The wise man's wife

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Cover of the first edition, 1898

The Wise Man's Wife is a novellette by Arthur Schnitzler about a reunion with a previous love affair that took place years later, the sudden end of which is now being clarified. It was completed in 1896 and appeared from January 2, 1897 in three installments in the Viennese weekly Die Zeit . In the following year, this became the title text for the author's first collection of short stories (S. Fischer, Berlin 1898).

First edition

The first edition appeared in the spring of 1898 by S. Fischer along with four other novellettes:

content

In the summer, the first-person narrator recovers from his doctorate , which was completed a month ago, in a Danish seaside resort. Miss Jenny, whom he loved so much in "this year's May", married someone else in June. That is not so bad, because Mrs. Friederike has arrived. The first-person narrator has not seen Friederike for seven long years. The lady is traveling with her four-year-old son and wants to meet her husband in Copenhagen in a fortnight. The husband is the former landlord of the first-person narrator. When the first-person narrator thinks about the end of his high school days, seven years ago, he already has a few remorse and asks: What did Friederike have to endure from her husband for his sake? Perhaps, he goes on to think, she still has to suffer today.

It was like this: on the day when the first-person narrator is supposed to start his journey home after finishing high school, Friederike comes to his room and kisses him. During the kiss, the door opens quietly and Friederiken's husband stands there. When the first-person narrator tries to scream, the husband is gone again; has closed the door. When the first-person narrator returned to his home town, he assumed that the man had forgiven Friederike for repenting. The first-person narrator still loves Friederike. The affection is reciprocated. Now he has to find out from her mouth that everything was a little different. The husband had approached so quietly that Friederike had feared his appearance, but not noticed. It was just as if someone was coming. The first-person narrator finds out through clever questioning that the husband had never mentioned the incident to Friederike later. After this revelation, the narrator is disillusioned. Suddenly Friederike appears to him like a stranger. He leaves, never to be seen again.

Explanation of the title

The experience of the protagonist with a sudden cooling of his passion ("something froze inside") is an expression of the defeat in the confrontation with the betrayed husband. Since this, despite knowledge of the kiss and surprisingly for the protagonist, did not cause a conflict, but rather passed over the intimacy with silence, it gained the upper hand in the long term. Because in this way, avoiding the generation conflict that his wife could leave him for a younger man, turns the high school professor into a “wise man”. By keeping calm he made sure that seven years after the kiss his wife - as the title also expresses it - is his. She is not mistress of her fate because the man "monitors" it and can end it at any time.

reception

  • Hofmannsthal wrote to Schnitzler on January 16, 1897: "I was surprised by the way the ending was carried out, as well as by a completely unexpected and yet infinitely simple, obvious solution ... Everything external that supports the progress of the action is also wonderfully economical and transparent. "
  • The first-person narrator finally turns away from Friederike because he is not entirely at ease with an unsuspecting woman who has been forgiven in silence by her husband for seven years. In addition, their strength, their superiority over men, contradicts his understanding of the roles of men and women.
  • Friederike's husband is wise because he remains silent about the incident and thus saves his marriage.

Web links

literature

expenditure
  • The wise man's wife. In: Arthur Schnitzler: The Wise's Woman. Novellettes. S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1898. (First edition, together with flowers , A Farewell , The Dead Silence and The Day of Honor)
  • Arthur Schnitzler: The Wise's Wife . Historical-critical edition. Edited by Konstanze Fliedl and Evelyne Polt-Heinzl. Collaboration with Anna Lindner, Martin Anton Müller and Isabella Schwentner. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter 2016.
Secondary literature
  • Michaela L. Perlmann: Arthur Schnitzler. Metzler Collection, Vol. 239. Stuttgart 1987. 195 pages, ISBN 3-476-10239-4
  • Giuseppe Farese: Arthur Schnitzler. A life in Vienna. 1862 - 1931. Translated from the Italian by Karin Krieger . CH Beck Munich 1999. 360 pages, ISBN 3-406-45292-2 . Original: Arthur Schnitzler. Una vita a Vienna. 1862 - 1931. Mondadori Milan 1997
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A - Z . S. 555, 2nd column, 24. Zvu Stuttgart 2004. 698 pages, ISBN 3-520-83704-8

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Farese, p. 79, 13. Zvu
  2. ↑ Perlmann, p. 129, 17th Zvu
  3. ↑ Perlmann, p. 129, 10th Zvu
  4. ↑ Farese, p. 79, 22. Zvo