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“Fridolin’s eyes roved hungrily from sensuous to slender figures, from budding figures to figures in glorious full bloom; and the fact that each of these naked beauties would forever be a mystery ��.The delight of beholding transformed to an almost unbearable agony of desire.��

This quote is taken from one of the most erotic scenes in this Dream Novel and is the one you probably remember most if you have seen Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut�� which is an adaptation of this novella. Fridolin is one or our main protagonists. The other is his wife, Albertina, who is not at this party with her husband. She is at home sleeping and dreaming about a lover.

How did this couple end up separated and in these different dream worlds?

It all started with the two of them going to a “bal masque,�� which inspired them to share sexual fantasies once they came home. Fridolin did not cope well with his wife’s fantasy and ends up feeling duped. In fact, he becomes very distraught. Unfortunately, before they have a chance to speak any further Fridolin, a doctor, is called away to see a dying patient and he ends up staying out all night having one adventure after another with his wife’s fantasy not far from his mind. These adventures, sometimes feel very dreamlike, while at other times they seem very real.

Fridolin’s first stop is his patient’s house. Upon his arrival he finds that his patient has died. The dead body reminds Fridolin of his own mortality which makes him anxious. His next thoughts are about sex and desire for women.

Dream Novel was originally written in German. The German word for dream is “traum.�� Traum is very close to the word “trauma�� which is the same in German and English. Fridolin does undergo a kind of trauma after hearing his wife’s fantasy and with the dreamscape partly focused on death and fear it isn’t too far-fetched to consider that Schnitzler may have called his novel �� Traumnovelle�� as a play on the word Traum. At another level, “to dream for something�� also reflects wishing or desiring something one does not have. This novella also delves in the realm of wishes and desires.

So what is this novel really about? Is it a study of marriage and infidelity? A story written in the form of a dream or a nightmare? A study of the underbelly of society lurking beneath the surface of civilized Viennese society of the early 20th Century? A story inspired by Freud’s theories which were all the rage at the time this novella was written (1926)? A novella concerned with the distinctions between dreaming and reality? It is, in fact, a combination of all of these.

In Dream Story, Arthur Schnitzler conveys his ideas about the nature of the human psyche as well as reality while at the same time asking what is real vs. what is a dream? The latter is a trick question because dreams hold deep truths about our greatest desires and fears but in a disguised form. In fact, in the novel, masks and disguises abound. Why disguises? Because dreams are the means by which the unconscious mind works out anxieties or wishes from the day before with which the conscious mind cannot cope during the day. That’s also why we dream in symbols or strange, odd or surprising juxtapositions of images. These dream images are conjured up by the unconscious so that the disturbing truths are not laid bare to the dreamer.

So, in a sense, dreams can be more true than everyday reality in which we wear disguises, or put on a different face, or mask, depending on the role we are playing. We wear one mask at work, another at home and yet another when playing with our children or having sex with a lover.

Appropriately, this dream novella is full of masks and disguises. To understand the dreams in this story (or in our own lives) we must look behind the masks. Sigmund Freud famously wrote in (his best work IMO) “The Interpretation of Dreams,�� that "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.��

Themes of desire and death run throughout Dream Story. Why is that? Because as Schnitzler said, "I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?�� Snitzler wasn’t kidding. I have no evidence from his personal life that Schnitzler dwelt on the subject of death, though it is a preoccupation in some of his other literary works, but there is an abundance of evidence that he was obsessed with the erotic side of life. He was a married man who often had mistresses, sometimes many at the same time. He kept meticulous notes in a diary from the age of 16 until two days before his death, of each sexual conquest including every orgasm. This manuscript is almost 8,000 pages long and takes up ten volumes.

Schnitzler’s artistic focus on love and death may have been intuited or borrowed from Freud, his contemporary and friend, but either way, his ideas gel perfectly with Freud’s theories on love and death. The two most basic instincts which rule the psyche and behavior: Love (Eros) is the drive which includes anything that makes people feel alive and that which sustains life for the individual or society. Some examples are desire and sex, procreation, and creativity.   The “death drive�� (Thanatos), involves anything which leads individuals or society towards destruction. These can include aggression, sadism, masochism, and suicide.

Understanding these two instincts we can understand why Fridolin’s mind is suddenly obsessed with sex and desire after he sees the dead body of his patient and starts to worry that he may die soon also. He’s a 35 year old man and not ready or likely to die soon. To reassure himself of this his mind focuses on the opposite of death, sex and desire. From that point on the story, or “dreamscape,�� comes alive with thoughts and scenes of sex and desire with death and the threat of death also continuing to appear in different guises.

This was a fun and interesting read, partly because it is so imaginative and like nothing I have ever read and partly because it was so much fun to read and discuss in great detail with Violeta, my reading buddy for this novella. Also, being a psychologist it became quickly apparent that Schnitzler’s story was highly influenced by Freud’s writings so seeing Freud’s ideas brought to life in a work of fiction was fascinating. That’s not to say that one needs to know anything about Freud to enjoy this novella. It just made it more interesting for me as Violeta and I went about thoroughly discussing every page of the story. Ironically, this also made it harder to write this review because I had too many ideas and notes which I had to pare way down (Thank you, Violeta, for your help).

Some of the aspects of this novella which Violeta and I discussed were the many questions posed to the reader:

Is complete honesty in a love relationship healthy for that relationship? What if that honesty involves fantasies of infidelity? How much do people hide from themselves? From their partners? What kind of masks do we wear? Is it best to reveal all to oneself? What about to one’s partner?

To know what the author thinks about these questions you will need to read the novel. No spoilers here. But I will give you a hint: these questions assume a certain degree of knowledge of oneself and one’s “reality.�� A person’s “reality�� is complicated and not stagnant. It is a moving target changing all the time depending on circumstances. It may never be possible to completely understand ourselves, but we can try. If we are willing to look behind the disguises of our dreams and of our waking lives then we can begin to know ourselves, or, to distinguish between dreams and reality.

“No dream…is entirely a dream�� and no one reality is the whole story. ��


For a different take on this novella please see Violetta’s terrific review: /review/show...