TRAGEDIES OF SEX
TRAGEDIES OF SEX
BY
FRANK WEDEKIND
Translation and Introduction by
SAMUEL A ELIOT, JR.
Spring’s Awakening (Frühlings Erwachen)
Earth-Spirit (Erdgeist)
Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora)
Damnation! (Tod und Teufel)
[Illustration]
_
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1914_
_Copyright, 1921_
_Copyright, 1923_
BY
BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
CAUTION.--All persons are hereby warned that the plays published in
this volume are fully protected under the copyright laws of the United
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
SPRING’S AWAKENING (FRÜHLINGSERWACHEN) 1
EARTH-SPIRIT (ERDGEIST) 111
PANDORA’S BOX (BÜCHSE DER PANDORA) 217
DAMNATION! (TOD UND TEUFEL) 305
INTRODUCTION
Frank Wedekind’s name is widely, if vaguely, known by now, outside of
Germany, and at least five of his plays have been available in English
form for quite some years, yet a résumé of biographical facts and
critical opinions seems necessary as introduction to this--I will not
say authoritative, but more careful--book. The task is genial, since
Wedekind was my special study at Munich in 1913, and I translated his
two Lulu tragedies the year after. The timidity or disapprobation
betrayed in this respect by our professional critics of foreign drama
makes my duty the more imperative. James Huneker merely called him
“a naughty boy!” Percival Pollard tiptoed around him, pointing out a
trait here and a trait there, like a menagerie-keeper with a prize
tiger. Viereck once waxed rapturous over Reinhardt’s production of
_Spring’s Awakening_ (that gave me my own first inkling of what
Wedekind might mean for me), but my friend Moderwell tossed him off in
less than a page of _The Theatre of Today_ as an immoral joker out of
_Simplicissimus_. It is true that Wedekind is by no means easy to grasp
or tabulate, true that greater men, such as Strindberg, have suffered
from similar slighting and ill-considered estimates here, before they
were suitably interpreted; but Wedekind has been dead five years, and
the time for a fair and thoughtful, if very inexhaustive, judgment of
him has surely come.
Although he was of the same generation as the naturalistic dramatists
who everywhere came to the fore in the 1890’s--Hauptmann, Chekov,
Brieux, etc.--Frank Wedekind was not of them, but far ahead of them.
They are now all but out-moded; his influence has barely begun. He
did not fit his time: the first twenty years of his active life,
in fact, were spent in continuous friction with the contemporary
world. He experienced the rancor and contempt, the smart of injustice
and the hopeless hatred, of most outcasts from society. Hostility
toward bourgeois civilization is the keynote of many of his works.
He is--against, I think, his natural tendency--a pessimist--all the
blacker for the flame of strange, Utopian ideals still flaring up in
his most savage scenes. The wrestle of contradictory wills within
him is what gives his writing its abnormal tensity, what drives him
often to overstrain each dramatic idea till its analogy to life is
so distorted most people find it morbid. He yearns to annihilate
the crude, the coarse, the ugly and the weak. He has declared, “The
reunion of holiness and beauty as the divine object of pious devotion
is the purpose to which I offer my life: toward which, indeed, I have
striven since earliest childhood.” Physical beauty, he means: a sort
of Pagan worship of the body--its lowest impulses and its highest
development.... But in every direction he found that reunion obstructed
by his all-too-well regulated German civilization. Like his own
Marquis of Keith he feverishly pursued the joy of life and could never
enjoy his life: when about to strike a splendid blow for his Promised
Land he would see a spike-helmeted angel with a police-club sentinel
at Eden’s gate. Only in the present century--only, indeed, after the
Great War had determined, for the Continent, what the outstanding
characteristics of the twentieth century were to be--did Wedekind, the
Expressionist, who despised literature and thrust raw life upon the
stage, arrive at his present commanding position and win the admiration
and discipleship of many of his countrymen.
Though he died in March, 1918, he had incorporated in many a play
before then both the sensational content and the free, direct,
spasmodic form which German literature, especially German drama, was to
show in the post-War turmoil and distress. Georg Kaiser and the other
Expressionists so prized to-day can make no secret of their debt to
him, and the wild rush they represent and play to--to contemplate man’s
lowest impulses, the roots of will and feeling, the instincts, not the
ideals that actuate confused and drifting peoples, and having studied
them in crude, disordered life to set them down in baldest, swiftest
speech, in rank but penetrating truth--this rush that is observed in
all the Continental countries but most among the Germans did there
alone possess a guide and prophet in the dead author, analyzer, wry and
bitter thinker, Wedekind.
Less than a twelvemonth after his decease, a desperate, revolutionary
era found suddenly in this perverse and pessimistic man, in his harsh
world of whores and swindlers, ruthless materialists and broken poets,
its own true shape and pressure. At the same time the former standards
of good taste, and theatre-censorships, were swept away; the ban which
had lain heavily on Wedekind throughout his stormy life, the legal ban
and the far more significant disfavor of the “good citizens,” arbiters
of general opinion, whom he had outraged so in their smug goodness,
their virtuous ideals, their bourgeois self-esteem,--these now were
lifted from his works: _Pandora’s Box_ became--imagine it--a popular
attraction; from him who had so foreseen the breakdown of conventional
formulæ and unreal modes of thought all men now feverishly sought some
intimation of what society, dazzled with commotion, must yet look
forward to.
For us in America, confirmed, not shattered, in our previous
illusions and conceit by the war’s outcome, there is less reason to
embrace this scornful soothsayer, this emissary (one is tempted to
believe) from Mephistopheles himself,--now cold and condescending,
and again intent with hectic hate. For all the foolish outcry over
the freer manners, perhaps the looser morals, of our youth, we are
still certain in America of our subjective health, of some objective
verities at least, of “progress,” of “ideals,” of many metaphysical
abstractions which Wedekind distrusts, shows up, derides. Ambassador
Gerard, innately, sensibly, was most American. In his _Four Years in
Germany_ he mentions shudderingly our author’s name, points to the
fact that Berlin still was going, over and over, to performances of
_Earth-Spirit_ as but one more indictment of a degenerate, odious
nation, and plainly shows us what must be the straight American’s
reaction to this volume--if such “straight,” normal readers should ever
take it up. But none the less it is important for America to question
and to try, to root, if need be, hog-like, to the bottom of our
civilization’s pile, and recognize the gross and primitive, the basely
human, that underlies each separate soul of us and all our deeds.
Naturalism of one type or another--nineteenth-century literalness or
twentieth-century explosiveness--is for us the necessary form our Art
must take; for only through the pitiless representing of home truth can
the easy sentimentalism, so hostile to real literature, be combated,
and America given self-knowledge and real grounds for spiritual
leaps in after-years. O’Neil in drama, Masters in poetry, Anderson,
Lewis, Frank and many more in fiction, these undeflected observers of
our seamier sides, prepare the way for the full appreciation due to
Wedekind. They are more literary, more artfully self-conscious than he
in his best work. Technique concerns them more. But it is not merely
for the light his drama throws on dominant European interests of the
moment, it is also for the impulse he may give to further, similar
probing and expression here at home that these four plays have been
prepared--revised or newly now translated--for eager and earnest
readers and (who knows?) it may be, for the stage.
They are linked together, these four culled from the score of
Wedekind’s writing, not solely in theme (for though they are recognized
in their own land as the _Geschlechtstragödien_ par excellence, there
are other tragedies of sex from Wedekind’s later years), but in
sequence too, chronological, philosophic. What an echo, for instance,
of the freshness and the fervor of _Spring’s Awakening_ we hear in
the scenes where Hugenberg, the schoolboy of _Earth-Spirit_, Act
IV, and _Pandora’s Box_, Act I, reveals his virginal, enthusiastic,
adventurous, devoted flush of life. How subtly is Lulu foreshadowed
in the vivid sketch of Ilse in _Spring’s Awakening_: buoyant,
unmoral,--simple in her acceptance of life complete, more likable
than Lulu in her pity, too, for those not so full-blooded. How keenly
Casti-Piani piques our interest, in _Pandora’s Box_, Act II; how
satisfyingly his life is summed and closed in _Tod und Teufel_--verily
_Damnation!_ The four plays hang together, and present compactly
Wedekind’s own growth of mind--from ardor, almost missionary zeal,
instilling his own subjective sympathy into his youngsters, girls as
well as boys, of _Spring’s Awakening_ (and his own hate, as well, of
teachers, parents, all their dry repressive world), to the objective
but still passionate building of full-formed characters, solid plot,
unswerving tragedy (no Muffled Gentleman here!) in _Earth-Spirit_, and
then to the less contained, extravagant riot, repulsively cold or hotly
ugly, perverse, verbose, derisive of his audience and even of his
art, that he so rightly named _Pandora’s Box_; and lastly to the frank
self-revelation, unrealistic preaching, unmotivated, unartful, yet
superbly confident theatricality of his _Damnation!_
What a life of disillusionment, self-questioning and pain must lie
behind these changes! Its externals Wedekind sketched himself, in
1901; but its real import can only be deduced from close, fond study
of his many plays, his stories and his poems. His father, a physician,
lived--it may be interesting to us Americans to know--in San Francisco
from the beginning of the gold rush in 1849 till 1864. His mother was
an actress in the German theater there when the elder Wedekind, at
46, met her and married her, a girl just half his age. Her father, an
inventor, manufacturer and gifted musician, had died some years before
in a German insane asylum. One child was born to the couple in America,
but they returned to Germany in 1864 and there, in Hanover, Frank (note
the American, quite un-German form of the name) was born, on the 24th
of July.
