Franziska

Ernst Weiss's second novel first appeared in German in 1916 (under the eerily prophetic title Der Kampf).

It poignantly describes a young female pianist's struggle, as artist, to reconcile the demands of her vocation with her need for human contact and love.

As her female mentor, the intriguing virtuoso known as La Constanza, tells her, 'Everything must be for your art,' and with the best will in the world, we are all only half people when we're with another. It becomes the young Franziska's challenge to realize these truths yet still retain her humanity.

Franzi's greatest obstacle to forging a spectacular music career comes in the form of her passionate, at times neurotically possessive, attachment to Erwin, a young man from her village who shows promise as an electrical engineer, having designed an improved telegraphing device. Yet Erwin is haunted, first by the recent suicide of his father, then by his obsession with a young German girl named Hedy, who, as the novel progresses, proves more and more unstable and all the more alluring to Erwin for that.

If these details suggest a luridly sensational novel, the fact is that the story unfolds in a plain and unaffected prose style, as translated into English for Pushkin Press by Anthea Bell. And, if first-time readers of Weiss know beforehand that he and Kafka were friends, they will nonetheless find Franziska quite realistic. True, there are dream sequences, and some of Franzi's and Erwin's dialogue and behavior (and most of Hedy's) can get absurd, but much of this can be attributed to the delirium of youth.

Though their words and actions often prove exasperating, Franzi and Erwin are engaging characters, and, with the journey eased somewhat by Weiss's short, brisk chapters, I kept wanting things to work out for them right on down to the end. For Franziska and Erwin do indeed elicit our empathy, not only because they are talented but also because they are lonely young people whose families and general social framework have collapsed.

The novel opens with the death of Franzi's mother and Franzi's subsequent cursory attempts to co-exist with her two sisters, to whom she can relate only perfunctorily. The quest for a career drives Franzi to Prague, where she is soon joined by Erwin, then to Berlin, where the story's harrowing climax takes place.

The former locale is one that Weiss describes with special charm. It is a city teeming with glorious churches and other grand old buildings, yet it is by and large a sad and soulless city; and at times, in her desperation, the otherwise atheistic Franzi resorts to falling to her knees and praying to the mother Mary.

Pre-World-War-I Berlin, associated more with Erwin and his disturbed Hedy, is marked by an even greater anomie. These three - Franziska, Erwin, and Hedy - are very modern young characters in a modern world, against which music alone can provide relief, a fact that Franziska must come to acknowledge and live her life by. And a life that is lived through the works of such greats as Beethoven and Schubert is rich indeed, as Weiss well conveys.

For its splendid descriptions of music's spiritual realms, for its insightful glimpses into the mind of a gifted young interpreter of those realms, this book is to be especially recommended.