The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-10-20
BY BARRETT H. CLARK.


Il joys one Of those rare novels
where the writer succeeds in effacing him
self completely and so telling his tale that
you are hardly aware you are reading fic-
ton, you will lay down Arthur Schnitz.
ler's Bertha Garldn with genuine satisfac-
ton.
Here is a novel of less than $50 pages,
into which the writer has compressed a
story Of the first interest, and a full
length portrait that Turgenev would not
have been ashamed to sign. To read
Bertha Garlan after an ordinary novel is
to be conscious Of the wide gulf separat-
ing Schnitzler from the ordinary novelist.
1t would seem pedantic TO refer to the
technique, were it not that the technique
of this novel succeeds in concealing itself,
thereby attaining the true end of all art
technique. Bertha Gdrlan begins quietly;
it is as if the reader were merely continu-
ing his everyday existence; and when it
ends, without the least strain, without
your being aware that you have arrived
at the end, you feel that you have been
brought back by imperceptible degrees to
the point where you began.
Il is the browning glory of the great
novelist that he can compress life within
the covers Of small book, and make it
pregnant with significance, bringing it to
the reader without doing violence to the
truth. The glass through which he asks
his reader to gaze is not the refracting
glass that perverts objects and people in
order to make them momentarily inter
esting; his glass is the pure crystal, diff
fercnt from ordinary glass only in that il
brings objects and characters q little
closer together and magnifes them. Where
the average novelist fails to give one the
feeling Of confidence in his puppets, such
artists as Schnitxler Immediately prove
their ability by making the reader a part
ner in the thoughts and actions Of his men
and women.
Oftener than not you have to make an
effort to get under the skin of the people
you meet in novels-provided all the while
that they are even skin deep-but with
Schnitzler no such effort is required. He
works from the inside out.
Bertha Garlan is you or L: the average
sensual person.
A sex novel! you exclaim. Well, yes.
Not a Robert W. Chambers or an Elinor
Glyn story-dear mol If you are looking
for something a little risque don't open
Bertha Garlan. Bertha is merely nor
NAL woman-dreadfully normal-whose
deceased husband was one of those men
who married as a matter of convenience
and was accepted for the same reason.
Bertha is young and healthy when the
story begins. But she is wholly uncon-
scious of the fact that there is still youth
and happiness before her. 1t might al
most be said that she was never conscious
Of her sex.
And what happcns7 By chance she
reads of the great success of one Emil
Lindbach, violinist she had known in
the Conservatory of Vienna years before,
and who had made love TO her. Gradu-
ally, before she quite realizes what is hap
pening, she has built up a whole romance
in her mind Of which Emil is the centre.
1t is the subtle and disa1-mingly natural
development of this sentiment within her
that is the principal merit of this remark
able novel. As in life, we march to our
fate, be it good or evil, without knowing
exactly how or why. Some trivial Incl
dent, decision made on the spur of the
moment, leads TO events Of the utmost
consequence.
Bcrtha's friend, Frau Ruprus, is gong
to Vienna. Now, trip to Vienna, only
a short distance, was quite an undertak-
ing, and Bertha was so used>to her little
home and so loath to leave it that here
tofOre the prospect Of gong there had
meant little other than inconvenience and
dirt and exhaustion. And yet