In 1872 the family moved to Switzerland, where Frank grew up, one of
six children, amid scenery that he praises but which, to judge by the
absence of any response to the beauties of nature from most of his
work, had little effect upon him. At 19 he began to earn his living,
at first as a journalist, at 22 as a press-agent, at 24 as a private
secretary, traveling extensively with his employers (notably the
painters Rudinoff and Willy Grétor) in France and England. In 1895-96
he was a public reader of Ibsen plays in Switzerland; in ’96-97,
political editor of _Simplicissimus_ in Munich; in ’97-98, an actor and
producer in a theatrical company which toured North Germany in Ibsen
plays and first presented on the stage his _Earth-Spirit_, written in
’93, published in ’95. In ’98-99 he held a similar important post with
the resident company of the Schauspielhaus in Munich and wrote his
great, though local, comedy _The Marquis of Keith_.
Save for a term in prison as a result of the prosecution of the
editors of _Simplicissimus_ for lèse-majesté,--a term enriched by
the composition of his long story of Utopian education--physical
education--for young girls, named _Minne-haha_ (again the influence
of America), which to my ears is the most pure and limpid piece of
German prose one is ever likely to find,--he continued to reside in
Munich, active in this or that playhouse or cabaret, for the rest of
his life. He composed many _Brettl-lieder_, rhymes and music, and sang
them in Bohemian restaurants. Every June, after Max Reinhardt became a
theatrical power in Berlin, he appeared there as an actor in a series
of his own plays, hastily prepared but persistently repeated to a
slowly growing, grudgingly appreciative public. As an actor he was a
paradox: more natural than Naturalistic, but more Expressionistic than
expressive. I saw him act several times in his _Franziska_, his new
play in 1912-13, and marveled at the almost inarticulate strain, the
rigid body, popping eyes, deep-lined and taut-drawn face, that marked
him then. Sartorially he was something of a dude: to be correct was a
requirement he forced upon his mettlesome temperament. His inheritance,
derived from a mixture of middle-aged, scientific, abstract-minded,
cold North German and young, sensuous, emotional, artistic Austrian,
resulted in a conflict that could be seen by anyone: he possessed
thesis and antithesis but never synthesis. His face expressed by
turns his fluctuant, opposing sides, Jesuit and ironic actor, tragedy
and vice, now gray, sharp-eyed, superior,--suddenly warm and deep.
He was no artist on the boards--too stiff, too choked with his own
earnestness, too genuinely intense,--but he was vastly interesting as a
man, a sufferer, a moralist and preacher inured to being scoffed at and
returning the too normal world hot scorn for scorn.
Extravagances and overemphasis, unmotivated, violent decisions and
spasmodic super-vitality in his characters, all these his vividest
traits, are explicable on this score of his own clashing disharmony
within. But he himself explains them as an artistic revolt, merely,
against the repressed and colorless dramaturgy which conquered Germany
in the wake of Ibsen. These bookish plays that stood in the way of
his own starkly abundant theatric art both angered him to protest and
augmented his own trend toward free unnaturalness. He has in his time,
he says (in _Schauspielkunst_, a collection of critical notes published
in 1910), played many parts by Sudermann, Hauptmann, Max Halbe, etc.,
and he is sure that actors trained in their literary technique are
unequal to his fierce, full-blooded characters. He demands acting
that shall be like hurdle-racing--bold, bounding creativeness--but
the lesser actors blue-pencil their hurdles out of the way, while the
greater ones make long “dramatic pauses” before them and deprive them
so of conviction. Certainly, Wedekind’s jerky stage-style requires a
rushing performance to give even the semblance of smooth truth to the
preposterous, but, when rightly played, thrilling theatric stories he
often tells. Short-of-breath, dry and uninspired, with voice untrained
for emotional seizures and outbursts, the ordinary cup-and-saucer actor
must of course mar Wedekind’s plays.
In the field of ethics, however, lay his sharpest cleavage from his
own generation, and his most dangerous pitfall. The mighty influence
of Ibsen had perverted, when Wedekind began to write, not merely
stagecraft, but all German drama, and turned it to the contemplation
not of life and action, but of principles: guilt, duty, and atonement.
Underrunning all the enthusiasm for exact representation and thorough
character-delineation that reigned in 1890 was an anæmic current of
literary preconceptions, second-hand ideals, and prime attention
to externals, either mere incidental questions of technique or
moral, philosophic conclusions (most often suicidal) to problems of
responsibility and conduct prearranged for meek and docile characters.
In the Prologue to _Earth-Spirit_, Wedekind specifically mocks the
pale and will-less heroes of Hauptmann’s _Lonely Lives_ and _Before
Sunrise_, and by implication all the conscientious weakness of the
then new Naturalism. He for his part had a sharp hunger for life,
irrespective of its moral aims and effects,--life boisterous, physical
and energizing. It is reflected in Melchior in _Spring’s Awakening_,
with keenest sympathy. He had also a theory, expressed by Alva, his
self-portrait in _Pandora’s Box_, that the place to find compelling
drama was in the changeful lives of people who never read a book,
who lived by instinct and expressed themselves, words and deeds, in
total ignorance of cultured ethics. The Paris and the London scenes of
_Pandora’s Box_ may indicate that in those cities the young dramatist
plunged into this demimonde in person, experienced much, and actually
undermined, instead of strengthening, his artistic creative power.
In ’90-91, when he wrote _Spring’s Awakening_, the 26-year-old pioneer
playwright was still close to adolescent tumult, doubt and rapture.
He writes a fluent, subtly interconnected, almost musical suite of
scenes utterly real when dealing with the children and youthfully
satirical when caricaturing the adults. He has no literary by-end,
no preoccupation with form or naturalism as such, and while he has a
moral, or rather an anti-moral, purpose, and evidently seeks to include
in his play the ontogeny of all the more common sex-perversions, his
chief interest is in Melchior, Moritz and Wendla--the vividness and
promise of the life awakening in them, the cruelty and tragedy of its
extinguishment, for which the adult world must take full blame. Whether
the play was produced at all in the 1890’s I do not know. Reinhardt,
who had had marked success with _Earth-Spirit_ among his very first
independent productions, in 1902-03, gave a very notable interpretation
of _Spring’s Awakening_ in 1906 which attained 390 performances; and it
has been widely acted since then, and in book form has far outstripped
the popularity of any other Wedekind work. A very imperfect translation
appeared in this country about 1909, and a private production was
later attempted in New York, with ludicrous inartistry. The “lesson”
of the play--“Parents, respect the possibilities of puberty, and give
it enlightenment and guidance”--is an old story with us now. We must
not forget the date on Wendla’s tombstone: the play transpires in 1892.
But the multifarious, teeming life, the lovableness and universal
naturalness of the chief characters, and the free, ardent expression
of the young author,--these are of no specific time, and will keep
Wedekind’s name alive for generations of adolescent readers.
His foreign experiences seem to have taken place between the writing
of this play and that of _Earth-Spirit_. The author is quite out of
sight in _Earth-Spirit_; he is the animal-tamer of the Prologue, the
showman putting his performers through their acts. There is a grim
objectiveness about this study of clashing wills and fatal weaknesses.
No moral is in sight, and if the technique is consciously more
conventional and studied (note Alva’s soliloquy in Act III), the
matter is far removed from the Ibsen-Hauptmann fashion of its day.
The dialogue is so idiomatic, so carefully fitted to each speaker’s
character, that this play is by far the hardest of the four to put in
English. Wedekind has dramatized the attractions and repulsions of sex
among mature people very variously endowed with strength and courage.
He has created Lulu, the embodiment of primitive, natural, instinctive
femininity, and watched her drive men mad. He offers no judgments, he
indulges in no retrospects or explanations: this is the fundamental
stuff of life as he has lived it and observed it. It takes a naturally
theatric shape: it is violently dramatic just because it is real and
living.
