Apart from the dislike of these Viennese young men for the bourgeoisie there were really very few positive tendencies that could join them into a group. Consequently very different artistic individualities developed. Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the two most representative, have very little in common in their work. But there was a spirit of friendship among all of them; they liked to meet in the cafés, which had always been Vienna's center of social life, and to talk things over--the lightest and the deepest. A certain café used to be famous as the center of the young literary world. The old people who didn't like the whole business called it the café of the crazy self-worshippers (something to that effect), and this title has stuck to it since. Today, the house has been demolished, its glory has passed, but there are still legends and stories told of the wonderful talk, the hot and breathless debates that once filled these rooms from morning till night--and till morning again. In all this there was no real rebellion against any local literary tradition. The great Austrian writers of the past always held their own places; but the great dramatists did not reign on the stage of that day. It was nearly exclusively devoted to the French salon-play--Dumas, Augier, and their German imitators. Naturally a generation which looked for the true and real in art could not have much in common with these. But there were certainly some features in Grillparzer and Anzengruber felt as congenial by the moderns. Grillparzer had possessed a sensuous softness, a musical beauty of language foreign to the contemporary North German. Thus an element of color and light--the soul of modern impressionism--entered in his creations, breaking through the severe contours characteristic of his generation, though in general he set great value on the strict architectonic upbuild of his dramas. In his tragedy of _Hero and Leander_ perhaps the warmest love tragedy ever written in the German language, a strongly realistic description of Viennese type is hidden among the Greek clothing. Hero, consecrated priestess, who forgets her vows when she sees Leander, first full of reserve, then letting herself go in a full passion, might be the grandmother of Schnitzler's sweet girl out of the suburb. Here she wears a charming Greek dress, her lonely tower stands on the seashore, and her lover, Leander, must swim through the whole Hellespont to reach her. The modern poet makes it easier for his heroes; the tower gets to be a little room in a Viennese suburb and a walk in the twilight through a few quiet streets brings him to his goal without much exertion. (And so you might find other parental traits between the two Austrians.)