IN FRONT OF THE CURTAIN
(1869)
John's proposal to transfer the university from Upsala to Stockholm was
destined to have consequences, and his comrades had warned him of them.
When he went up early in spring in order to write the obligatory Latin
essay he had sent the professor by post the three test-essays and the
15 krona fee. So he could carry out his purpose unhindered and enrolled
himself.
But now in May he wished to go and pass the preliminary examination in
chemistry. In order to be well prepared, he had himself tested by the
assistant-professor at the technological institute. The latter did so
and declared that he already knew more than was needed for the medical
examination. Thus prepared, he went up to Upsala. His first visit was
to a comrade, who had already passed the preliminary examination in
chemistry, and knew the "tips" for it.
John began: "I can do synthesis and analysis, and have studied organic
chemistry."
"That is very well, for we only need synthesis; however, it is no use
for you have not studied in the professor's laboratory."
"That is true; but the course at the Institute is much better."
"No matter,--it is not his."
"We shall see," said John, "whether knowledge does not tell in any
ease."
"If you are so sure, then try, but consider first what I say. You must
first go to the assistant-professor and get a 'tip'."
"What do you mean?"
"For a krona he will give you an hour's polishing, and ask you all the
important questions which the professor has put during the past year.
Just now he is in the habit of asking whether matches can be made out
of his carcase and ammonia from your old boots. But that you will
learn from the assistant. Secondly, you must not go to be examined
in a frock coat and white tie; least of all, dressed as well as you
are now. Therefore you must borrow my riding-coat, which is green in
the shoulders and red in the seams, and my top-boots, for he does not
like elastic boots."
John followed his friend's instructions and went first to the
assistant-professor who gave him the questions which had been last
asked. In return John promised that under all circumstances he would
return and tell him the questions which he himself had been asked, as a
means of enlarging his catechism.
The next day John went to his friend to array himself. His trousers
were drawn up so that the tops of the boots should be seen and his
loose collar turned on one side, so that the skin should show between
the tie and the collar. Thus equipped, he went up for his first trial.
The professor of chemistry had formerly been a fortification officer,
and had received in his time a not very cordial welcome from the
learned staff in Upsala. He was a soldier, not academically cultivated,
and thus a kind of "Philistine." This had galled him and made him
bilious. In order to efface the effect of his laymen-like exterior, he
affected the airs of an over-read and blunt professor. He went about
ill-dressed and behaved eccentrically. Though many hundreds besides
himself had been pupils of Berzelius, he was fond of mentioning the
fact; it was his trump card. Berzelius, among other things, went about
in shabby trousers, therefore a hole in one's clothes was the sign of a
learned chemist, and so on. Hence all these peculiarities.
John presented himself, was regarded with suspicion and bidden to come
again in a week. He replied that he had come from Stockholm and was
too poor to support himself for a week in the town. He managed to get
permission to present himself the next day. "It would be soon over,"
said the old man.
The next day he sat on a seat opposite the professor. It was a sunny
afternoon in May, and the old man seemed to have digested his dinner
badly. He looked grim as he threw out his first question from his
rocking-chair. The answers were correct at the beginning. Then the
questions became more tortuous like snakes.
"If I have an estate, where I suspect the presence of saltpetre, how
shall I begin to construct a saltpetre factory?"
John suggested a saltpetre analysis.
"No."
"Well, then, I don't know anything else."
There was silence and the flies buzzed,--a long and terrible silence.
"Now will come the question about the boots or the matches," thought
John, "and there I shall shine." He coughed by way of rousing the
professor, but the silence continued. John wondered whether he had been
seen through and whether the old man recognised the "examination coat."
Then came a new question which was unanswered, and then another.
"You have come too soon," said the old man, and rose up.
"Yes, but I have worked a whole year in the laboratory, and can do
chemical analysis."
"Yes, you know how to make up prescriptions, but you have not digested
your knowledge. In the Institute only manual dexterity is necessary,
but here scientific knowledge is required."
