Early matured, sad and tender,
Our own soul’s comedy;
Our feelings past and present,
Dark things lightly said,
Smooth words, joyous pictures,
Vague emotions, half experienced,
Agonies and episodes.
The sense of reality, which had been acquired in the school of Zola and Ibsen, was used here to make travels of discovery into the most interesting and unknown land of all—the over soul. And here the complicated, the unusual inmoods and feelings and emotions fascinated the young artists. Personality itself, though the center, took rather a passive part,—it simply came to be the scene of action, the meeting-place of all different impressions. People of the earlier time had been expressionists who projected their own ego into the outward world, whereas now they held themselves open to new impressions, observed them and their effect on the I and then reproduced their observations in artistic form. Impressionism, predominant in painting at that time, had taken hold of literature. Of course, this passivity could only be a stage of transition, because each artistic individuality tends from the passive to the active; but this impressionism was a good means of assimilating all the new possibilities in the inside and outside world.
Schnitzler, born as the son of a famous Viennese physician, and prepared to be a physician himself, was trained to observe. He had a sure scientific eye for human problems, a kind, objective benevolence, and tender forbearance for all sides of human life.
Anatol, his first work, is typical of all the following. Here we see the principal figures, the complicated lover as hero, a friend as the raisonneur,—a remembrance of the French play,—and seven different types of womanhood. Here they all are—the simple sweet girl, loving with her whole heart; the woman, who loves to play with men; the lady of the world, she who would like to love, but has not courage to do it.