Shadow lines

Intellectual culture in early twentieth-century Austria achieved remarkable originality and excellence. Shadow Lines explores the works of influential novelists, dramatists, poets, and thinkers from this era, including Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Musil, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Franz Kafka. Lorna Martens analyzes how these authors contributed to a significant transformation in Austrian culture, moving away from the dialectical syntheses prevalent in nineteenth-century German thought. Instead, they embraced potent dualisms of human experience—known and unknown, orderly and chaotic. Martens argues that for many of these writers, what is knowable and reasonable is rooted in the dark, irrational, and chaotic aspects of existence. This "dark area" manifests in various forms, such as the unconscious (Freud), sexual drive (Freud, Schnitzler, Musil), and the unsayable (Mauthner, von Hofmannsthal, Musil, Wittgenstein). The complex relationship between the known and the unknown creates unsettling yet captivating elements in their works. This critical appraisal connects these authors to the intellectual and political turmoil of their time, providing fresh insights into Austrian literature and culture at the century's dawn. Lorna Martens is an associate professor at the University of Virginia and author of The Diary Novel.