for each other's help, interest, attention. Amadeus tries to retain the professional note in the conversation by discussing what Cäcilie should sing at a forthcoming charity performance:

CäCILIE:
Nun, etwas von dir jedenfalls——
AMADEUS:
O nein, nein.
CäCILIE:
Warum denn nicht?
AMADEUS:
Aus einem inneren Bedürfnis heraus singst du's ja doch nicht.
CäCILIE:
Wie du meinst, Amadeus.—Ich dränge mich auch nicht auf.

(908)

Once again, the conversation touches on a point where their work commitments impinge on their personal relationship. Implicit in Amadeus's reaction is a kind of reproach to Cäcilie, a hint of simple jealousy. Cäcilie turns the tables on Amadeus by quoting his own phrase back at him—‘ich dränge mich auch nicht auf’. In so doing she reminds him of the terms of their working arrangement, terms that he has already invoked in the course of their conversation.

Once again the conversation is deflected on to practical matters, until Amadeus asks Cäcilie about her relationship with Sigismund. Cäcilie is disinclined to say more than she has already told him:

CäCILIE:
Glaubst du nicht, Amadeus, daß manche Dinge geradezu anders werden dadurch, daß man versucht sie auszusprechen?
AMADEUS:
Unter Menschen wie wir—nein!

(909)

Cäcilie's words crystallize what will be one of the central moral preoccupations of the play, namely the relationship between human emotions and their articulation in language. Amadeus is not to be put off, and insists on the simple fact: ‘du fühlst dich zu ihm hingezogen’ (909). Cäcilie answers with another kind of truth: ‘Aber vielleicht gibt es heute etwas, das zurückhält, … das zurückhalten könnte, wenn es nur wollte’ (910). Her words are commented upon by the stage direction—‘sehr innig, beinahe zärtlich’ (910). It therefore becomes clear that what she is referring to here is their love, a love which the working relationship has hitherto threatened, but not destroyed.

At one point later in the scene the conversation lapses and Amadeus plays a few notes on the piano, the theme of the ‘Zwischenspiel’ from the symphony on which he is working. Amadeus is considering changing its title: it will be called ‘Capriccio’, perhaps even ‘Capriccio doloroso’. Cäcilie has taught him to realize the sadness of this little transitional movement:

AMADEUS:
Es ist seltsam, wie man manchmal seine eigenen Einfälle anfangs mißversteht. Die verborgene Traurigkeit des Themas hast du mir entdeckt.
CäCILIE:
Du wärst schon selbst darauf gekommen, Amadeus.
AMADEUS:
Vielleicht.

(912)

Here briefly, the meaning of the play's title becomes apparent. It is an intermezzo, a seemingly gay and witty transition in a human relationship whose infinite sadness will yet become apparent to the participants.

Amadeus dominates the dialogue for the rest of the scene. Beginning with a discussion of Cäcilie's practical plans for her future concert career, he proposes that they should put their relationship on a totally different footing. They should simply concede that they have long ceased to love each other, but should maintain their professional and practical contacts as before. Over and over again Amadeus stresses that he is offering the obvious rational solution to the problem: ‘es liegt doch eigentlich kein vernünftiger Grund vor, daß sich unsere musikalischen Beziehungen umgestalten müßten’ (913), or again: ‘Je ruhiger ich die Sachlage überschaue, um so unsinniger erscheint es mir, daß wir wie die ersten besten geschiedenen Eheleute voneinandergehn …’ (914). In vain does Cäcilie protest that frequent contact between them, as envisaged by Amadeus, would inevitably bring emotional troubles. Amadeus brushes aside her objections and continues to elaborate his notion of the ideally free relationship that will prevail between them, whatever conventional moral scruples may say: ‘Wir haben wohl das Recht, einen etwas höheren Standpunkt einzunehmen. Wir gehören doch schließlich noch immer zusammen, auch wenn von hundert Fäden, die uns verknüpfen, einer zerrissen ist’ (914). Here one begins to feel already the falsity of Amadeus's argument, or rather, of his response to human relationships. In terms of abstract argumentation Amadeus may well have a case, but love, passion, is not just one of the many threads that has held him and Cäcilie together: it is the essential one. To push this on one side as no longer relevant is to misunderstand human behaviour, and, above all, the attraction between man and woman. But Amadeus is not to be deterred. His image of the ideal relationship between himself and Cäcilie is founded first on complete emotional freedom, and secondly on complete truthfulness: ‘Das wäre natürlich die Voraussetzung unserer weiteren Beziehungen: Wahrheit—rückhaltlose Wahrheit’ (915). Here again Amadeus falsifies the substance of human relationships by conceiving of truth and truthfulness in purely cerebral terms, by conceiving of a whole relationship in terms of a kind of professional interchange. Amadeus's conviction carries the day. In a moment of curious rhetoric Amadeus sets the seal on their new relationship by embracing Cäcilie for the last time as his beloved and taking her hand as a pledge of the friendship which in the future is to be the link between them. What makes this grand gesture of Amadeus's slightly pathetic is Cäcilie's instinctive reaction to it. As he moves to embrace her she says: ‘Was tust du? (Neue Hoffnung im Blick)’ (915). This is a deeply eloquent hint which undercuts all Amadeus's grand words and intellectual enthusiasms by revealing the simple, unspoken basis of their relationship, namely the fact that they still love each other. But Cäcilie is forced to accept Amadeus's interpretation of their situation—and his future solution to it.

