The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ii Part 27

It is in this sense that Shakespeare's productions are most dramatic; he wins the reader by his mode of treatment, of disclosing man's innermost life; the demands of the stage appear unessential to him, and thus he takes an easy course, and, in an intellectual sense, we serenely follow him. We transport ourselves with him from one locality to another; our imagination supplies all the intermediate actions that he omits; nay, we are grateful to him for arousing our spiritual faculties in so worthy a fashion. By producing everything in theatrical form, he facilitates the activity of the imagination; for we are more familiar with the "boards that mean the world" than with the world itself, and we may read and hear the most singular things and yet feel that they might actually take place before our eyes on the stage; hence the frequent failure of dramatizations of popular novels.

Strictly speaking, however, nothing is dramatic except that which strikes the eye as symbolic--an important action which betokens one still more important. That Shakespeare could attain this height too is evidenced in the scene where the son and heir takes the crown from the side of the father slumbering on his deathbed, places it on his own head, and struts off with it.[2] But these are only episodes, scattered jewels separated by much that is undramatic. Shakespeare's whole mode of procedure finds something unaccommodating in the actual stage; his great talent is that of an epitomist, and since poets are, on the whole, epitomists of Nature, we must here, too, acknowledge Shakespeare's great merit; only we deny, at the same time, and that to his credit, that the stage was a worthy sphere for his genius. It is precisely this limitation of the stage, however, which causes him to restrict himself.

But he does not, like other poets, select particular materials for particular works; he makes an idea the central point and refers the earth and the universe to it. As he condenses ancient and modern history, he can utilize the material of every chronicle, and often adheres to it literally. Not so conscientiously does he proceed with the tales, as _Hamlet_ attests. _Romeo and Juliet_ is more faithful to tradition; yet he almost destroys its tragic content by the two comic figures, Mercutio and the nurse, probably presented by two popular actors--the nurse undoubtedly acted by a man. If we examine the structure of the play very closely, we notice that these two figures and the elements touching them, appear only as farcical interludes, which, with our love of the logical and harmonious, must strike us as intolerable.

But Shakespeare is most marvelous when he adapts and recasts plays already in existence. We can inst.i.tute a comparison in the case of _King John_ and _Lear_; for the older dramas are still extant. But in these instances, likewise, he is again rather a poet than a dramatist.

But let us, in conclusion, proceed to the solution of the riddle. The imperfection of the English stage has been represented to us by well-informed men. There is not a trace of those requirements of realism to which we have gradually become used through improvements in machinery, the art of perspective, the wardrobe, and from which it would be difficult to lead us back into the infancy of those beginnings, to the days of a stage upon which little was seen, where everything was only _indicated_, where the public was satisfied to a.s.sume the chamber of the king lying behind a green curtain, the trumpeter who sounded the trumpet always at a certain spot, and many like things. Who at present would permit such a.s.sumptions? Under those conditions Shakespeare's plays were highly interesting tales, only they were recited by a number of persons, who, in order to make somewhat more of an impression, were characteristically masked as the occasion demanded, moved about, came and went, but left it to the spectator's imagination to fancy at will paradise and palaces on the empty stage.

How, indeed, did Schroder achieve the great credit of putting Shakespeare's plays upon the German stage but by epitomizing the epitomizer? Schroder confined himself entirely to what was effective; he discarded everything else, indeed, even much that was essential, when it seemed to him that the effect upon his nation, upon his time, would be impaired. Thus it is true, for example, that by omitting the first scene of _King Lear_ he changed the character of the piece; but he was right, after all, for in that scene Lear appears so ridiculous that one can not wholly blame his daughters. The old man awakens our pity, but we have no sympathy for him, and it is sympathy that Schroder wished to arouse as well as abhorrence of the two daughters, who, though unnatural, are not absolutely reprehensible.

