Anatol - a character that could only take shape in Vienna at the turn of the century: the carefree melancholic, the seduced seducer, the lover playing comedy, guided by moods, living in the moment, a fragmented subject in scenes of life, episodic like the cycle of short one-act plays in which the 26-year-old Arthur Schnitzler created him. Michael Scheffel has newly published this atmospheric youthful work, to which the 16-year-old Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote the lyrical prologue, and has added notes as well as an afterword for better understanding.