what's love got to do with it?
by Douglas
Messerli
Arthur Schnitzler La Ronde, translated from the German by Nicholas Rudall (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee,
2010)
La Ronde, originally
titled Der Reigen (a round-dance or
roundelay, published as Hands Around
in English) was first "handed-around" in a private edition in 1900
Vienna. The play, which follows the sexual affairs of 10 couples, one each
appearing in the next scene, was recognized as too outspoken even by its
author. Schnitzler was, nonetheless, shocked that when the play was produced in
1903, it caused a major scandal, anti-Semitic riots, and the banning of the
play. It was not revived again in that city until 1920.
None of the
play's characters, despite the intense denials to the contrary, are innocents.
The young prostitute of the first scene readily seeks out sexual contact with
the sailor, offering her body up to him for free! The young maid of Scene II,
knows very well how to flirt with the soldier while drawing him into the bushes
near where they have been dancing. She is equally willing to bed with the young
son the house, who may be inexperienced but is quite clearly "ready"
for the attack. Although the Young wife of Scene 4, may need a more careful
seduction than the maid, the young gentleman has prepared for almost
everything, and even though he fails the first time around, he soon comes alive
in her caresses.
It is, in fact,
in Scenes 4 and 5, that the play truly comes alive, and begins to intimate
Schnitzler's true concerns. Part of the method that the young wife uses to
arouse her would-be lover is to question him, not only about his own past, but
his affairs with other women, his own position in relationship to sex. While
this is not completely an innocent series of inquiries, we also feel that she
is seeking for some sort of understanding, if not about sexuality in general,
at least about her own feelings and her own break with cultural taboos. This
becomes more apparent in the next scene, where we come to understand the cause
of her frustrations—her business-man husband is much older than she and his
sexual relations might be described as a purposeful on-and-off again activity,
what he describes as an attempt to keep the honeymoon alive!
He cannot even
imagine that she might be unfaithful, and insists that she should dessert any
woman acquaintance who might possibly even be thought able to do such a thing.
Yet she insistently questions him, it is clear, just to comprehend why these
situations occur. Has he ever had sex with a married woman? He grumpily admits
that he has—before meeting her. But we see in the very next scene we see that
he is not himself adverse to having extra-marital affairs.
All of these
sexual couplings are heterosexual, in part, because Schnitzler intentionally
presents relationships in which men and women are quite equal, at least in
terms of their hypocrisy. The last two scenes, however, portray a man who has
his mind, at least, occupied by something else. In Scene 9, the handsome Count
(beautifully portrayed in Ophuls rendition by Gérard Philipe) visits the
actress midday with the permission of the woman's mother. To her suggestion
that they have immediate sex, he is startled; he's not ready for it, he argues;
it's like having a drink in the morning. No, they must wait until after of the
theater, after dinner, at the appropriate time and place. Meanwhile, he talks
not of love (The Count claims that "there is no such thing as love"),
but of his good friend, Louis and other men in his regiment. The actress
finally must ask him to remove his sword, and when the seduction scene arrives,
it is she who conquers.
In the final
scene, the Count awakens in the room of the Prostitute, not even knowing who
she is or where he is, and certain, given his drunken condition, that the woman
in the bed and he have never had sex. The only thing he remembers is that he
was in his carriage with his friend Louis. In a final series of questions he
reminds me of the stock-gay-figure: the straight-man who gets drunk to have sex
with homosexual men, conveniently forgetting everything come morning.
COUNT: (stops) Listen, tell me something. Doesn't it mean
anything to you anymore?
WHORE: What?
COUNT: I mean, don't you have any pleasure doing it anymore?
WHORE: (yawning) I need some sleep.
.......
COUNT: Last night...tell me. Didn't I just collapse on the sofa
right away?
WHORE: Of course you did....with me.
COUNT: With you...well, I...
WHORE: But you passed right out.
Love, even
pleasure is missing from most of these encounters. It's the interchange
accomplished through the revolutions of the dance and the attendant dizziness
that matters. Schnitzler's consistent "blackout" at the moment of
sexual contact, as established in this translation, is the perfect device in
that it indicates the unimportance of the act itself.
Early in the play
the Maid with her soldier cries out just before the sexual act, "I can't
see your face." In a 1982 translation by Sue Barton, the Soldier retorts,
"What's my face got to do with it," while Rudall simplifies the
Soldier's words into a question: "My face?!"* I am not interested in
judging which translation is better here—Rudall's translation seems to me to be
a muscular, performable version—but the former does remind me of the title of
the famed Tina Turner song, "What Does Love to Do with It?" which I
couldn't get out my head while reading this work.
The characters of
Schnitzler's play talk endlessly of love, but it's the sex they are after, and,
in the end, it is their search for it that spins them off a life-long dance.
The moment he finishes with the young maid, the soldier returns to the dance
hall. The young wife returns to her husband after her dalliance with the young
man. The Count surely is reunited with his friend Louis, uncertain whether or
not anything happened with the sleepy prostitute, who reminds him of someone he
has met long ago, perhaps the actress of the previous scene. In the end,
Schnitzler's world is not so much an immoral one as it is a society of
dissatisfied beings.
*Marya Mayne's 1917 English-language translation represents
the Soldier's line as, "Face, hell!"
Los Angeles,
August 12, 2010
Reprinted
from Rain Taxi
