Recently sighted shades of central Europe

Adolf Loos (photo by Trude Fleischmann)

From 2003, a long article by Robert von Dassanowsky situating The Sound of Music in its historical context

From last August, John Gray on Elias Canetti's best work of fiction, his autobiography. Here's Geoffrey Hill's poem prompted by one of Canetti's other works, 'On Reading Crowds and Power'.

From last April, a new book on Musil, published by Continuum (and relating his work to recent continental theorists). It's reviewed by David Winters.

Mr. Waggish reflects on a paper by Burton Pike about Musil and language; and reflects on Ernest Gellner's Words and Things.

Daniel Hartley reflects on love in Rilke's Duino Elegies.

I didn't know that Ludwig Boltzmann took his own life while vacationing in Duino.

From A Common Reader, a note on the movie version of Joseph Roth's Legend of the Holy Drinker (which features Rutger Hauer), and a series of posts on Roth's Radetzky March.

From Philosophers Zone, Paul Mendes-Flohr on the work of Martin Buber.

The UNC Press blog has an article on Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation.

Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta features prominently in Murakami's IQ84.

From the New York Public Library, Edmund de Waal in conversation with Paul Holdengraber:

Gleanings

Hedy Lamarr (image source)

Steven Nadler reviews a book on Spinoza and Maimonides.

'Anyone who enjoys the company of a provocative intelligence will want to pick up Night Music, a challenging collection of scattered Adorno essays. And pick a fight with it.'

Boyd Tonkin reviews Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind.

Cyril Connolly's '100 Key Books of the Modern Movement'

From the Guardian in 2002: '"We love only once," Connolly wrote, "and on how that first great love affair shapes itself depends the pattern of our lives." "Nonsense," Waugh mocked in the margin.'

Since kickstarting his career with his acclaimed travel bestseller, In Xanadu, at the age of 22, [William] Dalrymple has kept to writing about India and the Middle East consistently for 25 years. "Religion is a constant," he happily admits. "It seems to be something I can't quite escape."'

"On a steep slope overlooking Brno stands a modernist architectural masterpiece: the Tugendhat House. It is this remarkable building that provided Simon Mawer with inspiration for his most recent novel, The Glass Room."

More about Brno (which was the birthplace not only of Kundera but also of Kurt Godel, Adolf Loos, Erich Korngold, Pavel Tichy and Lorenz Eitner and in the environs of which were born Gregor Mendel, Ernst Weiss and Maurice Strakosch, AND which was the childhood home of Robert Musil) -- it has given Milan Kundera honorary citizenship.

David Sexton reviews The Letters of T. S. Eliot, and Josephine Hart reviews his tragic first marriage.

Amos Oz interviewed: “It's always a living miracle when I meet a reader. A reader is a co-producer of a book. I write the musical score, he plays it."

Footage of a John Nash interview.

Largehearted Boy and Fimoculous track the 'books of the year' lists.

More about the influence of Conan Doyle's medical background on his fiction ('more' in addition to this previously linked item).

Cafe Imperial

I wasn't much interested in Cafe Imperial. It seemed to be just an extension of a ritzy hotel, so I didn't even venture inside. Too bad, since it turns out to have a very interesting history.

First, Elias Canetti gives a mean-spirited anecdote about his meeting there with Stefan Zweig. I don't believe this anecdote to be accurate -- Canetti's autobiography is not that reliable, especially when he's talking about someone he didn't like. He evidently didn't like Zweig. Here's the relevant quotation:

"Soon after my return I ran into [Stefan] Zweig at the Cafe Imperial. He was sitting alone in one of the back rooms, holding his hand over his mouth to hide the absence of teeth [due to dental work]. Though he did not like to be seen in that condition, he beckoned me over to his table and bade me be seated. 'I've heard the whole story from Broch,' he said. 'You've met Joyce. ... Get Joyce to write a preface. Then your book will get attention.'" (Elias Canetti, The Play of the Eyes, p. 186)

Cafe Imperial also appears in Robert Musil's Diaries, but (again) Musil doesn't have much of interest to say about a cafe: "Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, spent some time with Morgenstern in the Cafe Imperial." (Robert Musil, Diaries, entry for March 26, 1930, p. 366)

More interestingly, Ludwig Wittgenstein met at this cafe with Ludwig von Ficker during the latter's visit to Vienna (so that Wittgenstein could give away part of his family's fortune to worthy artists under Ficker's guidance). Here's Ficker's description of a meeting with Wittgenstein on July 24, 1914:

"We met in Cafe Imperial, where there ensued a somewhat strenuous, but positively stimulating conversation between [Ludwig Wittgenstein] and the hard-of-hearing builder [Adolf Loos] on the still contoversial Haus am Michaelerplatz on questions of modern architecture, which seemed to interest Wittgenstein." (Ludwig von Ficker describing a meeting on July 24, 1914 at Cafe Imperial; quoted from Wittgenstein in Vienna, Allan S. Janik & Hans Veigl [Springer, 1998], p. 123)

The cafe in the Hotel Imperial was initially called Cafe Frohner. It's mentioned by Fritz Wittels, a med student and budding psychoanalyst in Freud's circle. According to Edward Timms, Wittels was also part of Karl Kraus' circle in 1907-08. Timms summarizes Wittels' description as follows:

"Later they [Kraus and Wittels] would go on to the Cafe Frohner, situated in the luxurious Hotel Imperial. Kraus was a heavy smoker, but never took a drop of alcohol. He was a gifted conversationalist and on good days, Wittels recalls, he enchanted everyone. All kinds of people -- senior government officials as well as artists, actors, and attractive girls -- would come to his table; and Kraus made them feel they were the 'centre of the universe'. Later, feeling the need to escape from the stifling atmosphere of bourgeois coffee houses, Kraus and his circle would move on to lower-class cafes patronised by prostitutes and bookies." (Edward Timms, 'The 'Child-Woman': Kraus, Freud, Wittles, and Irma Karczewska', in Vienna 1900: from Altenberg to Wittgenstein, ed. E. Timms and R. Robertson [Edinburgh University Press, 1990], p. 88)

Cafe Imperial was favoured by musicians; Mahler was a regular, as were Schonberg, Berg and Webern. According to Janik and Veigl, the Imperial was also visited by Freud, Hofmannsthal, Werfel, Rilke, Bruckner, Wagner, Brahms and Trotsky -- which raises a question: Is there a Viennese cafe from Trotsky's time in the Habsburg capital in which he did not luxuriate, excogitate or vegetate?

Update: I just read that Stalin was in Vienna briefly in early 1913 with Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky. I can't find evidence that Stalin frequented any cafes. In his excellent Stalin biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore reports that Stalin, like Hitler, liked to take walks in the park around the Schonbrunn Palace.

Montefiore quotes Trotsky's description of his first encounter with Stalin: "I was sitting at the table beside the samovar in the apartment of Skobelev ... in the ancient capital of the Habsburgs [...] when suddenly the door opened with a knock and an unkown man entered. He was short ... thin ... his greyish-brown skin covered in pockmarks ... I saw nothing in his eyes that resembled friendliness [...] Then, as silently as he had come, he left, leaving a very depressing but unusual impression on me." (Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin [Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2007], p. 275)

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)