As a matter of fact the case was exactly the reverse for the medical
students in Upsala complained that they had to stand like cooks and
make up mixtures and salts, without having time to look at an analysis,
which last was just what a doctor ought to do while synthesis was the
apothecary's work. But now the proposal made some years before whether
the university had not better be transferred to Stockholm had roused a
feeling in Upsala against the capital. Moreover the laboratory of the
newly-built technological institute was as famous for its excellent
equipment, as that of Upsala was notorious for its poor one. Here,
therefore, petty prejudices were at work and John felt the unfairness
of it. "I do not then get a certificate?" he asked.
"No, sir, not this year; but come again next year."
The professor was ashamed to say, "Go to my only soul-saving
laboratory."
John went out furious. Here then again neither diligence nor knowledge
prevailed, but only cash and cringing! Had he tried short cuts? No,
on the contrary, he had been obliged to travel by painful circuitous
paths, while others had gone the direct road, and the directest is the
shortest.
He went to the Carolina Park, as angry as an irritated bee. He did
not wish to return at once to the town, but sat down on a seat. If he
could only set this devil's hole on fire! Another year? No, never! Why
read so much unnecessary stuff, which would only be forgotten, and be
of no practical use? And slave in order to enter this dirty profession
where one had to analyse urine, pick about in vomit, poke about in all
the recesses of the body? Faugh! Just as he was sitting there, a group
of cheerful-looking people came by, and stood laughing outside the
Carolina library. They looked up to the window's, through which long
rows of books were visible, shelf after shelf. They laughed,--the men
and women laughed at the books. He thought he recognised them. Yes,
they were Levasseur's French actors, whom he had seen in Stockholm and
who were now visiting Upsala. They laughed at the books! Lucky people
who could be importers of genius and culture without books. Perhaps
every soul had something to give which was not in books, but would be
there some day. Yes, certainly it was so. He himself possessed stories
of experience and thoughts, which could enrich anthropology, and were
ready to be throw out.
Again there stole upon him the thought of entering this privileged
profession, which stood outside and above petty social conventions
which ignored distinctions of rank, and in which one need never be
conscious of belonging to the lower classes. There one could appeal to
the universal judgment, and work in full publicity instead of being
hung up here in a remote dark hole, without a verdict, examination, or
witnesses.
Strengthened by this new idea, he stood up, east a glance at the books
above, and went down to the town resolved to go home and seek for an
engagement in the Theatre Royal.
Every townsman has probably felt once in his life the wish to appear
as an actor. This is probably due to the impulse of the cultivated
man to magnify and make himself something, to identify himself with
great and celebrated personalities. John, who was a romanticist, had
also the desire to step forward and harangue the public. He believed
that he could choose his proper rôle, and he knew beforehand which it
would be. The fact that he, like all others, believed that he had the
capacity to become an actor, sprang from the superfluity of unused
force, produced by a want of sufficient physical exercise, and from the
tendency to megalomania connected with mental over-exertion. He saw no
difficulties in the profession itself, but expected opposition from
another quarter.
To attribute his being stage-struck to hereditary tendencies would
perhaps be hasty, since we have just remarked that it is an almost
universal impulse. But his paternal grandfather, a Stockholm citizen,
had written dramatic pieces for an amateur theatre, and a young
distant relative still lived as a warning example. The latter had been
an engineer, had been through a course of instruction in the Motala
iron-works, and had a post on the Köping-Hult railway. He therefore had
fine prospects in front of him, but suddenly threw them up, and became
an actor. This step of his was an incessant trouble to his family. Up
to this time the young man had become nothing but was still travelling
about with an obscure theatrical company. The danger of becoming like
him was the difficult point. "Yes," said John to himself, "but I shall
have luck." Why? Because he believed it; and he believed it because he
wished it.
