THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, September 7 - 8, 2019 |C11
BYNORMANLEBRECHT
O
N THE SECOND page
of “Passionate Spirit,”
the English biographer
Cate Haste runs up
her flag: “I like Alma
Mahler,” she declares. This statement
places the author in direct contra-
diction to three famous husbands,
numerous lovers and most
of Alma’s acquaintance.
A femme fatale who pro-
claimed herself a muse
to genius, Alma Mahler
aroused lust in her youth
and gossip-seekers into
her 80s. But not many
people who knew her liked
her very much, or for very
long. I clearly remember
her daughter, Anna Mah-
ler, telling me that at no
time in her long life did
her mother ever have a
devoted female friend.
The ditty that Tom
Lehrer sang on her death
in 1964—“The loveliest girl
in Vienna / Was Alma, the
smartest as well. / Once
you picked her up on your
antenna, / You’d never be
free of her spell”—still
rings true. Alma used her
beauty and her wit to get
the men she wanted. By
marrying three big names,
she achieved immortality
by proxy. Her own legacy
to our cultural heritage
consists of a clutch of
drawing-room songs and
two published memoirs,
the former unimpressive
and the latter largely un-
truthful.
These caveats aside,
there is something appeal-
ing about Ms. Haste’s
attempt to retell a well-
trodden life story from a
21st-century, egalitarian
perspective. “I particularly
like the modern young
woman who emerges from the pages
of her early diaries,” explains Ms.
Haste, “when she was untrammeled
by convention and bent on realizing
herself and her talents despite the
odds against her as a woman.”
The odds against her were, in fact,
greater than her sex. Born in Vienna
in 1879, the child of a painter, Emil
Jakob Schindler, and his opera-singer
wife, Alma was raised in bohe-
mian squalor and make-do morality.
Schindler was ineffectual, possibly
gay. In his absence his wife slept with
the landlord to make the rent, con-
ceiving an illegitimate child. She later
BOOKS
‘I’m beautiful, not stupid....Yet,whenIwish to step nearer and stretch longing hands toward a human heart, all humanity crumbles into dust.’—ALMA MAHLER
Passionate Spirit
By Cate Haste
Basic, 351 pages, $32
took her husband’s pupil, Carl Moll,
as a live-in lover.
The family fortunes were trans-
formed by the sudden patronage of
Crown Prince Rudolf, who commis-
sioned Schindler to paint landscapes
of Austrian lands. Even so, Alma grew
up with a sense of foreboding, trust-
ing no one. Her need for self-reliance
turned critical when her father died
of a burst appendix just before her
13th birthday.
Alma, who called Schindler “my
Führer,” never recovered from theloss, always reaching out to men
of artistic potential who bore some
resemblance to Emil. Her mother,
meanwhile, swiftly married the capa-
ble Moll, setting up a cultural salon
in Vienna’s fashionable Hohe Warte
district, overlooking the city.
Alma conducted her early experi-
ments in love with Gustav Klimt, the
leader of Vienna’s variant of the Art
Nouveau movement, and with Alexan-
der von Zemlinsky, her piano teacher.
Neither passion reached physical
consummation, apparently, though
it was a close-run thing when she
played “Tristan and Isolde” withZemlinsky at the piano and they were
unable to keep her hands off each
other (if Alma’s diaries are to be
believed). Eventually she went looking
for another man old enough to be her
father and alighted on Gustav Mahler,
director of the Vienna Opera and the
most talked-about man in the city.
Mahler was 41, mother-fixated,
Jewish, sexually inert and fearful that
he might not live long. He was low-
hanging fruit. Alma, 22, plucked him
in 1901, elevating herself to the status
of Frau Direktor and, to echo TomLehrer, the most desirable woman in
Vienna. The downside of the deal,
according to Alma, was that Mahler
prohibited her from composing,
saying that one composer was enough
in the family (we have only Alma’s
word for this ban).
In the decade of her marriage to
Mahler, she flirted with the composer
Hans Pfitzner, the pianist Ossip
Gabrilowitsch and various others
while Mahler slaved in a forest hut
composing one symphony after
another. She also had two children,
one dying of scarlet fever at the age
of 5. In 1910, the last summer of hislife, Mahler discovered her affair with
the rising architect Walter Gropius.
Mahler consulted Sigmund Freud,
who advised him, in the interest of
saving the marriage, to let Alma
indulge her desires.