In the old play which is Shakespeare's source, this scene is productive, in the course of the play, of the most pleasing effects. Lear flees to France; daughter and son-in-law, in some romantic caprice, make a pilgrimage, in disguise, to the seash.o.r.e, and encounter the old man, who does not recognize them. Here all that Shakespeare's lofty, tragic spirit has embittered is made sweet. A comparison of these dramas affords ever renewed pleasure to the lover of art.

In recent years, however, the notion has crept into Germany that Shakespeare must be presented on the German stage word for word, even if actors and audience should fairly choke in the process. The attempts, induced by an excellent, exact translation,[3] would not succeed anywhere--a fact to which the Weimar stage, after honest and repeated efforts, can give unexceptionable testimony. If we wish to see a Shakespearean play, we must return to Schroder's adaptation; but the dogma that, in representing Shakespeare, not a jot or t.i.ttle may be omitted, senseless as it is, is constantly being reechoed. If the advocates of this view should retain the upper hand, Shakespeare would in a few years be entirely driven from the German stage. This, indeed, would be no misfortune; for the solitary reader, or the reader in company with others, would experience so much the purer delight.

The attempt, however, in the other direction, on which we have dilated above, was made in the arrangement of _Romeo and Juliet_ for the Weimar stage. The principles upon which this was based, we shall set forth at the first opportunity, and it will perhaps then be recognized why that arrangement--the representation of which is by no means difficult, but must be carried out artistically and with precision--had no success on the German stage. Similar efforts are now in progress, and perhaps some result is in store for the future, even though such undertakings frequently fail at the first trial.

ORATION ON WIELAND (1813)[4]

TRANSLATED BY LOUIS H. GRAY, PH. D.

[To the Memory of the n.o.ble Poet, Brother, and Friend, Wieland.]

Most serene protector!

Right worshipful master I Very honorable a.s.sembly I

Although under no circ.u.mstances does it become the individual to set himself in opposition to ancient, venerable customs, or of his own will to alter what our ancestors in their wisdom have deemed right and have ordained, nevertheless, had I really at my bidding the magician's wand which the muses in spirit intrusted to our departed friend, I should in an instant transform all these sad surroundings into those of joy. This darkness would straightway grow radiant before your eyes, and before you there would appear a hall decked for a feast, with varied tapestries and garlands of gaiety, joyous and serene as our friend's own life. Then your eyes, your spirit, would be attracted by the creations of his luxuriant imagination; Olympus with its G.o.ds, introduced by the Muses and adorned by the Graces, would be a living testimony that he who lived amid such glad surroundings, and who also departed from us in the spirit of that gladness, should be counted among the most fortunate of mankind, and should be interred, not with lamentation, but with expressions of joy and of exultation.

And yet, what I cannot present to the outward senses, may be offered to the inward. Eighty years, how much in how few syllables! Who of us dares hastily to run through so many years and to picture to himself the significance of them when well employed? Who of us would dare a.s.sert that he could in an instant measure and appraise the value of a life that was complete from every point of view?

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTIN WIELAND]

If we accompany our friend step by step through all his days, if we regard him as a boy and as a youth, in his prime and in his old age, we find that to his lot fell the unusual fortune of plucking the bloom of each of these seasons; for even old age has its bloom, and the happiest enjoyment of this, also, was vouchsafed him. Only a few months have pa.s.sed since for him the brethren of our lodge crowned their mysterious sphinx with roses, to show that, if the aged Anacreon undertook to adorn his exalted sensuality with the rose's light twigs, the ethical sensuousness, the tempered joy of life and wit which animated our n.o.ble friend also merited a rich and abundant garland.

Only a few weeks have elapsed since this excellent man was still with us, not merely present but active at our gatherings. It was through the midst of our intimate circle that he pa.s.sed from things earthly; we were the nearest to him, even at the last; and if his fatherland as well as foreign nations celebrate his memory, where ought this to be done earlier and more emphatically than by us?

