It has been said that military conquest generally goes hand in hand with the decline of creative genius, with the retrogression of culture. I believe this is not a mere assertion. The history of the human race repeatedly demonstrates that whenever a nation achieved great military success, it invariably involved the decline of art, of literature, of the drama; in short, of culture in the deepest and finest sense. This has been particularly borne out by Germany after its military triumph in the Franco-Prussian War.

For almost twenty years after that war, the country of poets and thinkers remained, intellectually, a veritable desert, barren of ideas. Young Germany had to go for its intellectual food to France,—Daudet, Maupassant, and Zola; or to Russia—Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoyevski; finally also to Ibsen and Strindberg. Nothing thrived in Germany during that period, except a sickening patriotism and sentimental romanticism, perniciously misleading the people and giving them no adequate outlook upon life and the social struggle. Perhaps that accounts for the popular vogue of Hermann Sudermann: it may explain why he was received by the young generation with open arms and acclaimed a great artist.

It is not my intention to discuss Hermann Sudermann as an artist or to consider him from the point of view of the technic of the drama. I intend to deal with him as the first German dramatist to treat social topics and discuss the pressing questions of the day. From this point of view Hermann Sudermann may be regarded as the pioneer of a new era in the German drama. Primarily is this true of the three plays "Honor," "Magda," and "The Fires of St. John." In these dramas Hermann Sudermann, while not delving deeply into the causes of the social conflicts, nevertheless touches upon many vital subjects.

In "Honor" the author demolishes the superficial, sentimental conception of "honor" that is a purely external manifestation, having no roots in the life, the habits, or the customs of the people. He exposes the stupidity of the notion that because a man looks askance at you, or fails to pay respect to your uniform, you must challenge him to a duel and shoot him dead. In this play Sudermann shows that the conception of honor is nothing fixed or permanent, but that it varies with economic and social status, different races, peoples and times holding different ideas of it. With "Honor" Sudermann succeeded in undermining to a considerable extent the stupid and ridiculous notion of the Germans ruled by the rod and the Kaiser's coat.

But I particularly wish to consider "Magda," because, of all the plays written by Hermann Sudermann, it is the most revolutionary and the least national. It deals with a universal subject,—the awakening of woman. It is revolutionary, not because Sudermann was the first to treat this subject, for Ibsen had preceded him, but because in "Magda" he was the first to raise the question of woman's right to motherhood with or without the sanction of State and Church.

MAGDA

Lieutenant Colonel Schwartze, Magda's father, represents all the conventional and conservative notions of society.

Schwartze. Modern ideas! Oh, pshaw! I know them. But come into the quiet homes where are bred brave soldiers and virtuous wives. There you'll hear no talk about heredity, no arguments about individuality, no scandalous gossip. There modern ideas have no foothold, for it is there that the life and strength of the Fatherland abide. Look at this home! There is no luxury,—hardly even what you call good taste,—faded rugs, birchen chairs, old pictures; and yet when you see the beams of the western sun pour through the white curtains and lie with such a loving touch on the old room, does not something say to you, "Here dwells true happiness"?

The Colonel is a rigid military man. He is utterly blind to the modern conception of woman's place in life. He rules his family as the Kaiser rules the nation, with severe discipline, with terrorism and despotism. He chooses the man whom Magda is to marry, and when she refuses to accept his choice, he drives her out of the house.

At the age of eighteen Magda goes out into the world yearning for development; she longs for artistic expression and economic independence. Seventeen years later she returns to her native town, a celebrated singer. As Madelene dell'Orto she is invited to sing at the town's charity bazaar, and is acclaimed, after the performance, one of the greatest stars of the country.

Magda has not forgotten her home; especially does she long to see her father whom she loves passionately, and her sister, whom she had left a little child of eight. After the concert Magda, the renowned artist, steals away from her admirers, with their flowers and presents, and goes out into the darkness of the night to catch a glimpse, through the window at least, of her father and her little sister.

Magda's father is scandalized at her mode of life: what will people say if the daughter of the distinguished officer stops at a hotel, associates with men without a chaperon, and is wined and dined away from her home? Magda is finally prevailed upon to remain with her parents. She consents on condition that they should not pry into her life, that they should not soil and besmirch her innermost being. But that is expecting the impossible from a provincial environment. It is not that her people really question; but they insinuate, they speak with looks and nods; burning curiosity to unearth Magda's life is in the very air.

Schwartze. I implore you—Come here, my child—nearer—so—I implore you—let me be happy in my dying hour. Tell me that you have remained pure in body and soul, and then go with my blessing on your way.

Magda. I have remained—true to myself, dear father.

Schwartze. How? In good or in ill?

Magda. In what—for me—was good.

Schwartze. I love you with my whole heart, because I have sorrowed for you—so long. But I must know who you are.

Among the townspeople who come to pay homage to Magda is Councillor von Keller. In his student days he belonged to the bohemian set and was full of advanced ideas. At that period he met Magda, young, beautiful, and inexperienced. A love affair developed. But when Von Keller finished his studies, he went home to the fold of his family, and forgot his sweetheart Magda. In due course he became an important pillar of society, a very influential citizen, admired, respected, and feared in the community.

When Magda returns home, Von Keller comes to pay her his respects. But she is no longer the insignificant little girl he had known; she is now a celebrity. What pillar of society is averse to basking in the glow of celebrities? Von Keller offers flowers and admiration. But Magda discovers in him the man who had robbed her of her faith and trust,—the father of her child.

Magda has become purified by her bitter struggle. It made her finer and bigger. She does not even reproach the man, because—

Magda. I've painted this meeting to myself a thousand times, and have been prepared for it for years. Something warned me, too, when I undertook this journey home—though I must say I hardly expected just here to—Yes, how is it that, after what has passed between us, you came into this house? It seems to me a little— ... I can see it all. The effort to keep worthy of respect under such difficulties, with a bad conscience, is awkward. You look down from the height of your pure atmosphere on your sinful youth,—for you are called a pillar, my dear friend.

Von Keller. Well, I felt myself called to higher things. I thought—Why should I undervalue my position? I have become Councillor, and that comparatively young. An ordinary ambition might take satisfaction in that. But one sits and waits at home, while others are called to the ministry. And this environment, conventionality, and narrowness, all is so gray,—gray! And the ladies here—for one who cares at all about elegance—I assure you something rejoiced within me when I read this morning that you were the famous singer,—you to whom I was tied by so many dear memories and—

Magda. And then you thought whether it might not be possible with the help of these dear memories to bring a little color into the gray background?

Von Keller. Oh, pray don't—

Magda. Well, between old friends—

Von Keller. Really, are we that, really?

Magda. Certainly, sans rancune. Oh, if I took it from the other standpoint, I should have to range the whole gamut,—liar, coward, traitor! But as I look at it, I owe you nothing but thanks, my friend.

Von Keller. This is a view which—

Magda. Which is very convenient for you. But why should I not make it convenient for you? In the manner in which we met, you had no obligations towards me. I had left my home; I was young and innocent, hot-blooded and careless, and I lived as I saw others live. I gave myself to you because I loved you. I might perhaps have loved anyone who came in my way. That—that seemed to be all over. And we were so happy,—weren't we?... Yes, we were a merry set; and when the fun had lasted half a year, one day my lover vanished.

Von Keller. An unlucky chance, I swear to you. My father was ill. I had to travel. I wrote everything to you.

Magda. H'm! I didn't reproach you. And now I will tell you why I owe you thanks. I was a stupid, unsuspecting thing, enjoying freedom like a runaway monkey. Through you I became a woman. For whatever I have done in my art, for whatever I have become in myself, I have you to thank. My soul was like—yes, down below there, there used to be an Æolian harp which was left moldering because my father could not bear it. Such a silent harp was my soul; and through you it was given to the storm. And it sounded almost to breaking,—the whole scale of passions which bring us women to maturity,—love and hate and revenge and ambition, and need, need, need,—three times need—and the highest, the strongest, the holiest of all, the mother's love!—All I owe to you!

