Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle

Jill Scott
Queens University, Kingston, Ontario

Es flieen ineinander Traum und Wachen,

Wahrheit und Lge. Sicherheit ist nirgends.
Wir wissen nichts vom anderen, nichts von uns.
Wir spielen immer, wer es wei, ist klug.
Arthur Schnitzler, Paracelcus
On the morning of March 18, 1879, just as he was getting ready to leave for
school, young Arthur Schnitzler was confronted by his father with a little red
notebook he had found in his sons desk, a diary in which the pubescent Gymnasiast
had written some steamy bits about his current heartthrob. This Oedipal episode,
during which Dr. Schnitzler chastised his son and had him leaf through large medical
textbooks with unsavory illustrations of syphilis and other skin diseases, resulted in
a hiatus in the boys visits to Emilie, one of his griechische Gttinnen, as he called
them (Jugend in Wien 84).1
Schnitzlers late fiction, including his Traumnovelle, first published in 1926, has
commonly been labeled apolitical in part because of the insidious encroachment of
fantasy and dreamscape onto the real-world setting.2 But fantasy is not just the stuff
of which dreams are made. Rather, it is shown in the primal scene between father and
son to have consequences in the material world, notably a sharp reprimand for the
errant son and an indelible memory of the real threat of disease. Indeed, fantasy has
repercussions that go well beyond regulating the behavior of a mischievous boy.
The argument put forward here is that the dominant role of fantasy and the
undecidability of its borders in Traumnovelle offer potential for a critique of First
Republic Austria. My focus will be on the role of fantasy as a political foil. First I
discuss the shift in Austrias social and political institutions directly following World
War I, including the new Constitution, which fails in part, according to Eric Voegelin,
because the newly formed state lacks a national consciousness (see Weinzierl, Weiss).
In the place of a national psyche, however, we have the misplaced fantasy of Empire.
My reading of Traumnovelle rests on Slavoj ieks post-Lacanian theory of fantasy
as a form of social truth or reality principle: not only is there no outside to fantasy,
Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2006
2006 by the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association
46 JILL SCOTT

it actually supports reality. I demonstrate that Schnitzlers narrative technique, in

particular his use of erlebte Rede, prohibits the reader from discerning the limits of
dream and fantasy, and thus I argue that Traumnovelle can be read allegorically to
reflect the political situation of interwar Austria. Moreover, I refer to Freuds theories
of repetition compulsion and the uncanny in my analysis of Schnitzlers protagonist
in order to reveal parallels between Fridolins failed subjectivity and the failed or
uncanny Heimat of First Republic Austria.

Fantasy of Empire
Interwar Austria was hardly a stable democracy. It was in fact an orphan state
struggling to come to terms with the loss of Empire and a political system imposed
not through the free will of the people, but through military defeat. Throughout his
life, Schnitzler endeavored through acute observation and description of the social
landscape to illuminate the complex relations between aesthetics and politics, and
his later works demonstrate what Felix Tweraser calls the clandestine connections
between ostensibly revolutionary movements like the Secession and the conservative
traditions of the monarchy (3). The Empire may have been dissolved, but its cultural
institutions remained in place and in many ways perpetuated old structures of
Habsburgian authority to the detriment of serious social reform. In his 1936 treatise,
Eric Voegelin summed up the problems of the Austrian Constitution as follows:
Austria is a nationally uniform state without being a national State. The
population of the present territory of Austria has never formed in history
a political unit. Austria has a long and glorious history, but it is not the
history of the present Austria as an independent body politic; it is the
history of Austria as part of the mediaeval Empire or as an integral and
dominating part of the old Austrian monarchy. (quoted in Weiss 6)
Hans Kelsens makeshift constitution, ratified in October 1920, was modeled on a
variety of examples, including the Swiss Federal Constitution, the Constitution of
the Weimar Republic, and the old Constitution of the Monarchy (1867), which dated
back to Franz Josephs half-hearted efforts to introduce reform. Kelsen, a professor
of law at the University of Vienna and scientific advisor to Chancellor of State Karl
Renner, lectured on democracy and warned against both Bolshevism and fascism.
Voegelin criticized the failed constitution because it was based on Kelsens pure
theory of law, which was no substitute for political theory (see Weinzierl 30). The
newly formed state of Austria inherited the problems of the monarchy because, argued
Voegelin, there was no Volk in the political sense of the word, and in the absence of
this sense of nationhood was an administrative style of government. As during the
monarchy, the bureaucracy continued to exist for its own sake, independent of the
will of the people. Just one example of the Schlamperei which reigned supreme
in the newly formed state of Austria was the fact that the government agreed to hire
Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle 47

all railroad and postal employees of German ancestry who had lost their jobs in the
now independent successor states. The result was a ballooning payroll and increased
inefficiencies due to overstaffing (Johnston 74).
Schnitzler was aware of the problems that beleaguered the newly formed and
highly artificial state of Austria, and used fiction as the arena for his inconspicuous
critique.3 If hysteria was the dominant mode of the Austrian psyche at the fin de
sicle, repression and the ensuing fantasy became the modus operandi in the interwar
period. The decay that so characterized the decadent end of Empire was even more
pronounced in the aftermath of war, but the government and its public feigned
ignorance.

