View source for A Nervous Splendor: 1888-1889

{{Infobox book
| name           = A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889	

| author         = Frederic Morton
| publisher      = Little Brown
| pub_date       = 1979
| pages          = 352
| isbn           = 014005667X
| image          = [[File:A Nervous Splendor.jpg|200px|alt=Cover]]
}} 

Frederic Morton’s book covers a short time span – just one year – but the story he tells regarding the events taking place in Vienna at the fin-de-siècle gives us a very complicated political, social and cultural story about the malaise and anxiety permeating the Austrian capital. His narrative centers on the Crown Prince Rudolf, his affair with Mary Vetsera, and their murder-suicide. For Morton, the suicide represents an apogee of sorts -  perfectly symbolic of the tensions of the age and place. Similar to Carl Schorske, Morton argues that a politically stunted Viennese bourgeoisie turned away from class organization and looked inward. Individual self-examination led the bourgeoisie to an identity crisis. Morton writes eloquently of the suicides, depressions and anxiety felt by Viennese notables, including Klimt, Mahler, Freud and others, weaving their stories in with Rudolf’s.  

At times, Morton’s writing is so overwrought it can be difficult to follow the story or his central argument. For example, his description of Rudolf’s relationship with Mary is full of hyperbole and conjecture. “He had begun to need a woman who could offer him more than surrender. He needed to be embraced by a mystery…All his faith in liberalism, in science, in reason and technology and progress – where had it left him? In a dead end alley with golden walls. Now he must place his trust in something more transcendent” (130). Yet behind this hyperbolic language is the heart of his central thesis. How would Vienna go forward into a modern age, when so much of one’s identity was rooted in tradition (72)? The Crown Prince’s suicide also spurred others. Morton writes of one railway employee killing himself in the courtyard of the Technological Institute (280), in yet another example of his argument for the linkages between death and modernity. 

Morton’s method – a narrative cultural history – is effective and it certainly hooks a popular audience. The scholarly community might be more skeptical, given the lack of footnotes and the writing style, but his description of Vienna – while very different than Schorske – is equally as compelling. 


[[Category:Modern European History]]

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[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Frederic Morton]]