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Madensky Square - pp 26-27
My closest friend in Vienna is Alice Springer. She's three years older than I am, gentle and funny, and though she talks almost without stopping she never seems to say anything wounding or indiscreet. Alice sings in the chorus of the Volksoper - a hard life of dirndls and um-pa-pa - and I regard this as a shocking waste because she has a real gift for millinery. Hats come to Alice like dresses come to me and she has total recall for any hat that has ever caught her interest.
She's not a person to complain, but I think of late things have been hard for her. Though she's so pretty - one of those nut-brown women whose eyes and hair have the same russet tint, she's nearly forty and recently there's been a tendency to put her in the second row, often with a hay
bale or a milking stool. And from there, as everyone knows, it's only a short step to the back row in a grey wig with the village elders and a spinning wheel.
I usually pick her up at the theatre and we go and have a spritzer at the Cafe Landtmann. Tonight I was early enough to use the ticket she'd left for me, and so I was privileged to see the whole of a new production from Germany called Student Love. Alice was in the second row again, holding huge steins of beer aloft because it all took place in Heidelberg and about the operetta itself I prefer not to speak.
At the same time people were enjoying it. I noticed particularly a very fat man in the same row as me. He had bright ginger hair parted in the middle and a round red face which clashed with his moustache and it was clear that he was very much moved by what was going on. During the song about the fast-flowing River Neckar he sighed deeply, during the duet in which the nobly born student and the impoverished landlady's daughter plighted their troth, he leaned forward with parted lips, and during the heroine's solo of (strictly temporary) renunciation he was so overcome he had to mop his face several times with a large white handkerchief.
She's not a person to complain, but I think of late things have been hard for her. Though she's so pretty - one of those nut-brown women whose eyes and hair have the same russet tint, she's nearly forty and recently there's been a tendency to put her in the second row, often with a hay
bale or a milking stool. And from there, as everyone knows, it's only a short step to the back row in a grey wig with the village elders and a spinning wheel.
I usually pick her up at the theatre and we go and have a spritzer at the Cafe Landtmann. Tonight I was early enough to use the ticket she'd left for me, and so I was privileged to see the whole of a new production from Germany called Student Love. Alice was in the second row again, holding huge steins of beer aloft because it all took place in Heidelberg and about the operetta itself I prefer not to speak.
At the same time people were enjoying it. I noticed particularly a very fat man in the same row as me. He had bright ginger hair parted in the middle and a round red face which clashed with his moustache and it was clear that he was very much moved by what was going on. During the song about the fast-flowing River Neckar he sighed deeply, during the duet in which the nobly born student and the impoverished landlady's daughter plighted their troth, he leaned forward with parted lips, and during the heroine's solo of (strictly temporary) renunciation he was so overcome he had to mop his face several times with a large white handkerchief.
Near fragment in time
Es war ein in memoriam, gemischt aus Grimm und Wehmut, als Anton Kuh seinen kämpferischen Nachruf auf das Café Central mit der Feststellung verband, daß im November 1918, während auf dem Balkon des landhauses in der Wiener Herrengasse die Republik Österreich ausgerufen wurde, im Wiener Geistesleben zugleich eine stürmisch-erneuernde Sezession stattfand. Man kann es bei ihm nachlesen: "Bibiana Amon, die Strahlende, als Gretchen von Peter Altenberg entdeckt, aber nun schon zur Helena erblüht, stand auf der obersten der drei Eingangsstufen des "Central", blickte zum Gewühl beim Landhaus, sah ihre Geliebten mitten darin und rief: Gib acht, Anton! Die Revolution!" Wenige Tage später "saß alles, was politisch und erotisch revolutionär gesinnt war" zwei Häuser weiter im kurz zuvor neu eröffneten Café Herrenhof - "Die Mumien blieben im Alten" und, fügte Kuh hinzu: "Die Scheidung war folgerichtig."
pp 99 from Veruntreute Geschichte. Die Wiener Salons und Literatencafés by
Near fragment in space
Ein eigenartiges Lächeln spielte um den Mund des Franzosen, der nun ausstieg und langsam zu Fuß die Währingerstraße entlang schlenderte, dann in die Nußdorferstraße einbog, mitunter vor einer Auslage kopfschüttelnd stehen blieb, die Preise der ausgestellten Waren zur Kenntnis nahm und so schließlich in die Billrothstraße kam, die im weiteren Verlauf nach den rebenreichen Vororten Sievering und Grinzing führt.
pp 67 from Die Stadt ohne Juden by