Some might be inclined to derive this strong impulse on John's part
from the fact that he loved to play, as a child, with a toy theatre,
but that is not sufficient, as all children do the same and he had got
the taste from seeing them do it. The theatre was an unreal better
world which enticed one out of the tedious real one. The latter would
not have seemed so tedious if his education had been more harmonious
and realistic and not given him such a strong tendency to romance.
Enough; his resolution was taken; and without saying anything to any
one, he went to the director of the Theatrical Academy the dramaturgist
of the Theatre Royal.
When he heard the sound of his own words "I want to be an actor,"
he shuddered. He felt as though he tore down the veil of his inborn
modesty, and did violence to his own nature.
The director asked what he was doing at present.
"Studying medicine."
"And you want to give up such a career, for one that is the hardest and
the worst of all?"
"Yes."
All actors called their profession the "hardest and the worst" though
they had such a good time of it. That was in order to frighten away
aspirants.
John asked for private lessons in order that he might make his début.
The director replied that he was now going to the country for the
theatrical season was at an end, but he told John to come again on the
1st of September when the theatre opened, and the board of management
came again to the town. That was a definite appointment and he saw his
way clear.
When he went down the street, he walked with his eyes wide open, as
though he gazed into a brilliant future; victory was already his; he
felt its intoxicating eating fumes, and hurried, though with unsteady
steps, down the street.
He said nothing to the doctor nor to any one else. He had still three
months in front of him in which to train and prepare himself, but in
secret, for he was shy and timid. He was afraid of annoying his father
and the doctor, afraid of the whole town knowing that he thought
himself capable of being an actor, afraid of his relatives' scorn, his
friends' grimaces and efforts to dissuade him. This was the fruit of
his education, the fear,--"What will people say?" His imagination made
the act seem like a crime. It was certainly an interference with other
people's peace of mind for relations and friends feel a shock, when
they see a link torn out of the social chain. He felt it himself, and
had to shake off the scruples of conscience.
For his début he had chosen the rôles of Karl Moor and Wijkander's
Lucidor. This was no mere chance but perfectly logical. In both of
these characters he had found the expression of his inner experience,
and therefore he wished to speak with their tongues. He conceived of
Lucidor as a higher nature undermined and ruined by poverty. A higher
nature of course! In his enthusiasm for the theatre he felt again what
he had felt when he had preached, and when he had revolted against the
school prayers,[1] something of the proclaimer, the prophet, and the
soothsayer.
What most of all elevated his ideas of the great significance of the
theatre was the perusal of Schiller's essay, "The theatre regarded
as an instrument of moral education." Sentences like the following
show how lofty was the goal at which Schiller aimed. "The stage is
the chief channel through which the light of wisdom descends from
the better, thinking portion of the populace in order to spread its
beneficent light over the whole state." "In this world of art we
dream ourselves away from the real one, we find ourselves again, our
feelings are roused, wholesome emotions stir our slumbering nature and
drive our blood in swift currents. The unhappy here forget their own
sorrows in watching those of others, the happy become sober, and the
self-confident, reflective. The effeminate weakling is hardened into a
man, the coarse and callous here begin to feel. And then finally,--what
a triumph for thee O Nature, so often trodden down and so often
re-arisen,--when men of all climates and conditions, casting away all
fetters of convention and fashion, set free from the iron hand of fate,
fraternising in one all-embracing sympathy, dissolved into _one_ race,
forget themselves and the world, and approach their heavenly origin.
Each individual enjoys the delight of all, which is mirrored back to
him strengthened and beautified from a hundred eyes, and his breast has
only room for one aspiration,--to be a man!"
Thus wrote the young Schiller at twenty-five, and the youth of twenty
subscribed it.
The theatre is certainly still a means of culture for young people and
the middle class who can still feel the illusion of actors and painted
canvas. For older and cultivated people it is a recreation in which the
actor's art is the chief object of attention. Therefore old critics
are almost invariably discontent and crabbed. They have lost their
illusions and do not pass over any mistake in the acting.
