Old Vienna

Three new Random House books are adorned by Klimt's art. First, there's Eric Kandel's new book: 'Kandel's key contribution to neuroaesthetics in The Age of Insight, Zeki says, is to focus on the work and milieu of three Austrian Expressionist artists: Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele, all of whom Kandel has studied extensively and whose work he and his wife have collected since the 1960s.'

Next, also featuring on its cover the painting of  Adele Bloch-Bauer, is Anne-Marie O'Connor's book about that portrait, The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. All Things Considered has a clip about this book.

Then there's Tim Bonyhady's book about his art-collecting, Viennese ancestors, Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900, on the cover of which is Klimt's portrait of Hermine Gallia.

Guy Cunningham on the new English translation of Oliver Matuschek's biography of Stefan Zweig, and Miranda Seymour on the same bio in the Literary Review.

Anthony Heilbut reviews Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters (trans. & ed. by Michael Hofmann): 'If you want a high literary experience, to be rocked between emotional extremes by a writer with perfect pitch in any realm, you won’t do better than this collection of letters by an impoverished alcoholic, who died with two bedraggled suitcases to his name.' Daniel Johnson on the same collection in the Literary Review. From Stefany Anne Goldberg's review of Roth's letters: 'The fact that these people, like Zweig, continued their relationship with Roth, bearing the constant criticisms which came attired sometimes in white gloves, sometimes in vitriol, is both a testament to their devotion and to their position in Roth’s life as intimates he could keep at arm’s length.' Here's Philip Hensher's review; and Tess Lewis'; and Adam Kirsch's; and, finally, here's Michael Hofmann on his collection of Roth's letters: 'Still, I like the idea of a sort of accidental biography, told in the subject's own words, the sort of book that isn't nine parts starch, that is always medias in res, and that doesn't begin with a date of birth.'


Update (April 8): Jonah Lehrer interviews Kandel about Age of Insight. (ht Man Without Qualities) The above clip is the audio for Paul Holdengräber's interview with Kandel at the New York Public Library.

'Fin de siècle Vienna was, in the words of Jewish satirist Karl Kraus, a “research laboratory for world destruction.” Viennese playwright Arthur Schnitzler agreed; his play, Professor Bernhardi, was one of the first plays in German to confront the rising tide of anti-Semitism in early 20th-century Central Europe.'

Albert Lichtblau on the Jewish population in Vienna (1848-1938): 'The tension specific to Vienna was not only characterised by a tradition of distance between the Jewish and non-Jewish population ... but also by ... economic as well as social and political crises. The short phase of relief for the Jewish population, as a result of the emancipation of 1867, was shattered by a massive economic crisis, which was followed by a fundamentally political one.'

Adele Bloch-Bauer from Sebastian Cosor on Vimeo.

Austro-Hungarian subjects

Mia Slavenska

Otto von Habsburg's obituary: 'He died a happy man, right about almost everything, if usually too early.'

'“Only silence is innocent”: Zagajewski on Rilke, irony, and the future of poetry'

Brett Foster reviews Edward Snow's new translation of some Rilke poems (here's an excerpt from Zagajewski's introduction to Snow's translations)

Mark Harman's translation of Kafka's 'Message From the Emperor'

Isotropic Films is making a film of Kafka's Metamorphosis (the father's packin' heat -- I wonder if the bug will shoot electric rays from its antennae)

At Three Percent, Bill Marx goes to bat for Ernst Weiss's novel, Georg Letham, and Brady Evan Walker reviews Joseph Roth's Job, and Chad W. Post introduces Gregor von Rezzori's Ermine of Czernopol

Tom Nairn reviews a new biography of Ernest Gellner 

Otto Preminger one-ups Letterman:



Freud's cocaine thing. Here's a pdf about Freud's cocaine thing (and the much worse drug habits of renegade psychoanalyst Otto Gross, who had radical ideas about sex and free love, and who had an affair with Frieda von Richtofen, who later married D. H. Lawrence and might've presented to him [Lawrence] Gross' ideas about sex and free love ...).