The first act closes with a brief example of how their new relationship will work. Amadeus rehearses a Brahms song with Cäcilie. Yet the collaboration on their art cannot simply remain a question of rehearsing technicalities. The relationship is involved; the attraction between husband and wife is latent. Twice Cäcilie breaks off, the second time remarking: ‘Amadeus, du sollst nicht allen deinen Schülerinnen den Hof machen’ (916). After a further interruption Cäcilie manages to devote herself to the song. One of the reasons for her difficulties is perhaps the song itself, on whose first line the curtain falls: ‘Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen, beschloß ich und beschwor ich, und geh' doch jeden Abend …’ (916). Implicitly, the ending of the act relativizes the decision which Amadeus and Cäcilie have taken. They are united not simply by the practicalities of the same profession, but also by a love of music. And their relationship to music is of necessity more than purely cerebral. Amadeus, when he writes the solo part for the final movement of his new symphony, will think of Cäcilie's voice as he writes—and will want her to sing the part. The emotional involvement is there, just as it is hinted at in their rehearsing a song which is explicitly concerned with the discrepancy between intellectual decisions about relationships, and the sheer emotional force which these relations generate.

Acts II and III take place some months later. What has happened in the intervening period is both revealed and discussed in the scene between Amadeus and Marie Rhon. We learn that Cäcilie is returning from a brilliantly successful guest season at the Opera in Berlin, that during the summer Marie and Cäcilie were together in the Tirol, while Amadeus spent much of the time at the villa of Gräfin Friederike Moosheim, with whom he was having an affair. Marie is clearly perturbed about the relationship between Amadeus and Cäcilie, but he is at pains to assure her that all is well, that they have behaved completely within the terms of their agreement: ‘Wir beraten uns über alles, liebe Marie; geradeso wie früher. Und mit noch mehr Objektivität vielleicht als früher’ (918). Amadeus even goes so far as to be completely frank with Marie about the various infidelities, or supposed infidelities, that occurred during the holidays. Indeed, he talks quite happily about Sigismund having been in Berlin with his wife.

The discussion of the relationship is continued in the scene between Amadeus and Albertus Rhon. A further piece of information is given—Friederike's husband has fought a duel with a young painter who had had an affair with his wife. The irony—and this appeals to Albertus's acute sense of the tragicomic—was that at the time of the duel the affair between Friederike and the painter was over, in fact she was already involved with Amadeus. For Albertus, life is shabby and confused. It just needs to be heightened and concentrated by art to produce the perfect tragicomedy.

