Desire and Delusion
Desire and Delusion
By Arthur Schnitzler
Translated by Margret Schaefer
"One reads the stories with suspense, pleasure, amusement.... [Schnitzler] can be read with pleasure and ease."—The New York Times
"Translator Margret Schaefer [offers a] concise and informative introduction.... Schnitzler's characters—abrim with sensibility, but devoid of common sense—seem so contemporary."—New Haven Register
"These three dark novellas show Schnitzler's mastery as a guide to the neurotic, death-obsessed world of fin-de-siècle Vienna."—Robert Alter
"Life," Arthur Schnitzler famously said, "is what happens between love and death." This second collection of Schnitzler's prose fiction follows on Night Games, Margret Schaefer's earlier translation of the Viennese writer's tales, which won acclaim in the New Yorker and among critics generally. In Desire and Delusion, Ms. Schaefer has translated three of Schnitzler's greatest novellas—"Dying", "Flight into Darkness", and "Fräulein Else". They reveal the depths of his psychological and moral understanding of life as well as the masterful storytelling techniques that immerse the reader into the very center of his characters' thoughts and emotions. Acknowledged masterpieces all, these novellas span Schnitzler's entire career from 1895 to 1931. They testify to his stature as depth psychologist, a doctor-writer fascinated by illness and very much at home in what Susan Sontag has called "the country of the sick." In all these novellas, Schnitzler uses point of view, interior monologue, and stream of consciousness in a radically modern way reminiscent of Joyce and Proust, only earlier.
Paperback
288 pages
Ivan R. Dee, 2004
6.3 x 0.8 x 8.8 inches
ISBN 9781566636032
Novella, Psychological Fiction