Undecidable Fantasy
Though written between 1921 and 1925 and published in 1926, the earliest
sketches of Traumnovelle date back to 1907, and there is evidence that the
conception goes back to the 1890s, when the dream was at the forefront of literary
experimentation, for example in Hofmannsthals Das Mrchen der 672. Nacht and
Beer-Hofmanns Der Tod Georgs (Urbach 132; Cohn 67). This lag in time from
conception to production was not uncharacteristic of Schnitzler but should not
be taken as a sign of a particularly nostalgic or backward-looking perspective. It
does mean, however, that the function of the dreamfantasyscapeis different.
In the 1890s dream fictions had an oneiric surreality about them, with an escapist
agenda of neo-romantic, revolutionary beauty. After Freuds Die Traumdeutung,
however, dreams could no longer be innocent spaces for the creation of alternative,
even utopian, realities; they were now the entrance to the dark netherworld of the
unconscious and were fertile ground for das Unheimliche, which Freud defined by
quoting Schelling: alles, was ein Geheimnis, was im Verborgenen bleiben sollte und
hervorgetreten ist (The Uncanny 225). Schnitzler, a careful, albeit critical, reader
of Freud, injected his fantasyscape with more than a little uncanniness.4
Traumnovelle is a carefully crafted tale of a married couple and their jealous
preoccupations with fidelity and deceit. Fridolin and his wife, Albertine, both flirt
with dangerous and illicit sexual adventures. Fridolins escapades involve a heady
journey through the narrow streets and boisterous coffeehouses of Vienna to a
secret society of sexual orgy which borders on the surreal. Typical of Schnitzlers
protagonists, Fridolin is a bourgeois doctor and a man-about-town with a propensity
for philandering. His travels are not the casual stroll of the flneur, but rather a hectic
pursuit of erotic frenzy. We see a man driven by conscious and unconscious desires,
but also by danger, fear, and shame. While Fridolins adventures are codified as
masculine, all taking place in public spaces, Albertine fabricates her dreams in the
feminized interior of the home. Although originating in the security of the marital
chamber, her experiences are equally bizarre and her sexual exploits on a par with
those of Fridolin.
48 JILL SCOTT

We overhear a frank discussion between husband and wife in which each

confesses an infatuation and an infidelity that nearly occurred during their holiday in
Denmark. Each of them professes honesty and warns the other not to ask any further
questions. A knock at the door interrupts them and the doctor is called to see a sick
patient, and here begins Fridolins fantasyscape. He arrives at his patients home only
to find that the old man has already died. Although he is tempted by a flirtation with
the deceaseds daughter, Marianne, who suffers from hysterical delusions herself, the
physician moves on.5
Instead of returning home, Fridolin decides to visit a local caf, where he meets
Nachtigall, a former medical school classmate who is now a traveling pianist. From
his old friend Fridolin learns about the secret society and is determined to attend its
Faschingsball regardless of the dangers to himself and Nachtigall. After procuring the
necessary disguise in the form of a monks habit, Fridolin arrives at the appropriate
villa and obtains entry with the password: Denmark. Almost immediately one of
the courtiers recognizes him as an imposter and tells him to leave before it is too late.
Despite repeated warnings Fridolin remains. Finally he is called upon to pronounce
the second password, and when he claims to have forgotten it, he is told that it matters
not whether he forgot it or never knew it.
The end result is that Fridolin is told to unmask himself. When he refuses,
the woman whose warnings he ignored offers to sacrifice herself in order to save
him. Though he refuses the offer, he is unceremoniously thrown out of the house
and finds his way back to the city, determined to find the mysterious woman. A
series of events leads him to the morgue, where he finds the seemingly ageless
body of a so-called Baroness D.: Ein weies Antlitz mit halbgeschlossenen Lidern
starrte ihm entgegen []. Es konnte ebensogut einer Achtzehnjhrigen als einer
Achtunddreiigjhrigen angehren (83). With no clear evidence that this was the
woman from the Faschingsball, Fridolin assumes it is she and returns home and
makes a full confession to Albertine. This is an important scene and we shall return
to it, but my analysis hinges on a very specific definition of fantasy, which warrants
a brief discussion.

Fantasy: Transgression and Support

According to Freud, fantasies are obscure revelations of [] the truth of
unconscious psychical activity and openings into a hidden world of psychic
reality (quoted in Jonte-Pace 46). More than mere fleeting images constituting
desires in the form of wish-fulfillments or upholding the pleasure principle, fantasy
is part and parcel of the pursuit of truth and reality. Following Freuds lead via Lacan,
Slavoj iek develops a theory of cultural fantasy that underscores the ideological
underpinnings of all alternative states, and goes so far as to say that fantasy is in
fact responsible for the consistency of subjects and the solidarity of groups, a form
of social truth or reality principle. If it were not for fantasys flight from reality, we
Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle 49

would lose our grip on reality altogether and social structures would disintegrate.
Furthermore, the veil of fantasy turns out to be transparent: Fantasy reveals the
very transgressions it affects to hide: it endeavours to suppress the scandal of the
[Lacanian] Real, but in so doing inevitably provokes the return of the repressed,
which breaks out in unexpected material forms (Wright and Wright 87).
The Symbolic order comprises social structures, moral codes, institutions, and
the basic framework that holds up our world.6 Fantasy is marginalized as outside
reality and a threat to the reality principle. iek works to dismantle this assumption,
suggesting that the Symbolic is actually structured and supported by the Real, by
jouissance as the kernel of our enjoyment. He says that there is always an excess of
inside in the fantasy-space: The problem, of course, claims iek, is that the
tidy operation of signification never comes off without producing some annoying,
messy, disturbing surplus, a piece of leftover or excrement (28). Fantasy exists to
hide the inevitability of the split subject and always includes the impossible gaze
of the other. Paradoxically, subjectivity fails if the fantasy is realized, because the
subject depends on the split between its phantasmatic support and its identification
with the Symbolic and Imaginary. The mutual exclusivity of a whole subjectivity
and realized fantasy enforces a necessary liminality for both subjectivity and fantasy.
Moving from the level of the subject to a larger social perspective, we can say
that, though fantasy is often seen as a mode of transgression, it actually puts social
structures in place by breaking them.
This very scenario is mirrored in Traumnovelle in the way that fantasy functions
at the level of narrative structure and character development.7 First of all, Schnitzler
manipulates the narrative in clever ways to ensure the nonclosure of the fantasyscape.
Fridolins supposedly waking adventures appear as a mise en abyme framed within a
domestic scene that begins and ends in the marriage bed.8 His bizarre experiences at
the secret society are confirmed in the real world by a newspaper article, a dead body,
and other seemingly objective evidence. But a careful analysis of the text reveals
reasons to doubt that any of it actually happened. Hurrying home through the dark
streets, Fridolin resolves to tell his wife all the details, but first as a dream and then
as reality:
Er nahm sich vor, ihr bald, vielleicht morgen schon, die Geschichte der
vergangenen Nacht zu erzhlen, doch so, als wre alles, was er erlebt, ein
Traum gewesenund dann, erst wenn sie die ganze Nichtigkeit seiner
Abenteuer gefhlt und erkannt hatte, wollte er ihr gestehen, da sie
Wirklichkeit gewesen waren. (86, my emphasis)
Significantly, just as he describes his adventures as a Nichtigkeit, Fridolin is terrified
when he sees the outline of a human face on his pillow, which he soon recognizes
as the mask he had worn to the ball the previous night. He rationalizes its presence
by suggesting that a maid must have found it and Albertine then laid it out on the
bed. He surmises that his wifes action signals zugleich eine milde Warnung und
50 JILL SCOTT

