Bertha Garlan

by Arthur Schnitzler

Overview

This 1901 novel by the great Austrian writer deals with a young widowed woman who, following the lead of a libertine friend, travels to Vienna and undertakes an affair with a great violinist she had previously known. Becoming a "liberated woman," she must suddenly deal with the consequences: her lover’s refusal to continue the relationship and the societal pressures of the day.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940000781128
Publisher:	B&R Samizdat Express
Publication date:	02/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	373 KB

About the Author

Dr. Arthur Schnitzler (15 May 1862, Leopoldstadt, Vienna - 21 October 1931, Vienna) was an Austrian author and dramatist.
His works were often controversial, both for their frank description of sexuality (Sigmund Freud, in a letter to Schnitzler, confessed "I have gained the impression that you have learned through intuition - though actually as a result of sensitive introspection - everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons") and for their strong stand against anti-Semitism, represented by works such as his play Professor Bernhardi and the novel Der Weg ins Freie. However, though Schnitzler was himself Jewish, Professor Bernhardi and Fräulein Else are among the few clearly identified Jewish protagonists in his work.

Schnitzler was branded as a pornographer after the release of his play Reigen, in which ten pairs of characters are shown before and after the sexual act, leading and ending with a prostitute. The furore after this play was couched in the strongest anti-semitic terms. 'Reigen was made into a French language film in 1950 by the German-born director Max Ophüls as La Ronde. The film achieved considerable success in the English-speaking world, with the result that Schnitzler's play is better known there under Ophüls' French title.