The Road to the Open
About this ebook
“The Road to the Open” tells the story of the aristocratic young composer Georg von Wergenthin-Recco who has talent but lacks the drive to get down to work and spends most of his time socializing with members of the assimilationist, artistically sensitive Jewish bourgeoisie of Vienna and other non-Jews like himself who enjoy their company. A love affair with a Catholic lower middle class girl, combined with the author’s authentic descriptions of the milieu, the arts, the psychology of love, and the anti-Semitism that was coming to dominate so much of life and politics in the Austria-Hungary of the time, make this novel a classic.
“One of the most important, representative, revelatory works of Austria at the turn of the century....The best English version of the novel.”—Marc A. Weiner, Indiana University
“In Arthur Schnitzler the two strands of Austrian fin-de-siècle culture, the moralistic and the aesthetic, were present in almost equal proportions. Small wonder that Freud hailed Schnitzler as a ‘colleague’ in the investigation of the ‘underestimated and much-maligned erotic.’”—Carl Schorske, author of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
About the author
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER (15 May 1862 - 21 October 1931) was an Austrian author and dramatist.
Born in Vienna, he was the son of a prominent Hungarian laryngologist, Johann Schnitzler (1835-1893), and Luise Markbreiter (1838-1911), a daughter of the Viennese doctor Philipp Markbreiter. His parents were both from Jewish families. In 1879 Schnitzler began studying medicine at the University of Vienna and in 1885 he received his doctorate of medicine. He began work at Vienna’s General Hospital, but ultimately abandoned the practice of medicine in favour of writing.
A member of the avant-garde group Young Vienna (Jung Wien), Schnitzler toyed with formal as well as social conventions. He specialized in shorter works like novellas and one-act plays, and in his short stories like “The Green Tie” (“Die grüne Krawatte”) he showed himself to be one of the early masters of microfiction. He also wrote two full-length novels such as “Der Weg ins Freie” (“The Road to the Open”). His novella “Fräulein Else” has been adapted a number of times including the German silent film Fräulein Else (1929), starring Elisabeth Bergner, and a 1946 Argentine film, The Naked Angel, starring Olga Zubarry.
In addition to his plays and fiction, Schnitzler meticulously kept a diary from the age of 17 until two days before his death in 1931, aged 69.
