The Viennese legacy of Casanova: The late erotic writings of Arthur Schnitzler and Franz Blei

Abstract

ACCORDING TO PAUL ENGLISCH, that meticulous historian of erotic literature, Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) and Franz Blei (1871-42) were both eroticists, a reputation they still possess to the present day. The two Vienna-based writers did indeed have a passion for the depiction of erotic motifs. Arthur Schnitzler, who is best known for his socially critical accounts of fin-de-siècle bourgeois Vienna, did so most famously in his play Reigen (La Ronde, 1897). The less well known Franz Blei, recognized today for his satirical portrayal of his fellow writers in Das grosse Bestiarium der modernen Literatur (The Grand Literary Bestiarium, 1920), edited numerous volumes of erotic world literature an..