Von Keller. My child!

Magda. Your child? Who calls it so? Yours? Ha, ha! Dare to claim portion in him and I'll kill you with these hands. Who are you? You're a strange man who gratified his lust and passed on with a laugh. But I have a child,—my son, my God, my all! For him I lived and starved and froze and walked the streets; for him I sang and danced in concert-halls,—for my child who was crying for his bread!

Von Keller. For Heaven's sake, hush! someone's coming.

Magda. Let them come! Let them all come! I don't care, I don't care! To their faces I'll say what I think of you,—of you and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you, that I must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold upon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increase my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years? Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built up my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become what I am.

Magda's father learns about the affair and immediately demands that the Councillor marry his daughter, or fight a duel. Magda resents the preposterous idea. Von Keller is indeed glad to offer Magda his hand in marriage: she is so beautiful and fascinating; she will prove a great asset to his ambitions. But he stipulates that she give up her profession of singer, and that the existence of the child be kept secret. He tells Magda that later on, when they are happily married and firmly established in the world, they will bring their child to their home and adopt it; but for the present respectability must not know that it is theirs, born out of wedlock, without the sanction of the Church and the State.

That is more than Magda can endure. She is outraged that she, the mother, who had given up everything for the sake of her child, who had slaved, struggled and drudged in order to win a career and economic independence—all for the sake of the child—that she should forswear her right to motherhood, her right to be true to herself!

Magda. What—what do you say?

Von Keller. Why, it would ruin us. No, no, it is absurd to think of it. But we can make a little journey every year to wherever it is being educated. One can register under a false name; that is not unusual in foreign parts, and is hardly criminal. And when we are fifty years old, and other regular conditions have been fulfilled, that can be arranged, can't it? Then we can, under some pretext, adopt it, can't we?

Magda. I have humbled myself, I have surrendered my judgment, I have let myself be carried like a lamb to the slaughter. But my child I will not leave. Give up my child to save his career!

Magda orders Von Keller out of the house. But the old Colonel is unbending. He insists that his daughter become an honorable woman by marrying the man who had seduced her. Her refusal fires his wrath to wild rage.

Schwartze. Either you swear to me now ... that you will become the honorable wife of your child's father, or—neither of us two shall go out of this room alive.... You think ... because you are free and a great artist, that you can set at naught—

Magda. Leave art out of the question. Consider me nothing more than the seamstress or the servant-maid who seeks, among strangers, the little food and the little love she needs. See how much the family with its morality demand from us! It throws us on our own resources, it gives us neither shelter nor happiness, and yet, in our loneliness, we must live according to the laws which it has planned for itself alone. We must still crouch in the corner, and there wait patiently until a respectful wooer happens to come. Yes, wait. And meanwhile the war for existence of body and soul is consuming us. Ahead we see nothing but sorrow and despair, and yet shall we not once dare to give what we have of youth and strength to the man for whom our whole being cries? Gag us, stupefy us, shut us up in harems or in cloisters—and that perhaps would be best. But if you give us our freedom, do not wonder if we take advantage of it.

But morality and the family never understand the Magdas. Least of all does the old Colonel understand his daughter. Rigid in his false notions and superstitions, wrought up with distress, he is about to carry out his threat, when a stroke of apoplexy overtakes him.

In "Magda," Hermann Sudermann has given to the world a new picture of modern womanhood, a type of free motherhood. As such the play is of great revolutionary significance, not alone to Germany, but to the universal spirit of a newer day.

THE FIRES OF ST. JOHN

In "The Fires of St. John," Sudermann does not go as far as in "Magda." Nevertheless the play deals with important truths. Life does not always draw the same conclusions; life is not always logical, not always consistent. The function of the artist is to portray Life—only thus can he be true both to art and to life.

In this drama we witness the bondage of gratitude,—one of the most enslaving and paralyzing factors. Mr. Brauer, a landed proprietor, has a child, Gertrude, a beautiful girl, who has always lived the sheltered life of a hot-house plant. The Brauers also have an adopted daughter, Marie, whom they had picked up on the road, while traveling on a stormy night. They called her "the calamity child," because a great misfortune had befallen them shortly before. Mr. Brauer's younger brother, confronted with heavy losses, had shot himself, leaving behind his son George and a heavily mortgaged estate. The finding of the baby, under these circumstances, was considered by the Brauers an omen. They adopted it and brought it up as their own.

This involved the forcible separation of Marie from her gypsy mother, who was a pariah, an outcast beggar. She drank and stole in order to subsist. But with it all, her mother instinct was strong and it always drove her back to the place where her child lived. Marie had her first shock when, on her way home from confirmation, the ragged and brutalized woman threw herself before the young girl, crying, "Mamie, my child, my Mamie!" It was then that Marie realized her origin. Out of gratitude she consecrated her life to the Brauers.

Marie never forgot for a moment that she owed everything—her education, her support and happiness—to her adopted parents. She wrapped herself around them with all the intensity and passion of her nature. She became the very spirit of the house. She looked after the estate, and devoted herself to little Gertrude, as to her own sister.

Gertrude is engaged to marry her cousin George, and everything is beautiful and joyous in the household. No one suspects that Marie has been in love with the young man ever since her childhood. However, because of her gratitude to her benefactors, she stifles her nature, hardens her heart, and locks her feelings behind closed doors, as it were. And when Gertrude is about to marry George, Marie throws herself into the work of fixing up a home for the young people, to surround them with sunshine and joy in their new love life.

Accidentally Marie discovers a manuscript written by George, wherein he discloses his deep love for her. She learns that he, even as she, has no other thought, no other purpose in life than his love for her. But he also is bound by gratitude for his uncle Brauer who had saved the honor of his father and had rescued him from poverty. He feels it dishonorable to refuse to marry Gertrude.

George. All these years I have struggled and deprived myself with only one thing in view—to be free—free—and yet I must bow—I must bow. If it were not for the sake of this beautiful child, who is innocent of it all, I would be tempted to—But the die is cast, the yoke is ready—and so am I!... I, too, am a child of misery, a calamity child; but I am a subject of charity. I accept all they have to give.... Was I not picked up from the street, as my uncle so kindly informed me for the second time—like yourself? Do I not belong to this house, and am I not smothered with the damnable charity of my benefactors, like yourself?

It is St. John's night. The entire family is gathered on the estate of the Brauers, while the peasants are making merry with song and dance at the lighted bonfires.

It is a glorious, dreamy night, suggestive of symbolic meaning. According to the servant Katie, it is written that "whoever shall give or receive their first kiss on St. John's eve, their love is sealed and they will be faithful unto death."

In the opinion of the Pastor, St. John's night represents a religious phase, too holy for flippant pagan joy.

