7.38 Schnitzler — «Lieutenant Gustl» (opening) — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the opening of Arthur Schnitzler's Lieutenant Gustl (1900), the first German story told entirely as an interior monologue: the thoughts of a young Viennese officer at a concert and in the cloakroom afterwards. Understand Viennese colloquial German on the page: hätt', möcht', g'sagt, hab'n, net, stad , diminutives in -erl , and möcht' used as a conditional. Follow a text without a narrator: present tense, broken sentences, questions to oneself, and other people's words in quotation marks. See how Schnitzler lets a character expose his own prejudices, vanity and fear without a word of comment. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the German aloud; all of them come back below. German English der merkt, daß ich mich langweil’ und nicht herg’hör’ he notices that I'm bored and not listening Also Geduld, Geduld! Auch Oratorien nehmen ein End’! So, patience, patience! Even oratorios come to an end! Ist das ein Gedränge! What a crush! So, jetzt heißt’s noch zur Garderobe Right, now off to the cloakroom er hat den Griff von meinem Säbel in der Hand he has the hilt of my sabre in his hand wenn Sie das geringste Aufsehen machen if you make the slightest fuss Prerequisites : 7.37 — you need free indirect thought from 7.37 Reading , Austrian German from 11.3 Background , the regional and colloquial registers of 5.19 Vocabulary , and the perfect tense as the spoken past from 3.5 Verbs . About this text Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931) was a Viennese doctor and one of the leading writers of the city's modernism, the author of plays such as Reigen and of stories that explore the inner life, sexuality and self-deception of the Viennese middle classes, at the time when Freud was developing psychoanalysis in the same city. Lieutenant Gustl appeared at Christmas 1900 in the Vienna newspaper Neue Freie Presse . It caused a scandal. Schnitzler, who was Jewish and a reserve medical officer, was brought before an army court of honour for insulting the army, and stripped of his officer's rank in 1901. The whole story is the thought stream of a young lieutenant over one night. He is bored at a concert, thinks about women, gambling debts, and a duel he is to fight the next day with a lawyer, der Doktor , who insulted the army. In the crowded cloakroom he quarrels with a baker, who grips the hilt of his sabre and calls him, quietly, dummer Bub , silly boy . According to the officers' code of honour, a man of lower rank cannot be challenged to a duel, and an officer who has been so insulted must resign or kill himself. Gustl wanders through the Prater all night and decides to shoot himself at seven in the morning. At dawn, in his café, he learns that the baker died of a stroke at midnight. Nobody knows. Gustl is delighted, and looks forward to cutting his opponent to pieces in the afternoon. The excerpt is the beginning of the story up to the moment just after the incident, about 3,400 words, from the transcription of the 1906 edition (S. Fischer, Berlin) in German Wikisource, unchanged. Gustl's thoughts are full of contempt: for women, for socialists, and, repeatedly, for Jews. This antisemitism belongs to the character and the army culture Schnitzler satirised, and the story was written to expose it. Grammar in the text The interior monologue. There is no narrator and no dachte er . Everything is in the present tense, in the first person, and moves as thoughts move: Wie lange wird denn das noch dauern? Ich muß auf die Uhr schauen … schickt sich wahrscheinlich nicht in einem so ernsten Konzert. The three dots mark jumps; questions are put to oneself; other people's words appear in quotation marks only when Gustl hears them. Schnitzler took the technique from a French novel of 1887; in English it is best known from James Joyce, twenty years later. Viennese colloquial forms. Final -e and other sounds are dropped, as in speech: hätt', möcht', hab', geh'n, g'sagt, g'scheh'n, hab'n S' ( haben Sie ). The baker says sein S' jetzt ganz stad , keep quiet now , with Austrian stad , quiet , and Gustl thinks laßt er denn meinen Säbel net aus? with net for nicht . Diminutives end in -erl or -el : Brieferl, Weiberl, Augerln, Sechserl, Mädel, bissel . möcht' as a conditional. In Viennese German möchte often replaces würde : Ob ich sie erkennen möcht'? , would I recognise her? ; wenn ihr der draufkommen möcht' , if he were to find out about her . Read möcht' here as würde , not as would like . The spoken past. Gustl uses the perfect for the past, as southern German speakers do: hab' mich gestern so gegiftet , Ich hab's ja nicht können . Standard German says nicht gekonnt here, because no other infinitive follows; Gustl's colloquial speech keeps the infinitive können , as if a verb such as tun were understood. A true double infinitive, as in 2.24 Grammar , appears in daß ich in das blöde Konzert hab' geh'n müssen , and in the past subjunctive: das hätt' ich nicht sagen sollen . Honour and address. The officers greet each other with Habe die Ehre , a Viennese greeting that the baker uses with heavy irony as he leaves. The baker addresses Gustl with Sie and his rank, Herr Lieutenant , and then with an insult that destroys the whole system of rank: Sie dummer Bub . The title is spelled Lieutenant , the French form used in the Austrian army; later editions have Leutnant . Reading it a second time, section by section The concert (paragraphs 1–3). Gustl is bored by an oratorio: he only came because his friend Kopetzky gave him a ticket. He looks at the girls in the boxes, thinks of his lover Steffi, who is dining with another man tonight, and decides that Steffi's companion must be Jewish. Money, family, the duel (paragraphs 4–6). Gustl lost a hundred and sixty gulden at cards yesterday; his mother will have to ask his rich uncle. He thinks of a girl at his uncle's farm, his parents, his unmarried sister. Then of the duel tomorrow afternoon with a lawyer, der Doktor , whom Gustl counts among the R