Beatrice's veil
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| Title: | Beatrice's veil |
| Genus: | Play in five acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Arthur Schnitzler |
| Publishing year: | 1900 |
| Premiere: | December 1, 1900 |
| Place of premiere: | Lobe Theater , Wroclaw |
| Place and time of the action: | in Bologna during the Renaissance |
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The veil of Beatrice is a verse drama by Arthur Schnitzler in five acts. It was premiered in 1900 at the Lobe Theater in Breslau and was first published in book form in 1900 in Berlin by the theater agent and publisher Albert Ent, and in 1901 by S. Fischer Verlag . Beatrice's veil is considered a literary parallel to Freud's interpretation of dreams .
background
Arthur Schnitzler had started with verse dramas in his youth: Aegidius and his earliest printed dramatic attempt Alkandi's Lied (1890). Schnitzler's diary shows entries in the spring of 1898 that indicate the beginning of work on the piece; he wrote a "pantomime", it was said. Schnitzler finished the work in mid-1899, shortly after his lover Maria "Mizi" Reinhard died of sepsis on March 18. It is no coincidence that Schnitzler will quote the final verses of the drama at almost all public readings:
- The sign sounds, and powerful new greed
- Like never before, inspires my step.
- I rejoice in the good fight that is coming;
- I breathe the fresh morning breeze thirstily
- And praise this glow from the heights
- As if it were given to me alone so rich.
- Life is abundance, not abundance
- And the next moment is far.
- The sign sounds, and powerful new greed
The work is considered a literary parallel to Freud's Interpretation of Dreams ; Freud himself wrote in a letter to Schnitzler:
- “I have often wondered in amazement how you could get this or that secret knowledge that I acquired through laborious exploration of the object, and finally I came to envy the poet whom I usually admire. So I got the impression that through intuition - but actually as a result of fine self-perception - you know everything that I have uncovered in laborious work on other people. "
In 1900 Hermann Bahr demonstrated his friendship again when Schnitzler got into controversy with director Paul Schlenther from the Burgtheater in Vienna about his latest play The Veil of Beatrice . 1900 was the year of the Beatrice affair , when Schnitzler, supported by his friends, insisted on a promise made by the then Burgtheater director Paul Schlenther , namely that Beatrice's veil would be premiered in the Burgtheater. While Schnitzler experienced success in the field of prose with Lieutenant Gustl , he experienced a break in on the stage: After a falling out with Paul Schlenther because of the rejection of The Veil of Beatrice, he was banned for five years - despite protests from well-known friends and poet colleagues Pieces from the Vienna Burgtheater.
Already on October 7, 1899 Schnitzler had Otto Brahm the veil of Beatrice read. The drama impressed him very much, but it could not induce him to perform this play (at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin), which is why the performance took place in Breslau (on December 1, 1900). But after the Berlin success of the Lebendige Stunden (January 4, 1902) Brahm came closer to the idea of a performance again, even if his letters (to Schnitzler) gave the impression of deliberate delaying tactics. When Schnitzler heard from Hugo von Hofmannsthal that Brahm had made derogatory comments on Beatrice's veil because it contained too much sex, he was completely annoyed. On March 7, 1903 (despite Otto Brahm's misgivings), through the advocacy of Max Reinhardt, the time had come: the play had its premiere at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Reinhardt said that this piece “cannot currently be played, staged and equipped on any other stage as it is on ours”.
The contemporary judgment on the piece was ambivalent. Max Koch considered the work to be “one of the most important creations” of the turn of the century. Rainer Maria Rilke said in a letter to Schnitzler: "The complicated nature of Beatrice is wonderfully simple, and you stand above him and his troubles with really great justice". Alfred Polgar wrote in a detailed review of a new production (at the Burgtheater, Vienna April 23, 1925, with Raoul Aslan and Hilde Wagener ) in “ Die Weltbühne ” (June 16, 1925): “Nobody knew women, including Arthur Schnitzler, who knows them well ”. The Schnitzler biographer Reinhard Urbach points out the parallelism between the veil of Beatrice (in the context of the protagonist Filippo Loschi = poet) and the dream interpretation (by Sigmund Freud). Beatrice had not accepted the dream as a pipe dream and not interpreted it as a possibility. But what is only a dream for Beatrice, for Filippo, who knows how to interpret dreams, is desire without courage.