To these powerful, objective ’90’s of Wedekind belong also the one-act
play _Der Kammersänger_ or _The Tenor_, acted in New York in 1916 and
published in _Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays_; and _The Marquis of
Keith_, in which the struggle for success and money is as turbulently
dramatized as the sex-conflict was in _Earth-Spirit_. But there is a
moralizing character in _The Marquis_, a foil for the conscienceless
hero and also a mouthpiece for Wedekind. As he found himself and his
message disregarded, bitterness overcame him, and more and more he
scolds or preaches directly at his public. He worked over _Pandora’s
Box_, off and on, throughout this decade, and the impulse to expound
himself ever and again peeps through its three distorted pictures
of low life. Here and there it is deliberately disgusting. When it
was published, in 1901 or ’02, most of Act II was in bad French,
much of Act III in worse English: author or publisher or both were
self-conscious about it: and promptly it was banned. There ensued
appeals through various courts, and finally the ban was lifted, an
all-German text prepared, and occasional productions ventured. My
translation, published in New York in 1914, has never roused objection;
why should it?--the bare speeches without the accompanying action
which I have heard vividly described by friends lately in Germany, can
scarcely be shocking to readers in 1923. Later, Wedekind published the
two _Lulu_ plays together under her name, omitting _Earth-Spirit_,
Act III (which seems to me indispensable, none the less), and
_Pandora’s Box_, Act I--a commendable compression, because the whole
cholera episode is morbid and nearly incredible, and a swift flight
to France after Schön’s murder is quite thinkable without the long,
mostly undramatic speeches that overload the present commencement of
_Pandora’s Box_.
The pessimism of the last act is terrific and leads straight to the
mood of _Damnation!_--a sort of satyr-play, concluding the three
tragedies. In it, quite unrealistically, is passionately expressed
what _Pandora’s Box_ implies--the hopelessness, the impossibility of
happiness (for one, that is, whose conception of happiness is physical)
from life as at present organized. This was the mission--this and the
various remedies that Wedekind proposed--which the world persistently,
unshakably condemned. Wedekind writhed. Between _Pandora’s Box_ and
_Damnation!_ (1905) appeared two scarcely disguised subjective plays,
_King Nicolo_, or _Such is Life_, which is very largely autobiography
transferred to fourteenth-century Italy, a swift, dramatic and pathetic
tale genuinely engaging our sympathies; and _Hidalla_, or _The Giant
Dwarf_, which partly by satire, partly by outright propaganda,
sets forth the Wedekindian point of view--the necessity for a new
morality, for those who are rich enough to afford it: a morality
that puts beauty, not material welfare, first among its objects,
and especially revolutionizes sexual life. The worthlessness, for
Wedekind, of intellectual concepts, theories, spirituality and all
other abstractions--his utter absorption in the darker, inner world of
feeling, will and instinct, especially the world of his own jarring
soul, unheeding others or society at large, robs this one-sided drama
of true tragic force. He tried again to justify himself in his next
two plays: _Music_, a quite objective study of the havoc artistic
education, seduction, abortion, the punishment of abortion, etc., etc.,
may cause; and _Censorship_, a wholly subjective one-act written after
the lawsuits over _Pandora’s Box_ had been settled, and striving, not
too transparently, to show the world his truly self-sacrificial and
missionary spirit. By this time disciples were beginning to come to
him; he married; and the force of his irritation spent itself. His last
period begins.
It had little that was new to offer. _Schloss Wetterstein_ is an
engrossing, if extravagant, sex-tragedy in three semi-independent
acts, reminiscent of the _Lulu_ plays but laid in an aristocratic
environment. The Jack the Ripper of its grewsome end is an American
millionaire--an artist in sadism. Had Wedekind been reading of Harry
Thaw? _Franziska_ is a parody of _Faust_, a sort of feminine Faust, a
phantasmagoria in which there every now and then outcrops a striking,
profound, or even beautiful moment. Franziska finishes not in Faust’s
heaven, but in domesticity, and one cannot clearly discover whether
this is mockery or a real change of view. _Samson_, or _Shame and
Jealousy_, and _Herakles_, are blank-verse plays of Hebrew or Hellenic
legends, written with lessening power and intensity,--plays dramatic,
poetic, passionate enough to rank with Hauptmann’s work of the same
period but not “so fair, so wild, so brightly flecked” as Wedekind once
had been. In the first year of the War, finally, appeared a curiously
objective historical character-study in eight scenes, _Bismarck_,
plainly forerunning Drinkwater’s _Lincoln_ and its successors, and
utterly un-Wedekindian in style--not a word of sex, of satire, or of
himself. The full tale of his work includes, besides the above, four
very light satiric farces--one of them, _The World of Youth_, dated
1889, a most interesting prelude to nearly all his later ideas; two
esoteric verse-dialogues, two pantomime scenarios constructed in the
’90’s, the time of his greatest power, and anticipating modern movie
and ballet technique; a large number of poems, mostly erotic ballads
that he sang to his own accompaniment (I was reminded of them, and him,
when I first heard Bobby Edwards of Greenwich Village), and some prose
tales, shorter than _Minne-haha_.
Always he dealt in will, in inner urges, often specifically in “the
hellish drive out of which no joy remains alive.” His characters, no
matter how often balked, derided, or wounded, return to the attack
Until they are killed. Emotion is an inexhaustible force. The drama
of opposed views, of contrasted attitudes on points of conduct or
belief, can offer nothing so enthralling as this insatiable struggle
for the most fundamental pleasures humanity knows--which never
ultimately or for long are pleasures! And the same Satanic return to
the attack, repeated efforts at destruction, are seen in Wedekind’s own
life, hurling play after play against conventional society. At last,
after his death, conventional society broke down, and the forces of
disruption honored him, and the confused masses sought in his other,
Utopian, constructive work for light upon the society that is to
come. To few writers is such posthumous homage given; by few can such
a reversal of judgment be expected. Wedekind remained ever true to
himself, his deeply divided, contrary self, now appearing through his
plays, now vanishing again behind his characters, but always vividly
alive: one could feel _him_, one had the sense of human passion and
struggle, of something personally experienced and sweated out, in
almost all his work. Hence, in the last analysis, his hold upon our
later generation: we too want life, not literature--personality, not
limpid art--original thought, even destructive and extravagant, not old
truths, even the deepest, newly dressed. Wedekind, like Strindberg,
like Andreiev, and like Shaw, meets these demands. If America should
ever have reason to turn pessimistic, Wedekind will be waiting; and
even as America is, in Wedekind she can find much that is vital,
life-promoting, of immediate power and worth.
SAMUEL A. ELIOT, JR.
Smith College,
January, 1923.
SPRING’S AWAKENING
(FRÜHLINGS ERWACHEN)
A Children’s Tragedy
_Dedicated to_
THE MUFFLED GENTLEMAN
CHARACTERS
MELCHIOR GABOR }
MORITZ STIEFEL }
HÄNSCHEN RILOW }
ERNEST ROEBEL } _Schoolboys, aged 14 to 17_
LÄMMERMEIER }
OTTO }
GEORGE }
ROBERT }
DIETHELM }
REINHOLD }
RUPRECHT } _Boys in a House of Correction_
HELMUTH }
GASTON }
MR. GABOR, a Judge }
MRS. FANNY GABOR } _Melchior’s Parents_
MR. STIEFEL, _Moritz’s Father_
MR. ZIEGENMELKER, _his Friend_
MR. PROBST, _Moritz’s Uncle_
REV. MR. KAHLBAUGH, _Pastor_
DR. SONNENSTICH, Principal }
DR. AFFENSCHMALZ }
DR. KNOCHENBRUCH } _The Faculty of the
DR. ZUNGENSCHLAG } Boys’ School_
DR. KNÜPPELDICK }
DR. HUNGERGURT }
DR. FLIEGENTOD }
HABEBALD, _the School Beadle_
DR. PROKRUSTES, _Head of the House of Correction_
A LOCKSMITH
DR. VON BRAUSEPULVER, M.D.
THE MUFFLED GENTLEMAN
MRS. BERGMANN
INA MÜLLER, _her married daughter_
WENDLA BERGMANN, _her 14-year-old daughter_
MARTHA BESSEL }
THEA } _Wendla’s Friends_
ILSE, _an older girl, an artist’s model_
The Scene is laid in Southern Germany or in Switzerland. The Time is
from May to November, 1892.
A NOTE ON THE STAGING
SPRING’S AWAKENING is divided into Nineteen Scenes as follows:
ACT I: SCENE 1. In Mrs. Bergmann’s House.
SCENE 2. A Park.
SCENE 3. The Same.
SCENE 4. The School Yard.
SCENE 5. In the Woods.
ACT II: SCENE 1. Melchior’s Study.
SCENE 2. Same as I, 1.
SCENE 3. In the Rilow House.
SCENE 4. A Hayloft.
SCENE 5. Mrs. Gabor’s Room.
SCENE 6. The Bergmann Garden.
SCENE 7. A Path near the River.
ACT III: SCENE 1. The Faculty Room at the School.
SCENE 2. By the Wall of the Graveyard.
SCENE 3. In the Gabor House.
SCENE 4. In the House of Correction.
SCENE 5. Wendla’s Bedroom.
SCENE 6. A Vineyard.
SCENE 7. The Graveyard.
It will be noted that the scenes concluding the acts, long scenes all
of them, are intended to occupy the full stage, and that the prior
scenes in each act may be played in the foreground.
Two of the scenes, II, 3, and III, 6, have nothing to do with the
story and to save time may be omitted, though the latter has another
importance, lightening with its idyllic atmosphere the squalor and
bitterness of the last act. If it _is_ omitted, III, 4, and III, 5,
might be played in reverse order.
