Mephisto Waltz

Schubert seems to be the artist of the moment in Vienna Twilight. Because of a current patient of Liebermann's, Schubert's Doppelganger is played one night by Max and Oskar.

And it would seem much as in Vienna Secrets, we will get bigger glimpses of Liebermann practicing his Freudian psychology on patients in Vienna Twilight as well.

But back to a summation of the recently-completed Vienna Secrets: It will be interesting to get Mr. Flu's opinion about one incident. You could consider this a very minor spoiler. I'll tell you what happened, now how or if it got resolved.

Dr. Liebermann is called in to the ward to attend a patient who is having an emergency. For various reasons, his regular doctors are not available.

The man is a Catholic (this will matter). He is dying. The intern there (or whatever his title is) probably gave him too large of a dose of morphine so now he's definitely not long for the world. He's into and out of consciousness but relatively relaxed. (Morphine can do that, I guess.)

Anyway, it's clear he's dying. The nurse (I think) calls for a priest. Basically Liebermann physically blocks his way and won't allow the priest to give the patient the last rites because it might distress him.

It's a flimsy plot point, at best, for surely the priest could have given the last rites without even waking the patient.

Anyway, Liebermann faces disciplinary action (and rightly so, to my mind) although Oskar thinks that's an outrage and buys Max's line that he was just doing what was best for the patient. Max said the patient was calm and he didn't want his last moments to be upset by a priest giving him the last rites.

Anyway, however you fall on this issue, it's interesting that there is zero introspection from the author on why Liebermann opposed the patient being given the last rites. Was it latent Jewish hostility toward Catholics? (Probably rightly earned if it was.) Was it Liebermann's secularism sneering at religious sensibilities?

The author comes off way short. We're constantly being bombarded by Freudian second-guessing of people and wondering what elements in the unconscious are motivating them. But the author is suddenly silent regarding this episode. It's frankly a moronic piece of writing in what is otherwise a pretty good book.

It will be interesting to see what Mr. Flu thinks of this if he gets to the book.

You will. Liebermann goes full Freudian sex theory in the book. It gets very f*#king sick. 

A devout Catholic would never shrug off such a thing as Liebermann's action.  To let someone interfere with a person's last rites would be damning. 

And that's exactly how it was.

While I love the Austrian desserts, I still prefer the savory dishes. I was not a soup eater until I got to Austria. Here is one of my favorites, which a friend's mother would sometimes cook for us. Leberknoedel Suppe.  One might thing liver dumplings would be heavy, but hers was as light as air. 




Wanda's roast pork and dumplings might have looked something like this. I love red cabbage as well.




Can you imagine, every time I visited my friend's home, his mother would cook lunch which included soup, main course and dessert. When I was really lucky, she would cook lunch and supper.  Her Goulash was out of this world! Mrs. Flu was lucky enough to have it once almost 35 years ago and she still raves about it. 


“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
, But to be young, hungry and skinny with a friend's mother who loved to cook, was very heaven.”

With apologies to Wordsworth. 

That's a full meal right there. There can't be many skinny Austrians.

Can you imagine what a delight that was for a couple of "Poor" students to split? I knew one guy who existed on eggs and semmel for something like six weeks. 

I have to admit that Tallis' emphasis on desserts and coffee wears a bit thin. While it is nice to read about the many wonderful desserts available in the Austrian kitchen, he over does it, in my opinion. It becomes simply silly. The idea itself becomes a caricature. I have eaten plenty of Austrian desserts and drunk plenty of Austrian coffee and neither became caricatures.