Anxiety and the Imperial City: Arthur Schnitzler's 'Die Toten schweigen'

Abstract:In Schnitzler's narrative 'Die Toten schweigen' [The Dead Are Silent, 1897], the repeated mentioning of specific Viennese streets, landmarks, and what one might call the building blocks of urbanity stands out starkly in a narrative otherwise dominated by figural narrative situations. Schnitzler's story of doomed lovers is mapped onto the topography of an imperial city that mirrors the instability of an empire heading towards a crisis both accidental and inevitable. As it captures the anxieties of those who hasten through urban landscapes that have forfeited the stability of their temporal and material structures, Schnitzler's narrative seems to anticipate the end of empire and the dawning of the nation-state.