Daybreak

DAYBREAK--Arthur Schnitzler (translated by William A. Drake)--Simon & Schuster ($1.50). The Story. Lieutenant Willi Kasda is wakened early one Sunday morning by an unwelcome guest. His caller, Otto von Bogner, is a former fellow officer who, after an army disgrace, has now been stealing from the bank that employs him. A little unjustly, Willi feels, does this man ask him (a former companion whose elegance does not betray his poverty) for the 1,000 gulden which will conceal his thefts. Still, the situation calls for some action. Willi promises his impecunious friend that he will gamble with what little money he can lay his hands on in the hope of winning 1,000 gulden. First he goes to lunch with the Kessners. That was a merry luncheon. ". . . He could note how he gradually conquered Herr Ressner, how the lawyer's tone gradually became less ironical, how Frau Ressner's face began to glow with a certain memory, and how the thrilling touch of Emily's knee no longer was at pains to dissemble its intimacy as the grace of chance. . . . As he left the house two elegant young men rode up in a fiacre. This did not please Willi at all. What might not happen in this house, while he was forced to sit in a wretched coffee house earning a thousand gulden for the sake of a broken comrade? . . ." When he reached the Cafe Schopf, the game was already going on. Consul Schnabel played with the most concentration, while Elrief, the actor, who was having an affair with the consul's mistress, seemed not greatly excited by the varying cards. Willi played carefully but with assurance; when he left the table to return to the Ressners' he had won 2,000 gulden; ". . . He saw that only the eye of the Consul had left the cards to follow him with a quick cold glance. . . ." The Ressners had left for dinner when he reached their house. He debated whether to follow them; without risking a decision he allowed his steps to carry him back again to the coffee house and the card game. This time he lost, ". . . and soon there came a moment when his thousand gulden seemed to be in grave danger. What do I care? thought Willi. . . ." But, again, when he left the table, he had the 2,000 gulden which he had won in the afternoon though now, "... he did not feel as exultant as, in the nature of things, he ought to have been. . . ." As he left the game to catch his train, he met the Ressners seated at an adjacent table. ". . . The Lieutenant was joyfully greeted. He remained standing at the table, gay and unaffected, a chic young officer. . . ." When he reached the station, the train had already begun to move. Willi, "turned to the coachman. 'Back to the Cafe Schopf,' he directed. . . ." This time, his luck mounted immediately. ". . . At two o'clock, he had won four thousand two hundred gulden. . . ." The others stopped playing to watch Willi and Consul Schnabel staking fortunes with a desperate extravagance. At half past two the Consul ordered wine. "'. . . Your debt, lieutenant,' he added, in his most friendly manner, 'amounts to exactly eleven thousand gulden. . . ." After the drive back to Vienna, Lieutenant Kasda began to understand his predicament. He must pay the Consul not later than the next day. Where could he get the money? He tried his rich old uncle; here there was no hope, for his uncle had married a young woman who was keeping all his wealth. Willi tried seeing her; she was, he discovered, a woman he had once paid for spending a night with him. Nonetheless, he asked her for the sum he needed so badly; she came to his rooms for dinner without saying whether she would leave the money or not. In the morning, she gave the Lieutenant a thousand gulden. She said: ". . . 'You gave me only ten. Do you still remember? . . . Ten gulden-- was plenty. In fact, too much.' Her eyes held his. 'To speak accurately, it was precisely ten gulden too much!'" Three hours later, Bogner, still impecunious, and Rasda's uncle, whose wife had sent with him eleven thousand gulden for her inamorata, called at Rasda's rooms; Bogner saw a thousand gulden, a crumpled scrap of paper on the table where Rasda had thrown it. Rasda had shot himself. He was lying on the dishevelled bed, a sticky gutter of blood marked from his temple down to the collar of his uniform. The Significance. Author Schnitzler's books are sudden, delicate, glittering and sharp. Daybreak is like the music of incredibly swift and al, most inaudible violins, swinging and sighing through the measures of a bitter improvisation. The excitement of the cardgame, the quick, inexplicable chances of love and despair rise and fall; tbev are flashes of an ironic dangerous lightning, never followed! by the slow, loud rhetoric of thunder.' As in Fraulein Else, Rhapsody, None But the Brave, Author Schnitzler's understanding of humanity is unclouded with impurities of opinion or emotion. Profundities, in one meaning, are avoided. It is as if Authorj Schnitzler had decided that pro; fundities could never be more than inconclusive platitudes and that in a world of chance and mischance, the fragmentary whims of humanity are alone absurd enough to justify comment.

The Author in appearance, is the shaggy counterpart of a country doctor. This is not unseemly; his grandfather was a doctor, his father, Professor Johann Schnitzler, a once famed throat specialist. Author Arthur Schniztler studied medicine, became an M. D., lectured on ailments of the throat, at the Poliklinik in Vienna. One of his early published works was a paper on Nervous Diseases of the Voice.

Author Schnitzler began to write poetry, "and such bad poetry," when he was ten years old. At 40 he gave up practicing medicine to write. A native of Hungary, he has written the light moods of Vienna into many a book; many a book that he has never written now lies in the prolific incubation of notebooks from which they hatch, briefly and pungently, like bright little birds. Author Schnitzler has never visited the U. S. He fears that the fuss and fume of literary idolaters would overwhelm him.