Albertus has read rumours in the paper that Cäcilie and Sigismund intend to marry, and he offers to stay with Amadeus until the worst is over. Amadeus is horrified by the amount of rumour that he and Cäcilie are exciting, and Albertus warns him: ‘Neuerer wie du müssen das Urteil der Welt verachten, sonst geraten sie in Gefahr, Großsprecher gewesen zu sein’ (924). Here Albertus raises one aspect of Amadeus and Cäcilie's behaviour which is not fully worked out in the play, but which is implicit in the social reactions which they cause. Their working arrangement amounts to a new kind of sexual morality which contradicts all traditional notions of propriety and fidelity. As such it questions many deeply ingrained social attitudes, and society draws the automatic conclusion that their marriage is simply breaking up. What it refuses to recognize or believe is the possibility that this relationship represents moral integrity just as much as the traditional ‘happy marriage’. In one sense, what Amadeus and Cäcilie have done, is to recognize the pressure which is exerted on the social institution of marriage by prevailing trends of behaviour, and to attempt to formulate a new and appropriate morality. Amadeus answers Albertus very much in this spirit. Like so many of Schnitzler's characters, he asserts that he is concerned with a private issue: ‘Ich bin ja kein Neuerer. Das Ganze ist eine Privatabmachung zwischen mir und Cäcilie, bei der wir uns beide so wohl fühlen als möglich’ (924). Yet at the same time, Amadeus desperately wants to convince the outside world of the rightness with which he has solved this private issue: ‘Sag’ doch den Leuten, bitte, die dich fragen, daß wir uns nicht scheiden lassen … Mach' ihnen doch klar, daß von einem Betrug keine Rede sein kann, wo es keine Lüge gibt. Sag' ihnen, daß die Treue, die wir, Cäcilie und ich, einander halten, wahrscheinlich eine bessere ist als die in manchen andern Ehen …’ (924). Their new relationship is the result of a process of general moral argumentation, and it is the generality of principle behind it that the world could be made to recognize. Albertus agrees that he could put this in a play, that he could allow the figure representing Amadeus to declaim his views, but Albertus warns that the play would end ‘nicht sehr heiter, mein Freund’. He goes on to explain why: ‘Das ist ja das Charakteristische aller Übergangsepochen, daß Verwicklungen, die für die nächste Generation vielleicht gar nicht mehr existieren werden, tragisch enden müssen, wenn ein leidlich anständiger Mensch hineingerät’ (925). At the most obvious level, Albertus is making a social point here, that Amadeus and Cäcilie are trying for a notion of marriage which is so far in advance of their times that it will be threatened by prevailing social attitudes. And yet, as the play as a whole shows, there is a further implication in Albertus's words. Amadeus is concerned with a ‘Privatsache’. However unpleasant the anonymous letters may be which he receives, he could, presumably, continue to live happily with his wife in spite of the furore which their relationship creates. The ultimate test of their relationship is not whether they can persuade society to recognize it, but quite simply, whether they can make it work. The play itself ends, ‘nicht sehr heiter’, and the relationship disintegrates from within. Amadeus and Cäcilie may indeed be right—on their own terms—when they reject traditional notions of sexual morality as excessively inflexible; and yet their answer to such notions is, in its turn, equally inflexible. Their ‘new’ ideal of a relationship does not correspond to their emotional being. Implicitly, however, the question is raised whether these emotional needs, which they falsify in their working relationship, are the eternal and immutable emotional needs of man, or whether they are themselves the result of a whole tradition of moral thinking which has falsified them in the first place. To this Schnitzler can give no answer. He can only offer that pragmatic response which is so typical of him: that the basic moral needs of the human being are ultimately indeterminable; that, in practical terms, some kind of moral restriction does help man to find lasting relationships and, with them a sense of personal security and wholeness. Zwischenspiel is about the destruction of love. And this destruction is directly caused by an attempt to formulate a code of moral behaviour that is right for this specific relationship. It is this paradox at the heart of the play's vision which, as Amadeus senses towards the end of his scene with Albertus, makes not so much for heroes, but rather, for clowns and fools.

The scene between Amadeus and Cäcilie which concludes the second act is one of the most richly ambiguous that Schnitzler ever wrote. Dramatically, its most obvious function consists in the reversal of the position in the comparable scene in the first act. In the first act, Amadeus had dominated as the theorist of the new relationship, and Cäcilie had been hesitant. Now Amadeus feels himself again in love with Cäcilie, and she answers him with his own arguments.

Amadeus, as becomes clear in this act and subsequent developments, is jealous of Cäcilie's intimacy with Sigismund and Wedius. She assures him that nothing has happened:

AMADEUS:
So ist eine Gefahr in der Nähe.
CäCILIE:
Gefahr? … Was ist für uns Gefahr? Wer keine Verpflichtungen hat, für den gibt es auch nichts mehr zu fürchten.
AMADEUS (sie leicht am Arm fassend):
Spiel' nicht mit Worten!

(938)

Amadeus here angrily dismisses as playing with words the kind of argument that he himself has used. Similarly, later in the scene when Cäcilie says: ‘wir werden uns immer die Hände reichen, selbst über die tiefsten Abgründe hinweg, Amadeus' (935), she directly echoes what her husband had said to her in Act I: ‘[wir] würden uns die Hände reichen, auch über Abgründe’ (915). Ironically, Amadeus's only reaction to Cäcilie's quotation of his own words is a helpless ‘Du sprichst wie gewöhnlich äußerst klug’ (935). Similarly, he goes on to reproach Cäcilie with being so ‘ruhig’ in the present confused emotional situation, and yet it was precisely this quality which he so proudly displayed in this confrontation in Act I. Amadeus is alarmed at the kind of freedom Cäcilie displays, at the degree of moral independence which she claims for herself. He argues that Cäcilie will only cause herself pain, but she rejects this: ‘Ich bin schon heute nicht mehr, die ich war, Amadeus …’ (936). Here we are confronted by one of the central notions of Schnitzler's moral thinking: man is compounded of a whole mass of contradictory emotions and urges, and can only find a coherent sense of his own manageable identity if he is prepared to restrict himself, to circumscribe an area within the mass of possibilities which he chooses to convert into reality. When this principle is ignored, when, for example, as in Act I, Amadeus urges Cäcilie to fulfil many of the possibilities of her being, he is inviting her to change the definition of her self. Hence, in Act II, when Amadeus looks for the Cäcilie he has known, he finds she has vanished irrevocably. As he looks at her, this truth begins to dawn: ‘du bist auch nicht die Cäcilie, die ich geliebt habe—nein! … Die, die heute kam, hat eine Stimme, die ich nie gehört, Blicke, die mir fremd sind, eine Schönheit, die ich nicht kenne …’ (937).