die Bereitwilligkeit des Verzeihens (87). This uncanny denouement is one plausible
point of intersection between Fridolins adventures and his life with Albertine.

From Dream to Fantasy: Daring Condensations

A further crack in the veneer of Fridolins story is the resonance and reciprocity
between his fantasy and Albertines dream, which functions as a musical coda to his
escapades. In the dream she and Fridolin are to be married, but when she looks for
her wedding dress, she instead finds exotic oriental gowns. The couple wears these
costumes on a magical journey, supposedly their honeymoon, when all of a sudden
they find themselves naked and ashamed.9 While Albertine is seduced in a meadow
by a young Dane, an infatuation from their earlier holiday, Fridolin is being chased
by a threatening mob. In the final scene Albertine is aware of being surrounded by
hundreds if not thousands of copulating couples, but Fridolin has been captured by
priests and is tortured and then executed on a cross. In response to what she witnesses,
Albertine bursts out in uncontrollable laughter.
We see demonstrated in Albertines dream the exact methods of condensation
and displacement that Freud outlines in The Interpretation of Dreams.10 Fridolin
and Albertines fantasyscapes each contain residue from their daily lives, including
references to their holiday in Denmark and a fixation on the problem of fidelity. Many
other elements are duplicated, such as the monks costumes in Fridolins adventure,
which turn up as clerics in Albertines dream, the play of disguises versus naked
bodies, and the omnipresence of titillating sexual overtures coupled with quasi-
religious ritual, but most importantly the atmosphere of fear and imminent danger.
The text is full of allusions to the daring games the husband and wife have played and
which carry with them [einen] Hauch von Abenteuer, Freiheit und Gefahr (9). Both
of them attest to the powerful emotions evoked in their dreams. Albertine confesses:
Entsetzen, Scham, Zorn war an Heftigkeit mit nichts zu vergleichen, was ich jemals
im Wachsein empfunden habe (57, my emphasis).11 Fridolin treats Albertines dream
as if it were a fait accompli, suggesting that his wife is now treulos, grausam und
verrterisch, which in turn gives rise to the hate that now exists between them as
Todfeinde (62). Fridolin uses her spiteful behavior in the dream to justify keeping
his adventures a secret from her and declares with indignation: Man mochte es
nehmen, wie man wollte: heute nacht hatte sie ihn ans Kreuz schlagen lassen (76).
Albertines dream has become Fridolins waking nightmare, but is he really awake?
Fantasy functions at the level of plot, but also at the level of narration through
the use of interior monologue. Erlebte Rede, Schnitzlers signature narrative mode,
appears repeatedly throughout the novella, allowing the reader access to Fridolins
psyche and a glimpse of his increasing anxiety regarding a wide variety of topics.12
Scattered throughout the text, interior monologue becomes a fantasy within a
fantasy, a portal to Fridolins fractured subjectivity. The first such passage arises
from a confrontation with some rabble-rousing fraternity students. They box him in
Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle 51

on the street and one of them jabs him in the ribs. This gives rise to a long diatribe
reminiscent of Leutnant Gustl, where the question of challenging the offending lad
to a duel circles around and around without resolution. The end result is inaction,
cowardice, and lost honor. Subsequent fixations include the fear of falling ill after
visiting a sick child, dissatisfaction with his professional standing, and the problem
of obtaining a professorship without a finished dissertation. Indecisiveness is both a
narrative mode and a character trait: Schnitzlers use of interior monologue reveals
Fridolins tormenting indecisiveness, for example, when it comes time to get out of
the coach and enter the secret society. He frets incessantly: Wie wrs [], wenn
ich gar nicht erst ausstieg? (40). He wonders where he would go thento the
prostitute he had just met? to the young daughter of his deceased patient? Typical
of Schnitzlers style, Fridolins monologues are often interrogative in nature, with
rhetorical questions piling up in endless succession. Finally the frazzled doctor is
on the verge of collapse and recognizes ein allmhliches Versagen seiner Nerven
(75).

Failed Fulfillment: Psychic Disorder or Narrative Strategy?