Like Sigmund Freud in psychoanalysis , Arthur Schnitzler brought up those taboos - especially sexual ones - that were displacing the society of the time, which was entirely oriented towards rationality and progress. It shows that there are forces in the subconscious that are beyond the control of the mind. As already mentioned, Schnitzler was referred to as the literary counterpart to Sigmund Freud, who also emphasized this in a letter to Schnitzler in 1922:
- “Dear Doctor Schnitzler. For many years I have been aware of the wide-ranging agreement. So I got the impression that through intuition you know everything that I have uncovered in laborious work on other people. Yes, I believe that at heart you are a psychological in-depth researcher, as honest, impartial and fearless as anyone has ever been. But I also know that analysis is not a means of making yourself popular. Your devoted Dr. Freud."
Schnitzler finally wrote The Veil of Pierrette in 1910 based on motifs from the play Veil of Beatrice .
action
The plot is in Bologna of the Renaissance created where the troops of Cesare Borgia besiege the city. Beatrice loves the poet Filippo Loschi, but has a dream in which she sees herself married to the Duke of Bologna, Lionardo Bentivoglio. That is enough for Fipippo to cast off her beloved. What is just a dream for Beatrice takes on the meaning of a secret wish for Filippio.
review
The veil of Beatrice is not one of Schnitzler's strongest stage works, wrote Max Haberich. "One of the reasons for this is that it is consistently held in verses that prevent the psychological motives for the characters' actions from becoming as clear as in dramas with unbound language."
Book editions
- Beatrice's veil. Play in five acts. Berlin: A. Dec 1900
- Beatrice's veil . Berlin, S. Fischer, 1901.
- The plays. Second volume. (Paracelsus. The companion. The green cockatoo. The veil of Beatrice. Living hours). Berlin, Fischer, undated (1912)
- Beatrice's Veil: Dramas 1899–1900 . Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 1999, ISBN 9783596115044
Web links
literature
- Giuseppe Farese: Arthur Schnitzler: A life in Vienna 1862-1931. Munich: CH Beck, 1999, ISBN 3406452922 / 3-406-45292-2
- Sabler, Wolfgang: ›The veil of Beatrice‹ and the historical drama. In: Les relations d'Arthur Schnitzler avec la France. Edited by Martine Sforzin 2013.
- Schnitzler Handbook: Life - Work - Effect , edited by Christoph Jürgensen, Wolfgang Lukas, Michael Scheffel. JB Metzler Verlag, 2014, ISBN 9783476024480
Individual evidence
- ^ Journal for German Studies, Volume 18. Verlag Enzyklopädie, 2008
- ↑ Arthur Schnitzler, Otto Brahm : The correspondence Arthur Schnitzler, Otto Brahm. M. Niemeyer, 1975
- ↑ The dream novel Literary Psychoanalysis
- ^ Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Bahr: The Letters of Arthur Schnitzler to Hermann Bahr. University of North Carolina Press, 1978
- ↑ Andrea Willi: Arthur Schnitzler's novel The Way to the Free : an investigation into daily criticism and its contemporary references. C. Winter, 1989
- ↑ Arthur Schnitzler, a biographical sketch by Kristina Fink in: Arthur Schnitzlerdigital
- ^ Giuseppe Farese, Arthur Schnitzler: a life in Vienna 1862–1931. Munich: CH Beck, 1999, p. 86 ff
- ↑ Max Reinhardt, Edda Fuhrich, Gisela Prossnitz: Max Reinhardt: Die Träume des Magiers , Salzburg and Vienna, Residenz, 1993, page 42.
- ↑ Urbach, Reinhard: Arthur Schnitzler. Felber near Hanover, Friedrich Verlag, 1972
- ↑ Schnitzler biography
- ↑ WG 2 / S. 1366 / No. 12.
- ↑ Claudia Wolf: Arthur Schnitzler and the film: meaning, perception, relationship, implementation, experience . Karlsruhe University Press.
- ↑ Max Haberich: Arthur Schnitzler: Anatom des Fin de Siècle. Kremayr and Scheriau 2017, ISBN 9783218010641 .