Arthur Schnitzler
Paperback | Pages: 112 pages Rating: 3.86 | 2467 Users | 131 Reviews
Declare Books Supposing Fräulein Else
| Original Title: | Fräulein Else |
| ISBN: | 1901285065 (ISBN13: 9781901285062) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Description In Pursuance Of Books Fräulein Else
Last night I attended an unforgettable staging of this book: a dramatized version of a dialogue of a novel. The performance took place in an apartment or flat in the old part of Madrid. It was the home of the director-producer. The audience, of twenty-five people max, was sitting around his living room and the play took place in his connected dining room. Before going up to the sixth story we had to line up for a few minutes to be able to get into the old elevator—four people max--, and while waiting we had to listen to a neighbour from the third floor who insisted on telling us domestic gossip on the building that we did not want to hear.
The elevator scene seemed taken out of an Almodovar film.
So the play began. Fräulein Else, or in last night’s version Señorita Elsa, was first published in 1924. It takes place in a hotel – a health resort. This work then joins the many others by written by Germanic writers that are set in hotels, alongside Hotel Savoy, Death in Venice, The Post-Office Girl. It also deals with the equivocal position of women in society – where their flawed independence, their circumstantial need of money, and their sexual appeal are shuffled in different permutations to build a plot and develop themes, and thereby join the works by Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Stefan Zweig
A promising young actress played the role of Elsa. She gradually managed to absorb our attention in an extremely intimidating venue. Where we were sitting did not provide the black and anonymous vacuum that confronts the players when on stage. Unlit audiences are like empty mirrors. Actors can talk to it and pretend they are safe. Instead this young lady could see our faces as we stared at her performed emotions. We were not an audience. We were voyeurs. And in that role we entered the work, for part of the plot circulates around her having to pose naked, which she did, in front of those with power, which we pretended we had.
But the acting Elsa, enveloped in the elegance of a Klimt but whose beauty was closer to the spell that Schiele creates in his drawings, retained her own power until she brought us back from our imagined visit to a Italian Kurort to the living room of a flat in Madrid. She had commanded our attention by her interpretation of this peculiar genre of dialogue-novel--created by Schnitzler-- which if acted as a monologue requires the abilities of a ventriloquist.
After the performance some of us went to the Gin-Bar across the street and we chatted with the director and the actress while we had an aromatic Bloom Gin&Tonic. Its fragrance of belonged to the inebriating night.
We were told that this gin is the only one in the world distilled by a woman. Not a bad drink to have after reflecting on the short life of Elsa – a woman distilled in an entrancing monologue by Schnitzler.
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I have now also started reading the novel-play. I may come back to this review and comment on the actual text.Identify Regarding Books Fräulein Else
| Title | : | Fräulein Else |
| Author | : | Arthur Schnitzler |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 112 pages |
| Published | : | January 1st 1998 by Pushkin Press (first published 1924) |
| Categories | : | Classics. European Literature. German Literature. Fiction |
Rating Regarding Books Fräulein Else
Ratings: 3.86 From 2467 Users | 131 ReviewsJudgment Regarding Books Fräulein Else
When I think of the word decadence, Arthur Schnitzler comes to mind. Not saying that he himself is decadent - even though i have heard that he kept a sex diary recording every aspect of his sexual fun. But no, he is a writer that focuses on Austrian culture via it's sexual and romantic ways. And this book deals with the nature of money or currency when it mixes with sex. Schnitzler maybe a more healthier Fassbinder - but he is one of my favorite authors who really looks at sex as a socialoh wow... i don't t really know what else to say... o.o
Last night I attended an unforgettable staging of this book: a dramatized version of a dialogue of a novel. The performance took place in an apartment or flat in the old part of Madrid. It was the home of the director-producer. The audience, of twenty-five people max, was sitting around his living room and the play took place in his connected dining room. Before going up to the sixth story we had to line up for a few minutes to be able to get into the old elevatorfour people max--, and while
Note: Were turning this into a movie. Well, at least a sequence of it. In our literature class. And by now, the ideas are... overflowing. Well see what comes of it. But also: Else is waaaaay too relatable, considering she is a vain, arrogant, indecisive creature - a marchesa, a beggar, a coward, a bird. A glass spilling over. And then she is free. Or is she?
Arthur Schnitzler was born in Vienna, Austria, in May 1862. Coming from a prominent family of medical doctors he became a doctor himself and worked first at the Vienna General Hospital and at the General Policlinic where he focused on hypnosis and suggestions. Even while a medical student Schnitzler began his career as a writer and that later on became his main occupation. Starting in 1880 he published poems, prose sketches and aphorisms. In 1888 his play, The Adventure of His Life, appeared in
4,5 starsFräulein Else is the story of a young woman, who, while staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, receives a telegram from her mother begging her to save her father from debtor's jail by approaching an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money from him.It is a delightful novella, a blend of humorous and tragic. I've come to enjoy it more than I thought I would. The story is carried by Else, a young society lady. Although written as a stream of consciousness, it doesn't trail off
A short stylish novel about many things, one of which is attribution theory: Else is obsessed with attribution. She wonders manically about her real motives, her real feelings and what others do feel or will think about her. Else is tied in a cobweb of attributions. And when her behavior appears to drift away from any apparent logical rationality, she's all too aware of the one explanation witnesses will give. The clients of this Dolomites hangout for the austro-hungarian gentry inevitably
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