Fridolins self-diagnosed nervous disorder is mirrored on the level of narrative
structure as a repetition compulsion in the form of a series of failed sexual
encounters.13 Opportunities for clandestine liaisons present themselves at regular
intervals throughout the text. First we have the episode with the young girl on the
Danish coast to whom he feels a powerful attraction that he cannot pursue. Next is
the dramatic declaration of love by Marianne, the spinster daughter of his deceased
patient. Then Mizzi, the prostitute, offers her services, followed by the costume store
proprietors daughter dressed as Pierrot. The list is incomplete without the plethora
of available women at the secret society. In none of these cases does Fridolin engage
in erotic adventure, offering instead a variety of excuses for his reticence.
Whatever the reason for his seeming impotence, Fridolins metaphoric castration
can be traced back to the incident with the fraternity boys. The unexpected jab in the
ribs he receives can be read simultaneously as a challenge to his masculinity and
an anti-Semitic attack. His inaction at this moment is symptomatic of his inability
to carry through his romantic intentions. Schnitzlers works are full of characters
crippled by indecisivenessLeutnant Gustl and Georg von Wergenthin from Der
Weg ins Freie are obvious examples. But in Traumnovelle ambivalence has a special
significance because it is both the result of and the prerequisite for the extended
fantasyscape. Fridolins hesitations are paralleled on the level of narration by the
undecidability of fantasy itselfthe reader is placed in the same castrated position
as the protagonist because she cannot know with any certainty if the events described
are real or where the edge of fantasy lies. Like Fridolins unconsummated overtures
to women, the narrative uncertainty is repeated again and again.
Schnitzlers critique of Freud provides an interesting parallel to my iekian
52 JILL SCOTT

reading of fantasy here. He disapproved of Freuds heavy emphasis upon the

unconscious as the source of all drives because, in his view, the instinctual forces too
easily absolved humans of their responsibility. The division between the superego and
the id did away with the ethical demands of free will in favor of determinism (Segar
12021). In place of Freuds system, Schnitzler proposed a greater emphasis upon the
notion of the Mittelbewute, which resides between the conscious and unconscious
mind (Perlmann 38). He claimed that it was up to the poet to mark divisions between
the conscious, semi-conscious, and unconscious: Das Unbewute fngt nicht so
bald an, als man glaubt, oder manchmal aus Bequemlichkeit zu glauben vorgibt
(quoted in Perlmann 37). Schnitzlers admonishment of the distinction between the
ego and the id in favor of a Mittelbewute can be seen as analogous to the idea that
fantasy functions as a limitless and malleable station between reality and dreams.14
Konstanze Fliedl is also interested in liminal consciousness, but rather than
focus on fantasy, she investigates memory and its transformation within modernity.
Fliedl signals a looming Wahrnehmungs- und Erkenntniskrise at the turn of the
century that shatters any sense of continuity (19). Her diagnosis of this Krise der
Erinnerung and its importance for Schnitzlers work has obvious parallels to the
undecidability of fantasy. Each challenges existing models of consciousness and
can be seen as a form of collective psychic dysfunction or a device for shattering
grand narratives, private or public. Forgetfulness and fantasy have at their root a
lack of concentration. The subject can no longer be expected to sustain a continuous
conscious state. Significantly, Fliedl focuses her argument regarding memory on the
potential for the development of ethical responsibility in Schnitzlers fiction. The
problem of memory is twofold: the fear that memory loss leads to identity loss or
das unrettbare Ich, and the fear of being burdened by excessive accumulation of
historical memory (23). When we view Traumnovelle through this lens, we can see
that, like memory, fantasy questions subjectivity in ways that lead to both pleasure
and panic, and that the collective fantasy of continued empirical institutions elicits
equal amounts of joy and fear depending on whether one is in a position of power or
a member of an oppressed group.
Freuds theory of Wiederholungszwang, introduced in Beyond the Pleasure
Principle (1919), rests on the analogy of the fort-da game, where little Hans rolls
a spool away from himself with an expressive o-o-o-o sound followed by a joyful
da upon its return. This, Freud concluded, is the childs way of making a game out of
the anxiety over his mothers absence and turning what had been a painful experience
into a pleasurable one: by repeating it, unpleasurable though it was, as a game, he
took on an active part (285). Taking control over painful experiences through the
repetition compulsion results in the deferral of the death drive. In Fridolins case the
deferral of sexual satisfaction represents his unsuccessful attempt to take control
over his feelings of inadequacy and doubt regarding both his masculinity and his
Jewish self-identity. Moreover, the perpetual state of sexual arousal provides both
Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle 53

the content and the structure of his fantasy. Fridolin represses his desires through
the game of erotic stimulus, further underscored in the text through the play of
masks and disguises versus naked bodies. His desire produces and is produced by
the fantasyscapethe two are mutually dependent. Fantasy is a function of the ego
in Freuds second typology, where it is produced through a mental projection of the
surface of the body (The Ego and the Id 26). While the early Freud was concerned
largely with wish-fulfillment and its threat through castration anxiety, the later Freud
was primarily concerned with object loss, which results in either the endless pursuit
of the lost object or narcissistic regression, whereby the lost object is incorporated
and functions as the other within the self. The result of narcissistic regression is the
inward focus of libidinal energies and the withdrawal of erotic tensions. In Fridolins
case we can see evidence of both of these scenarios: he searches endlessly for sexual
encounters with substitute objects in the form of the women he encounters, but in the
end he is unable to achieve sexual satisfaction because of his fixation on the self.