The simplest arrangement of the stage would be a neutral proscenium,
six or seven feet deep, pierced with doors. Behind this, different
backwalls can be lowered, and all the interior scenes played in this
shallow front space. On the back of the stage should be sloping ground
covered with underbrush, and a path winding down through it. In the
middle-stage can be set the properties for special scenes--a bench in a
box-hedge for I, 2 and 3; a huge oak-trunk for I, 5; a garden wall with
grass and violets for II, 6; the graveyard wall with Moritz’s grave for
III, 2, etc. The swiftest possible sequence of scenes within the act is
of prime importance.
ACT I
SCENE I.--_A pretty little room, with a window looking out on an
early spring garden._ WENDLA’S _bed in one corner, wardrobe in
the other, table and two chairs between. Doors just below bed and
wardrobe._
WENDLA _stands at the foot of the bed, all dressed except for her
frock, which hangs on the chair in front of her. Her mother stands
on the other side of the table, with a long dress in her hands._
WENDLA--Why did you make the dress so long for me, mother?
MRS. BERGMANN--You’re fourteen years old to-day!
WENDLA--If I had known you were going to make my dress so long, I’d
rather not have been fourteen.
MRS. BERGMANN--It isn’t too long, Wendla. What do you want? Can I help
my girl’s growing two inches taller every spring? A girl as grown up as
you can’t go round in a little princess-dress!
WENDLA--All the same, my little princess-dress looks better on me
than that nightgown. Let me wear it just once more, mother! Just this
summer! That penitence-frock will suit me just as well at fifteen as at
fourteen: let’s hang it up till my =next= birthday! Now I’d only tread
on the braid.
MRS. BERGMANN--I don’t know what I ought to say. I’d like so much to
keep you this way, child,--just as you are. Other girls are overgrown
and awkward at your age. You’re just the opposite. Who knows what you
will be like when the others are fully developed?
WENDLA--Who knows? Perhaps I shan’t =be= at all.
MRS. BERGMANN--Child, child, what makes you think such things!
WENDLA--Don’t, mother dear; oh, don’t be sad.
MRS. BERGMANN--[_Kissing her._] My only darling!
WENDLA--They come to me so, night-times, when I can’t go to sleep. They
don’t make me a bit sad, and I know I sleep better afterwards. Is it
wrong, mother, to think about things like that?
MRS. BERGMANN--Go, dear, and hang the “penitence-frock” away, and put
on your princess-dress again, God bless you! When I get the chance I’ll
put another breadth of ruffles on the bottom of it.
WENDLA--[_Hanging the dress in the wardrobe._] No! Then I might as well
be all of twenty right away!
MRS. BERGMANN--If only you don’t get too cold. In its time that little
dress was plenty long enough for you, but now----
WENDLA--Now, with summer coming? Oh, mother, not even little children
get diphtheria in their knees! Why are you so scary? At my age nobody
freezes, least of all in the legs. Do you think it would be better if
I got too hot, mother? Thank the good God if your darling doesn’t cut
off her sleeves some morning and come to you at twilight without her
shoes and stockings!--When I wear my penitence-frock I’ll dress like a
fairy queen under it.... Don’t scold, motherkin,--nobody’ll see how,
then!
CURTAIN
SCENE II.--_Sunday evening. A gravel walk in front of a park bench;
shrubbery and tree-tops behind. MELCHIOR enters, followed by the
other boys_.
MELCHIOR--I’m tired of that: I don’t want to any more.
OTTO--Then the rest of us can just as well stop, too. Have you done
your work, Melchior?
MELCHIOR--Go on playing, why don’t you!
MORITZ--Where are you going?
MELCHIOR--For a walk.
GEORGE--It’ll be dark soon.
ROBERT--Have you done your work already?
MELCHIOR--And why shouldn’t I go for a walk in the dark?
ERNEST--Central America!--Louis XV!--Sixty lines of Homer!--Seven
equations!
MELCHIOR--Damn the work!
GEORGE--Oh, if only Latin Comp. didn’t come to-morrow!
MORITZ--One can’t think of anything without some work coming in between!
OTTO--I’m going home.
GEORGE--I, too, home to work!
ERNEST--Me, too; me, too.
ROBERT--Good night, Melchior.
MELCHIOR--Sleep well!... [_All make off except_ MORITZ.] Gosh, I’d like
to know what we’re in the world for!
MORITZ--School makes me wish I’d been a cabhorse sooner!--What do we
go to school for? So that somebody can examine us. And what are we
examined for? To make us flunk! Seven of us have got to flunk just
because the classroom upstairs only holds sixty.--I’ve felt so queer
since Christmas! Devil take me, if it weren’t for Papa I’d tie up my
bundle this very night and be off to Altoona!
MELCHIOR--Let’s talk about something else. [_They go for a walk._]
[In practice, MELCHIOR can here fling himself down on the bench;
MORITZ remain standing.]
MORITZ--Do you see the black cat there with its tail stuck up?
MELCHIOR--Do you believe in omens?
MORITZ--I don’t quite know.--It came from over there.--Means nothing!
MELCHIOR--I believe that’s a Charybdis everyone falls into who has
struggled up out of the Scylla of religious nonsense. Let’s sit down
under this beech. The warm spring wind is streaming over the mountains.
I’d like to be a young Dryad in the woods up there letting herself be
rocked and swung in the highest tree-tops all night long to-night....
MORITZ--Unbutton your vest, Melchior.
MELCHIOR--Ah, how it blows through one’s clothes!
MORITZ--It’s getting so jolly dark you can’t see your hand before your
face. Where are you? [_He draws_ MELCHIOR _down beside him. Only their
voices, from here on, come out of the darkness._] Don’t you believe
too, Melchior, that modesty in people is just the effect of their
bringing-up?
MELCHIOR--I started thinking about that just the day before yesterday.
No, after all it seems to me to be deeply rooted in human nature.
Imagine undressing completely before even your best friend! You
wouldn’t do it unless he did it, too, at the same time. But it’s also
more or less a matter of custom.
MORITZ--I’ve sometimes thought, if I have children, boys and girls,
right from the start I’ll have them sleep together in the same room--if
possible, on the same bed--and help each other twice a day to dress and
undress,--and on hot days, boys and girls alike, let ’em wear nothing
at all but a short tunic, white woolen with just a leather belt. It
seems to me, if they grew up so, they’d surely, later, be more at ease
than we are, usually....
MELCHIOR--Oh, I’m sure of that, Moritz!--The only question is, what if
the girls should have children?
MORITZ--How do you mean--have children?
MELCHIOR--I believe there’s a kind of instinct in that matter. I
believe, for instance, if you shut up a pair of kittens, male and
female, and cut them off from any contact with the outer world--left
them absolutely to their own impulses, that is--well, the female sooner
or later would get pregnant, though neither she nor the male had
anyone to imitate or show them how.
MORITZ--With animals--yes--it must happen all by itself.
MELCHIOR--With people, too, just the same! I ask you, Moritz,--if your
boys are sleeping on the same bed as the girls, and all of a sudden
the first masculine impulses stir in them.... I’d like to bet with
anybody....
MORITZ--Yes, you may be right there. But all the same----
MELCHIOR--And with your girls it would be absolutely the same at the
corresponding age. Not that a girl exactly--of course, one can’t tell
so well ... at least, it would be natural to expect ... and their
curiosity, too, would be there, to do its share.
MORITZ--One question by the way----
MELCHIOR--Well?
MORITZ--You’ll answer?
MELCHIOR--Surely.
MORITZ--True?
MELCHIOR--There’s my hand. Well, Moritz?
MORITZ--Have you written your theme yet?
MELCHIOR--Oh, speak out what you want to say! No one can hear us or
see us.
MORITZ--You understand my children would be made to work all day in
the yard or the garden, or play games that called for real physical
exertion. They’ll have to ride and wrestle and climb, and of all things
not sleep so soft at night as we do. We are awfully softened! I don’t
believe people dream when they have hard beds!
MELCHIOR--I’m going to sleep from now till vintage time in just my
hammock. I’ve shoved my bed behind the stove: they go together. Last
winter I dreamt once that I whipped our Lolo till he couldn’t move a
limb! That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever dreamt.--What makes
you look at me so strangely?
MORITZ--Have you felt them yet?
MELCHIOR--What?
MORITZ--How did you phrase it?
MELCHIOR--Masculine impulses?
MORITZ--M-hm.
MELCHIOR--Yes indeed!
MORITZ--I too.
MELCHIOR--In fact I’ve known that quite a while--nearly a year.
MORITZ--It struck me like a bolt of lightning!
MELCHIOR--You had dreamt?
MORITZ--Oh, just a flash ... of legs in sky-blue tights climbing over
the teacher’s desk--to be exact, I thought they were going to climb
over it. I only got a glimpse of them.
MELCHIOR--George Zirschnitz dreamt of his =mother=.
MORITZ--Did he tell you that?
MELCHIOR--Out there on the gallows-path.
MORITZ--If you only knew what I’ve gone through since that night!
MELCHIOR--Qualms of conscience?
MORITZ--Qualms of conscience?--Pangs of death!
MELCHIOR--Good God....
