The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-10-20
bertha Garlan'

a journey naQ not once entered nef mlnu,
The more so as 1t could be accomplished
with SO little trouble. 1t appeared to her
at that moment that such journey might
be remedy for the strange sense Of DIS
satisfaction under which she had been suf-
fering during the last few days"
Bertha is led--even as you and L
from mere suggestion on the part Of
her friend into active cooperation with
fate, and she suddenly awakes, startled,
to find herself writing to Emil Lindbach.
The character of Emil stands revealed
in his answer: good natured, little
superficial, blase. We know that Bertha
is doomed to disappointment. If she were
at all interpretive she would know it.
She comes to Vienna again and meets
him. For him she is something new: q
decent woman throwing herself at his
head. To her he is everything: all the
romance and youth which had never been
hers. She throws her petty convention
atty to the winds, she forgets her little
boy, her relatives, her friends and gives
herself up wholly to Emil. He is bored.
He begs her to 60 home-and come again
some weeks lateri Bertha is slow to real
lie that Emil does not really love her,
but she cannot long remain blind to facts.
And when at last she admits to herself
that his love for her is no more than the
fleeing passion Of a moment, notice that
she neither goes into decline nor COM
mits suicide. The creator Of Bertha is not
her creator in the sense that he makes
her; he only describes her. And it is lust
this point that puts Schnitzler immeas-
urably higher than Elinor Glyn and Rob
ert W. Chambers and their followers.
He observes, and he knows, and he dares
tell what he knows. He describes people
thinking and acting as they think and act
in life; whereas the novelists who merely
exploit sex describe their behavior &C
eording to the ideas Of their shop girl
readers. Bertha Garlan neither svoons
nor dies. She goes home, back to her
little boy, her tiresomsrelatives, her music
lessons, to the young man and the old
man who make love to her. Her life is
richer and more complete.
Nor is there the least trace of remorse
In her breast: she gave herself without
thought, blindly, ont of the fulness of her
great love. Was not that enoughi
And now for the final touch. Where a
less skilled artist might have demanded
of his ''heroine" the wages Of her "sin,"
Schnitzler allows Bertha to suffer as it
were vigorously. Rather than have her
suffer, rather than make his picture
morally symmetrical, he offers MS "cut-
in" suggestion of what might have been
Bertha's lot-only things don't happen
that way in life. In life we know of
course that Consequences are visited
upon innocent and guilty alike And so
Bertha's punishment is visited upon her
friend, Frau Rupius; not that she is in
nocent, but that punishment might, we
feel, have come to Bertha-and Bertha
feels it, too.
Frau Rupius's husband, a paralytic, is
a quietly tragic figure.
"The relations which had existed be-
tween the paralyzed man in the room
beyond and this woman Frau Rupiusl,
who had had to die for her deceit, seemed
now to Bertha 10 be spread out before her
with wonderful clearness. Herr
Rupius was sitting in the adjoining room
exactly as she had left him. She was
seized with a profound desire to speak
some words of consolation to him. For
moment it seemed TO her as though her
own destiny had only had this one pur-
pose: to enable her fully to understand
the misery of that man. She would have
liked to have been able to tell him so, but
she felt that he was one of those who
desire to be alone with their sorrow. And
so, without speaking, she sat down oppo-
site him"
BERTHA GARLAN, BY ARTHUR SCHNIrz