Fantasy of Me: Doppelgnger

This narcissistic obsession is manifested again in self-analysis through erlebte
Rede. If Fridolin is unaware of his sexual dysfunction and fancies himself a man-about-
town, he is nevertheless oddly self-conscious about his split identity. He perceives
this doubledness in two distinct ways. The first is motivated by revenge and involves
a scheme of [V]erraten, [B]etrgen, [L]gen whereby he leads a Doppelleben,
a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde life divided between the respectable doctor and
family man and the conniving seducer and cynic (71). He revels in the thought of the
pain he would inflict on Albertine by revealing his sins to her. The second scenario
involves Fridolin boarding a train and simply disappearing into another life as a kind
of Doppelexistenz in which one would forget all about the former life. Fridolin
compares this to waking up from a dream: Freilich, man erinnerte sich []. Aber
gewi gab es auch Trume, die man vllig verga []. Oder man erinnerte sich
spter, viel spter und wute nicht mehr, ob man etwas erlebt oder nur getrumt
hatte (74). It is telling that the narrative breaks off abruptly precisely at this moment
of conscious awareness of the ambiguity between dreams and reality. Fridolin seems
unable to pursue the thought further, instead repressing it and displacing it with a
new concern for the prostitute he had visited the previous day.
Fridolins musing about his doubled identity, whether the philandering deceiver
or the disappearing wanderer, can be seen as a symptom of his growing anxiety
regarding the veiled death threats from the secret society warning him to stop his
investigations into the whereabouts of the missing woman. But doubled identity can
also be seen as a symptom of the fantasy itself, where the split or narcissistic ego
becomes a permanent motive for Fridolins harried pursuit of erotic adventures. The
ego seeks to substitute wholeness of the self through a temporary union with an other
in love relations, but because these love relations are deferred and unconsummated,
54 JILL SCOTT

the desire remains unfulfilled and the fantasy continues.

The doctors flirtations with a doubled identity are also evidence of the flimsiness
of fantasy, a close call where he almost catches a glimpse of his own other within the
fantasyscape. His twin existences or split subject would reveal fantasy for the hoax
that it is, but would simultaneously, according to ieks model, threaten Fridolins
subjectivity itself since the subject depends on the split between its phantasmatic
support and its Symbolic/Imaginary identification. The paradox is that Fridolins
fantasy is both a transgression of and a support for the reality principle that keeps
him sane. Similarly, the novels own narrative reality is transgressed and supported
by the same fantasy. The undecidability of fantasy is thus indispensable for both the
character and Schnitzlers fiction.
The limits of fantasy are tested in new ways during the scene at the morgue. It
is telling that the only truly passionate moment in the narrative occurs there. The
physician is in his element in the hospital setting and seems almost relieved when he
learns that the patient, who it is presumed committed suicide by morphine poisoning,
has died. He is relaxed as he interrupts his colleague, Dr. Adler, and asks to see the
body. Schnitzlers description here is leisurely and nuancednot the clinical tone of a
doctor, but movingly poetic. Fridolin slips into a reverie as he notices the details of the
anonymous womans face, neck, and hands. He moves from the visual examination to
the tactile, gently running his hands over her forehead, cheeks, shoulders, and arms,
[u]nwillkrlich, ja wie von einer unsichtbaren Macht gezwungen und gefhrt (84).
He intertwines his fingers in hers and contemplates her gaze, when all of a sudden
the gruff Dr. Adler interrupts: Aber was treibst du denn? (84). Fridolin comes to
his senses and the womans body, which only a moment ago had been encapsulated
in a radiant glow, is instantly a corpse again.
Unlike the previous sexual adventures, which Fridolin has tried to circumvent,
there is an unnamable allure to this dead woman, but any consummation remains at
the level of the gaze. We glimpse here the true marriage of Eros and Thanatos. The
pleasure principle meets the death drive, which Freud describes as an urge inherent
in organic life to restore an earlier state of things, which is to say an inanimate state
(Pleasure Principle 308). When these two forces meet, the repetition compulsion is
halted, but this signifies the end of the ego: death itself. Schnitzler needs his character
to finish the story and so cannot pursue this narrative thread, but it is more complicated
still. If this scene is read in the context of ieks model of fantasy, i.e. that there is no
outside to fantasy, then the uncanniness of this erotic encounter with death stretches
Fridolins fantasyscape to its thinnestindeed, it almost reveals the fantasy principle
itself. The dreamy moment when he contemplates the corpse constitutes a fantasy
embedded within a fantasythat the woman is not dead but sleeping. The beauty of
her inert body represents the veil of fantasy, which reveals the very transgressions
it affects to hide (Wright and Wright 87). Fridolins mesmerized gaze penetrates to
the scandal of the Real, the rock against which our language fails, but when he snaps
out of the spell, the fantasy principle, which is in itself a mechanism of repression,
Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle 55

regains its hold on him. Schnitzlers protagonist dares not see the fantasy for what
it is, for this would threaten his very being since, as iek tells us, subjectivity fails
if the fantasy is realized. Thus when she becomes an it againa cold, lifeless
corpsethe reality principle of fantasy is resuscitated.15

Rigor Mortis: Empire as Corpse

The intersection between Schnitzlers use of fantasy in Traumnovelle and
the political arena of interwar Austria is rigor mortis; whether from the decay of
the corpse or the continued decay of the Empire, the stench is the same. Fridolin
remarks that what had been the beautiful body of a woman is now destined zu
unwiderruflicher Verwesung (86), and he is awakened to his repulsion. Decay
as a fin de sicle motif most often signifies the corrupt and crumbling Habsburg
Empire with its unwieldy bureaucracy and outmoded political, cultural, and social
institutions, but it can be equally argued that Traumnovelle, though set in pre-World
War I society, is a commentary on First Republic Austria. On the surface, the newly
formed state is a democracy and has turned over a new leaf, but Schnitzler implicitly
creates a continuum, as Tweraser correctly observes, by referring simultaneously to
the past and the present in his later works (3).
Schnitzlers fantasyscape is not the dreamworld of the 1890s presented as a
utopian alternative to the conservative institutions of Empire. Rather, fantasy here is
the grim reality of a political world that naively believes it has begun something new
but that is in fact merely a veneer over the Old World institutions. Schnitzler reveals
fantasy as an omnipresent dream. The obsession with fidelity in Traumnovelle extends
beyond the institution of marriage and is really about the pursuit of a larger truth.
The oscillation between masks and naked bodies parallels the games of deceit being
played out in interwar Austria, where social reform was like a renovation consisting
of rearranging the furniture in a bourgeois salon.
The fin de sicle period seems fixated wholly on the crisis of the individual,
modeled on Freuds theories of the self as a product of the family romance. Oedipus
becomes the everyman of human consciousness, and the focus of art rests on the
smallest indivisible unit of beingthe singular human psyche. However, after the
First World War this obsession with the self seems narcissistic and naive. The senseless
loss of millions of lives shifts the focus, even for Freud, to the social arena and
community.16 Schnitzlers protagonist is hopelessly anachronistic in his narcissistic
obsession with himself and his petty escapades. The portrayal of Fridolins selfish
concern with his professional standing as a doctor, his sexual exploits, and even his
masculinity are all part of Schnitzlers ironic critique of Austrian society.
Scattered throughout the text are reminders of the social problems of the day:
homelessness, prostitution, disease, child labor, child prostitution and abuse, right-
wing political agitation, and anti-Semitism. Fridolin takes note of these details as he
goes about his business and seems intent on instructing Gibisier, the costume store
56 JILL SCOTT