Gropius, a man her own age, was in
the throes of founding the Bauhaus
movement, his own style featuring, as
Ms. Haste puts it, the “concept of a
building as a total work, a rational
and functioning entity.” Frustrated by
his inattention, Alma waged a pas-
sionate affair with Oskar Kokoschka,a gritty painter whose most coveted
work, “Die Windsbraut” (“The Bride
of the Wind”), shows a couple lying
together as a storm swirls around
them, the half-draped female figure
being “clearly Alma,” as Ms. Haste
notes. Kokoschka’s obsession with
Alma’s naked body ultimately terri-
fied her. She married Gropius in 1915.
While he was away at war, she
seduced a 20-something Jewish poet
from Prague, Franz Werfel, a tubby
youth she sought to mold.
Alma, pushing 40, was no longer
beautiful. “She looked like a laundry
sack,” her daughter said. But she hadonly to enter a room to command
total attention and could still arouse
desire. Werfel, locked into a deterio-
rating sado-masochistic marriage,
wrote his romantic Catholic best
seller “The Song of Bernadette” at
Alma’s behest (or so she said).
The problem with Alma’s version
of events is that you never know what
to believe. She doctored the truth in
her published memoirs and, while her
diaries were not intended for alien
eyes, Ms. Haste is rather too prone
to take Alma at her own inflated esti-
mation. “Although famous
for her attraction to cre-
ative geniuses,” Ms. Haste
concludes, “throughout her
life it was not the men
who were her saviors.
Composing, playing or
experiencing music in dif-
ferent forms was her crys-
talline core....Andmusic
was the voice through
which she could express
her passionate spirit. Her
own music is her lasting,
and living, legacy.”
This is, frankly, non-
sense. I have studied the
songs of Alma Mahler
without ever being con-
vinced of their originality,
or even their authorship.
Composed in a turn-of-
the-century, late-romantic
mood swing, they owe
much to the hands of
Zemlinsky and the fash-
ions of the day. If compos-
ing was Alma’s life force,
as Ms. Haste maintains,
one has to wonder why
the urge was confined to
two brief spells—with
Zemlinsky and shortly
after Mahler’s death, when
she might have felt liber-
ated to write a symphony.
In the diaries, Alma re-
cords her doubt that she
has any talent at all.
Composing was never
her primary motivation.
Alma’s life was a work of
art, a pursuit of love on
her own terms. Her main
interest was the capture
of men through whom she could find
consolation for the loss of her father
and, through their response to her,
a vicarious immortality. She was
neither feminist, nor heroine nor
likable. After Werfel’s death, she was
seen out shopping in Beverly Hills.
Asked if she was not going to her
third husband’s funeral, Alma said:
“I never go to those things.”Mr. Lebrecht is the author of
“Why Mahler? How One Man and
Ten Symphonies Changed Our World.”
His next book, “Genius and Anxiety,”
will be published in December.SongsintheKeyofMe
ENTANGLED ‘Die Windsbraut’ (1914) by Oskar Kokoschka, featuring a self-portrait of the artist with Alma Mahler.
ALAMYCHILDREN’S
BOOKS
MEGHAN
COXGURDONHow
could
that
scaly
glutton
ever
resist
Venice,
with its
canals,
red wine
and
pasta?IN 1999, FRED MARCELLINO
introduced children to the sly,
mordant narrator of “I,
Crocodile,” a picture book about
a gluttonous Egyptian river-
dweller who is kidnapped by
Napoleon Bonaparte and brought
to Paris to wow the multitudes.
As Marcellino (1939-2001) was
finishing the book, he had to
begin treatment for cancer.
Unfortunately, the disease took
his life before he could finish
work on the sequel.
Twenty years later, the tale of
the gourmandizing creature’s
further adventures has
been brought to glori-
ous posthumous life
by Eric Puybaret,
whose airy, sugar-spun
illustrations (see
right) meld so
beautifully with
Marcellino’s that
few readers, I
suspect, will be
able to spot the
point at which
one man’s work
ends and the other’s begins.
“Arrivederci, Crocodile: or,
See You Later, Alligator”
(Atheneum, 40 pages, $17.99)
is a joy from start to finish.
Having escaped Napoleon’s
clutches, the crocodile is
lounging around in the Parisian
sewers; we see him throwing
darts at a portrait of his imperial
nemesis. Children ages 4-8 who
love the first book know that
our hero is a creature of vast
appetite, so when he sees anewspaper headline about
Napoleon traveling to Venice,
he gives himself over to fanta-
sies of pasta and red wine in the
moonlight. “Perfect! A watery
city of canals and Italian food,”
he thinks. “What more could a
crocodile want?”
