The woman with the dagger
The woman with the dagger is a play in one act by Arthur Schnitzler . Together with three others, it belongs to the one-act cycle Living Hours . The play was premiered together with the others on January 4, 1902 in the Deutsches Theater Berlin .
content
Pauline meets the young Leonhard several times in the picture gallery. He confesses his love to the married young woman. Too late, signals the beloved. Tomorrow she is going to Italy with her husband, the poet. Besides, she doesn't love Leonhard. Leonhard sticks firmly to his decision. In the coming, for both of them the last possible and only night, Pauline will be his.
A leap back in time to the 16th century is carried out on the stage - into Italy into the epoch in which the picture The woman with the dagger , in front of which the two are currently standing, was painted. Now is Pauline Paola and Leonhard Lionardo. The constellation in the late Middle Ages is, as it were, a congruent one with the modern age. Much more, the painter Lionardo owned Paola, someone else's wife, last night. Now that the betrayed husband is approaching, Lionardo wants to kill himself out of love for Paolo, so that he "won't give himself away with one look".
Enter the husband. Paola points to the still living Lionardo and confesses to the husband the love affair. Lionardo wants to be killed by the husband on the spot. The latter renounces revenge and generously opens the gate to freedom. Paola stabs Lionardo.
A leap forward into modern times ends the drama at the same time: the determined Pauline wants to spend the coming night with Leonhard.
shape
The piece is cleverly built. The short excursion into the late Middle Ages anticipates the outcome of the drama. So Pauline will kill Leonhard after the night together.
Opera
- Vladimir Ivanovich Rebikov composed the opera The Woman with the Dagger (Shenschtschina s kinshalom). There is a piano reduction from 1911.
reception
- Sprengel classifies the piece in Schnitzler's drama, in which "temporary infidelity" in the artist marriage is tolerated by the partner.
Web links
- The text at Zeno.org
literature
- source
- Arthur Schnitzler: The woman with the dagger. S. 340–358 in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Arthur Schnitzler: Reigen. The one-act. With an afterword by Hermann Korte . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1961 (edition 2000). 602 pages, ISBN 3-10-073557-9
- First edition
- Arthur Schnitzler: Lively Hours . Four one-act plays. Also contains: The woman with the dagger - The last masks - Literature . S. Fischer Berlin 1902. Linen gold stamping. 160 pages
- Secondary literature
- Therese Nickl (Ed.), Heinrich Schnitzler (Ed.): Arthur Schnitzler. Youth in Vienna. An autobiography. With an afterword by Friedrich Torberg . Fischer paperback. Frankfurt am Main 2006. 381 pages, ISBN 978-3-596-16852-1 (© Verlag Fritz Molden , Vienna 1968)
- Peter Sprengel : History of German-language literature 1900 - 1918. Munich 2004. 924 pages, ISBN 3-406-52178-9
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A - Z . S. 555, 2nd column, 20. Zvu Stuttgart 2004. 698 pages, ISBN 3-520-83704-8