Pastor. On such a dreamy night, different emotions are aroused within us. We seem to be able to look into the future, and imagine ourselves able to fathom, all mystery and heal all wounds. The common becomes elevated, our wishes become fate; and now we ask ourselves: What is it that causes all this within us—all these desires and wishes? It is love, brotherly love, that has been planted in our souls, that fills our lives: and, it is life itself. Am I not right? And now, with one bound, I will come to the point. In the revelation you will find: "God is love." Yes, God is love; and that is the most beautiful trait of our religion—that the best, the most beautiful within us, has been granted us by Him above. Then how could I, this very evening, so overcome with feeling for my fellow-man—how could I pass Him by? Therefore, Mr. Brauer, no matter, whether pastor or layman, I must confess my inability to grant your wish, and decline to give you a genuine pagan toast—

But Christian symbolism having mostly descended from primitive pagan custom, George's view is perhaps the most significant

George. Since the Pastor has so eloquently withdrawn, I will give you a toast. For, you see, my dear Pastor, something of the old pagan, a spark of heathenism, is still glowing somewhere within us all. It has outlived century after century, from the time of the old Teutons. Once every year that spark is fanned into flame—it flames up high, and then it is called "The Fires of St. John." Once every year we have "free night." Then the witches ride upon their brooms—the same brooms with which their witchcraft was once driven out of them—with scornful laughter the wild hordes sweep across the tree-tops, up, up, high upon the Blocksberg! Then it is, when in our hearts awake those wild desires which our fates could not fulfill—and, understand me well, dared not fulfill—then, no matter what may be the name of the law that governs the world on that day, in order that one single wish may become a reality, by whose grace we prolong our miserable existence, thousand others must miserably perish, part because they were never attainable; but the others, yes, the others, because we allowed them to escape us like wild birds, which, though already in our hands, but too listless to profit by opportunity, we failed to grasp at the right moment. But no matter. Once every year we have "free night." And yonder tongues of fire shooting up towards the heavens—do you know what they are? They are the spirits of our dead perished wishes! That is the red plumage of our birds of paradise we might have petted and nursed through our entire lives, but have escaped us! That is the old chaos, the heathenism within us; and though we be happy in sunshine and according to law, to-night is St. John's night. To its ancient pagan fires I empty this glass. To-night they shall burn and flame up high—high and again high!

George and Marie meet. They, too, have had their instinct locked away even from their own consciousness. And on this night they break loose with tremendous, primitive force. They are driven into each other's arms because they feel that they belong to each other; they know that if they had the strength they could take each other by the hand, face their benefactor and tell him the truth: tell him that it would be an unpardonable crime for George to marry Gertrude when he loves another woman.

Now they all but find courage and strength for it, when the pitiful plaint reaches them, "Oh, mine Mamie, mine daughter, mine child." And Marie is cast down from the sublime height of her love and passion, down to the realization that she also, like her pariah mother, must go out into the world to struggle, to fight, to become free from the bondage of gratitude, of charity and dependence.

Not so George. He goes to the altar, like many another man, with a lie upon his lips. He goes to swear that all his life long he will love, protect and shelter the woman who is to be his wife.

This play is rich in thought and revolutionary significance. For is it not true that we are all bound by gratitude, tied and fettered by what we think we owe to others? Are we not thus turned into weaklings and cowards, and do we not enter into new relationships with lies upon our lips? Do we not become a lie to ourselves and a lie to those we associate with? And whether we have the strength to be true to the dominant spirit, warmed into being by the fires of St. John; whether we have the courage to live up to it always or whether it manifests itself only on occasion, it is nevertheless true that there is the potentiality of freedom in the soul of every man and every woman; that there is the possibility of greatness and fineness in all beings, were they not bound and gagged by gratitude, by duty and shams,—a vicious network that enmeshes body and soul.

GERHART HAUPTMANN

LONELY LIVES

Gerhart Hauptmann is the dramatist of whom it may be justly said that he revolutionized the spirit of dramatic art in Germany: the last Mohican of a group of four—Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, and Hauptmann—who illumined the horizon of the nineteenth century. Of these Hauptmann, undoubtedly the most human, is also the most universal.

It is unnecessary to make comparisons between great artists: life is sufficiently complex to give each his place in the great scheme of things. If, then, I consider Hauptmann more human, it is because of his deep kinship with every stratum of life. While Ibsen deals exclusively with one attitude, Hauptmann embraces all, understands all, and portrays all, because nothing human is alien to him.

Whether it be the struggle of the transition stage in "Lonely Lives," or the conflict between the Ideal and the Real in "The Sunken Bell," or the brutal background of poverty in "The Weavers," Hauptmann is never aloof as the iconoclast Ibsen, never as bitter as the soul dissector Strindberg, nor yet as set as the crusader Tolstoy. And that because of his humanity, his boundless love, his oneness with the disinherited of the earth, and his sympathy with the struggles and the travail, the hope and the despair of every human soul. That accounts for the bitter opposition which met Gerhart Hauptmann when he made his first appearance as a dramatist; but it also accounts for the love and devotion of those to whom he was a battle cry, a clarion call against all iniquity, injustice and wrong.

In "Lonely Lives" we see the wonderful sympathy, the tenderness of Hauptmann permeating every figure of the drama.

Dr. Vockerat is not a fighter, not a propagandist or a soapbox orator; he is a dreamer, a poet, and above all a searcher for truth; a scientist, a man who lives in the realm of thought and ideas, and is out of touch with reality and his immediate surroundings.

His parents are simple folk, religious and devoted. To them the world is a book with seven seals. Having lived all their life on a farm, everything with them is regulated and classified into simple ideas—good or bad, great or small, strong or weak. How can they know the infinite shades between strong and weak, how could they grasp the endless variations between the good and the bad? To them life is a daily routine of work and prayer. God has arranged everything, and God manages everything. Why bother your head? Why spend sleepless nights? "Leave it all to God." What pathos in this childish simplicity!

They love their son John, they worship him, and they consecrate their lives to their only boy; and because of their love for him, also to his wife and the newly born baby. They have but one sorrow: their son has turned away from religion. Still greater their grief that John is an admirer of Darwin, Spencer and Haeckel and other such men,—sinners, heathens all, who will burn in purgatory and hell. To protect their beloved son from the punishment of God, the old folks continuously pray, and give still more devotion and love to their erring child.

Kitty, Dr. Vockerat's wife, is a beautiful type of the Gretchen, reared without any ideas about life, without any consciousness of her position in the world, a tender, helpless flower. She loves John; he is her ideal; he is her all. But she cannot understand him. She does not live in his sphere, nor speak his language. She has never dreamed his thoughts,—not because she is not willing or not eager to give the man all that he needs, but because she does not understand and does not know how.

Into this atmosphere comes Anna Mahr like a breeze from the plains. Anna is a Russian girl, a woman so far produced in Russia only, perhaps because the conditions, the life struggles of that country have been such as to develop a different type of woman. Anna Mahr has spent most of her life on the firing line. She has no conception of the personal: she is universal in her feelings and thoughts, with deep sympathies going out in abundance to all mankind.

When she comes to the Vockerats, their whole life is disturbed, especially that of John Vockerat, to whom she is like a balmy spring to the parched wanderer in the desert. She understands him, for has she not dreamed such thoughts as his, associated with men and women who, for the sake of the ideal, sacrificed their lives, went to Siberia, and suffered in the underground dungeons? How then could she fail a Vockerat? It is quite natural that John should find in Anna what his own little world could not give him,—understanding, comradeship, deep spiritual kinship.

The Anna Mahrs give the same to any one, be it man, woman or child. For theirs is not a feeling of sex, of the personal; it is the selfless, the human, the all-embracing fellowship.

In the invigorating presence of Anna Mahr, John Vockerat begins to live, to dream and work. Another phase of him, as it were, comes into being; larger vistas open before his eyes, and his life is filled with new aspiration for creative work in behalf of a liberating purpose.

Alas, the inevitability that the ideal should be besmirched and desecrated when it comes in contact with sordid reality! This tragic fate befalls Anna Mahr and John Vockerat.

Old Mother Vockerat, who, in her simplicity of soul cannot conceive of an intimate friendship between a man and a woman, unless they be husband and wife, begins first to suspect and insinuate, then to nag and interfere. Of course, it is her love for John, and even more so her love for her son's wife, who is suffering in silence and wearing out her soul in her realization of how little she can mean to her husband.

Mother Vockerat interprets Kitty's grief in a different manner: jealousy, and antagonism to the successful rival is her most convenient explanation for the loneliness, the heart-hunger of love. But as a matter of fact, it is something deeper and more vital that is born in Kitty's soul. It is the awakening of her own womanhood, of her personality.