proprietor, that madness is not synonymous with depravity, and that child prostitution
is despicable. He seems genuinely concerned when he learns that Mizzi is in the
hospital with syphilis. But Fridolins philanthropic attitude is mitigated by a fixation
on his own well-being, by his fears that he has contracted a disease from a coughing
child, and by his narrowly missed exposure to venereal disease in his encounter with
the infected prostitute. His anxiety surrounding contagion is a selfish concern, and
his botched sexual opportunities are not merely missed chances for satisfaction, but
are symptomatic of his larger failure to engage with the other.
Traumnovelle, insofar as all of Schnitzlers characters contain bits of himself,
is also a self-indictment on the part of the author. In his youth Schnitzler had been a
shameless womanizer and he expressed grave concern when he felt himself falling
in love, for he considered that feelings of genuine tenderness would only hamper his
freedom to pursue other women (Gay 65). The mature Schnitzler was able to look
back upon his own life with the wisdom of hindsight and see the flaws in his character.
He was enough of a pragmatist not to believe in regret and certainly not repentance,
but this does not mean that he was not critical of his own behavior. My point is not
to berate Schnitzler, but to contrast the narcissistic and self-seeking tendencies of
his protagonists with the renewed interest in the social during the interwar period.
I would like to suggest that Schnitzler constructs a subtle parody here by placing
Fridolins pursuit of pleasure in the foreground while surrounding him at every turn
with evidence of human suffering.

Failed Heimat: Uncanny Home

If the repetition compulsion manifests itself most obviously in his failed sexual
exploits, another conspicuous recurring fixation is the avoidance of home. At various
intervals along his journey, Fridolin pauses and ponders his next move, but in each
case when the possibility of returning to the calm security of domesticity arises,
he rejects it vehemently. After the confrontation with the Allemannic students, he
complains of feeling heimatlos (27). On his way to the masked ball the thought of
home fills him mit einem leichten Schauer (40), and afterwards the idea of returning
to his family is described as lcherlich (52). Toward the end of his escapades,
when he is exhausted by the ordeal, home is even more unsettling: Und was nun?
Nach Hause? Wohin sonst! ... Er fhlte sich ungeschickt, hilflos, alles zerflo ihm
unter den Hnden; alles wurde unwirklich, sogar sein Heim (73, my emphasis).
Everything surrounding the notions of house and home becomes unreal, echoing
Freuds concept of the uncanny, where heimisch comes to mean the opposite of
comfort and security.
The eerie, sinister qualities of home are, according to Freud, the result of a
fundamental ambivalence associated with the mothers body as a sort of Urheimat,
the origin of all existence: This unheimlich place, however, is the entrance to the
former Heim of all human beings, [] the place where each one of us lived once
Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle 57

upon a time and in the beginning (The Uncanny 245). One is captivated at once
by an unconscious desire to be reunited with the mothers body, but at the same
time repulsed and terrified by the thought of being buried alive. The prefix un is
the token of repression, says Freud (245). Interestingly enough, Fridolin blames
his wife and her dream of killing him for his fear of home: Und nun wute er,
warum seine Schritte ihn statt in die Richtung seines Hauses unwillkrlich immer
weiter in die entgegengesetzte fhrten. Er wollte, er konnte Albertine jetzt nicht
entgegentreten (76). Equally telling is that this moment of lucidity comes directly
before his encounter with the dead Baroness D. Once Fridolin has seen and touched
the corpse, he seems cured of his problem and returns home without hesitation
indeed he even hurries. The uncanniness of home is associated with women, but once
the ambivalence surrounding the nature of the fantasy principle has died with the
woman on the table, so too has the fear of home. It is as if the fantasy can now stretch
to include home, confirming that there is no outside to the fantasyscape.
The ambiguity surrounding home in Traumnovelle can be read as an extended
allegory for the political situation in interwar Austria. Heimat does not represent
security and comfort but rather fear, repression, and the uncannysomething that
ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light. Schnitzlers critique
of First Republic Austria is subtle but sustained: he condemns the hypocrisy of a
society that feigns democracy but in fact perpetuates the fantasy of Empire. The
author justifies his skepticism regarding the rhetoric of democracy and the calls for
sweeping reform by recalling the failure of political liberalism within the period
of the monarchy. The decade of the 1860s brought unprecedented change and
opportunity, especially for Jews, but the collapse of liberalism was followed by a
time of fractured parties and conservative ideologies. This trend was not halted by
the dissolution of the monarchy. Indeed, the abysmal economic situation coupled
with the humiliation of war reparations made for a climate of fear and suspicion, all
of which perpetuated the exclusionary attitudes of the later nineteenth century. The
experiments in democracy were associated not with freedom and equality, but with
the crippling postwar Treaty of Saint-Germain, widespread unemployment, famine,
and destitution, so that it was doomed to failure. We should not forget, after all,
that Traumnovelle was published just two years after the inflation of 1924, which
wiped out the savings of all those who had not put their money into Swiss francs. If
corruption and decay are omnipresent tropes of the fin de sicle, Schnitzler littered his
texts with signs of morbidity well into the postwar period. Fridolin risks committing
unspeakable crimes with the corpse of Baroness D., but comes to his senses and
realizes that, in the end, the body is destined to unwiderruflicher Verwesung (86).
Fridolins last line, Kein Traum [] ist vllig Traum (88), raises a red flag
of caution with regard to the neat closure of the final scene, warning that the tearful
confession of husband and wife does not signify the end of their troubles and that their
collective experiences on the level of fantasyscape may have lasting consequences.
Fridolins words also suggest that no story should ever be taken at face value and that
58 JILL SCOTT

