Dream Story – Arthur Schnitzler

Dream Story was a book that caught my eye while I was wandering around a charity that sells books, and when I read the back cover, it drove me crazy with curiosity. Of course, I had to read this book, which inspired the film Eyes Wide Shut, and I had to watch that Kubrick film again, which I don’t remember very clearly. Finally, I can say that I loved both the book and the film separately. It was a great book + film duo for me.

Advertisements


Dream Story - Arthur Schnitzler

Dream Story is an interesting novel. While reading it, I thought about how one thinks of a film and couldn’t come up with anything. And Even though the movie doesn’t progress precisely the same as the book, it is a great spectacle, a work in itself, since it takes all the essential points and is a Kubrick movie. However, I think its effect will be more remarkable when you watch Eyes Wide Shut after reading Dream Story.

A marriage in which small and harmless (dreams) confessions grow into something else, and a man in a panic… Doctor Fridolin attends a private party he is not invited to that will change his life completely. His life will change because of what happened after this party he shouldn’t have gone to. Imagine a marriage where all the secrets are freely circulating and leave it in the hands of a good writer. Enjoy!

Dream Story - Arthur Schnitzler

Dream Story

Dream Story: This wonderful translation of Dream Story will allow a fresh generation of readers to enjoy this beautiful, heartless and baffling novella. Dream Story tells how through a simple sexual admission a husband and wife are driven apart into rival worlds of erotic intrigue and revenge.

Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler, (born May 15, 1862, Vienna, Austria—died October 21, 1931, Vienna), Austrian playwright and novelist known for his psychological dramas that dissect turn-of-the-century Viennese bourgeois life.

Schnitzler, the son of a well-known Jewish physician, took a medical degree and practiced medicine for much of his life, interesting himself particularly in psychiatry. He made his name as a writer with Anatol (1893), a series of seven one-act plays depicting the casual amours of a wealthy young Viennese man-about-town. Although these plays were much less probing than his later works, they revealed a gift of characterization, a power to evoke moods, and a detached, often melancholic, humour.

Dream Story - Arthur Schnitzler

Schnitzler’s Reigen (1897; Merry-Go-Round), a cycle of 10 dramatic dialogues, depicts the heartlessness of men and women in the grip of lust. Though it gave rise to scandal even in 1920, when it was finally performed, the play inspired numerous stage and screen adaptations, including the French film La Ronde (1950), by Max Ophüls. Schnitzler was adept at creating a single, precisely shaded mood in a one-act play or short story. He often evoked the atmosphere of corrupt self-deception he saw in the last years of the Habsburg empire. He explored human psychology, portraying egotism in love, fear of death, the complexities of the erotic life, and the morbidity of spirit induced by a weary introspection.

He depicted the hollowness of the Austrian military code of honour in the plays Liebelei (1896; Playing with Love) and Freiwild (1896; “Free Game”). His most successful novel, Leutnant Gustl (1901; None but the Brave), dealing with a similar theme, was the first European masterpiece written as an interior monologue. In Flucht in die Finsternis (1931; Flight into Darkness) he showed the onset of madness, stage by stage. In the play Professor Bernhardi (1912) and the novel Der Weg ins Freie (1908; The Road to the Open) he analyzed the position of the Jews in Austria. His other works include plays, novels, collections of stories, and several medical tracts.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges: 

Read Around the World, A Great Journey

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.