Merry-Go-Round

La Ronde (also known by its original German title, Reigen) is a play in which ten people form an unwitting interpersonal circle with their secret sexual relationships. It was written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897 and was controversial at that time. It scrutinizes the sexual morality and class ideology of its day through successive encounters between pairs of characters (before or after a sexual encounter). By choosing characters across all levels of society, the play offers social commentary on how sexual contact transgresses class boundaries. Printed privately in 1900, it was not publicly performed until 1920, when it provoked strong reactions. The play's two titlesin German Reigen and in French La Ronderefer to a round dance, as portrayed in the English rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses. Publication and reception La Ronde was first printed in 1900 for private circulation amongst friends. In 1903, the first German-language edition was published in Vienna, selling some 40,000 copies, but was banned by the censors a year later. A German editor was found in 1908 to publish the play from Germany. In 1912 it was translated into French, and in 1920 into English and published as Hands Around. In 1917 an English translation written by Marya Mannes was published by Boni & Liveright, inc. A Dutch translation, by Jo van Ammers-Küller, was published in 1923 as Rondedans: tien dialogen. Schnitzler's play was not publicly performed until 23 December 1920 in Berlin and 1 February 1921 in Vienna. (An unauthorized production was staged earlier in Budapest in 1912.) The play elicited violent critical and popular reactions. Schnitzler suffered moralistic and personal attacks that became virulently anti-Semitic; he was attacked as a Jewish pornographer and the outcry came to be known as the "Reigen scandal." Despite a 1921 Berlin court verdict that dismissed the charges of immorality, Schnitzler withdrew La Ronde himself from public production in German-speaking countries. The play remained popular in Russia, Czechoslovakia and especially in France, where it was twice adapted for the cinema, in 1950 and 1964. In 1982, fifty years after Schnitzler's death, his son Heinrich Schnitzler re-released the play for German-language performances.