I have not, therefore, dared to disobey the mandates of our masters, and before this honorable a.s.sembly I speak a few words in his memory, the more gladly since they may be fleeting precursors of what in the future the world and our brotherhood shall do for him. This is the sentiment, and this the purpose, for the sake of which I venture to entreat a gracious hearing; and if what I shall say from an affection tested for almost forty years rather than for mere rhetorical effect--by no means well composed, but rather in brief sentences, and even in desultory fashion--may seem worthy neither of him who is honored nor of them who honor, then I must remark that here you may expect only a preliminary outline, a sketch, yes, only the contents and, if you so will, the marginal notes of a future work. And thus, then, without more delay, to the theme so dear, so precious, and, indeed, so sacred to us!

Wieland was born in 1733 near Biberach, a small imperial free-town in Swabia. His father, a Lutheran clergyman, gave him a careful training and imparted to him the first elements of education. He was then sent to the monastery of Bergen on the Elbe, where the truly pious Abbot Steinmetz presided over an educational inst.i.tution of good repute.

Thence he went to the University of Tubingen, and then lived for some time as a private tutor in Bern, but he was soon attracted to Bodmer, at Zurich, who, like Gleim at a later date in North Germany, might be called the midwife of genius in South Germany. There he gave himself over entirely to the joy that arises from youth's self-creation, when talents develop under friendly guidance without being hampered by the higher requirements of criticism. Soon, however, he outgrew this stage, returned to his native town, and henceforth became his own teacher and trainer, while with ceaseless activity he pursued his inclination toward literature and poetry.

His mechanical official duties as the chief of the chancery robbed him, it is true, of time, though they could not deprive him of joy and courage; and that his spirit might not be dwarfed amid such narrow surroundings, he fortunately became acquainted with Count Stadion, whose estates lay in the vicinity, and who was a minister of the Prince Elector of Mainz. In this ill.u.s.trious and well-appointed house the atmosphere of the world and of the court was for the first time wafted to him; he became no stranger to domestic and foreign affairs of state; and in the count he gained a patron for all his life. In consequence, he did not remain unknown to the Prince Elector of Mainz, and since the University of Erfurt was to be revived under Emmerich Joseph, our friend was summoned thither, thus exemplifying the tolerant sentiments which, from the beginning of the century, have spread among men who are akin through the Christian faith, and have even permeated humanity as a whole.

He could not labor long at Erfurt without becoming known to the d.u.c.h.ess Regent of Weimar, at whose court Count von Dalberg, so active in every form of good work, did not fail to introduce him. An adequate education of her princely sons was the chief object of a tender mother, herself highly cultured, and thus he was called thither to employ his literary talents and his moral endowments for the best interests of the princely house, for our weal, and for the weal of all.

The retirement promised him after the completion of his educational duties was given him at once, and since he received a more than promised alleviation of his domestic circ.u.mstances, he led, for nearly forty years, a life of complete conformity to his disposition and to his wishes.

The influence of Wieland on the public was uninterrupted and permanent.

He educated his generation up to himself, giving to the taste and to the judgment of his contemporaries a decided trend, so that his merits have already been sufficiently recognized, appraised, and even portrayed. In many a work on German literature he is discussed as honorably as judiciously; I need only recall the laudations which Kuttner, Eschenburg, Manso, and Eichhorn have bestowed upon him.

And whence came the profound influence which he exercised on the Germans? It was a result of the excellence and of the openness of his nature. In him man and author had completely interpenetrated; he wrote poetry as a living soul, and lived the poet's life. In verse and prose he never hid what was at the instant in his mind and what each time he felt, so that judging he wrote and writing he judged. From the fertility of his mind sprang the fertility of his pen.

I do not employ the term "pen" as a rhetorical phrase; here it is valid in the strictest sense, and if a pious reverence pays homage to many an author by seeking to gain possession of the quill with which he formed his works, the quill of which Wieland availed himself, would surely be worthy of this distinction above many another. For the fact that he wrote everything with his own hand and most beautifully, and, at the same time, with freedom and with thoughtfulness; that he ever had before him what he had written, carefully examining, changing, improving, indefatigably fashioning and refashioning, never weary even of repeatedly transcribing voluminous works--this gave to his productions the delicacy, the gracefulness, the clearness, the natural elegance which can be bestowed on a work already completed, not by effort, but by unruffled, inspired attention.

