Literature, music, atmospheres: Arthur Schnitzler´s Miss Else

Abstract

In Fräulein Else (Miss Else), published in 1924, stream of thought and music composition intertwine, creating atmospheres that simultaneously express the historical turbulence of the Belle Époque Vienna and tumultuous affects that escape from it. This work written by the physician Arthur Schnitzler (whose father was Freud’s physician) consists of the inner monologue of a nineteen-year-old Viennese girl from a wealthy family on the brink of ruin. The young Else finds herself in a critical dilemma, as she needs to obtain a loan at any cost to save her indebted father. This is what she will attempt with a wealthy Sexagenarian, an art dealer, who promises to lend her the money under one condition: to see her naked. The novella is moved by affects such as eroticism, vital force, insurgent and suicidal impulses, love for her father, indignation, contempt, and hate. At the climax of the plot, fragments of Schumann’s Carnival blend with the text, when Else fulfills and breaks her promise, undressing herself for the hotel guests and then committing suicide with an overdose of Veronal, a drug commonly used at that time to treat insomnia and nervous excitability. The atmospheric climax is created by fragments of a music composition that rhythmizes Else’s final crisis, her stream of thought in the process of abolition. The outcome, death, undecidably articulates her destruction and a final flight: “Ich fliege... ich träume... ich schlafe... ich träu… träu – ich flie...”(I am flying... I am dreaming... I am sleeping... dream... dream... - fly...).