Dream Story (Little Clothbound Classics) [Hardcover] Schnitzler, Arthur and Davies, J.M.Q.

The book was severely folded in many places. For the money I paid, the condition of the copy that I received was third rate.

After a massive Yanagihara, I needed something light. This novella turned out to be weightless only in its physicality, it seems, the story that Schnitzler has crafted is intense and emotionally haunting and thus, unbelievable, that it was written in 1926! In an Austrian city when café houses were still a thing, a married couple with their little girl is struggling to keep their marriage together. They admit being promiscuous mutually. What would have led to a détente, instead, made way for a morbid game of vengeance, unconsciously. It is here, the author's reputation of being Freudian in his analysis of sexuality takes shape. The husband can't help being aroused, seduced by younger women he meets as he makes into the night to look after a dying patient. The wife, on the other hand, is helpless with the desire to see her husband dead and to make love with other men. A very thoughtful and intricate web of relations is charted out by the author within 99 pages that questions desires, our fears, our vulnerabilities and our continuous struggle with resistance, that which is carnal and orgiastic. I will end the review here because you should as well read this short, crisp novella to know more. It is utterly well written, loved the prose through and through (thanks to the translator Davies), and I can't recommend it enough.

I am a big fan of both Arthur Schnitzler and the movie, "Eyes Wide Shut", which was adapted from this novella though, unlike many book to movie screenplays, this one underwent very little modification. The novella is shockingly close to the movie even though they are set about 80 years apart (2000 for the movie, circa 1920 for the book). Schnitzler, who was a respected physician and a likely source for many of Freud's ideas, writes in a style that is at once complex yet extremely clear. Unlike Nabokov, who also wrote lengthy sentences, Schnitzler's sentences are well-structured and highly communicative. I am admittedly biased, as I have never come across an author whose writing style is more similar to my own. In any event, this is a great read. Several gaps in the movie - spots that don't quite make sense - are clarified in the book. It's also quite amazing how "politely" lurid the book is, given that it was written in the first part of the 20th century; then again, Schnitzler's writings were frequently attacked and censored as being indecent. This translation is also available in a longer book, "Night Games", which includes several other Schnitzler novellas in excellent translations. Highly recommended if this matches your tastes.

Not so interesting or intriguing

I love the story although the end is quite abrupt and not what I expected but that's fine, things don't always need to go my way :).Love those clothbound books. Lovely paper as well. Small enough to fit in the pocket of my coat, yet the font is easily readable. You can see this is produced with great attention to design and feel.

Fridolin is a doctor living and working in a town – perhaps Vienna, though this is less important than the fact that it is in Austria. After all, this deliciously disturbing 99 page novella by Arthur Schnitzler written in 1926 is entitled Traumnovelle (Dream Story) and as we all know, Austria is the birthplace of psychoanalysis. What is also key to this tale is that Fridolin is married to Albertine, they have a six-year-old daughter, and they are eminently respectable. But like all of us, they have dreams and the problems start when they begin to share those dreams with each other. It’s soon apparent to the reader that Fridolin – who is the centre of the action – is unsure as to what is dream and what is reality. The action takes place throughout the course of one night and the following day, and begins when Fridolin is called to a house where one of his patients has died, and he bizarrely finds himself in a situation where the dead man’s about-to-be-married daughter appears to be sexually attracted to him. After leaving the house, and with his mind full of salacious possibilities he is menaced by drunken students. Shaken and confused, he finds himself drawn to the premises of a prostitute. Nothing really happens other than talk, but Fridolin’s mind and body are full of sexual tension. It’s late, he goes to think things over in a coffee shop where he encounters an old student colleague called Nachtigall, a shambolic figure hovering on the edge of life failure and having abandoned medicine is hiring himself out as a background pianist in insalubrious establishments. Nachtigall can’t help boasting to Fridolin that his next assignment involves naked women and Fridolin decides to follow him – even if it means putting his life at risk. This is an overwhelmingly compulsive piece of modernistic writing, containing long episodes of unsettling internal monologue from the main character. Fridolin comes face to face with his obsessions, and Schnitzler’s writing explores Jungian and Freudian archetypes of sex, death, and guilt. If it seems a trifle familiar to the reader then that’s because in 1969 a film of the same title was released directed by Wolfgang Gluck. A man called Stanley Kubrick watched the film at the time of its release, bought the legal rights, and the rest is history…

Die lange Einführung war etwas ermüdend. Aber am nächsten Tag hab ich die Geschichte verschlungen. Gut erzählt und ich konnte mir die Situationen bildlich vorstellen.