SECTION:
Twentieth-Century Austrian Authors as Examples of the Unifying Aspect of Cultures
Pamela S. Saur
Viennese Fin de sieçle Impressionism in International ContextThere are several reasons to explain why fin de sieçle Viennese literature is often studied for its own sake rather than in international context. Not only did the milieu produce a great volume of art of high quality, but the coffeehouse life, social structure, and even the local dialect contributed to a sense of unity and community among artists and intellectuals, who often were not even acquainted with each other in other cities. In addition, the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire lends the subject an apparent broad scope, and the enduring fascination of the associated mythic fall of that Habsburg Empire, coupled with the charm of the city of Vienna itself, has had effects on literary historians. It has been all too tempting to ignore the years by which the end of the century preceded the end of the empire and to identify literary developments supposedly resulting from the effects of these two end-points. However, neither the end of the century nor the literary developments of the era occurred only in Austria, and Austrian writers were not isolated from the broader European culture. The literary impressionism of authors such as Zweig, Bahr, Musil, Hofmannsthal, and Schnitzler, and permeating the writings of Peter Altenberg, also can be found in literary works of the time in France, England, Russia, and Italy, although not in German literature, despite the pervasive international influence of Nietzsche. Baudelaire and the French symbolists are frequently cited as influential in both Austria and England at the turn of the century. Moreover, discussions of the fin de sieçle period in England, represented by Wilde, Symons, Pater, and Swinburne, are similar to descriptions of Viennese culture of the time in their emphasis on the phenomena of impressionism and the related concepts of decadence and aestheticism.
Even the arch-Viennese impressionist writer Peter Altenberg claimed such influences from abroad as the French writers J. K. Huysman, Baudelaire and Mallarme and the English pre-Raphaelite artists. Hofmannsthal wrote a famous essay on his affinity with the Italian poet D’Annunzio, and Andrian’s novel Garten der Erkenntnis was admired by writers from several countries. Thus, Viennese literary Impressionism was one branch of an international artistic movement. As such, it intersects with developments in other branches of art, and reflects social and historical developments of the modern era in Europe as a whole.
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