A_Nervous_Splendor

A Nervous Splendor Unit 5 Historical Interpretation Question 1 A Nervous Splendor by Fredric Morton A Nervous Splendor is a study of a single year - 1888-1889 - in the fairy tale city of Vienna. During this year Johann Strauss Jr. wrote his Emperor Waltz; Sigmund Freud, having quit his lucrative job as assistant physician to a Nerve Specialist for the Very Rich, used the term "subconscious" for the first time in print; there was a renaissance of Viennese music, art, literature, and architecture; and Vienna became the Suicide Capital of the world. It was the year Crown Prince Rudolph, handsome and popular heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, shot his 17 year-old mistress Mary Vetsera and then himself at his hunting lodge Mayerling. It was also the year Clara Hitler gave birth to Adolph. For many Austrians, it was the year the Western Dream died. In Vienna, the Totentanz, the 'Dance of Death', is necessarily a waltz. Frederic Morton, Viennese to the core and one of our better novelists, turned his hand a decade back to history, the history of Vienna before the wars. The results are superb. In A Nervous Splendor, Morton takes up the life and mood of an ancient and imperial city confronting the year, vienna, morton, suicide, splendor, one, nervous, life, world, vetsera, mayerling, mary, history, freud, whose, war, waltz, viennese, very, tragic, time, through, theories, suicides, subconscious, rudolph, rudolf, romance, prince, popular, pact, own, new, minor, lodge, imperial, hitler, heir, gives, first, empire, easter, during, detail, city, capital, both, book, before, austro-hungarian