SOURCE: Raphael, Frederic. Introduction to Dream Story, by Arthur Schnitzler, translated by J. M. Q. Davies, pp. v-xvii. New York: Penguin, 1999.

In the following essay, Raphael discusses Dream Story in terms of its cultural and historical context in fin-de-siècle Vienna, and comments on the implied Jewish identity of the main character.

By the time Arthur Schnitzler was born in Vienna in 1862, Franz-Josef had been on the throne of Austria-Hungary for ten years. The emperor did not die until 1916. The dual kingdom survived only two more years before being dismantled by the Treaty of Versailles. Although, when he died in 1931, Schnitzler had survived Franz-Josef by fifteen years, his creative life was determined by the protracted twilight of an empire which lost its hegemony, and its nerve, when he was four years old.

In 1866, Bismarck's Prussia destroyed Austro-Hungary's bravely incompetent army at Sadowa. The effect of that defeat on...