Kitty. I agree with Miss Mahr on many points. She was saying lately that we women live in a condition of degradation. I think she is quite right there. It is what I feel very often.... It's as clear as daylight that she is right. We are really and truly a despised and ill-used sex. Only think that there is still a law—so she told me yesterday—which allows the husband to inflict a moderate amount of corporal punishment on his wife.

And yet, corporal punishment is not half as terrible as the punishment society inflicts on the Kittys by rearing them as dependent and useless beings, as hot-house flowers, ornaments for a fine house, but of no substance to the husband and certainly of less to her children.

And Mother Vockerat, without any viciousness, instills poison into the innocent soul of Kitty and embitters the life of her loved son. Ignorantly, Mother Vockerat meddles, interferes, and tramples upon the most sacred feelings, the innocent joys of true comradeship.

And all the time John and Anna are quite unaware of the pain and tragedy they are the cause of: they are far removed from the commonplace, petty world about them. They walk and discuss, read and argue about the wonders of life, the needs of humanity, the beauty of the ideal. They have both been famished so long: John for spiritual communion, Anna for warmth of home that she had known so little before, and which in her simplicity she has accepted at the hand of Mother Vockerat and Kitty, oblivious of the fact that nothing is so enslaving as hospitality prompted by a sense of duty.

Miss Mahr. It is a great age that we live in. That which has so weighed upon people's minds and darkened their lives seems to me to be gradually disappearing. Do you not think so, Dr. Vockerat?

John. How do you mean?

Miss Mahr. On the one hand we were oppressed by a sense of uncertainty, of apprehension, on the other by gloomy fanaticism. This exaggerated tension is calming down, is yielding to the influence of something like a current of fresh air, that is blowing in upon us from—let us say from the twentieth century.

John. But I don't find it possible to arrive at any real joy in life yet. I don't know....

Miss Mahr. It has no connection with our individual fates—our little fates, Dr. Vockerat!... I have something to say to you—but you are not to get angry; you are to be quite quiet and good.... Dr. Vockerat! we also are falling into the error of weak natures. We must look at things more impersonally. We must learn to take ourselves less seriously.

John. But we'll not talk about that at present.... And is one really to sacrifice everything that one has gained to this cursed conventionality? Are people incapable of understanding that there can be no crime in a situation which only tends to make both parties better and nobler? Do parents lose by their son becoming a better, wiser man? Does a wife lose by the spiritual growth of her husband?

Miss Mahr. You are both right and wrong.... Your parents have a different standard from you. Kitty's again, differs from theirs. It seems to me that in this we cannot judge for them.

John. Yes, but you have always said yourself that one should not allow one's self to be ruled by the opinion of others—that one ought to be independent?

Miss Mahr. You have often said to me that you foresee a new, a nobler state of fellowship between man and woman.

John. Yes, I feel that it will come some time—a relationship in which the human will preponderate over the animal tie. Animal will no longer be united to animal, but one human being to another. Friendship is the foundation on which this love will rise, beautiful, unchangeable, a miraculous structure. And I foresee more than this—something nobler, richer, freer still.

Miss Mahr. But will you get anyone, except me, to believe this? Will this prevent Kitty's grieving herself to death?... Don't let us speak of ourselves at all. Let us suppose, quite generally, the feeling of a new, more perfect relationship between two people to exist, as it were prophetically. It is only a feeling, a young and all too tender plant which must be carefully watched and guarded. Don't you think so, Dr. Vockerat? That this plant should come to perfection during our lifetime is not to be expected. We shall not see or taste its fruits. But we may help to propagate it for future generations. 1 could imagine a person accepting this as a life-task.

John. And hence you conclude that we must part.

Miss Mahr. I did not mean to speak of ourselves. But it is as you say ... we must part. Another idea ... had sometimes suggested itself to me too ... momentarily. But I could not entertain it now. I too have felt as if it were the presentiment of better things. And since then the old aim seems to me too poor a one for us—too common, to tell the truth. It is like coming down from the mountain-top with its wide, free view, and feeling the narrowness, the nearness of everything in the valley.

Those who feel the narrow, stifling atmosphere must either die or leave. Anna Mahr is not made for the valley. She must live on the heights. But John Vockerat, harassed and whipped on by those who love him most, is unmanned, broken and crushed. He clings to Anna Mahr as one condemned to death.

John. Help me, Miss Anna! There is no manliness, no pride left in me. I am quite changed. At this moment I am not even the man I was before you came to us. The one feeling left in me is disgust and weariness of life. Everything has lost its worth to me, is soiled, polluted, desecrated, dragged through the mire. When I think what you, your presence, your words made me, I feel that if I cannot be that again, then—then all the rest no longer means anything to me. I draw a line through it all and—close my account.

Miss Mahr. It grieves me terribly, Dr. Vockerat, to see you like this. I hardly know how I am to help you. But one thing you ought to remember—that we foresaw this. We knew that we must be prepared for this sooner or later.

John. Our prophetic feeling of a new, a free existence, a far-off state of blessedness—that feeling we will keep. It shall never be forgotten, though it may never be realized. It shall be my guiding light; when this light is extinguished, my life will be extinguished too.

Miss Mahr. John! one word more! This ring—was taken from the finger of a dead woman, who had followed her—her husband to Siberia—and faithfully shared his suffering to the end. Just the opposite to our case.... It is the only ring I have ever worn. Its story is a thing to think of when one feels weak. And when you look at it—in hours of weakness—then—think of her—who, far away—lonely like yourself—is fighting the same secret fight—Good-bye!

But John lacks the strength for the fight. Life to him is too lonely, too empty, too unbearably desolate. He has to die—a suicide.

---

What wonderful grasp of the deepest and most hidden tones of the human soul! What significance in the bitter truth that those who struggle for an ideal, those who attempt to cut themselves loose from the old, from the thousand fetters that hold them down, are doomed to lonely lives!

Gerhart Hauptmann has dedicated this play "to those who have lived this life." And there are many, oh, so many who must live this life, torn out root and all from the soil of their birth, of their surroundings and past. The ideal they see only in the distance—sometimes quite near, again in the far-off distance. These are the lonely lives.

This drama also emphasizes the important point that not only the parents and the wife of John Vockerat fail to understand him, but even his own comrade, one of his own world, the painter Braun,—the type of fanatical revolutionist who scorns human weaknesses and ridicules those who make concessions and compromises. But not even this arch-revolutionist can grasp the needs of John. Referring to his chum's friendship with Anna, Braun upbraids him. He charges John with causing his wife's unhappiness and hurting the feelings of his parents. This very man who, as a propagandist, demands that every one live up to his ideal, is quick to condemn his friend when the latter, for the first time in his life, tries to be consistent, to be true to his own innermost being.

The revolutionary, the social and human significance of "Lonely Lives" consists in the lesson that the real revolutionist,—the dreamer, the creative artist, the iconoclast in whatever line,—is fated to be misunderstood, not only by his own kin, but often by his own comrades. That is the doom of all great spirits: they are detached from their environment. Theirs is a lonely life—the life of the transition stage, the hardest and the most difficult period for the individual as well as for a people.

THE WEAVERS

When "The Weavers" first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the "land of thinkers and poets." "What!" cried Philistia, "workingmen, dirty, emaciated and starved, to be placed on the stage! Poverty, in all its ugliness, to be presented as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!"

Indeed it is too much for the self-satisfied bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It is too much, because of the truth and reality that thunders in the placid ears of society a terrific J'accuse!

---

Gerhart Hauptmann is a child of the people; his grandfather was a weaver, and the only way his father could escape the fate of his parents was by leaving his trade and opening an inn. Little Gerhart's vivid and impressionable mind must have received many pictures from the stories told about the life of the weavers. Who knows but that the social panorama which Hauptmann subsequently gave to the world, had not slumbered in the soul of the child, gaining form and substance as he grew to manhood. At any rate "The Weavers," like the canvases of Millet and the heroic figures of Meunier, represent the epic of the age-long misery of labor, a profoundly stirring picture.