A longish piece in Haaretz called 'Monk, Mystic, Mechanic' -- on a recent Berlin exhibit devoted to Wittgenstein

Alan Saunders' and Gavin Kitching's podcast on Wittgenstein's puzzlement

Wittgenstein's photos, and a 'Lost archive shows Wittgenstein in a new light'

Dave Maier on Wittgenstein and meaning: "Can I say 'bububu' and mean 'If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk'?" 

Humpty Dumpty

Fergus Johnston reviews the new translation of Jens Malte Fischer's 2003 biography of Mahler, and here's Rupert Christiansen's review

And M. Werbowski reviews Norman Lebrecht's Why Mahler?

Bob Duggan reviews a Neue Galerie show on fin-de-siècle Vienna: 'How Vienna in 1900 gave birth to modernity' -- '“In his life, Klimt clearly divided women into those he respected, even exalted, and those he slept with,” [Jill] Lloyd acknowledges, but also “Klimt’s images of women are acknowledged as complex representations with a symbolic force; as such, they embody allusions to the ‘women question’ that are far from straightforward".'

Mattel's new 'Gustav Klimt Barbie doll echoes the artist's portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, reflecting the painting's Byzantine mosaics and Egyptian motifs. She wears a halter gown with silvery trim, draped chiffon sleeves and bustle .... She is a magnificent muse.'

The world's first mobile internal combustion engine was made in Vienna

Mahler, with Glenn Gould conducting, Maureen Forrester singing: 

Cafe Museum

Cafe Museum is between the Karlsplatz subway station and the State Opera House. Its customers included Ludwig Wittgenstein, the artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, as well as the Jugendstihl architect Otto Wagner. It's famous for having an interior designed in his typically spartan fashion by Adolf Loos.

This historic cafe was also a stomping ground for such literary heavyweights as Elias Canetti and Robert Musil. Canetti frequently mentions Viennese cafes in his autobiography, esp. in the third volume thereof (The Play of the Eyes). Musil, by contrast, is much more sparing in his cafe references -- in his Diaries he devotes much more space to describing his walking routes through Vienna.

Here's one of Musil's few mentions of a cafe: "We then went on foot to the Cafe Museum in the hope of meeting Morgenstern; I wanted to tell him about Frankfurt. But, to our surprise, we met Frau Krista." (Robert Musil, Diaries: Robert Musil 1899-1942 , ed. Frise & Mirsky, trans. Philip Payne [Basic Books, 1998] p. 365, entry for March 16, 1930)

Canetti's descriptions of Cafe Museum are more informative. Here are three of them:

"Georg Merkel, a painter ..., was a man of about Broch's age. I had seen him at the Cafe Museum, though less frequently than some other painters." (Elias Canetti, The Play of the Eyes, trans. Ralph Manheim [Granta Books, 1999], p. 128)

"At the Cafe Museum, where I went every day after moving back to town, there was a man [later identified as Dr. Sonne] whom I noticed because he was always sitting alone and never spoke to anyone. That in itself was not so unusual, lots of people went to cafes to be alone among many." (Ibid., p. 112)

"I saw [Alban Berg] last at the Cafe Museum a few weeks before his death. It was a short meeting, at night after a concert." (Ibid., p.230)

Update (Sept. 27): There's a nice description of Cafe Museum in Wittgenstein in Vienna (by Allan S. Janik & Hans Veigl [Springer, 1998], pp. 57-8). The authors say that this cafe was originally (1886) at Babenbergerstrasse 5, and then moved to its current Loos-designed location in 1899. Among its patrons, they list (in addition to Musil, Klimt and Schiele) Hermann Broch, Peter Altenberg, Karl Kraus, Joseph Roth, Franz Blei, Roda Roda, etc.

They also include this bit from a letter written by the poet Georg Trakl: "Dear Mr. Ficker! I beg you to loan me 40 crowns, for I am momentarily in a very sad situation.... I would be very happy to be able to meet with you tomorrow, Thursday, at 2 p.m. in Cafe Museum." (Wittgenstein in Vienna, p. 58)