Book Review: Ecstasy by Mary Sharratt

I haven´t listen to the musical works authored by Alma Mahler, but I am familiar with her writings and her image as a femme fatale of the 20th century Viennaise intellectual realm. Her compositions - out of which only 14 survived as for now - are publicized nowadays therefore the interest for her long and eventful life.

Born in a family of artists, she was first kissed by Klimt, married Gustav Mahler - 19 years her senior - had an affair with Oskar Kokoshka, and after Mahler´s death, married Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel. In the States where she moved at the end of the 1930s, she created a salon gathering artists in exile, like Stravinsky, Arnold Schöneberg or Thomas Mann. 

The overwhelming representation of her is of an enchanteress, a sin that Ecstasy by Mary Sharratt, a historical novel about her, is repeating as well.  

Vienna of the beginning of the 20th century was becoming a center of intellectual creation and women were starting to become involved in the process, more than from a role of amusing the guests while playing a nice piece of easy piano music. But unless heirs of significant heritage. Being a spinster, no matter how far your intellectual achievements, was most likely a shameful label. Succesful men like Mahler wanted to marry beautiful women to have children with and respect their working routines. And the Mahler represented in Mary Sharratt book is a person of strict habit: ´Gustav could tolerate no disruption in his routine even to accommodate her pregnancy or their newlyweed status´ as ´Nothing and no one was permitted to disturb his creative trance´ ´It was Alma´s task to keep the household running smoothly and discourage imopportune guests so Gustav didn´t need to worry about anything besides his own work´. To be honest, I´ve heard more than once of such career distribution of home tasks, implemented in very intellectual families where the woman is walking on egg shells trying not to bother the creative flow of the husband, although she might be more gifted and talented than him, but thanks Gd never had to experience it myself.  

Alma, on the other hand, was dreaming of having a colleagues, an intellectual companion on her side, like the power musical couple of Clara and Robert Schumann. She loved Mahler but she could not forgive him the cruelty of being asked to give up her musical ambitions for the sake of their marriage. She accepted, despite the cruel remark of her mother: ´He can´t ask you to give up your music. It´s monstruous´. Alma is longing to be considered more than a beautiful face and Mahler´s wife and this uncertain status increases her insecurities and nervous breakdowns once she advances in age. As her beauty is fading, what she is left with? Hence, the easy stereotype of novels set in Vienna at the time, of the visits to the spas and the follow up of Mr. Freud therapies - there must be a hysterical outburst after all. Which is a medical possibility, after all, but I think personally that it can be a more complex mental setting for understanding Alma and her turmoil. The same for her depiction of a highly sexual person, which is perfectly normal, but it does not necessarily played well with her intellectual aims - a kind of German hausfrau Madame Bovary reading Nietzsche.

The male characters in the book are emotionally instable, taking for granted the gifts of liberated women, womanizers and selfish. Very often, childish and driven to Alma mostly for her position within the Viennaise socialities, acquired through marriage. Mahler is clumsy, indeed, with his hilarious reading aloud from the Kant´s Critique of Pure Reason on the topic of the seemingly futility of metaphisics when Alma´s waters broke down. In the book it is not explicitly mentioned if he was reading it to Alma or just to himself. The other men, including Gropius, are equally tained by the morb of insecurity, longing for a stable 3-meal lifestyle, but driven towards creative, strong women, that are keen to betray. 

For a historical novel, I´ve found that some of the mentions of media approaches at the time rather belonging to our 21st century than of the journalistic behaviors from the beginning of the 20st.

However, despite the shortcoming of some of the characters, Ecstasy by Mary Sharratt had a monologue worth considering about intellectual power couples - not often a possibility in real time/life - and at what extent being partners in a relationships should be followed by giving up your professional ambitions and creative gifts. Mostly, women are faced to such options, therefore the feminist touch of the book. Next, I would prefer to read Alma´s diaries and her personal accounts about life and her quests and her intellectual journey in general.

Rating: 3 stars