The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ix Part 70

"A curse upon thee!"

answers the latter; then he inquires who gave the order for the retreat; Mehmed answers that he did; the Janizaries had been slaughtered by the thousands, but in vain, the army was exhausted, and it had been impossible to wrest the victory from the enemy; he intended, however, to bombard the castle the next night and was persuaded that the walls must give way. Soliman flies into a pa.s.sion:

"But I from them will wrest it (the victory namely), must wrest it!"

In very truth an excellent commander-in-chief, who is not to be persuaded by reasons such as Mehmed advanced, and who differs from a child who is denied his will only in that he bellows where the child screams. But--perhaps we have the tyrant before us where I thought I perceived the nullity of the commander-in-chief. Let us read on:

ALI.

"Remember Malta!

SOLIMAN.

Death and h.e.l.l! Ali!

Remind me not of Malta, if thy head Is dear to thee. More I endure from thee Than does befit the great lord Soliman!"

Really the beginning promises well.

ALI.

"My life is in thy hands, my Emperor!

SOLIMAN.

Since thou dost know that, yet didst freely speak Thy heart's thought to me, I'll forgive thee.

For I love truth which knows no fear of death.

In token then of my imperial grace, Thy council shall prevail; I'll not attack!"

I think we do not need to tremble before a tyrant whose fury could be appeased by Ali's paltry words. "My life is in thy hands, my Emperor!"

which must have been said to him often enough before. Let no one reproach me if, henceforth, I keep silence on the subject of Soliman.

Offenses of this kind are not mere blunders, they are the sign of complete incompetency on the part of the poet, and solely out of curiosity, not because it is necessary to demonstrate my argument, I shall continue to a.n.a.lyze Zriny, Helena, and the other marionettes.

Zriny is an abortive copy of Wallenstein; his originality consists in doing _for_ the Emperor, what the latter does _against_ him. Juranitsch is Max Piccolomini the second, but has the misfortune to stand as far _below_ the first as other people who also happened to be seconds, as for example, Frederick the Second, Joseph the Second, etc., stood _above_ their namesakes. In general, _Zriny_ has made it clear to me that Korner, had he lived, would, without any doubt, have become a second Schiller, namely, by completely absorbing the first. The plagiarisms which the n.o.ble young man has indulged in, in this tragedy, as regards the disposition of the scenes as well as in whole individual speeches and sentences, surpa.s.s all belief. I shall perhaps point out some of these in the course of my investigation of the characters.

But before I investigate the claims to heroism of Korner's Zriny may I be allowed to determine what are the qualities absolutely indispensable for a hero. I will not place my demands very high, but circ.u.mspection and firmness I may at least be allowed to require, besides mere courage.

Also a certain amount of modesty would not become him ill, perhaps we may even demand this of the hero of a drama; for the dramatic poet must not indeed in any sense idealize, but he should render only the genuinely human, not the purely accidental, which, because accidental, is rare. For an individual to be at the same time a hero and a braggart is, however, quite accidental, and the result merely of a deficient or a perverted education. If one wishes to find firmness in the fact that a man knows in advance what he wants, that he forms his decision before he is acquainted with the controlling circ.u.mstances, then certainly this quality cannot be denied our Zriny.

"His loyalty no n.o.bler guerdon asks Than to seek death, a joyful sacrifice, For his own folk and his undying faith."

But it seems to me that a desperate resolution is only justifiable when it can no longer be avoided; whoever takes one before that, is cowardly rather than brave; for he has not the strength to make the sacrifice at the proper moment; therefore he tries, beforehand, to reason himself into being courageous. When Zriny, however, speaks the words quoted, he has already in his possession the letter of the Emperor, informing him that he need hope for no relief; but he cannot know yet how long Soliman will continue to a.s.sault Szigeth, and there is likewise no need to inspire his companions with courage by these words, in which he boasts of his own courage, for they were every one of them heroes. I fail, therefore, to find in his braggadocio the firmness that is worthy of a great man, and this is a fault which I may be permitted to charge to Mr.

Korner's account; for he intended it to form part of his Zriny's character. The dear man has an even smaller share of circ.u.mspection: read but the sixth scene of the second act where he ponders the question, what he shall do with his wife and child. Truly, when he decides to leave them in the fortress, so that the garrison shall not lose courage, I cannot suppress the thought that the daughter has already had an illegitimate child and the wife has been a heroine in the wrong place; for if he had considered them worth a straw, he could not, for such a reason, have exposed them to such a danger. And is that a courageous garrison which is calm because it believes itself to be still safe? And shall its eyes never be opened simply because it sees that the danger is shared for a while by the wife and child of the commander--for whom, as Zriny himself remarks, there are secret pa.s.sages which can be used in case of necessity. Mr. Zriny did not consider all this; his circ.u.mspection, therefore, is surely not very great. Just one sample of the n.o.ble simplicity and modesty of this hero:

"Thou knowest me, Maximilian, I thank thee for thy high imperial trust, Thou knowest Zriny, thou dost not mistake."