The background of "The Weavers" is the weaving district in Silesia, during the period of home industry—a gruesome sight of human phantoms, dragging on their emaciated existence almost by superhuman effort. Life is a tenacious force that clings desperately even to the most meager chance in an endeavor to assert itself. But what is mirrored in "The Weavers" is so appalling, so dismally hopeless that it stamps the damning brand upon our civilization.

One man and his hirelings thrive on the sinew and bone, on the very blood, of an entire community. The manufacturer Dreissiger spends more for cigars in a day than an entire family earns in a week. Yet so brutalizing, so terrible is the effect of wealth that neither pale hunger nor black despair can move the master.

There is nothing in literature to equal the cruel reality of the scene in the office of Dreissiger, when the weavers bring the finished cloth. For hours they are kept waiting in the stuffy place, waiting the pleasure of the rich employer after they had walked miles on an empty stomach and little sleep. For as one of the men says, "What's to hinder a weaver waitin' for an hour, or for a day? What else is he there for?"

Indeed what else, except to be always waiting in humility, to be exploited and degraded, always at the mercy of the few pence thrown to them after an endless wait.

Necessity knows no law. Neither does it know pride. The weavers, driven by the whip of hunger, bend their backs, beg and cringe before their "superior."

Weaver's wife. No one can't call me idle, but I am not fit now for what I once was. I've twice had a miscarriage. As to John, he's but a poor creature. He's been to the shepherd at Zerlau, but he couldn't do him no good, and ... you can't do more than you've strength for.... We works as hard as ever we can. This many a week I've been at it till far into the night. An' we'll keep our heads above water right enough if I can just get a bit o' strength into me. But you must have pity on us, Mr. Pfeifer, sir. You'll please be so very kind as to let me have a few pence on the next job, sir? Only a few pence, to buy bread with. We can't get no more credit. We've a lot o' little ones.

"Suffer little children to come unto me." Christ loves the children of the poor. The more the better. Why, then, care if they starve? Why care if they faint away with hunger, like the little boy in Dreissiger's office? For "little Philip is one of nine and the tenth's coming, and the rain comes through their roof—and the mother hasn't two shirts among the nine."

Who is to blame? Ask the Dreissigers. They will tell you, "The poor have too many children." Besides—

Dreissiger. It was nothing serious. The boy is all right again. But all the same it's a disgrace. The child's so weak that a puff of wind would blow him over. How people, how any parents can be so thoughtless is what passes my comprehension. Loading him with two heavy pieces of fustian to carry six good miles! No one would believe it that hadn't seen it. It simply means that I shall have to make a rule that no goods brought by children will be taken ever. I sincerely trust that such things will not occur again.—Who gets all the blame for it? Why, of course the manufacturer. It's entirely our fault. If some poor little fellow sticks in the snow in winter and goes to sleep, a special correspondent arrives post-haste, and in two days we have a blood-curdling story served up in all the papers. Is any blame laid on the father, the parents, that send such a child?—Not a bit of it. How should they be to blame? It's all the manufacturer's fault—he's made the scapegoat. They flatter the weaver, and give the manufacturer nothing but abuse—he's a cruel man, with a heart like a stone, a dangerous fellow, at whose calves every cur of a journalist may take a bite. He lives on the fat of the land, and pays the poor weavers starvation wages. In the flow of his eloquence the writer forgets to mention that such a man has his cares too and his sleepless nights; that he runs risks of which the workman never dreams; that he is often driven distracted by all the calculations he has to make, and all the different things he has to take into account; that he has to struggle for his very life against competition; and that no day passes without some annoyance or some loss. And think of the manufacturer's responsibilities, think of the numbers that depend on him, that look to him for their daily bread. No, No! none of you need wish yourselves in my shoes—you would soon have enough of it. You all saw how that fellow, that scoundrel Becker, behaved. Now he'll go and spread about all sorts of tales of my hardheartedness, of how my weavers are turned off for a mere trifle, without a moment's notice. Is that true? Am I so very unmerciful?

The weavers are too starved, too subdued, too terror-stricken not to accept Dreissiger's plea in his own behalf. What would become of these living corpses were it not for the rebels like Becker, to put fire, spirit, and hope in them? Verily the Beckers are dangerous.

Appalling as the scene in the office of Dreissiger is, the life in the home of the old weaver Baumert is even more terrible. His decrepit old wife, his idiotic son August, who still has to wind spools, his two daughters weaving their youth and bloom into the cloth, and Ansorge, the broken remnant of a heroic type of man, bent over his baskets, all live in cramped quarters lit up only by two small windows. They are waiting anxiously for the few pence old Baumert is to bring, that they may indulge in a long-missed meal. "What ... what ... what is to become of us if he don't come home?" laments Mother Baumert. "There is not so much as a handful o' salt in the house—not a bite o' bread, nor a bit o' wood for the fire."

But old Baumert has not forgotten his family. He brings them a repast, the first "good meal" they have had in two years. It is the meat of their faithful little dog, whom Baumert could not kill himself because he loved him so. But hunger knows no choice; Baumert had his beloved dog killed, because "a nice little bit o' meat like that does you a lot o' good."

It did not do old Baumert much good. His stomach, tortured and abused so long, rebelled, and the old man had to "give up the precious dog." And all this wretchedness, all this horror almost within sight of the palatial home of Dreissiger, whose dogs are better fed than his human slaves.

Man's endurance is almost limitless. Almost, yet not quite. For there comes a time when the Baumerts, even like their stomachs, rise in rebellion, when they hurl themselves, even though in blind fury, against the pillars of their prison house. Such a moment comes to the weavers, the most patient, docile and subdued of humanity, when stirred to action by the powerful poem read to them by the Jaeger.

The Dreissigers, however, will take no heed. Arrogant and secure in the possession of their stolen wealth, supported by the mouthpieces of the Church and the State, they feel safe from the wrath of the people—till it is too late. But when the storm breaks, they show the yellow streak and cravenly run to cover.

The weavers, roused at last by the poet's description of their condition, urged on by the inspiring enthusiasm of the Beckers and the Jaegers, become indifferent to the threats of the law and ignore the soft tongue of the dispenser of the pure word of God,—"the God who provides shelter and food for the birds and clothes the lilies of the field." Too long they had believed in Him. No wonder Pastor Kittelhaus is now at a loss to understand the weavers, heretofore "so patient, so humble, so easily led." The Pastor has to pay the price for his stupidity: the weavers have outgrown even him.

The spirit of revolt sweeps their souls. It gives them courage and strength to attack the rotten structure, to drive the thieves out of the temple, aye, even to rout the soldiers who come to save the sacred institution of capitalism. The women, too, are imbued with the spirit of revolt and become an avenging force. Not even the devout faith of Old Hilse, who attempts to stem the tide with his blind belief in his Saviour, can stay them.

Old Hilse. O Lord, we know not how to be thankful enough to Thee, for that Thou hast spared us this night again in Thy goodness ... an' hast had pity on us ... an' hast suffered us to take no harm. Thou art the All-merciful, an' we are poor, sinful children of men—that bad that we are not worthy to be trampled under Thy feet. Yet Thou art our loving Father, an' Thou wilt look upon us an' accept us for the sake of Thy dear Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. "Jesus' blood and righteousness, Our covering is and glorious dress." An' if we're sometimes too sore cast down under Thy chastening—when the fire of Thy purification burns too ragin' hot—oh, lay it not to our charge; forgive us our sin. Give us patience, heavenly Father, that after all these sufferin's we may be made partakers of Thy eternal blessedness. Amen.

The tide is rushing on. Luise, Old Hilse's own daughter-in-law, is part of the tide.