This careful preparation of his writings had its origin in a happy conviction which apparently came to him toward the end of his residence in Switzerland, when impatience at production had in some measure subsided, and when the desire to present a perfected result to the public had become more decidedly and more obviously active.

Since, then, in him the man and the poet were a single individuality, we shall also portray the latter when we speak of the former. Irritability and versatility, the accompaniments of poetical and of rhetorical talents, dominated him to a high degree, but an acquired rather than an innate moderation kept them in equilibrium. Our friend was capable of enthusiasm in highest measure, and in youth he surrendered himself wholly to it, the more actively and a.s.siduously since, in his case, for several years that happy period was prolonged when within himself the youth feels the worth and the dignity of the most excellent, be it attainable or not.

In that pure and happy field of the golden age, in that paradise of innocence, he dwelt longer than others. The house where he was born, in which a cultivated clergyman ruled as father; the ancient, linden-embowered monastery of Bergen on the Elbe, where a pious teacher kept up his patriarchal activity; Tubingen, still monastic in its essential form; those simple Swiss dwellings about which the brooks murmured, which the lakes laved, and which the cliffs surrounded--everywhere he found another Delphi, everywhere the groves in which as a mature and cultivated youth he continued to revel even yet.

There he was powerfully attracted by the monuments of the manly innocence of the Greeks which have been left us. Cyrus, Araspes, Panthea, and forms of equal loftiness revived in him; he felt the spirit of Plato weaving within him; he felt that he needed that spirit to reproduce those pictures for himself and for others--so much the more since he desired not so keenly to evoke poetic phantoms as, rather, to create a moral influence for actual beings.

Yet the very fact that he had the good fortune to dwell so protractedly in these loftier realms, and that he could long regard as the most perfect verity all that he thought, felt, imagined, dreamed, and fancied--this very fact embittered for him the fruit which he was obliged at last to pluck from the tree of knowledge.

Who can escape the conflict with the outer world? Even our friend is drawn into this strife; reluctantly he submits to contradiction by experience and by life; and since, after a long struggle, he succeeds not in uniting these august figures with those of the vulgar world, or that high desire with the demands of the day, he resolves to let the actual pa.s.s current as the necessary, and declares that what has thus far seemed real to him is phantasy.

Yet even here the individuality and the energy of his spirit reveals itself to be worthy of admiration. Despite all the fulness of his life, despite so strong a joy of living, despite n.o.ble inward talents and honorable spiritual desires and purposes, he feels himself wounded by the world and defrauded of his greatest treasures. Henceforth he can in experience nowhere find what had const.i.tuted his joy for so many years, and what had even been the inmost content of his life; yet he does not consume himself in idle lamentations, of which we know so many in the prose and verse of others, but he resolves upon counter-action. He proclaims war on all that cannot be demonstrated in reality; first and foremost, therefore, on Platonic love, then on all dogmatizing philosophy, especially its two extremes of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism.

Furthermore, he works implacably against religious fanaticism, and against all that to reason appears eccentric.

But he is at once overwhelmed with anxiety lest he go too far, lest he himself act fantastically, and now he simultaneously begins battle against commonplace reality. He opposes everything which we are accustomed to understand under the name Philistinism--musty pedantry, provincialism, petty etiquette, narrow criticism, false prudery, smug complacency, arrogant dignity, and whatever names may be applied to all these unclean spirits, whose name is Legion.

Herein he proceeds in an absolutely natural manner, without preconceived purpose or self-consciousness. He stands before the dilemma of the conceivable and the real, and, as he must advise moderation to control or to unite the two, he must hold himself in check, and must be many-sided, since he wishes to be just.

He had long been attracted by the pure, rational uprightness of n.o.ble Englishmen, and by their influence in the moral sphere, by an Addison, by a Steele; but now in their society he finds a man whose type of thought is far more agreeable to him.