It is nauseating to continue, I have the impression at this moment that I am trying to prove that a soap-bubble is really only a soap-bubble.

Just one word more about Helena. The tender child, who faints away at the end of the first act when Juranitsch takes leave of her to go into battle, has made such progress in bravery in the seventh scene of the second act, that she exclaims:

"Yes, father, father, send us not from thee!"

and at the conclusion of the fourth (indeed it is time, for in the next act the piece comes to an end) she even says:

"Yes, let us die! What care we for the sun!"

Spare your sympathy, reader or spectator; you must not think that you have to do with men who care anything for their lives, and who therefore are making a sacrifice--no indeed! They have nothing in common with such a weakling as you.

I hope I shall not be accused of hastiness--I must hurry on to the end, for there are just as many absurdities in _Zriny_ as there are verses--if from all this I draw the conclusion that Theodor Korner had not the slightest talent for the drama. I promised, a while ago, to specify some plagiarisms from Schiller, but I may safely refer to the whole book. Instead I will make a few more remarks on the death-scene of Helena, scene six, act five.

This scene is not badly constructed. I will not, indeed, examine too closely how far love made it justifiable for a girl to ask of her lover to kill her. For once we will take Helena's word for it that under similar circ.u.mstances she would have done the like had Juranitsch demanded it, and then she, as well as the poet, is held excused. We will only listen to what Juranitsch answers when she has made her wish clear to him. He says:

"Thee, I must kill? Thee? no, I cannot kill thee!"

This would be human, but listen to what follows:

"--When the storm wind O'erthrows the oak and rages 'mongst the pines, It leaves unharmed the tender floweret, Its thunders change to gentle whisp'ring zephyrs And shall I wilder be than the wild storm?

Shall I destroy life's loveliest vernal wreath?

In cruelty the boisterous elements Surpa.s.sing, shall I break this floweret To touch which destiny's hand has yet not dared?"

I ask you is it possible to surpa.s.s such trivial nonsense?

I shall say no more concerning Korner's individual scenes. This is not committing an injustice; for it is absolutely unimportant, so far as our investigation is concerned, whether and in how far Korner had the ability to construct a tragedy, since this faculty--as Goethe's example shows us--has nothing to do with poetry in itself. There is no need for us to draw the parallel between the _Prince of Homburg_ and _Zriny_; it is quite evident. One reproach, however, which might be made by an attentive reader, I must antic.i.p.ate: namely, I might be asked why I have subjected the two princ.i.p.al characters of Korner's tragedy to a regular police examination, and, instead of accepting them in their totality, have required them to render account in how far they were heroes, commanders, tyrants, etc. But since they are, like all creations of mere talent, nothing but arrows which are shot from a certain bow-string toward a certain target, it follows that they can only be judged by the deflections from their course. Herein--be it remarked incidentally--lies the difference, often perceived but seldom explained, between the characters portrayed by Schiller and those portrayed by Goethe.

Schiller's characters--to use a play on words which for once expresses the truth--are beautiful because they are self-contained; Goethe's characters because they are unrestrained. Schiller delineates the man who is complete in his own strength, and, a man of iron, is tried by circ.u.mstances; for this reason Schiller was great only in the historical drama. Goethe delineates the endless creations of the moment, the eternal modifications of the man caused by every step that he takes; this is the token by which we may recognize genius, and it seems to me that I have discovered it also in Heinrich von Kleist.

At this moment, when I would pa.s.s on to review the achievements of Korner and Kleist in the field of comedy, I remember that I was not sufficiently definite, above, when developing my conception of the drama. I should have added that I cannot, strictly speaking, count comedy as a form of drama, but must include it in the category of dialogue narrative. If one recalls to mind the purpose of high-cla.s.s comedy--"to describe individual ages and cla.s.ses," one must admit that I am ent.i.tled to do so. I must remark in advance that neither Korner nor Kleist has done anything for high-cla.s.s comedy. But Kleist in his _Broken Pitcher_ has drawn a comic character-picture which is so full of life that it reminds us of Shakespeare, if of any one, while Korner in his _Night.w.a.tchman_ has drawn nothing but a funny caricature; with the former the character shapes the situations, whereas with the latter the situations shape the characters, if I may use this expression. I should be giving myself a great deal of unnecessary trouble if I should engage in a further a.n.a.lysis of the two comedies which I have mentioned, since at all events I could only adduce sundry details, and such details in this case prove absolutely nothing; for the only safe criterion of the truly comic is that the picture as a whole, apart from what wit has done for it, should arouse interest as an organic adaptation of nature. With the rascally, l.u.s.tful, country judge, Adam, in the _Broken Pitcher_, this is certainly the case; one can safely take away from him the few witty sallies which he indulges in: but what the night.w.a.tchman Schwalbe would become if one attempted the same procedure with him, I should not like to decide; probably a clown, who has been deprived of his wooden sword and cap and bells, and whose plain, honest features show that he has only executed such droll antics for the sake of his bread and b.u.t.ter. Schwalbe is merely ridiculous, but Adam is comic; the difference, to define it more clearly, consists in this; every caricature, because it diverges from laws which are eternal and necessary, without standing in eternity as a peculiarly constructed whole, has a tinge of incongruity, consequently of ridiculousness; while only that caricature of nature can be comic of which the divergences are self-consistent, which shows therefore that it is founded _in itself_.