At the end of Act II, Amadeus looks at the changed Cäcilie and falls in love with her again. She feels the erotic tension behind his words to her, and she attempts to resist. She reminds her husband of his principle that they should be simply friends and colleagues. He counters by reminding her of their promise to be truthful—and the truth is that they are not now friends, but lovers. She continues to resist, but Amadeus's passion mounts to a final outcry: ‘Nicht dein Geliebter also … nein, etwas Besseres und was Schlimmeres: der Mann, der dich einem andern nimmt! … der, für den du einen verrätst … einer, der dir Seligkeit und Sünde zugleich bedeutet! …’ (938). Not only the sentiments here, but also the language itself is different from anything we have heard from either Amadeus or Cäcilie up to now. It is a tone that first makes its appearance towards the end of this scene when Cäcilie speaks of her new identity, of her powerful sense of potential sexual adventures. This passionate, intense tone in its over-rhetorical fury is the linguistic and stylistic underpinning of the experiential truth about which both of them have spoken. Not only the voice is different: the whole language has changed. In grandiose emotional terms Amadeus coaxes Cäcilie into this most dangerous of adventures. The clock is turned back; this is, as it were, the voice of adolescence: the individual personality is an unrestricted tangle of possibilities, and it responds to that possibility which represents the greatest emotional intensity.

Act III takes place the following morning. Amadeus is violently jealous of Sigismund. He is in love with Cäcilie and therefore determines to challenge Sigismund to a duel. He tells this to Albertus, and asks him to convey his challenge to Sigismund. Albertus finds the whole thing absurd—if it were a play, no one would believe it. He coolly points out that Amadeus cannot possibly challenge Sigismund to a duel for behaving in a way that he (Amadeus) has explicitly invited.

Albertus's mission, is, however, forestalled by the arrival of Sigismund, and the ensuing scene is a fine example of Schnitzler's high comedy at its best. Sigismund finds the position in which he is placed intolerable and he asks Amadeus to offer Cäcilie a divorce in order that she may choose freely whether she wishes to marry him or not. Amadeus reveals that two of his friends are at present entrusted with conveying his challenge to Sigismund. Sigismund realizes that Amadeus has changed position so that Cäcilie will no longer be left in such a compromised situation, and immediately withdraws his suit. The neatly comic pattern of reversed roles which operates throughout the play is employed here with delightful precision.

Amadeus is convinced that he can assert possession of Cäcilie. But Cäcilie refuses. She argues that they cannot simply forget what they were—what they meant to each other—nor can they trust the fleeting happiness of a night's love. Amadeus tries to answer her objections with his certainty—both about himself and about the rightness of their relationship. In a crucial exchange he offers her the protection of his love:

AMADEUS:
… Jetzt bist du auch nicht mehr schutzlos, wie du es warst—meine Zärtlichkeit behütet dich.
CäCILIE:
Aber ich will nicht behütet sein.—Ich gebe dir das Recht nicht mehr dazu! …

(956)

Cäcilie condemns the two of them for lacking the courage of their convictions, for being neither friends nor lovers: ‘Wir waren weder geschaffen, uns ewig in Treue zu lieben, noch stark genug, um unsere Freundschaft rein zu erhalten’ (957). With relentless intellectual clarity which recalls Amadeus's argumentation in the first act, she insists that what is now holding them together is nothing more than a shabby fear of the final leave-taking. To stay together would be as much a moral degradation as the kind of empty, convention-bound marriages of which they were so scornful. Their discussion is interrupted briefly by Albertus, who then leaves to play with Peterl's toy theatre. As he does so, he says: ‘Na, Bub’, komm, du sollst mir dein Stück vorspielen. Aber ich bestehe darauf, daß der Held zum Schluß entweder Hochzeit macht oder vom Teufel geholt wird; da kann man doch beruhigt nach Hause gehen, wenn der Vorhang gefallen ist’ (959). In the play we are witnessing, however, the ending is neither happy nor tragic; it is an arid realization of the destruction of a relationship—and of the fact that both principal characters not only acquiesced in this process, but helped to bring it about. In a speech of infinite sadness, Cäcilie recalls the cardinal error they committed; a schematization of their emotional needs in the name of a cerebral partial ‘truth’:

Wenn alles andere wahr gewesen ist,—daß wir beide uns so schnell darein gefunden in jener Stunde, da du mir deine Leidenschaft für die Gräfin und ich dir meine Neigung für Sigismund gestand—das ist nicht Wahrheit gewesen. Hätten wir einander damals unsern Zorn, unsere Erbitterung, unsere Verzweiflung ins Gesicht geschrien, statt die Gefaßten und Überlegenen zu spielen, dann wären wir wahr gewesen, Amadeus,—und wir waren es nicht.

(960)

The insight comes too late, however.

And yet one should stress here that Zwischenspiel is a comedy—for all its serious undertones. It is comic in the sense of Bergson's definition: ‘du mécanique plaqué sur du vivant’.⁸ Throughout the play, Amadeus and Cäcilie become so involved in arguing out the implications of their relationship, in formulating a kind of new morality, that they always ignore the basic fact of present emotional attraction. In this sense, they are comic figures, uttering grand words, impressive intellectual arguments, and yet quite simply missing one of the essential points. And it is this essential point which continues to assert itself every time they are together—and which necessitates every time a fresh piece of argumentation to explain the situation yet again. And this is true even of the final act. Cäcilie speaks with considerable insight when she sees through their ideal of ‘truthfulness’—and yet in a supreme stroke of comedy, she cannot see that she is now guilty of the same kind of misunderstanding as that perpetrated by Amadeus in the first act. Why should they not trust the previous night of love as much as their own ability to discuss and analyse it? Fundamentally, Amadeus and Cäcilie learn very little in the course of the play. They gyrate in perpetual confusion occasioned by their relentless desire for complete intellectual clarity. They are comic in the sense that the hapless Faulkland is comic in The Rivals. Their only insight is to be able to see each time where they have gone wrong—but they are never able to see where they are going wrong. At the end of the play they separate. Amadeus leaves—and then and only then does Cäcilie confront her sorrow at losing him. Their separation will put an end to their relentless self-tormenting. And yet even in the final act Cäcilie refers to the possibility of their perhaps coming together again: ‘Aus allen möglichen Schicksalen können wir eher einmal zueinander zurück als aus dem Abenteuer dieser Nacht und aus dieser trügerischen Stunde’ (957). This remains a possibility. If they do come together again, then presumably the whole process will repeat itself. The song which closes Act I perhaps stands as a kind of motto for the play—‘Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen, beschloß ich und beschwor ich, und geh’ doch jeden Abend …’ (916).

One should in conclusion stress the basically comic structure of Zwischenspiel. There is a sharp parallelism in all three acts. Each act opens with a scene—or several scenes—of exposition, then follows a discussion between Amadeus and Albertus, and then a discussion between Amadeus and Cäcilie. The parallelism is deliberate, and as I have tried to suggest on several occasions, it yields a neatly contrasting pattern as statements are repeated, transformed by context, and often reversed by characters who have completely changed position. The artificiality is further stressed by Albertus's frequent references to the similarities between what Amadeus and Cäcilie are doing and the performance of a play. And yet the neatness and wit of this comic illumination is never allowed to lose its serious undertone. Amadeus's and Cäcilie's shifting attitudes with regard to their relationship may be comic; but we know that all the time they are playing with something deeply serious, ultimately indeed, with their own reality as people. With the mechanical relentlessness of so many great comedies, they change and undermine themselves.

Notes

1. On the contrast between Ibsen and Schnitzler see Melchinger, Illusion und Wirklichkeit im dramatischen Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, pp. 17, 87, 94.

2. Richard Alewyn in the ‘Nachwort’ to Liebelei, Reigen (Fischer Bücherei, 1960), pp. 157f.

3. Liebelei, Leutnant Gustl, Die letzten Masken, ed. Stern, ed. cit., p. 13.

4. Heinz Politzer, Das Schweigen der Sirenen, p. 137.

5. Cf. p. 134 n. 1.

6. Medea, Act III, scene ii.

7. Roy Pascal, The German Novel (Manchester, at the University Press, 1957), p. 127.

8. Henri Bergson, Le Rire (Alcan, Paris, 1938), p. 50.