Luise. You an' your piety an' religion—did they serve to keep the life in my poor children? In rags an' dirt they lay, all the four—it didn't as much as keep 'em dry. Yes! I sets up to be a mother, that's what I do—an' if you'd like to know it, that's why I'd send all the manufacturers to hell—because I am a mother!—Not one of the four could I keep in life! It was cryin' more than breathin' with me from the time each poor little thing came into the world till death took pity on it. The devil a bit you cared! You sat there prayin' and singin', and let me run about till my feet bled, tryin' to get one little drop o' skim milk. How many hundred nights has I lain an' racked my head to think what I could do to cheat the churchyard of my little one? What harm has a baby like that done that it must come to such a miserable end—eh? An' over there at Dittrich's they're bathed in wine an' washed in milk. No! you may talk as you like, but if they begins here, ten horses won't hold me back. An' what's more—if there's a rush on Dittrich's, you will see me in the forefront of it—an' pity the man as tries to prevent me—I've stood it long enough, so now you know it.

Thus the tide sweeps over Old Hilse, as it must sweep over every obstacle, every hindrance, once labor awakens to the consciousness of its solidaric power.

An epic of misery and revolt never before painted with such terrific force, such inclusive artistry. Hence its wide human appeal, its incontrovertible indictment and its ultra-revolutionary significance, not merely to Silesia or Germany, but to our whole pseudo-civilization built on the misery and exploitation of the wealth producers, of Labor. None greater, none more universal than this stirring, all-embracing message of the most humanly creative genius of our time—Gerhart Hauptmann.

THE SUNKEN BELL

The great versatility of Gerhart Hauptmann is perhaps nowhere so apparent as in "The Sunken Bell," the poetic fairy tale of the tragedy of Man, a tragedy as rich in symbolism as it is realistically true—a tragedy as old as mankind, as elemental as man's ceaseless struggle to cut loose from the rock of ages.

Heinrich, the master bell founder, is an idealist consumed by the fire of a great purpose. He has already set a hundred bells ringing in a hundred different towns, all singing his praises. But his restless spirit is not appeased. Ever it soars to loftier heights, always yearning to reach the sun.

Now once more he has tried his powers, and the new bell, the great Master Bell, is raised aloft,—only to sink into the mere, carrying its maker with it.

His old ideals are broken, and Heinrich is lost in the wilderness of life.

Weak and faint with long groping in the dark woods, and bleeding, Heinrich reaches the mountain top and there beholds Rautendelein, the spirit of freedom, that has allured him on in the work which he strove—"in one grand Bell, to weld the silver music of thy voice with the warm gold of a Sun-holiday. It should have been a master-work! I failed, then wept I tears of blood." Heinrich returns to his faithful wife Magda, his children, and his village friends—to die. The bell that sank into the mere was not made for the heights—it was not fit to wake the answering echoes of the peaks!

Heinrich.

---

'Twas for the valley—not the mountain-top!
I choose to die. The service of the valleys
Charms me no longer, ... since on the peak I stood.
Youth—a new youth—I'd need, if I should live:
Out of some rare and magic mountain flower
Marvelous juices I should need to press—
Heart-health, and strength, and the mad lust of triumph,
Steeling my hand to work none yet have dreamed of!

Rautendelein, the symbol of youth and freedom, the vision of new strength and expression, wakes Heinrich from his troubled sleep, kisses him back to life, and inspires him with faith and courage to work toward greater heights.

Heinrich leaves his wife, his hearth, his native place, and rises to the summit of his ideal, there to create, to fashion a marvel bell whose iron throat shall send forth

The first waking peal
Shall shake the skies—when, from the somber clouds
That weighed upon us through the winter night,
Rivers of jewels shall go rushing down
Into a million hands outstretched to clutch!
Then all who drooped, with sudden power inflamed,
Shall bear their treasure homeward to their huts,
There to unfurl, at last, the silken banners,
Waiting—so long, so long—to be upraised,

---

And now the wondrous chime again rings out,
Filling the air with such sweet, passionate sound
As makes each breast to sob with rapturous pain.
It sings a song, long lost and long forgotten,
A song of home—a childlike song of Love,
Born in the waters of some fairy well—
Known to all mortals, and yet heard of none!

---

And as it rises, softly first, and low,
The nightingale and dove seem singing, too;
And all the ice in every human breast
Is melted, and the hate, and pain, and woe,
Stream out in tears.

Indeed a wondrous bell, as only those can forge who have reached the mountain top,—they who can soar upon the wings of their imagination high above the valley of the commonplace, above the dismal gray of petty consideration, beyond the reach of the cold, stifling grip of reality,—higher, ever higher, to kiss the sun-lit sky.

Heinrich spreads his wings. Inspired by the divine fire of Rautendelein, he all but reaches the pinnacle. But there is the Vicar, ready to wrestle with the devil for a poor human soul; to buy it free, if need be, to drag it back to its cage that it may never rise again in rebellion to the will of God.

The Vicar.
You shun the church, take refuge in the mountains;
This many a month you have not seen the home
Where your poor wife sits sighing, while, each day,
Your children drink their lonely mother's tears!

---

For this there is no name but madness,
And wicked madness. Yes. I speak the truth.
Here stand I, Master, overcome with horror
At the relentless cruelty of your heart.
Now Satan, aping God, hath dealt a blow—
Yes, I must speak my mind—a blow so dread
That even he must marvel at his triumph.
... Now—I have done.
Too deep, yea to the neck, you are sunk in sin!
Your Hell, decked out in beauty as high Heaven,
Shall hold you fast. I will not waste more words.
Yet mark this, Master: witches make good fuel,
Even as heretics, for funeral-pyres.
... Your ill deeds,
Heathen, and secret once, are now laid bare.
Horror they wake, and soon there shall come hate.

---

Then, go your way! Farewell! My task is done.
The hemlock of your sin no man may hope
To rid your soul of. May God pity you!
But this remember! There's a word named rue!
And some day, some day, as your dreams you dream,
A sudden arrow, shot from out the blue,
Shall pierce your breast! And yet you shall not die,
Nor shall you live. In that dread day you'll curse
All you now cherish—God, the world, your work,
Your wretched self you'll curse. Then ... think of me!
That bell shall ring again! Then think of me!

Barely does Heinrich escape the deadly clutch of outlined creeds, superstitions, and conventions embodied in the Vicar, than he is in the throes of other foes who conspire his doom.

Nature herself has decreed the death of Heinrich. For has not man turned his back upon her, has he not cast her off, scorned her beneficial offerings, robbed her of her beauty, devastated her charms and betrayed her trust—all for the ephemeral glow of artifice and sham? Hence Nature, too, is Heinrich's foe. Thus the Spirit of the Earth, with all its passions and lusts, symbolized in the Wood Sprite, and gross materialism in the person of the Nickelmann, drive the intruder back.

The Wood Sprite.
He crowds us from our hills. He hacks and hews,
Digs up our metals, sweats, and smelts, and brews.
The earth-man and the water-sprite he takes
To drag his burdens, and, to harness, breaks.

---

She steals my cherished flowers, my red-brown ores,
My gold, my precious stones, my resinous stores.
She serves him like a slave, by night and day.
'Tis he she kisses—us she keeps at bay.
Naught stands against him. Ancient trees he fells.
The earth quakes at his tread, and all the dells
Ring with the echo of his thunderous blows.
His crimson smithy furnace glows and shines
Into the depths of my most secret mines.
What he is up to, only Satan knows!

The Nickelmann.
Brekekekex! Hadst thou the creature slain,
A-rotting in the mere long since he had lain—
The maker of the bell, beside the bell.
And so when next I had wished to throw the stones,
The bell had been my box—the dice, his bones!

But even they are powerless to stem the tide of the Ideal: they are helpless In the face of Heinrich's new-born faith, of his burning passion to complete his task, and give voice to the thousand-throated golden peal.

