Cheap Lieutenant Gustl (Green Integer, 95) (Book) (Arthur Schnitzler) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Lieutenant Gustl (Green Integer, 95)

Intriguing Early Example of Stream of Consciousness
Written in 1901, twenty years before James Joyce's "Ulysses", this is a very early example of the literary stream of consciousness technique. Indeed, Joyce acknowledged his debt to this story. It is an indictment of Austrian militarism, as the book explores the mind of the young Viennese officer, Lieutenant Gustl. Gustl ruminates upon whether to take his own life, after suffering what he believes to be an insult to his honor, while retrieving his coat at the cloakroom after a concert he is attending. His thoughts flit from one thing to another, and the reader is given a look at the shallow and arrogant nature of Austrian society during the fin de siecle period.

---

Great knowledge of human psyche
Schnitzler is known as a representative of the fin-de-siècle generation of Viennese intellectuals, and his name is often mentioned alongside Freud's because of his profound interest in the workings of the human mind. He was, indeed, a trained psychiatrist who seemed to revel in the darker corners of the psyche, all that beneath the shiny surface of "decency."

"Lieutenant Gustl" is presented in the form of the eponymous soldier's stream of consciousness, so there is much skipping among subjects which at the same time reveals a great deal about Gustl's personality, the Austrian society of the time, as well as makes one smile. The narrative begins at a concert where an oratorio is being performed, and Gustl seems to be terribly bored with it, cursing his friend, Kopetzky, for giving him the free ticket. Parallel to that though, he is enjoying the fleeting glances of young women in the audience, and on top of that, he appreciates the fact that he is attending an event that has an ascribed cultural value to it--something respectable, decent and going with his image.

At the same time, he is preparing for a duel with a doctor the next day, the cause for which have been some utterings by the latter insulting to Gustl's sense of patriotism. This is another theme throughout the work: the Austrian militarism as well as its opponents, a dose of anti-Semitism, the belligerence of a "good Austrian."

However, the plot following the concert focuses on an incident in the cloakroom. Gustl becomes restless with a large man blocking his way to retrieving his coat, and that irritates him to the extent of cursing at the large man. He turns out to be the baker who is also a regular at Gustl's coffee-shop, but to our hero's chagrin, he turns out to be stronger than Gustl. The baker grabs Gustl's sabre and whispers into his ear to straighten out or the sword would suffer, with all the disciplinary consequences.

This upsets Gustl so much that he gets launched into lengthy ponderings over whether what he has just experienced was a dream or real. After weighing a number of options to stop any further damage to his reputation (what if the baker tells somebody about the incident?), he resolves to commit suicide at the break of dawn. Until the very end of the story, matters from philosophical of universal scale down to prosaic and technical such as how best to say good-bye to his prostitute-friend preoccupy his mind. I am sure many readers would recognise the pattern in which Gustl's mind keeps jumping from topic to topic--Schnitzler has captured the process of thinking so well.

The ending is very abrupt, just like that which the mainstream consumer of popular culture might have experienced when viewing Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut." I will not give it away, but it is an easy little read that won't take too long for anybody to reach the denouement.