we are invited to read between the lines. Similarly, when Albertine answers Nun
sind wir wohl wach (88), we should be leery of false optimismthe restoration of
reality and with it the sanctity of marriage.17 If marriage is an institution that often
hides the turmoil of mistrust, hatred, and violence behind the veneer of domestic
happiness, so too Schnitzler seems to warn that the seeming institutional reforms
of the fledgling democracy of First Republic Austria hide the truth of stubborn
hierarchies, corruption, and the familiar power structures of the monarchy.
Schnitzler pushes the limits of genre by setting up a fantasyscape that offers
no way out. There is no easy exit from the chaos of the dream just as there is no
escaping the shadow of Empire that looms so large in interwar Austria. Schnitzler
is forward-looking and innovative in the realm of fictional form, but he is keenly
aware of the weight of history and tradition, and the immense difficulty of making
real shifts on the concrete level of social and political structures. He loves to play
games with his readers and invite them into his carefully crafted fantasyscape, but at
heart he is a pragmatist, and his aim is to instruct as well as entertain. As Schnitzler
learned early in life through the lesson his father taught him with regard to the little
red diary: fantasy will always occupy the minds of boys, but it can also have serious
consequences. Early in the novella Fridolin observes of his patients dead body that
nach ewigen Gesetzen Verwesung und Zerfall ihr Werk schon begonnen hatten
(21). If decay is a corrupting influence, it is equally a productive process and, as
Schnitzler demonstrates in Traumnovelle, the eternal laws of nature are not yet
finished with their work of nation-building in First Republic Austria.

notes
1. In Schnitzlers Century (2002) Peter Gay uses this episode as a point of
departure for his musings about Victorian attitudes. Scholars tend to be skeptical
of Gays readings of Schnitzler as an incorrigible playboy. It is perhaps true that the
anecdote about the diary falls into this category, but it nevertheless illustrates the
point I want to make about fantasys part in subject development and support.
2. The terms dreamscape and fantasyscape will be used to emphasize the
all-encompassing aspects of unreality in the novel, reflecting Slavoj ieks concept
(to be introduced later on) that there is no outside to fantasy.
Felix Tweraser argues that Schnitzlers late fiction has often been viewed as
gentle, refined critique of imperial Austria or, to a lesser degree, a nostalgic reverence
for its order and its benign approach to resolving internecine conflicts (2), and goes
on to say that Schnitzler himself has been labeled a cynic, pessimist, or nihilist
because his characters are typically unable to negotiate threats to their worldview.
Twerasers argument for politically charged readings of Schnitzlers late fiction rests
on the mediated experience of characters as shaped by social institutions. Michaela
Perlmann documents several early investigations of the relation between dreams and
reality in Traumnovelle: an early study (Lantin, 1958) argues that the events in the
Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle 59

novella are real (180), but several subsequent critics (Politzer, 1968; Imboden, 1971;
Ekfeldt, 1973) concentrate more on the surrealist nature of Fridolins adventures as a
type of Zwischenwelt (181). Tweraser builds on Hilde Spiels thesis that the novels
strange dream-world mimics the Niemandszeit between the Donau Monarchy and
the Republic, suggesting comparisons to Goethes Walpurgisnacht or Huysmans
La Bas (181). An early sociohistorical reading of Traumnovelle is offered by Hartmut
Scheible, who suggests parallels between the secret society as a place of refuge from
strict ideologies in Schnitzlers novella and Lessings Ernst und Falk. Scheible sees
the dream as a tool that goes beyond the interpretation of the individual to encompass
the larger social politic, quoting Schnitzlers aphorism: Nicht die Menschen sind zu
bessern, sondern die Organisationen (12).
3. With its forthright treatment of anti-Semitism, Der Weg ins Freie stands out as
one of Schnitzlers most political fictions, but one could argue that even those works
which appear frivolous or apolitical contain covert political commentary.
4. Schnitzlers ambivalent relationship with Freud and psychoanalysis has
been well documented. The similarities between the two mens lives were such
that eventually, in a letter commemorating his sixty-fifth birthday, Freud named
the writer his Doppelgnger (Brief 1922). In a much earlier letter dated 1906,
Freud expressed admiration bordering on envy for Schnitzlers apparent secret
knowledge of psychological phenomena that demanded laborious research on the
part of the analyst (Brief 1906). Schnitzler was close to Freuds circle from 1912
to 1914 but then took some distance from the analytic movement. He had a chance
meeting with Freud in 1916 but never became well acquainted with him. Like Freud
himself, Schnitzler analyzed his own dreams but was adamant that he did not want to
be the subject of analysis by another.
5. W. G. Sebald reads this scene as a parallel to Freuds Anna O., except that
instead of having at least a moderately successful talking cure with Breuer and
Freud, Marianne is left by the doctor to suffer in silence. Sebald concludes that
Fridolins decision to abandon the neurotic woman to her fianc, Dr. Roediger,
confirms the patriarchal order of symptoms as superior to female desire (123).
6. I am using the terms Symbolic order and Imaginary order in the sense of
Jacques Lacan, for whom the Imaginary represents the preconscious realm of oneness
with the maternal figure, and the Symbolic order is a set of discursive structures
which begin to exert their influence when we enter into language. For Lacan the
Real is that to which we have no ordinary access, that which is unmediated and has
no language. The Real is a space of original unity, of fullness and completeness. It
should not be confused with our common notion of reality; indeed the Lacanian Real
bears considerable similarity to Kants Das Ding an sich.
7. Dorrit Cohn remarks that Schnitzlers greatest achievement in Traumnovelle
is the way he bends the norms of realist fiction without breaking them. She says that
the events in the novella border on the fantastic (67), but I would like to suggest
that they are fantastic, that there is indeed no outside to the fantasy at all. My reading
60 JILL SCOTT