The stowaway croc soon gets
himself to the floating city,
which, by excellent happen-
stance, abounds with the cos-
tumes and masks of Carnevale.
He falls in with a
party of cheerful
revelers who
can’t get over
his wonderful
outfit (“Do you
believe those
teeth?”) as
they eat their
way through
palazzo
buffets—but
all parties
must end, as
this one does
when Napoleon
turns up. Children
will adore the sting
in the tail of this
welcome and long-overdue tale.
A child contends with
turbulent, devouring feelings
in “Hungry Jim” (Chronicle,
56 pages, $17.99) , a picture
book written by Laurel Snyder,
illustrated by Chuck Groenink
and dedicated to the memory of
the late Maurice Sendak. (“We
ate him up. We loved him so,”
the book’s creators write, echoing
lines from Sendak’s famous 1963picture book, “Where the Wild
Things Are.”) In this clever and
observant homage, we see a
young lion waking up in a child’s
bedroom to discover that his tail
has fallen asleep. “This seemed
odd,” we read. “Jim had never
had a tail before.”
When his (human) mother
calls Jim down to breakfast, his
stomach growls: “She sounded
delicious.” In no time, Jim has
gobbled up his mother and
begun rampaging along the side-
walk of his pretty neighborhood,
swallowing everyone he meets
and feeling worse all the time.
Mr. Groenink’s pictures, espe-
cially of Jim’s expressions, feel
reminiscent of early Sendak, as
does the emotional resonance of
Ms. Snyder’s words. “The further
he ran, the hungrier Jim became.
He wanted to eat anything.
He wanted to eat everything.
He wanted to cry.” Like Max,
Sendak’s “king of all wild
things,” Jim eventually comes
full-circle by taming his inner
beast in this perceptive story
for cubs ages 4-7.
Dan Richards spins a funny
and redemptive fairy tale in
“Once Upon a Goat” (Knopf,
40 pages, $17.99) , a picture
book that begins in traditional
style: “Once upon a time, in a
faraway kingdom, a king and
queen wished for a child.” The
royal pair isn’t picky. “Any kid
will do,” the king tells their fairy
godmother. Still, it’s a shock
when the adoptive couple opens
the front door of their castle tofind a baby goat. “Baah,” the
animal says, looking cute. “It’s
my fault,” wails the king. “I said
any kid would do. But I never
meant— this .”
It’s a bad situation. The goat
disrupts everything, knocking
over valuables and eating theroses, and eventually the king
and queen send him into exile.
In Eric Barclay’s engaging
illustrations, we see the little
fellow in the rain, gazing across
the moat at the castle window
where his human parents stand,
looking remorseful. Well, they
are remorseful, and pretty soon
they embrace the kid and the
ruckus he brings. And when their
fairy godmother realizes her mis-
take—elsewhere in the kingdom,
a goat family is raising a baby—
thekingand queen choose to
expand the circle of family love
rather than make a swap. “Notexactly the family we wished
for,” says the king, sitting in a
room strewn with toys and
chewed-up roses. “No,” the
queen replies. “Better.”
Some picture books make you
want to hug them to your chest
and not let go until the fullness
in your heart subsides. “Small
in the City” (Holiday House,
38 pages, $18.99) , a work of
surpassing poignancy and under-
standing by Canadian author-
illustrator Sydney Smith, is one
of them. The book’s color scheme
is bleak and wintry and the lines
dark and ragged as a small child
travels by bus through a city that
resembles Toronto. “I know what
it’s like to be small in the city,”
we read. “People don’t see you
and loud sounds can scare you,
and knowing what to do is hard
sometimes.”
At first, readers ages 4-8
won’t know who is narrating:
Is it an adult offering comfort
to the child? Or is it the child
addressing someone even
smaller and more vulnerable? In
the pictures, snow begins to fall.
The child moves past dark alley-
ways and empty lots, and the
narrator offers advice about
staying safe and warm. When
the child stops in the driving
snow to post a “lost cat” sign,
we understand at last. Oh, it is
a big world when you are small!
“But I know you,” we read,
as the child is folded into a
maternal embrace. “You will be
all right.” And judging from the
final, beautiful page, it’s true.A Crocodile Goes to Carnevale
THIS WEEK
Arrivederci, Crocodile
By Fred Marcellino &
Eric PuybaretHungry Jim
By Laurel Snyder
Illustrated by Chuck GroeninkOnce Upon a Goat
By Dan Richards
Illustrated by Eric BarclaySmall in the City
By Sydney SmithATHENEUM