HANDS AROUND OF THIS EDITION, INTENDED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY, 1475 COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED, AFTER WHICH THE TYPE HAS BEEN DISTRIBUTED. THIS COPY IS NUMBER 738 HANDS AROUND [REIGEN] A CYCLE OF TEN DIALOGUES _By_ ARTHUR SCHNITZLER COMPLETELY RENDERED INTO ENGLISH AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION NEW YORK _Privately Printed for Subscribers_ MCMXX Copyright, 1920 By A. KOREN INTRODUCTION Humanity seems gayest when dancing on the brink of a volcano. The culture of a period preceding a social cataclysm is marked by a spirit of light wit and sophisticated elegance which finds expression in a literature of a distinct type. This literature is light-hearted, audacious and self-conscious. It can treat with the most charming insouciance subjects which in another age would have been awkward or even vulgar. But with the riper experience of a period approaching its end the writers feel untrammeled in the choice of theme by pride or prejudice knowing that they will never transgress the line of good taste. So it was in the declining days of the Roman civilization when Lucian of Samosata wrote his _Dialogues of the Hetærai_ and countless poets penned their intricate epigrams on the art and experience of love. So it was in England when the fine vigor of the Elizabethan and Miltonic age gave way to the Restoration and the calculating brilliance of a Congreve or a Wycherly. But the exquisite handling of the licentious was elaborated into a perfect technique in eighteenth century France. The spirit of the Rococo with its predilection for the well-measured pose was singularly well adapted to the artistic expression of what in a cruder age could only have been voiced with coarseness and vulgarity. In the literature of this period we meet again the spirit that animates the gracious paintings of Watteau and Fragonard. The scenes we admire in their panels recur in literary style in works like Choderlos de Laclos’ _Liaisons dangereuses_ and Louvet de Couvray’s _Les amours du Chevalier de Faublas_. Again the same note is heard in Beaumarchais’ _Le Mariage de Figaro_, in which the society of the period is travestied with brilliant wit and worldly philosophy. The court of Louis XVI., quite unaware, looked on and applauded a play which Napoleon later characterized as “the revolution already in action.”