also contradicts William Reys early structuralist reading in which the novella is
interpreted along strictly binary divisions of Eros and Thanatos, Day and Night, and
ultimately good and evil. Rey shuns psychoanalysis in favor of a humanistic reading
whereby fantasy is shown to be a sinister obstacle to moral order, which triumphs in
the end once marital harmony has been restored. The real function of the dream, for
Rey, is to highlight the ethical possibilities in the deep recesses of the human soul
(263).
8. The familiar bedtime routine for the couples child underscores the apparent
seamlessness of the reality principle at the outset, and yet the story Fridolin reads
while his daughter drifts off to sleep is no ordinary fairy tale but a snippet that evokes
the otherworldly richness of A Thousand and One Nights. The fact that the novella
opens with a metatextual reference to a prince lounging on a boat sheltered by the
vastness of the night sky dares the reader to sink into the tale in the innocent position
of a child, for whom the distinction between fact and fiction is flimsy at best.
9. Michaela Perlmann finds remarkable parallels between this scene and Marc
Chagalls 1914 image of a flying couple which bears the mark of both Russian
folklore and Chassidic legends (198).
10. Condensation is the phenomenon of abbreviating the material of waking life
and translating it into the dream form such that the manifest content is smaller than
the latent content: Dreams are brief, meagre and laconic in comparison with the
range and wealth of the dream-thoughts (Freud, Interpretation 383). Displacement
is a form of dream censorship and manifests itself as a replaced image or an allusion,
often with a lessened emphasis, for example a car accident showing up as an insect
on a car window: The consequence of the displacement is that the dream-content no
longer resembles the core of the dream-thoughts and that the dream gives no more
than a distortion of the dream-wish which exists in the unconscious (417). Both
condensation and displacement represent forms of resistance within the dream.
11. For Hartmut Scheible the missing bridal gown is symbolic of a desire to
defer the wedding itself, and the non-white clothes she finds in its place stand for
eine ungebundene Lebensform (76). This may be, but perhaps more importantly
the closet itself stands for a secret chamber which holds mysterious secrets, and the
exotic costumes conjure up the images of the purple robe worn by the mysterious
prince in the bedtime story told at the outset of the novella. Scheible claims that
nothing comes up in Albertines dream that was not mentioned in her conversations
with her husband (75), implying his influence over her, but I think her dream tells
more than one story: that of her relationship to her husband and that of her independent
life of dreams.
12. Perlmann argues that Schnitzlers use of erlebte Rede allows for distinctions
to be made among the different levels of consciousnessconscious, semi-conscious,
and unconscious (19091). If we consider that fantasy takes place largely at the level
of the semi-conscious or Mittelbewute, then Perlmanns thesis coincides with my
own argument.
Fantasies of Repressed Empire in Schnitzlers Traumnovelle 61

13. See Eric Santners Of Masters, Slaves, and Other Seducers: Arthur
Schnitzlers Traumnovelle for a full discussion of Fridolins failed erotic encounters
and the problem of repetition compulsion. Santner views Fridolins escapades as
more of a Trauerarbeit than a dream and argues that he can only enter into normal
sexual relations once he has properly mourned the dead woman (45).
14. Horst Thom is less enthusiastic about the idea of the Mittelbewute,
claiming that the semi-conscious can also be a realm where humans act without
being fully conscious of their actions. He goes on to say that Schnitzlers characters
are founded on a psychopathology that is nichtfreudianisch, especially where
hysteria is concerned (163). Moreover, it is in times of crisis (and we have ample
examples in Traumnovelle), says Thom, that the subject can become awakened and
fully authentic (164).
15. Stanley Kubricks film adaptation of Traumnovelle, Eyes Wide Shut (1999),
has been criticized for its foreclosure of fantasy. While remaining for the most part
faithful to the plot of Schnitzlers novella, the film does take one major departure
with the addition of an informant character named Victor Ziegler who, according
to some critics, explains away all the mystery and ties up the loose ends of the plot
(Saur 59; Borchardt 14). Ziegler summons Bill (Fridolin) to his mansion and reveals
that he knows all about the doctors adventures. Ziegler was present at the secret
society soire and tells Bill that the whole thing was staged, a charade, a fake, meant
to scare Bill into silence about what he had seen. It may be true that Ziegler answers
some important questions, and yet we have no proof that we can trust this character.
Although there are several interesting parallels regarding the use of fantasy in the
film and the novella, limitations of space prohibit a full discussion here.
16. Freuds Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (1915) signaled a shift
in the direction of his research from the individual to the social psyche once he
realized that entire nations were emotionally crippled by the trauma of war.
17. Martin Swaless reading of Traumnovelle is distinctly pragmatic, interpreting
the scene at the end of the novella as an existential moment of reckoning. While this
reading is tempting, I find that it is slightly over-optimistic and that there is always
a hint of irony in Schnitzler if one ventures to scratch the surface. My reading also
diverges from that of Perlmann, who suggests that the collective adventures of the
couple lead to a catharsis and a new beginning, free from desire and aggression
(201).

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