Shaftesbury, whom I need only mention to recall a great thinker to the mind of every well-informed man,--Shaftesbury lived at a time when much disturbance reigned in the religion of his native land, when the dominant church sought by force to subdue men of other modes of thought.

State and morals were also threatened by much that must arouse the anxiety of the intelligent and right-thinking. The best counter-action to all this, he believed, was cheerfulness; in his opinion, only what was regarded with serenity would be rightly seen. He who could look serenely into his own bosom must be a good man. This was the main thing, and from it sprang all other good. Spirit, wit, and humor were, he held, the real agencies by which such a disposition should come in contact with the world. All objects, even the most serious, must be capable of such clarity and freedom if they were not bedizened with a merely arrogant dignity, but contained within themselves a true value which did not fear the test. In this spirited endeavor to become master of things it was impossible to avoid casting about for deciding authorities, and thus human reason was set as judge over the content, and taste over the manner, of presentation.

In such a man our Wieland now found, not a predecessor whom he was to follow, nor a colleague with whom he was to work, but a true elder twin brother in the spirit, whom he perfectly resembled, without being formed in his likeness; even as it could not be said of the Menaechmi which was the original, and which the copy.

What Shaftesbury, born in a higher station, more favored with worldly advantages, and more experienced by travel, office, and cosmopolitan knowledge, did in a wider circle and at a more serious period in sea-girt England, precisely this our friend, proceeding from a point at first extremely limited, accomplished through persistent activity and through ceaseless toil, in his native land, surrounded on every side by hills and dales; and the result was--to employ, in our condensed address, a brief but generally intelligible term--that popular philosophy whereby a practically trained intelligence is set in decision over the moral worth of things, and is made the judge of their aesthetic value.

This philosophy, prepared in England and fostered by conditions in Germany, was thus spread far and wide by our friend, in company with countless sympathizers, by poems and by scholarly works, even by life itself.

And yet, if we have found Shaftesbury and Wieland perfectly alike so far as point of view, temperament, and insight are concerned, nevertheless, the latter was far superior to the former in talent; for what the Englishman rationally taught and desired, the German knew how to elaborate poetically and rhetorically in verse and prose.

In this elaboration, however, the French mode of treatment was necessarily most suitable to him. Serenity, wit, spirit, and elegance are already at hand in France; his luxuriant imagination, which now desires to be occupied only with light and joyous themes, turns to tales of fairies and knights, which grant it the greatest freedom. Here, again, in the _Arabian Nights_ and in the _Bibliotheque universelle des romans_, France offered him materials half-prepared and adapted, while the ancient treasures of this sort, which Germany possesses, still remained crude and unavailable.

It is precisely these poems which have most widely spread and most firmly established Wieland's fame. Their light-heartedness gained them access to everyone, and even the serious Germans deigned to be pleased with them; for all these works appeared indeed at a happy and favorable time. They were all written in the spirit which we have developed above.

Frequently the fortunate poet undertook the artistic task of giving a high value to very mediocre materials by revising them; and though it cannot be denied that he sometimes permits reason to triumph over the higher powers, and at other times allows sensuality to prevail over the moral qualities, yet we must also grant that, in its proper place, everything which can possibly adorn n.o.ble souls gains supremacy.

Earlier than most of these works, though not the earliest of all, was the translation of Shakespeare. Wieland did not fear impairment of his originality by study; on the contrary, he was convinced at an early date that a lively, fertile spirit found its best stimulus not only in the adaptation of material that was already well known, but also in the translation of extant works.

In those days the translation of Shakespeare was a daring thought, for even trained _litterateurs_ denied the possibility of the success of such an undertaking. Wieland translated freely, grasped the sense of his author, and omitted what appeared to him untranslatable; and thus he gave to his nation a general idea of the most magnificent works of another people, and to his generation an insight into the lofty culture of by-gone centuries.

Great as was the effect of this translation in Germany, it appears to have exercised little influence upon Wieland himself. He was too thoroughly antagonistic to his author, as is sufficiently obvious from the pa.s.sages omitted and pa.s.sed over, and still more from the appended notes, in which the French type of thought is evident.