love adventures of the title character as the object of the depiction and focuses on his fleeting impressions. It is proved that the scenes with the participation of Anatole and his lovers are built in the form of a “round dance”, emphasizing the infinite variability of the love feeling. The random and improvisational nature of the development of the action is caused by the capricious mood of the hero in all seven plays It is proved that the fragmentary worldview of Anatole and the playful nature of his relationship with his beloved “loves — does not love?” has a philosophical (Nietzschean) justification and comes into conflict with the ideas of true love. Following the rules of the game, Anatole turned into a weak-willed puppet in a state of absolute instability and loneliness. “Filling” mistresses with his mood, Anatole did not see personal qualities in them, playing, being jealous and abandoning them. He, as a fleeting hero and hedonist, was not able to stop in a series of love scenes, even if he was thinking about marriage. Unquenchable “don Juan” in him seems to have no limits. A sober and ironic antipode of Anatole, his friend Max, watched Anatole’s behavior skeptically, and in the finale of the cycle he touched on the important problem of women’s equality in society, raising the drama cycle to the level of modern to Schnitzler’s time concept of “new drama”. In this vein, the interpretation of Schnitzler’s Anatole drama cycle at the A. Bryantsev St. Petersburg Young Spectator Theater (2005) seems relevant.
For citation:
Tsvetkov Yu.L. “He loves me — loves me not?”: the game in the cycle of one-act dramas “Anatole” by Arthur Schnitzler, Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2023, iss. 2, pp. 22—33.