Viennese Schoolboys

CLASS REUNION--Franz Werfel--Simon & Schuster ($2).

In a "prep" school near New York in 1902, would the entire student body seriously prepare and abide by a shrewd timetable for playing hookey? Would the rich boys and the well-born boys form a clique under the dominance of the literary boy, listen to his poems, read their own, play the ouija board, indulge with equal zest in philosophy and barroom wenches? And despise footballers for brainless oxen? Would U. S. students consider cheating on marks a crime from whose penalty, legal and moral, suicide was a welcome escape?

In 1902 at the Nikolaus Gymnasium outside Vienna such things happened. Author Werfel's story, the story of Sebastian and Adler, tells about it. Behind Sebastian's soft eyes seethed envy--envy of Adler, the literary boy. Reason: the couple's clique acclaimed Adler Mentally Most High. Sebastian, craving that title, decided first to make Adler feel inferior. Failing to compete with Adler's mind, Sebastian turned the laugh on Adler's awkward body. That hurt Adler. Sebastian wrestled with Adler, pinned him to the mat, made him kneel for a sweetmeat, caught him with a harlot. That broke Adler. When the clique laughed at Adler, Adler laughed too, a self-annihilating laugh. All Adler's superiority seemed to vanish.

Yet did it vanish? A quarter-century later, now 43 and a Judge, Sebastian still feels superior. He meets a convict whom he (wrongly) thinks is Adler. He goes into a turmoil and says, "When we were boys together, your finer nature made a criminal of me: but when I had driven you away, you robbed me of my soul forever. Now when death seems ridiculously close to me, I accuse you of ruining my life. For I was fated to love you!" When Sebastian discovers his mistake about the convict's identity, he realized that not his sight but Divine Truth deceived him. Thus, Author Werfel concludes his thesis (from Goethe): "Against the superiority of another there exists no weapon or remedy save love."