Heinrich works and toils, and when doubt casts its black shadow athwart his path, Rautendelein charms back hope. She alone has boundless faith in her Balder,—god of the joy of Life—for he is part of her, of the great glowing force her spirit breathed into the Heinrichs since Time was born—Liberty, redeemer of man.

Heinrich.
I am thy Balder?
Make me believe it—make me know it, child!
Give my faint soul the rapturous joy it needs,
To nerve it to its task. For, as the hand,
Toiling with tong and hammer, on and on,
To hew the marble and to guide the chisel,
Now bungles here, now there, yet may not halt.
... But—enough of this,
Still straight and steady doth the smoke ascend
From my poor human sacrifice to heaven.
Should now a Hand on high reject my gift,
Why, it may do so. Then the priestly robe
Falls from my shoulder—by no act of mine;
While I, who erst upon the heights was set,
Must look my last on Horeb, and be dumb!
But now bring torches! Lights! And show thine Art!
Enchantress! Fill the wine-cup! We will drink!
Ay, like the common herd of mortal men,
With resolute hands our fleeting joy we'll grip!
Our unsought leisure we will fill with life,
Not waste it, as the herd, in indolence.
We will have music!

While Heinrich and Rautendelein are in the ecstasy of their love and work, the spirits weave their treacherous web—they threaten, they plead, they cling,—spirits whose pain and grief are harder to bear than the enmity or menace of a thousand foes. Spirits that entwine one's heartstrings with tender touch, yet are heavier fetters, more oppressive than leaden weights. Heinrich's children, symbolizing regret that paralyzes one's creative powers, bring their mother's tears and with them a thousand hands to pull Heinrich down from his heights, back to the valley.

"The bell! The bell!" The old, long buried bell again ringing and tolling. Is it not the echo from the past? The superstitions instilled from birth, the prejudices that cling to man with cruel persistence, the conventions which fetter the wings of the idealist: the Old wrestling with the New for the control of man.

---

"The Sunken Bell" is a fairy tale in its poetic beauty and glow of radiant color. But stripped of the legendary and symbolic, it is the life story of every seeker for truth, of the restless spirit of rebellion ever striving onward, ever reaching out toward the sun-tipped mountain, ever yearning for a new-born light.

Too long had Heinrich lived in the valley. It has sapped his strength, has clipped his wings. "Too late! Thy heavy burdens weigh thee down; thy dead ones are too mighty for thee." Heinrich has to die. "He who has flown so high into the very Light, as thou hast flown, must perish, if he once fall back to earth."

Thus speak the worldly wise. As if death could still the burning thirst for light; as if the hunger for the ideal could ever be appeased by the thought of destruction! The worldly wise never feel the irresistible urge to dare the cruel fates. With the adder in Maxim Gorki's "Song of the Falcon" they sneer, "What is the sky? An empty place.... Why disturb the soul with the desire to soar into the sky?... Queer birds," they laugh at the falcons. "Not knowing the earth and grieving on it, they yearn for the sky, seeking for light in the sultry desert. For it is only a desert, with no food and no supporting place for a living body."

The Heinrichs are the social falcons, and though they perish when they fall to earth, they die in the triumphant glory of having beheld the sun, of having braved the storm, defied the clouds and mastered the air.

The sea sparkles in the glowing light, the waves dash against the shore. In their lion-like roar a song resounds about the proud falcons: "O daring Falcon, in the battle with sinister forces you lose your life. But the time will come when your precious blood will illumine, like the burning torch of truth, the dark horizon of man; when your blood shall inflame many brave hearts with a burning desire for freedom."

The time when the peals of Heinrich's Bell will call the strong and daring to battle for light and joy. "Hark!... 'Tis the music of the Sun-bells' song! The Sun ... the Sun ... draws near!" ... and though "the night is long," dawn breaks, its first rays falling on the dying Heinrichs.

FRANK WEDEKIND

THE AWAKENING OF SPRING

Frank Wedekind is perhaps the most daring dramatic spirit in Germany. Coming to the fore much later than Sudermann and Hauptmann, he did not follow in their path, but set out in quest of new truths. More boldly than any other dramatist Frank Wedekind has laid bare the shams of morality in reference to sex, especially attacking the ignorance surrounding the sex life of the child and its resultant tragedies.

Wedekind became widely known through his great drama "The Awakening of Spring," which he called a tragedy of childhood, dedicating the work to parents and teachers. Verily an appropriate dedication, because parents and teachers are, in relation to the child's needs, the most ignorant and mentally indolent class. Needless to say, this element entirely failed to grasp the social significance of Wedekind's work. On the contrary, they saw in it an invasion of their traditional authority and an outrage on the sacred rights of parenthood.

The critics also could see naught in Wedekind, except a base, perverted, almost diabolic nature bereft of all finer feeling. But professional critics seldom see below the surface; else they would discover beneath the grin and satire of Frank Wedekind a sensitive soul, deeply stirred by the heart-rending tragedies about him. Stirred and grieved especially by the misery and torture of the child,—the helpless victim unable to explain the forces germinating in its nature, often crushed and destroyed by mock modesty, sham decencies, and the complacent morality that greet its blind gropings.

Never was a more powerful indictment hurled against society, which out of sheer hypocrisy and cowardice persists that boys and girls must grow up in ignorance of their sex functions, that they must be sacrificed on the altar of stupidity and convention which taboo the enlightenment of the child in questions of such elemental importance to health and well-being.

The most criminal phase of the indictment, however, is that it is generally the most promising children who are sacrificed to sex ignorance and to the total lack of appreciation on the part of teachers of the latent qualities and tendencies in the child: the one slaying the body and soul, the other paralyzing the function of the brain; and both conspiring to give to the world mental and physical mediocrities.

"The Awakening of Spring" is laid in three acts and fourteen scenes, consisting almost entirely of dialogues among the children. So close is Wedekind to the soul of the child that he succeeds in unveiling before our eyes, with a most gripping touch, its joys and sorrows, its hopes and despair, its struggles and tragedies.

The play deals with a group of school children just entering the age of puberty,—imaginative beings speculating about the mysteries of life. Wendla, sent to her grave by her loving but prudish mother, is an exquisite, lovable child; Melchior, the innocent father of Wendla's unborn baby, is a gifted boy whose thirst for knowledge leads him to inquire into the riddle of life, and to share his observations with his school chums,—a youth who, in a free and intelligent atmosphere, might have developed into an original thinker. That such a boy should be punished as a moral pervert, only goes to prove the utter unfitness of our educators and parents. Moritz, Melchior's playfellow, is driven to suicide because he cannot pass his examinations, thanks to our stupid and criminal system of education which consists in cramming the mind to the bursting point.

Wedekind has been accused of exaggerating his types, but any one familiar with child life knows that every word in "The Awakening of Spring" is vividly true. The conversation between Melchior and Moritz, for instance, is typical of all boys not mentally inert.

Melchior. I'd like to know why we really are on earth!

Moritz. I'd rather be a cab-horse than go to school!—Why do we go to school?—We go to school so that somebody can examine us!—And why do they examine us?—In order that we may fail. Seven must fail, because the upper classroom will hold only sixty.—I feel so queer since Christmas.—The devil take me, if it were not for Papa, I'd pack my bundle and go to Altoona, to-day!

Moritz. Do you believe, Melchior, that the feeling of shame in man is only a product of his education?

Melchior. I was thinking over that for the first time the day before yesterday. It seems to me deeply rooted in human nature. Only think, you must appear entirely clothed before your best friend. You wouldn't do so if he didn't do the same thing.—Therefore, it's more or less of a fashion.

Moritz. Have you experienced it yet?

Melchior. What?

Moritz. How do you say it?

Melchior. Manhood's emotion?

Moritz. M—'hm.

Melchior. Certainly.

Moritz. I also ...

Melchior. I've known that for a long while!—Almost for a year.

Moritz. I was startled as if by lightning.

