Lots of Love
And the Bridge is Love. By Alma Mahler Werfel. (Hutchinson, 25s.) Wttsr's in a name? More than one would think. The average English reader can hardly be expected to feel a genuine Mahlerian pang at the mere sight of the name on this title-page. Worshippers at the shrine, however, have only to cast their minds back a few years. They will recall Alma Maria Werfel-Mahler (as she then styled herself) remark- ing on jealousy in her earlier book Gustav Maltler—Letters and Memories: 'He [Mahler] and I were jealous of each other, at first I of him more than he of me. 1 was jealous of his past, which in my innocence I used to think very objec- tionable. He was jealous of my future and that I can now understand.' And so, now, can we, thanks to these further revelations by the irrepressible 'Schone Mahlerin.'
And the Bridge is Love, then, is a chronicle of high romance and tragedy, with just a glimmering or two of high farce. In it the author restores her nine-year marriage (her first) to the great Mahler to its rightful position in the love-crammed chronology. Herself a composer of talent, and obviously the darling of her age, she held an irresistible attraction for men of genius. Gropius courted her while Mahler was still alive. After Mahler's death there followed three tempestuous years of intimacy with Oskar kokoschka. But it was Werfel, of Bernadette fame, who was destined to become her last and greatest love. And the book actually opens in 1915 with the author committing mental infidelity to Gropius, whom she had only recently married, at the first glimpse of one of Werfel's poems!
For all its busy pages evoking almost the whole of twentieth-century Europe's cultural elite, this story, once it has progressed beyond the Mahler Years, is mainly a tribute to the greatheartedness and unflagging literary (as well as sexual) energy of Franz Werfel. After remaining lovers through an age of change, Alma and Franz finally mar- ried in 1929. Their years of continued happiness witnessed even greater changes, which culminated h) their flight from a Nazi-occupied Austria. After two years of nomadic existence the Couple reached America and safety in October, 1940, and their married romance continued until Werfel's death in 1945. 'His body was taken away the same evening, as is customary here, and I felt as though my life were carried out,' wrote his wife. And reading these touching pages even the most jealous Mahlerians may not consider her any the less their Alma for equating two such beloved husbands in the hook's title.
ARTHUR BOYARS
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