MORITZ--I thought I was past cure. I thought I was suffering from some
inward weakness.--I only began to feel easier when I set out to take
notes on the memories of my life. Oh, yes, Melchior! the last three
weeks have been a Gethsemane for me.
MELCHIOR--I had been more or less prepared for it beforehand. I felt a
bit ashamed, but that was all.
MORITZ--And yet you’re almost a full year younger than me.
MELCHIOR--On that point, Moritz, I wouldn’t waste much thought. By
all I can make out, there is no definite age for this phantom’s first
appearance. You know that big Lämmermeier with the straw-colored hair
and the big nose? He’s three years older than me, but Hansy Rilow says
that to this very day he dreams of nothing but tarts and apricot jelly.
MORITZ--I ask you, how can Hansy Rilow tell about that?
MELCHIOR--He’s asked him.
MORITZ--He’s asked him?--I’d never have dared to ask anybody!
MELCHIOR--You just asked me, didn’t you?
MORITZ--Yes, I did!--Maybe Hansy had made his will too,
beforehand!--Isn’t it a queer game the world plays with us?! And
we’re supposed to be grateful! I don’t remember having felt the least
desire for this sort of disturbance.--Why couldn’t I have been left
sleeping quietly until everything was still again! Father and mother
could have had a hundred better children. But here I am, with no idea
how I got here, and now I must be responsible for not having stayed
away!--Haven’t you sometimes thought about that too, Melchior: in what
kind of a way exactly we got mixed up in this whirl?
MELCHIOR--Do you mean you don’t know that either, Moritz?
MORITZ--How should I know?--I see how the hens lay eggs and hear how
Mama says she carried me under her heart; but is that enough?--And I
remember being embarrassed even at five years old when someone turned
up the queen of hearts, she was so décolleté. That feeling has gone;
but to-day I can scarcely speak to any girl any more without something
abominable coming into my head--and I swear to you, Melchior, I don’t
know =what=!
MELCHIOR--I’ll tell you the whole thing. I’ve gotten it partly out of
books, partly from pictures, partly from observations of nature. You’ll
be surprised. It made me an atheist at first. I told George Zirschnitz
about it, too. He wanted to tell Hansy Rilow, but Hansy had learned it
all from his French governess when he was a kid.
MORITZ--I’ve gone through Meyer’s Abridged from A to Z. Words! just
words and more words! Not one simple explanation! Oh, this reticence!
What good to me is an encyclopædia that has nothing to say on the most
vital question of all?
MELCHIOR--Did you ever see two dogs running about the streets?
MORITZ--No!--Don’t tell me anything yet--not to-day, Melchior! I’ve
still got Central America and Louis XV before me, not to speak of the
sixty lines of Homer, the seven equations, the Latin Comp.--I should
lose out at everything to-morrow again. If I am to drudge successfully
I must be as dull as an ox.
MELCHIOR--But come up to my room with me. In three-quarters of an hour
I’ll have the Homer, the algebra, and =two= Latin Comp.’s. I’ll put a
few harmless blunders into yours, and the thing’s done. Mama’ll make us
some lemonade again, and we’ll talk comfortably about propagation.
MORITZ--I can’t!--I can’t talk comfortably about propagation! If you
want to help me, give me your information in writing. Write down what
you know. Make it as short and plain as you can, and stick it between
my books to-morrow at recess. I’ll carry it home without knowing I have
it, and come upon it sometime unexpectedly. I won’t be able to help
skimming thru it, even if I’m tired.... If it’s absolutely necessary,
you can draw something in the margin, too.
MELCHIOR--You’re like a girl.... But just as you like. It’ll be an
interesting job for me all right.--One question, Moritz.
MORITZ--Hm?
MELCHIOR--Have you ever =seen= a girl?
MORITZ--Yes!
MELCHIOR--All?
MORITZ--Every bit!
MELCHIOR--I, too.--Then no illustrations will be necessary.
MORITZ--At the Shooting-meet, in Leilich’s Anatomical Museum. If it
had come up, I’d have been chucked out of school. As beautiful as the
daylight--and oh, so =true=!
MELCHIOR--I was with Mama in Frankfort last summer-- Are you going
already, Moritz?
MORITZ--To get my work done.--Good night.
MELCHIOR--So long!
CURTAIN
SCENE III.--_A stormy afternoon._ MARTHA, WENDLA _and_ THEA _are
coming along the path_.
MARTHA--How the water gets into your shoes!
WENDLA--How the wind whistles past your cheeks!
THEA--How your heart pounds!
WENDLA--Let’s go out to the bridge. Ilse said the river was full of
bushes and trees. The boys have a raft on the water. They say Melchi
Gabor nearly got drowned yesterday evening.
THEA--Oh, =he= can swim!
MARTHA--You bet he can, kid!
WENDLA--If he hadn’t been able to swim, I guess he’d have been really
drowned.
THEA--Your braid’s coming out, Martha, your braid’s coming out!
MARTHA--Pooh, let it! It bothers me so all the time! I can’t wear my
hair short, like you; I can’t wear it loose like Wendla; I can’t wear a
bang; and at home I even have to put it up--all on account of my aunt!
WENDLA--I’ll bring scissors with me to-morrow to the
confirmation-class. While you’re reciting “Well for him who erreth not”
I’ll cut it off!
MARTHA--For God’s sake, Wendla! Papa’ll beat me to pieces, and Mama’ll
lock me up three nights in the coal-hole!
WENDLA--What’ll he beat you with, Martha?
MARTHA--It often strikes me that they’d miss something, after all, if
they didn’t have such a horrid little brat as I am.
THEA--Oh, my dear!
MARTHA--Aren’t you allowed to have a sky-blue ribbon thru the top of
your chemise?
THEA--Pink satin! Mama thinks pink goes well with my pitch-black eyes.
MARTHA--Blue’s awfully becoming to me.--Well, Mama yanked me out of bed
by the hair--this way; I fell with my hands out on the floor.--You see
Mama prays with us night after night....
WENDLA--In your place I’d have run away from them long ago, out into
the world.
MARTHA--There! That’s it, that’s just what I’m aiming at. That’s just
it.--But she’d like to see me! Oh, she’d just like to see me! At any
rate, I shan’t have anything to blame my =mother= for later on!
THEA--Huh--huh--
MARTHA--Can you possibly think, Thea, what Mama meant by that?
THEA--Not I-- Can you, Wendla?
WENDLA--I would simply have asked her.
MARTHA--I lay on the floor and shrieked and screamed. In comes Papa.
Rip!--Off with the chemise! Out of the door with me! There now! Maybe
I’d like to go down on the street like that, eh?...
WENDLA--Oh, Martha, that just can’t be true!
MARTHA--I froze. I told all about it. Well, I must sleep in the sack
the whole night.
THEA--Never in my life could I sleep in a sack!
WENDLA--I really wish I could sleep in your sack =for= you sometime.
MARTHA--If only you’re not beaten----
THEA--But don’t you smother in it?
MARTHA--Your head stays out. It’s tied under your chin.
THEA--And then do they beat you?
MARTHA--No. Only when there’s something special.
WENDLA--What do they beat you =with=, Martha?
MARTHA--Oh, what--with anything handy.--Does your mother think it’s
“disreputable” to eat a piece of bread in bed?
WENDLA--No, no.
MARTHA--I do believe they enjoy it, though, even if they never speak of
that.--When once I have children I’ll let them grow up like the weeds
in our flower-garden. No one bothers himself about =them=, and they
stand so high, so thick!--while the roses in the beds are flowering
worse and worse each summer.
THEA--When _I_ have children I’ll dress them all in rosy pink--pink
hats, pink dresses, pink shoes. Only their stockings--their stockings
will be black as night! Then when I go walking I’ll have them march
ahead of me.--And you, Wendla?
WENDLA--How do you two know that you’ll have any?
THEA--Well, why shouldn’t we have some?
MARTHA--It’s true Aunt Euphemia hasn’t any.
THEA--Silly! That’s because she’s not married!
WENDLA--Aunty Bauer was married three times, and hasn’t got one.
MARTHA--If you have any, Wendla, which would you rather--boys or girls?
WENDLA--Boys! Boys!
THEA--Me too--boys!
MARTHA--Me too--better twenty boys than three girls.
THEA--Girls are tiresome.
MARTHA--If I weren’t a girl already, I surely wouldn’t want to be one
any more!
WENDLA--That’s a matter of taste, I guess, Martha. I’m glad every day
that I’m a girl. I wouldn’t exchange with a prince, believe me.--But
that’s why I’d only want boys.
THEA--But that’s nonsense, Wendla, rank nonsense!
WENDLA--But look here, child,--mustn’t it be a thousand times more
uplifting to be loved by a man than by a girl?
THEA--But you wouldn’t say that forest-inspector Pfälle loved Melitta
more than she loves him!
WENDLA--Yes, I would, too, Thea.--Pfälle is proud. Pfälle is proud of
being forest-inspector, for he has nothing else.--Melitta is =happy=,
because she gets ten thousand times more than she is.
MARTHA--Aren’t you proud of =yourself=, Wendla?