Melchior. Did you dream?

Moritz. Only for a little while—of legs in light blue tights, that strode over the cathedral—to be correct, I thought they wanted to go over it. I only saw them for an instant.

Melchior. George Zirschnitz dreamed of his mother.

Moritz. Did he tell you that?... I thought I was incurable. I believed I was suffering from an inward hurt.—Finally I became calm enough to begin to jot down the recollections of my life. Yes, yes, dear Melchior, the last three weeks have been a Gethsemane for me.... Truly they play a remarkable game with us. And we're expected to give thanks for it. I don't remember to have had any longing for this kind of excitement. Why didn't they let me sleep peacefully until all was still again. My dear parents might have had a hundred better children. I came here, I don't know how, and must be responsible myself for not staying away.—Haven't you often wondered, Melchior, by what means we were brought into this whirl?

Melchior. Don't you know that yet either, Moritz?

Moritz. How should I know it? I see how the hens lay eggs, and hear that Mamma had to carry me under her heart. But is that enough?... I have gone through Meyer's "Little Encyclopedia" from A to Z. Words—nothing but words and words! Not a single plain explanation. Oh, this feeling of shame!—What good to me is an encyclopedia that won't answer me concerning the most important question in life?

Yes, of what good is an encyclopedia or the other wise books to the quivering, restless spirit of the child? No answer anywhere, least of all from your own mother, as Wendla and many another like her have found out.

The girl, learning that her sister has a new baby, rushes to her mother to find out how it came into the world.

Wendla. I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years, I myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven't the least idea how it all comes about—Don't be cross, Mother dear, don't be cross! Whom in the world should I ask but you! Please tell me, dear Mother! Tell me, dear Mother! I am ashamed for myself. Please, Mother, speak! Don't scold me for asking you about it. Give me an answer—How does it happen?—How does it all come about?—You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still believe in the stork.

Frau Bergmann. Good Lord, child, but you are peculiar!—What ideas you have!—I really can't do that!

Wendla. But why not, Mother?—Why not?—It can't be anything ugly if everybody is delighted over it!

Fran Bergmann. O—O God, protect me!—I deserve—Go get dressed, child, go get dressed.

Wendla. I'll go—And suppose your child went out and asked the chimney sweep?

Fran Bergmann. But that would be madness!—Come here, child, come here, I'll tell you! I'll tell you everything— ... In order to have a child—one must love—the man—to whom one is married—love him, I tell you—as one can only love a man! One must love him so much with one's whole heart, so—so that one can't describe it! One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are still unable to love—Now you know it!

How much Wendla knew, her mother found out when too late.

Wendla and Melchior, overtaken by a storm, seek shelter in a haystack, and are drawn by what Melchior calls the "first emotion of manhood" and curiosity into each other's arms. Six months later Wendla's mother discovers that her child is to become a mother. To save the family honor, the girl is promptly placed in the hands of a quack who treats her for chlorosis.

Wendla. No, Mother, no! I know it. I feel it. I haven't chlorosis. I have dropsy—I won't get better. I have the dropsy, I must die, Mother—O, Mother, I must die!

Frau Bergmann. You must not die, child! You must not die—Great heavens, you must not die!

Wendla. But why do you weep so frightfully, then?

Frau Bergmann. You must not die, child! You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl! You have a child! Oh, why did you do that to me!

Wendla. I haven't done anything to you.

Frau Bergmann. Oh, don't deny it any more, Wendla!—I know everything. See, I didn't want to say a word to you.—Wendla, my Wendla—!

Wendla. But it's not possible, Mother.... I have loved nobody in the world as I do you, Mother.

The pathos of it, that such a loving mother should be responsible for the death of her own child! Yet Frau Bergmann is but one of the many good, pious mothers who lay their children to "rest in God," with the inscription on the tombstone: "Wendla Bergmann, born May 5th, 1878, died from chlorosis, Oct. 27, 1892. Blessed are the pure of heart."

Melchior, like Wendla, was also "pure of heart"; yet how was he "blessed"? Surely not by his teachers who, discovering his essay on the mystery of life, expel the boy from school. Only Wedekind could inject such grim humor into the farce of education—the smug importance of the faculty of the High School sitting under the portraits of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, and pronouncing judgment on their "immoral" pupil Melchior.

Rector Sonnenstich. Gentlemen: We cannot help moving the expulsion of our guilty pupil before the National Board of Education; there are the strongest reasons why we cannot: we cannot, because we must expiate the misfortune which has fallen upon us already; we cannot, because of our need to protect ourselves from similar blows in the future; we cannot, because we must chastise our guilty pupil for the demoralizing influence he exerted upon his classmates; we cannot, above all, because we must hinder him from exerting the same influence upon his remaining classmates. We cannot ignore the charge—and this, gentlemen, is possibly the weightiest of all—on any pretext concerning a ruined career, because it is our duty to protect ourselves from an epidemic of suicide similar to that which has broken out recently in various grammar schools, and which until to-day has mocked all attempts of the teachers to shackle it by any means known to advanced education.... We see ourselves under the necessity of judging the guilt-laden that we may not be judged guilty ourselves.... Are you the author of this obscene manuscript?

Melchior. Yes—I request you, sir, to show me anything obscene in it.

Sonnenstich. You have as little respect for the dignity of your assembled teachers as you have a proper appreciation of mankind's innate sense of shame which belongs to a moral world.

Melchior's mother, a modern type, has greater faith in her child than in school education. But even she cannot hold out against the pressure of public opinion; still less against the father of Melchior, a firm believer in authority and discipline.

Herr Gabor. Anyone who can write what Melchior wrote must be rotten to the core of his being. The mark is plain. A half-healthy nature wouldn't do such a thing. None of us are saints. Each of us wanders from the straight path. His writing, on the contrary, tramples on principles. His writing is no evidence of a chance slip in the usual way; it sets forth with dreadful plainness and a frankly definite purpose that natural longing, that propensity for immorality, because it is immorality. His writing manifests that exceptional state of spiritual corruption which we jurists classify under the term "moral imbecility."

Between the parents and the educators, Melchior is martyred even as Wendla. He is sent to the House of Correction; but being of sturdier stock than the girl, he survives.

Not so his chum Moritz. Harassed by the impelling forces of his awakened nature, and unable to grapple with the torturous tasks demanded by his "educators" at the most critical period of his life, Moritz fails in the examinations. He cannot face his parents: they have placed all their hope in him, and have lashed him, by the subtle cruelty of gratitude, to the grindstone till his brain reeled. Moritz is the third victim in the tragedy, the most convenient explanation of which is given by Pastor Kahlbauch in the funeral sermon.

Pastor Kahlbauch. He who rejects the grace with which the Everlasting Father has blessed those born in sin, he shall die a spiritual death!—He, however, who in willful carnal abnegation of God's proper honor, lives for and serves evil, shall die the death of the body!—Who, however, wickedly throws away from him the cross which the All Merciful has laid upon him for his sins, verily, verily, I say unto you, he shall die the everlasting death! Let us, however, praise the All Gracious Lord and thank Him for His inscrutable grace in order that we may travel the thorny path more and more surely. For as truly as this one died a triple death, as truly will the Lord God conduct the righteous unto happiness and everlasting life....

It is hardly necessary to point out the revolutionary significance of this extraordinary play. It speaks powerfully for itself. One need only add that "The Awakening of Spring" has done much to dispel the mist enveloping the paramount issue of sex in the education of the child. To-day it is conceded even by conservative elements that the conspiracy of silence has been a fatal mistake. And while sponsors of the Church and of moral fixity still clamor for the good old methods, the message of Wedekind is making itself felt throughout the world, breaking down the barriers.

The child is the unit of the race, and only through its unhampered unfoldment can humanity come into its heritage. "The Awakening of Spring" is one of the great forces of modern times that is paving the way for the birth of a free race.