The poet should take only the comic as a subject of treatment; for he can never lay stress upon detached separate phenomena, if he cannot prove the connection between them and the general whole, if they do not const.i.tute for him a window through which he looks down into Nature's breast. It is easy to calculate, accordingly, how high Theodor Korner's services to the comedy should be rated, provided he has actually succeeded with his smaller things, _The Night.w.a.tchman, The Green Domino_, etc., in furnishing amusing farces. To accomplish this, nothing was required but natural gaiety combined with a talent for representation, and many men who were anything but poets have been equipped with both.

It still remains for us to estimate what Korner and Kleist have achieved in narrative. In this field Korner has produced such mere trifles that it would be unjust for one to infer from them the least thing touching his characteristics, as it probably never occurred to him to consider himself a story-writer. Heinrich von Kleist's novels and stories, on the other hand, belong among the best that German literature possesses.

Almost all the narratives of our writers, with the exception of a few productions by Hoffmann and Tieck, suffer, if I may say so, from the monstrousness of the subjects chosen, if they do indeed rise at all above mediocrity. There is, however, no very deep psychological insight needed in order to know how the whole man will be affected by an event which sweeps down upon him like a stormwind, and very ordinary talents may safely attempt tasks of this kind; just as, for example, every painter with some technical skill can represent despair, fear, terror, all those emotions, in short, which only permit of one expression; whereas a Rembrandt is required, if a gipsy encampment is to be pictured. Kleist, therefore, set himself other tasks; he knew and had perhaps experienced in his own person, that life's process of destruction is not a deluge but a shower, and that man is superior to every great fatality, but subject to every pettiness. He proceeded from this theory of life, when he delineated his _Michael Kohlhaas_, and I maintain that in no German novel have the hideous depths of life been projected upon the surface in such vivid fashion as in this, when the theft by a squire, of two miserable horses, forms the first link in a chain, which extends upward from the horse-dealer Kohlhaas to the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and crushes a world by coiling round it. I should like to a.n.a.lyze the novel more in detail, but am glad that the limits of my essay, or rather the patience of my readers and auditors, do not permit me to do so; for the members of the society will thus feel prompted the sooner to acquaint and familiarize themselves with the works of Heinrich von Kleist, if they have not already done so.

While hastening on to the close, I must, in accordance with the introduction to this essay, call attention to the fact that Kleist, no less than Korner, did not leave unheeded the claims that his country properly made upon him in the portentous age in which he lived. In his breast, as in that of his contemporaries, there glowed the flame of enthusiasm for the honor and freedom of his people; and the oppression that they endured, the internal and external slavery in which he beheld them sunk, placed the pistol in his hand. I mention this because it has been imputed to the poet Korner as a great merit that he was at the same time a martyr. But Kleist could behold his country unworthily treated without for that reason having unworthy thoughts of the man who was treading it in the dust; he was great enough to be able to forgive Napoleon the pain which he could not endure. He wrote no war-songs for patriotic journeymen-tailors and high-minded counter-jumpers, but he described Hermann's Battle and the battle of Fehrbellin; he called the dead to life in order to arouse the living.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: The extracts from _The Prince of Homburg_ are taken from Mr. Hagedorn's translation, Volume IV of THE GERMAN CLa.s.sICS.]

LUDOLF WIENBARG'S "THE DRAMATISTS OF THE PRESENT DAY"

A REVIEW (1839)

By FRIEDRICH HEBBEL

TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING

It is probable that no German who is able to appreciate the power of the theatre, its silent influence on the people, and the consequent reaction on the development of dramatic talent, has looked on indifferently at the decay and complete ruin of our stage. The drama of a nation, conceived in a worthy sense, represents that nation in its self-consciousness; it is the burning-mirror which receives the separate rays of the nation's innermost being while pa.s.sing history is enticing them out of the depths, which condenses and concentrates them and thus kindles one century by means of another, and calls to life one glorious deed by means of another. Tragedy represents a people in its relation to the most important problems, its own as well as those of humanity in general. Comedy paints it in its natural aberrations and abnormalities, in its tendencies and endeavors which are directed earthward. Both must subsist together, in common development, and on an equal elevation, if we are to sum up the entire life of a nation, and give a true, eternal picture of its will-power and capacity, of its vacillations and defeats.