Schnitzler's Dying - some idle speculation

Another pleasant Pushkin Press book today, their edition of the 1895 Arthur Schnitzler novella cheerily and accurately title Dying.  A young writer, Felix, learns that he has a year to live and we watch him live out that year, badly and well by turns.  At times the story and Felix’s behavior reminded me a bit of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886), but in a fundamental shift the point of view of Felix alternates with that of Marie, his wife or girlfriend.  Sometimes their views of life and death sync up, sometimes not.  Mostly not.

Now that is an odd detail there, isn’t it, that I do not know if the couple is married.

The novel opens with Marie waiting for Felix in a Viennese park.  They are young, they are a couple – “she said lovingly,” “he took the hand she casually offered him.”  Felix acts like a jerk for a while before admitting the bad news he got from a doctor, so that is how the story moves.  I assumed that the couple was unmarried, especially once Felix demands that Marie leave him to spare her the suffering and similar balderdash.  But Felix and Maria also cohabitate, share a bed, stay in hotels together, and so on.

Perhaps their surnames would provide a clue, but Schnitzler never mentions them .  Maybe a legal matter comes up, like a will.  No.  Perhaps another character, say a family member, will mention something, but neither Felix nor Marie have any family at all.  In fact, Dying only has one other character of consequence, a friend who happens to be a doctor.  So this is a deliberate ambiguity.  Maybe the translator missed something, but the translator is Anthea Bell, so I strongly doubt that.

Dying reinforces my sense that Schnitzler is a powerful but narrow writer.  No family, no religion, no work except some vague writing about which the dying man claims, near the end of the story, to have “thousands of fresh insights” (p. 96).  I cannot remember, actually, a single reference to religion in any of the Schnitzler I have read so far, although I was not looking for them, so who knows.

Schnitzler’s imaginary world is cramped.  Many of the scenes in Dying are not much more than two people in a bedroom or railroad carriage, talking or fighting or thinking.

This is strange, too.  The three earliest Schnitzler stories I have read, aside from Dying, are about:

1.  “The Widower” (1894): a young man’s wife has just died.

2.  “A Farewell” (1896): a young man’s secret mistress has just died, and he cannot grieve properly because of course the husband makes all of the funeral arrangements.

3.  “The Dead Are Silent” (1897): a young adulterous couple have a carriage accident; the man is killed.

You cannot say that Schnitzler does not squeeze the juice out of a conceit when he gets hold of it.  His plays from the same period, like La Ronde and Liebelei, do not fit this pattern.  Still: narrow.

I have done no justice to Dying, so we are stuck with it for another day.