Modern times have overprised the theatre, especially the actor's art in
an exaggerated degree, and a re-action has followed. Actors have tried
to ply their art independently of the dramatist, believing that they
could stand on their own legs. Therefore particular "stars" become the
objects of homage and therefore also opposition has been aroused. In
Paris, where people had gone to the greatest lengths, a reaction first
showed itself. The _Figaro_ called the heroes of the Théâtre-Français
to order, and reminded them that they were only the author's puppets.
The decay of all the great European theatres shows that the actor's
art has lost its interest. Cultivated people no more go to the
theatre because their sense for reality has been developed, and
their imagination which is a relic of the savage has diminished; the
uncultivated lack the time, and the money to go. The future seems to
belong to the variety theatre, which amuses without instructing, for it
is mere play and recreation. All important writers choose another, more
suitable form in which to handle important questions. Ibsen's dramas
have always produced their effect in book form before they were played;
and when they are played, the spectators' interest is generally
concentrated on the _manner_ of their performance; consequently it is a
secondary interest.
John committed the usual mistake of youth, _i.e._ of confusing the
actor with the author; the actor is the mere enunciator of the
sentiments for which the author who stands behind him, is responsible.
In the spring John resigned his post as tutor to the two girls, and
now he had leisure during the summer to study his art in secret,
and on his own responsibility. He had scoffed at books, and now the
first things he sought were books. They contained the thoughts and
experiences of men with whom, though most of them were dead, he could
converse familiarly, without being betrayed. He had heard that in the
castle there was a library which belonged to the State, and from which
one could borrow books. He obtained a surety and went there. It was a
solemn place with small rooms full of books where grey-haired silent
old men sat and read. He got his books and went shyly and happily home.
He wished to study the matter thoroughly in all its aspects, as was his
custom. In Schiller he found the assurance that the theatre was of deep
significance; in Goethe he found a whole treatise on the histrionic
art with directions how one should walk and stand, behave oneself, sit
down, come in and go out; in Lessing's _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_ he
found a whole volume of theatrical critiques filled with the closest
observations. Lessing especially roused his hopes, for he went so far
as to declare that the theatre had come down owing to the inferiority
of the actors, and said that it would be better to employ amateurs
from the cultivated classes who would play better than the drilled and
often uncultured actors. He also read Raymond de St. Albin, whose often
quoted observations on the actor's art are of great value.
At the same time he exercised himself practically. At the doctor's he
arranged a stage when the boys were out. He practised entrances and
exits; he arranged the stage for "The Robbers," dressed himself like
Karl Moor, and played that part. He went to the National Museum and
studied gestures of antique sculptures and gave up using his walking
stick in order to accustom himself to walk freely. He did violence
to his shyness, which had almost produced in him "agoraphobia," or
the dread of crossing open places, and accustomed himself to walk
across Karl XIII's square where great crowds used to be found. He did
gymnastics every day at home, and fenced with his pupils. He gave
attention to every movement of the muscles; practised walking with head
erect and chest expanded, with arms hanging free and hands loosely
clenched, as Goethe directs.
The chief difficulty he found was in the cultivation of his voice,
for he was overheard when he declaimed in the house. Then it occurred
to him to go outside the town. The only place where he could be
undisturbed was the Ladugårdsgärdet. There he could look over the plain
for a great distance and see whether any one was coming; there sounds
died away so quickly that it cost him an effort to hear himself. This
strengthened his voice.
Every day he went out there, and declaimed against heaven and earth.
The town whose church tower rose opposite Ladugårdsgärdet symbolised
society, while he stood out here alone with Nature. He shook his fist
at the castle, the churches, and the barracks, and stormed at the
troops who during their manoeuvres often came too close to him. There
was something fanatical in his work and he spared himself no pains in
order to make his unwilling muscles obedient.
[1] _Vide_ the _Son of a Servant_.