WENDLA--That would be silly.
MARTHA--How proud I wish I could be, in your place!
THEA--Only see how she puts her feet down, how straight ahead she
looks, how she holds herself, Martha! If that isn’t pride--
WENDLA--But what for? I’m so happy that I’m a girl! If I weren’t one,
I’d kill myself, so that next time.... [_Stops, seeing_ MELCHIOR. _He
crosses past them, greeting them, and goes, followed by their eyes._]
THEA--He’s got a wonderful head.
MARTHA--That’s how I think of the young Alexander, when he went to
school to Aristotle.
THEA--Oh, good gracious! Greek History!--I only remember how Socrates
lay in his tub when Alexander sold him the donkey’s shadow.
WENDLA--They say he’s the third best in his class.
THEA--Professor Knochenbruch says he could be first, if he wanted to.
MARTHA--He has a lovely forehead, but his friend has more soulful eyes.
THEA--Moritz Stiefel?--He’s a stupid!
MARTHA--I’ve always gotten on with him perfectly well.
THEA--He humiliates you, no matter where you are with him. At the
Rilows’ party he offered me some sugar-almonds. Imagine, Wendla,--they
were soft and warm! Isn’t that just---- He said he had kept them too
long in his trousers pocket!
WENDLA--Think of this: Melchi Gabor told me that time that he didn’t
believe in anything--not in God, or in a future life--in just nothing
in the world!
CURTAIN
SCENE IV.--_Near the Boys’ School. All the boys but_ MELCHIOR _and_
MORITZ _and_ ERNEST ROEBEL _are standing about expectantly_.
MELCHIOR--[_Entering._] Can any of you tell me where Moritz Stiefel is
keeping himself?
GEORGE--He’s going to catch it--Oh, he’s going to catch it!
OTTO--He’ll go too far once, and then he’ll get what’s coming to him
good and plenty.
LÄMMERMEIER--Lord knows _I_ wouldn’t like to be in his shoes at this
moment!
ROBERT--Some cheek! Some impudence!
MELCHIOR--But wha--wha--what do you mean?
GEORGE--What do we mean?--Well, listen....
LÄMMERMEIER--I wish I hadn’t said anything.
OTTO--Me too--=wish= I hadn’t!
MELCHIOR--If you don’t tell me this minute----
ROBERT--Well, here it is: Moritz Stiefel has broken into the
Faculty-Room!
MELCHIOR--The Faculty-Room!
OTTO--The Faculty-Room! Right after Latin.
GEORGE--He was the last out. He stayed behind on purpose.
LÄMMERMEIER--As I turned the hall corner I saw him opening the door.
MELCHIOR--You go to----
LÄMMERMEIER--Yeah, if only =he= doesn’t go to----
GEORGE--I guess someone had left the key in the lock.
ROBERT--Or else Moritz Stiefel has a pick-lock on him.
OTTO--I’d believe it of him!
LÄMMERMEIER--If he has luck he’ll only get a Sunday afternoon.
ROBERT--Along with a demerit in his report.
OTTO--If he doesn’t get a suspension on top of a reprimand.
HANSY RILOW--There he is!
MELCHIOR--Pale as a sheet. [MORITZ _appears, in the utmost excitement_.]
LÄMMERMEIER--Moritz, Moritz, what have you done?
MORITZ--Nothing--nothing----
ROBERT--You’re feverish.
MORITZ--With joy--with rapture--with jubilation----
OTTO--You were caught----?
MORITZ--I’ve passed!--Melchior, I’ve passed! Oh, let the world
go hang now--I have passed!--Who would have believed that I’d be
promoted! I can’t realize it! Twenty times over I read it! I can’t
believe it--but God be thanked, there it was--there it stayed! I =am=
promoted!--[_Smiling._] I don’t know--I feel so queer--the earth’s
going round.... Melchior, Melchior, if you only knew what I’ve gone
thru!
HANSY RILOW--Congratulations, Moritz!--Just be glad that you got away
safe!
MORITZ--You don’t know, Hansy--you can’t imagine what depended on it.
For the last three weeks I’ve slunk past that door as though it were
the mouth of hell. Then, to-day,--it was ajar! I think if a million had
been offered me, nothing, oh, nothing could have held me back! Before
I knew it I was standing in the middle of the room--I was opening the
record book, turning the pages, finding--and during all that time--it
makes me shudder!----
MELCHIOR--During all that time----
MORITZ--All that time the door behind me was standing wide open!--How I
got out, how I got down the stairs, I don’t remember.
HANSY RILOW--Did Ernest Roebel pass, too?
MORITZ--Oh, yes, Hansy, sure! Ernest Roebel is promoted the same way.
ROBERT--Then you just can’t have read right. Not counting the dunces’
bench, there are sixty-one of us with you and Roebel, and the upper
classroom can’t hold more than sixty!
MORITZ--I read perfectly right. Ernest Roebel is moved up just as I
am--both of us, for the present, to be sure, only =provisionally=.
During the first quarter it will be decided which of us must make room
for the other.--Poor Roebel! God knows I’m not afraid for myself any
more. I’ve looked too far down into the depths this time for that!
OTTO--I bet you five marks it’ll be you that makes room.
MORITZ--You haven’t got it. I don’t want to rob you.--Gosh, won’t I
grind from now on!--Now I can tell you all too,--and you can believe it
or not, it doesn’t matter now--but _I_ know, _I_ know how true it is:
if I had not been promoted, I’d have shot myself.
ROBERT--Brag!
GEORGE--The coward!
OTTO--I’d like to see you shoot anything!
LÄMMERMEIER--Punch his face!
MELCHIOR--[_Punches_ LÄMMERMEIER.] Come along, Moritz. Let’s go to the
forester’s house.
GEORGE--Do you really believe that rot?
MELCHIOR--Is that your business?--Let ’em talk, Moritz. Just let’s
get away, out o’ the city. [_He pulls him away. They meet_ PROFESSORS
KNOCHENBRUCH _and_ HUNGERGURT, _touch their caps, and exeunt. The other
boys vanish, to the other side._]
KNOCHENBRUCH--It is beyond my comprehension, dear colleague, how the
best of my pupils can feel drawn like that to the very worst of them
all.
HUNGERGURT--And beyond mine too, dear colleague.
CURTAIN
SCENE V.--_A sunny afternoon in a wood of beech and oak trees. Thick
undergrowth. A big oak-trunk with mossy roots. By it_, WENDLA
_stands, looking about for the path_. MELCHIOR _breaks thru the
brush_.
MELCHIOR--[_Seeing her, stops dead._] Is it really you, Wendla? What
are you doing up here so all alone? I’ve been tramping up and down this
wood for the last three hours without meeting a soul, and now all of a
sudden you step out of the thickest covert at me!
WENDLA--Yes, it’s I.
MELCHIOR--If I didn’t know you were Wendla Bergmann I’d think you were
a Dryad fallen out of the branches!
WENDLA--No, no, I’m Wendla Bergmann.--Where have you come from?
MELCHIOR--I’m following my thoughts.
WENDLA--I’m looking for woodruff.[1] Mama wants to flavor May-wine with
them. At first she was going to come too, but at the last moment Aunty
Bauer turned up, and she doesn’t like to climb: so I came up here alone.
MELCHIOR--Have you got your woodruff?
WENDLA--The whole basket full. Over there under the beech-trees
they’re as thick as meadow-clover. Just now I’m looking round for a way
out. I seem to have got mixed up. Maybe you can tell me what time it is.
MELCHIOR--Just after ha’ past three.--When do they expect you back?
WENDLA--I thought it would be later. I lay a long time in the moss by
the brook and dreamed. The time went by me so quickly, I was afraid it
would soon be night.
MELCHIOR--If nobody’s expecting you yet, let’s lie down here a little
while. Under the oak there’s my favorite place. When you lean your head
back against the trunk and stare thru the twigs at the sky, you get
hypnotized. [_He does as he says._] The ground is still warm from the
morning sun. [_She sits on a root._]--There’s something I’ve wanted to
ask you for weeks, Wendla.
WENDLA--But I must be at home before five.
MELCHIOR--We’ll go in time together. I’ll take the basket and we’ll
strike out thru the underbrush and get to the bridge in ten minutes.
When one lies like this, with his forehead in his palm, one gets the
strangest ideas....
WENDLA--What was it you wanted to ask me, Melchior?
MELCHIOR--I’ve heard, Wendla, that you go a lot to poor people and take
them things to eat and even clothes and money. Do you do that of your
own accord or does your mother send you?
WENDLA--Generally Mother sends me. There are poor laborers’ families
with an awful lot of children. Often the man is out of work, and then
they’re cold or go hungry. We have still such a lot of things left in
cupboards and bureaus that we don’t need any longer.--But what made you
think of it?
MELCHIOR--Do you like to go, or not, when your mother sends you on such
errands?
WENDLA--Oh, I like to ever so much!--How can you ask?
MELCHIOR--But the children are dirty, the women are sick, the rooms are
alive with filth, the men hate you because you don’t work----
WENDLA--That isn’t true, Melchior,--and if it were true I’d go all the
more!
