The art of loving
This immensely readable book recounts the life of a great 20th-century socialite, #lma /ahler, nÅe 5chindler. *aste plunders Mahler’s astonishingly frank diaries and letters to reveal a mercurial and sensual personality.
$orn into fin-de-siÄcle Vienna, /ahler had a glittering social circle, which embraced the musicians 5trauss, &ebussy and her first husband, Gustav Mahler, whose death left her a wealthy young widow. 5he knew the artists -limt her first crush , Rodin and 1skar -okoschka her on-off lover . #nd there were writers, architects (her second husband, Walter Gropius), psychiatrists (Freud), scientists and priests. $ut because *aste focuses closely on her subject, this fascinating cultural and political world remains largely in the background.
Mahler’s endlessly waxing and waning passions are documented in capitalised diary declarations of being I0 01T I0 .1V' . #nd this creates a problem. *aste suggests that she was a frustrated composer. $ut although various women did enjoy successful musical careers, Mahler did little to further her own musical ambitions. Instead she lived through men, and even then declared p#ll I love in a man is his achievement.q 1nce she had them, she usually lost interest.
Wisely, *aste doesn’t whitewash /ahler. Despite the bohemian company she kept, she was conservative, monarchist and anti-Semitic. When the First World War broke out, she projected the drama onto herself. *aste rightly identifies this as staggering self-aggrandising.
More revelatory is the ghastliness of her lovers. Gustav Mahler subjugated her, and (unforgivably) read Kant to her when she was in labour. -okoschka commissioned and later beheaded) a life-sized doll of her. Gropius effectively kidnapped her by dragging her onto his train to *anover. #lma /ahler was remarkably consistent in her inconsistency, but *aste’s account reveals 50 shades of derangement in the men who loved her.
Natasha Loges, reader in musicology at the Royal College of Music