New Double Online Release on the Schnitzler Edition

Arthur Schnitzler digital: https://www.schnitzler-edition.net/

The two texts open up different perspectives on Schnitzler's late work while simultaneously demonstrating how protracted and convoluted the genesis of his works could be. This is particularly evident in the case of Die Schwestern oder Casanova in Spa. The play draws on subject ideas that Schnitzler had noted as early as the 1880s and 1890s, and developed over several decades from a one-act play originally planned under the title "Jealousy". The work received decisive impulses from Schnitzler's intensive engagement with Giacomo Casanova, whose memoirs inspired him to transpose his material into the world of the 18th century. The result was a verse comedy that the author himself held in extraordinarily high regard. „Mir selbst ist selten was von mir so lieb gewesen“ ("I have rarely been so fond of anything of mine"), Schnitzler wrote to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1919; years later he described the play as "technically the most flawless" of his dramas. All the more remarkable, therefore, that this work, judged so unreservedly positively by Schnitzler himself, was not granted lasting theatrical success. Repeatedly postponed premieres, failed rehearsals, and protracted conflicts with theatre directors prevented the hoped-for triumph. The edition makes the unusual history of the work's composition, publication, and performance traceable in detail for the first time, on the basis of all surviving documents.

A different aspect of Schnitzler's literary work is revealed by the edition of Der letzte Brief eines Literaten und ein Nachwort. For nearly 25 years, the author wrestled here less with the subject matter than with finding the appropriate form. He drafted the story of a "literary man" who believes he must experience deep personal suffering in order to create a great work, conceiving it successively as a diary, as a tragic anecdote, as a novella, as a first-person narrative by a doctor, and finally as a (novelistic) letter by the writer himself. Although Schnitzler continued to revise the text into the final years of his life, it was not published until after his death, and thus without the author's authorisation. The historical-critical edition therefore does not follow the posthumous first printing, but instead establishes for the first time a reading text based on the last manuscript version revised by Schnitzler himself. The differences from the text in the hitherto widely circulated version of the first printing are highlighted in the process. The edition also documents in detail the numerous attempts and detours that led to the final form of the novella.

Also going online for the first time are the complete factual commentaries on the previously edited works Komödie der Verführung and Professor Bernhardi,meaning that further central works by the author are now comprehensively contextualised within their historical, cultural, and biographical setting. The commentary on Professor Bernhardi was produced by the British partner team of the edition.

More Background on the Research Project

The research project Arthur Schnitzler digital. Digital Historical-Critical Edition (Works 1905 to 1931) is carried out by scholars at the University of Wuppertal, the University of Cambridge, and University College London, in cooperation with Cambridge University Library, the German Literature Archive Marbach, the Arthur Schnitzler Archive Freiburg, and the Trier Center for Digital Humanities. The German sub-project, founded in early 2012 and funded as a research undertaking of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts within the framework of the Academies' Programme, covers the works from 1914 onwards.