MELCHIOR--What do you mean, Wendla,--all the more?
WENDLA--I’d go all the more for that: it would give me so much more
pleasure to be able to help them!
MELCHIOR--Oh, so you go to the poor people for the pleasure you get out
of it!
WENDLA--I go because they’re poor!
MELCHIOR--But if it didn’t give you any pleasure, would you stop going?
WENDLA--Well, can I help it if it does give me pleasure?
MELCHIOR--[_Rolling over and staring straight up._] And yet it’s for
that that you’ll get into heaven!--So it was true, the thought that has
left me no peace for the last month!--Can the skinflint help it if it
=doesn’t= give him any pleasure to go and visit sick and dirty children?
WENDLA--Oh, I’m =sure= it would give =you= the =greatest= pleasure!
MELCHIOR--And yet it’s for that that he’s condemned to everlasting
death. [_Sits up, his back against the tree._] I’ll write it up and
send it to Pastor Kahlbauch. He started me on this. Why does he drivel
to us about “the joy of sacrifice”?--If he can’t answer me I won’t go
to his Sunday-school any more, nor let myself be confirmed.
WENDLA--Why do you want to give pain to your dear father and mother?
Let yourself be confirmed! It won’t cost you your head! If it weren’t
for our horrid white dresses and your baggy trousers, perhaps one could
even feel enthusiastic about it.
MELCHIOR--There =is= no self-sacrifice. There =is= no unselfishness.--I
see the good rejoice in their goodness, and the wicked tremble and
groan--I see you, Wendla Bergmann, shake your curls and laugh, and I
get as glum about it as a pariah!--What did you dream about just now,
Wendla, when you lay in the grass by the brookside?
WENDLA--Silly things--foolishness----
MELCHIOR--With your eyes open?
WENDLA--Oh, I dreamt I was a poor beggar-child, oh, awfully poor, who
was shoved out on the street at five in the morning and had to beg the
whole day long in wind and rain among harsh, hard-hearted people; and
if I came home at night shivering with hunger and cold, and hadn’t as
much money as my father wanted, then I was beaten and beaten....
MELCHIOR--Oh, I know, Wendla. You get that out of silly kid-stories.
Believe me, such brutal people don’t exist any more!
WENDLA--Oh, yes, they do, Melchior,--you don’t know!--Martha Bessel is
beaten night after night, so that you can see the marks the next day.
Oh, what she must suffer! It makes you boiling hot to hear her tell
about it. I’m so terribly sorry for her, I often have to cry into my
pillow in the middle of the night. For months I’ve been thinking and
thinking how to help her. I’d joyfully put myself in her place for a
week.
MELCHIOR--Her father should simply be reported to the police. Then
they’d take the child away from him.
WENDLA--I, Melchior, have never been whipped in my life--not one single
time. I can scarcely guess what it’s like to be beaten. I’ve tried
hitting myself, to find out how it feels really, inside.--It must be a
shuddery sensation.
MELCHIOR--I don’t believe a child is ever made better by it.
WENDLA--Better by what?
MELCHIOR--Being struck.
WENDLA--[_Reaching over and plucking a young shoot._] With this switch,
for example.--Whew, but that’s strong and slender!
MELCHIOR--That would draw blood.
WENDLA--Wouldn’t you hit me with it once?
MELCHIOR--You?
WENDLA--Yes.
MELCHIOR--What’s got into you, Wendla?
WENDLA--[_Drawing back, a little alarmed._] Why shouldn’t you?
MELCHIOR--Oh, don’t shrink. I won’t hit you.
WENDLA--But even if I let you?
MELCHIOR--Never, girl!
WENDLA--Even if I ask you to, Melchior?
MELCHIOR--Have you lost your senses?
WENDLA--I have never in my life been beaten!
MELCHIOR--If you can beg for a thing like that!...
WENDLA--[_Thrusting it into his hands._] I do! Please!
MELCHIOR--I’ll teach you to say Please! [_Strikes her._]
WENDLA--Oh, what! I don’t feel the least thing!
MELCHIOR--No wonder--thru all your skirts like that....
WENDLA--Then hit me on the legs--here!
MELCHIOR--Wendla! [_Strikes her harder._]
WENDLA--Oh, you’re just stroking me!--You’re stroking me!
MELCHIOR--You wait, you witch--I’ll beat the devil out of you! [_He
throws the sprig aside and falls upon her with his fists so that she
breaks out with a fearful cry. Undeterred, raging, his blows rain on
her thick and fast, while big tears overflow and streak his cheeks. Of
a sudden, he springs upright, clasps his temples with both hands, and,
passionately sobbing, plunges into the forest._]
CURTAIN
ACT II
SCENE I.--MELCHIOR’S _study. A recess, rear center, with casements
looking out upon moonlit garden and dark, evening woods.
Window-seat. Low table with a well-shaded oil lamp, books,
cigarettes, etc._ MORITZ _and_ MELCHIOR _sit on the two ends of
the window-seat, in profile, facing each other_.
MORITZ--Now I’m quite cheerful again--only a bit excited. But in the
Greek class I went to sleep like the besotted Polyphemus! I’m amazed
old Zungenschlag didn’t tweak my ears. This morning again I came within
an ace of being late. My first thought when I woke up was of the verbs
in -MI. Gee whiz, but didn’t I conjugate all during breakfast and along
the road till everything turned green before me!--It must have been a
little after three when I dropped off. The pen left a blot on my book.
The lamp was smoking when Matilda woke me. In the elders under my
window the blackbirds were twittering so joyously--I got unutterably
melancholy again at once. I buttoned my collar and pulled the brush
thru my hair.--But you feel it when you force yourself against
nature....
MELCHIOR--Shall I roll you a cigarette?
MORITZ--No, thanks--I won’t smoke.--If only it can keep on like this! I
mean to work and work till my eyes pop out of my head. Ernest Roebel
has fallen down six times already since vacation--three times in Greek,
twice with Knochenbruch, last time in History of Literature. I haven’t
been in that pitiful fix more than five times, and from to-day on it
shall never happen again!--Roebel won’t shoot himself. Roebel hasn’t
got parents who are sacrificing their all for him. Whenever he wants
to, he can be a soldier of fortune or a cowboy or a sailor. But if _I_
fail my father’ll have a stroke and Mama’ll go crazy. That’s the kind
of thing nobody would live to see. Before the exam I prayed God to let
me get consumption, so that the cup might pass me by untasted. It did
pass over--even tho its nimbus still gleams at me from afar so that I
never dare to lift my eyes.--But now that I’ve got hold of the first
rung I shall haul myself up. I’m sure of that, because the inevitable
consequence of a fall will be a broken neck.
MELCHIOR--There’s an undreamed-of meanness to this life. It wouldn’t
take much to make me hang myself up in the branches.--Wonder where Mama
can be with the tea.
MORITZ--Your tea will do me good, Melchior.--I’m actually trembling!
I feel so strangely sensitized. Touch me a moment. I see, I hear, I
feel much more sharply, and yet everything’s so dreamy, so charged with
atmosphere.--How the garden recedes in the moonlight there, so still,
so deep, as if it went on forever! Dim-veiled figures are moving among
the bushes; they slip over the open tracts in breathless activity, and
vanish in the half-dark. I should say they were holding a conference
under the chestnut-tree.--Shan’t we go down, Melchior?
MELCHIOR--Let’s wait till we’ve had some tea.
MORITZ--The leaves whisper so eagerly. It’s as if I were hearing
dead Grandmother tell the story of the Queen without a Head. She was
a perfectly beautiful queen, fair as the sun, lovelier than all the
maidens in the land,--only she had come into the world, alas! without a
head. She couldn’t eat nor drink nor see nor laugh nor kiss either. She
could only make herself understood to her court thru her supple little
hand. With her dainty feet she tossed off declarations of war and
death-sentences. Then one day she was conquered by a king who happened
to have two heads that were always at outs with each other--quarreled
the whole year long so hard that neither let the other speak a word. So
the chief court conjurer took the smaller of the two heads and set it
on the queen; and lo and behold, it was mighty becoming to her; so then
the king married the queen and the two were no longer at loggerheads
but kissed each other on the forehead and the cheeks and the mouth, and
lived for a long, long time after in happiness and joy.... Confounded
rot! Since vacation I haven’t been able to get the Headless Queen out
of my head! If I see a beautiful girl, I see her without a head,--and
then all of a sudden I appear as the Headless Queen--myself!... Well,
it’s possible that one will be set on my shoulders yet. [MRS. GABOR
_enters with a tray of steaming tea, which she sets down on the table
after moving the lamp a little, and then shakes hands with_ MORITZ.]
MRS. GABOR--Here, children! Fall to!--Good evening, Moritz Stiefel. How
are you?
MORITZ--[_Standing._] Well, thank you, Mrs. Gabor.--I’m listening to
the roundelays down there.
MRS. GABOR--But you’re not looking a bit well.--Don’t you feel quite
right?
MORITZ--It’s nothing to speak of. I’ve been rather late getting to bed
the last few nights.
MELCHIOR--Think of it--he’s been studying all night!
