Letters from Vienna #178
Letter to Baron Bethell #1
A virtual guided tour of Vienna, Part 1
Dear James,
I still have a bad conscience about the fact that my father refused your request to stay in our flat in the Gentzgasse. As a form of (somewhat belated) recompense, I’ve decided to take a couple of photos and to give you a “virtual guided tour”.
This is the Ursulinenhof, where the flat in question is located, and where I spent the first four (extremely happy) years of my life. A next-door neighbor, a doctor, delivered me (it was an extremely warm weekend and he was annoyed he couldn’t escape to the country) while both the private clinic where I was born as well as the church in which I was baptized aren’t too far removed.
This is also where I wrote the play about Mary Queen of Scots that Owen Dudley Edwards wanted to turn into an opera and led Working Title (“The Big Lebowski”, “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “Love Actually” etc. etc.) to offer me the chance to make a film. Why exactly our local, student theater in Edinburgh (The Bedlam) refused it remains a mystery; the fact that they did certainly doesn’t speak in their favor!
At the time I was researching about Charles Baudelaire and Working Title asked whether I’d convert the material into a film. I said I wanted to write a play first but they said it was a question of either or. I also didn’t like it when they said that I’d write what the producer told me to. At that juncture in life I had a rather romantic and somewhat naïve vision of what, exactly, a writer’s duties should be: the expression of personal truth with a degree of integrity; I saw myself more as a poet than a hack, more akin to James Joyce than Jeffrey Archer! Now that I come to think of it: this remains my philosophy, despite all the failure and setbacks it of necessity entails. I have nevertheless learned a lot about art and have published a thing or two, about which I’m extremely proud. Yet, if truth be told, I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship to “success”, “money” and “fame”. After all: I never felt the need to “be somebody”. And when I consider my “famous” friends I can’t help but think of all the dangers, difficulties and derangements “fame” entails. One was even murdered on account of it but I’d rather not get into that for a number of reasons.
Arthur Schnitzler
Not far removed from the Gentzgasse are two houses where Arthur Schnitzler lived, in the Edmund-Weiß-Gasse 7 (between 1903 and 1910) and in the Sternwartestrasse 71 (between 1910 and his death in 1931).
Edmund-Weiß-Gasse 7
Sternwartestrasse 71
A close friend of his, the photographer and engraver Ferdinand Schmutzer, lived practically opposite,
Sternwartestraße 62-64
while Felix Salten (of Bambi fame), with whom Schnitzler had a vexed relationship, lived in the Cottagegasse.
Cottagegasse 37
This is the Türkenschanzpark, where Schnitzler would dine out or go for walks. It’s also where I played as a child; I still have vivid memories of the fire engine there!
Not far removed is Das Salettl, where I spend many a pleasurable hour and a bit further off is the cemetery, Friedhof Neustift am Walde,
where a large number of my relatives are buried, a fitting place to end the first part of my tour. I’m sure you must be perfectly exhausted; I know I certainly am!
Best,
Michael