MRS. GABOR--You shouldn’t do that kind of thing, Master Stiefel! You
should take care of yourself. Look out for your health. School can’t
take the place of health in your life. Take frequent long walks in the
fresh air! That is worth more to you at your age than correct Middle
High German!
MORITZ--I will go walking oftener. You’re right. One can work, too,
while one is walking. Why didn’t I think of that myself!--The written
lessons I should have to do at home just the same.
MELCHIOR--You’ll do the written work here with me. That way it’ll
be easier for both of us.--You know, Mama, Max von Trenk has been
down with brain-fever. Well, this noon Hansy Rilow came from Trenk’s
death-bed to inform Mr. Sonnenstich that Trenk had just died in his
presence. “Is that so?” says Sonnenstich. “Haven’t you still got two
hours’ work to make up from last week? Here’s the note to the proctor.
See that the thing is cleared up at last. The entire class will attend
the interment.”--Hansy was simply paralyzed.
MRS. GABOR--What is that book you have there, Melchior?
MELCHIOR--“Faust.”
MRS. GABOR--Have you read it all yet?
MELCHIOR--Not all thru.
MORITZ--We’re just at the Walpurgisnacht.
MRS. GABOR--I should have waited a year or two more, if I’d been you,
before reading that.
MELCHIOR--I don’t know any book, Mama, that I’ve found so much that was
beautiful in. Why shouldn’t I have read it?
MRS. GABOR--Because you can’t understand it.
MELCHIOR--How can you know that, Mama? I feel plainly enough that I’m
not able yet to grasp it in its full sublimity, but....
MORITZ--We always read it together. That makes understanding it vastly
easier.
MRS. GABOR--You are old enough, Melchior, to be able to judge what is
good for you and what isn’t. Do whatever you feel you can justify. I
shall be the first to realize, and be glad, if you never give me any
reason to have to withhold anything from you. I only wanted to remind
you that even the best can do harm if one is still too immature to
appraise it rightly. I shall always rather put my trust in you than
in any possible set of educational rules.--If you want anything
else, children, come and call me, Melchior: I shall be in my bedroom.
[_Exit._]
MORITZ--Your Mama meant the story of Gretchen.
MELCHIOR--Have we lingered even a moment over that!
MORITZ--Faust himself can’t have been more cold-blooded getting thru it!
MELCHIOR--After all, that villainy isn’t the climax of the poem. Faust
could have promised the girl marriage, he could have deserted her
directly after, without being one whit less guilty in my eyes. Gretchen
could have died of a broken heart for all the difference I’d see.--When
you behold how intensely everyone always looks first for that sort
of thing, you might think the whole world revolved round penis and
vulva.[2]
MORITZ--To be frank with you, Melchior, I’ve had exactly that feeling
since I read your paper. It fell out at my feet in the first days of
vacation. I had my Plötz [a French grammar] in my hand.--I bolted the
door and ran through your quivering lines like a frightened owl flying
through a blazing wood. I think I read most of it with my eyes shut.
At your explanations a stream of vague memories rang in my ears like a
song one used to hum joyously to one’s self in childhood, and at the
brink of death hears from the mouth of another, and is appalled.--My
sympathy was aroused most by what you wrote about the girl’s part, I
shall never get over the impression that made. I’m sure, Melchior, to
have to suffer wrong is sweeter than to do wrong. Blamelessly to have
to undergo so sweet a wrong seems to me the essence of every earthly
bliss.
MELCHIOR--I don’t want my bliss given me as a charity!
MORITZ--But why not?
MELCHIOR--I don’t want anything that I haven’t had to struggle and win
for myself.
MORITZ--But then is it still enjoyable, Melchior?--The girl’s delight,
Melchior, is like the blessèd gods’. The girl represses. Her very
nature protects her. She is kept free from any bitterness or regret
up to the last moment, and so can see, all at once, heaven itself
break over her. She is still fearful of hell in the very instant of
discovering and embracing paradise. Her senses are as fresh as the
spring that bubbles from pure rock. She lays hold of a cup no earthly
breath has yet clouded--a draught of nectar that she takes and swallows
even as it flames and flares.... The gratification that the man
receives seems to me shallow and flat beside hers!
MELCHIOR--Let it seem what it will to you, but keep it to yourself. I
don’t like to think about it.
CURTAIN
SCENE II.--WENDLA’S _room, empty_. MRS. BERGMANN, _her hat on, her
shawl round her shoulders, a basket on her arm, enters with
beaming face_.
MRS. BERGMANN--Wendla! Wendla!
WENDLA--[_Appearing, half dressed, at the other door._] What is it,
Mother?
MRS. BERGMANN--Up already, dear? Well! That’s nice of you.
WENDLA--Have you been out already?
MRS. BERGMANN--Hurry up now and get dressed! You must go straight down
to Ina’s and take this basket to her.
WENDLA--[_Finishing dressing during the following._] Have you been at
Ina’s? How is Ina feeling? Isn’t she ever going to get better?
MRS. BERGMANN--Just think, Wendla: the stork came to her last night and
brought her a new little boy!
WENDLA--A boy?--A boy?--Oh, that’s grand!--So it was for that she’s
been sick so long with influenza!
MRS. BERGMANN--A splendid boy!
WENDLA--I’ve got to see him, Mother!--So now I’m an aunt for the third
time--one niece and two nephews!
MRS. BERGMANN--And what fine nephews they are!--That’s just the way
of it when one lives so close to the church roof.--It’ll be just two
[and a half?] years to-morrow since she went up those steps in her
wedding-dress!
WENDLA--Were you with her when he brought him, mother?
MRS. BERGMANN--He had just that minute flown away again!--Don’t you
want to pin a rose on here? [_At the front of her dress._]
WENDLA--Why didn’t you get there a little bit sooner, Mother?
MRS. BERGMANN--Why, I do believe, almost, that he brought you something
too--a brooch or something like that.
WENDLA--[_Losing patience._] Oh, it’s really too bad!
MRS. BERGMANN--But I tell you that he did bring you a brooch too!
WENDLA--I’ve got brooches enough....
MRS. BERGMANN--Why, then be happy, darling. What are you troubled about?
WENDLA--I’d like to have known, so much, whether he flew in by the
window or down the chimney.
MRS. BERGMANN--You must ask Ina about that. [_Laughing._] You must ask
Ina about that, dear heart! Ina will tell you all about it exactly.
Didn’t Ina spend a whole half-hour talking to him?
WENDLA--I’ll ask Ina as soon as I get down there.
MRS. BERGMANN--Be sure you don’t forget, you angel child! Really, I’m
interested myself in knowing if he came in by the window or the chimney!
WENDLA--Or how about asking the chimney-sweep, rather?--The
chimney-sweep must know better than anybody whether he flies down the
chimney or not.
MRS. BERGMANN--No, not the chimney-sweep, dear; not the chimney-sweep!
What does the chimney-sweep know about the stork? He’ll fill you
chuck-full of nonsense he doesn’t believe himself.... Wha-what are you
staring down the street so at?
WENDLA--A man, mother, three times as big as an ox!--with feet like
steamboats--!
MRS. BERGMANN--[_Plunging to the window._] Impossible! Impossible!
WENDLA--[_Right after her._] He’s holding a bedstead under his chin
and fiddling “The Watch on the Rhine” on it--now he’s just turned the
corner....
MRS. BERGMANN--Well! You are and always were a little rogue! To put
your simple old mother into such a fright!--Go get your hat. I wonder
when you’ll ever get any sense! I’ve given up hope!
WENDLA--So have I, Mother; so’ve I. It’s pretty sad about my sense!
Here I have a sister who’s been married two and a half years; here I
am an aunt three times over; and I haven’t the least idea how it all
happens!... Don’t be cross, motherkin! don’t be cross! Who in the world
should I ask about it but you? Please, Mother dear, tell it to me!
Tell me, darling motherkin! I feel ashamed at myself! Please, please,
mother, speak! Don’t scold me for asking such a thing. Tell me about
it--how does it happen--how does it all come about?--Oh, you can’t
seriously expect me still to believe in the stork when I’m fourteen!
MRS. BERGMANN--But, good Lord, child, how queer you are! What things do
occur to you! Really, I just can’t do that!
WENDLA--But why not, mother? Why not? It can’t be anything ugly,
surely, when everyone feels so glad about it!
MRS. BERGMANN--Oh, oh, God defend me!--Have I deserved to---- Go and
put your things on, girl,--put your things on.
WENDLA--I’m going ... and supposing your child goes out now and asks
the chimney-sweep?
MRS. BERGMANN--Oh, but that’s enough to drive me crazy!--Come, child,
come here: I’ll tell you.... Oh, Almighty Goodness!--only not to-day,
Wendla! To-morrow, day after, next week, whenever you want, dear heart!
WENDLA--Tell it to me to-day, mother. Tell it to me now; now, at once.
Now that I’ve seen you so upset, it’s all the more impossible for me to
quiet down again until you do!
MRS. BERGMANN--I just can’t, Wendla.
WENDLA--Oh, but why can’t you, motherkin?--Here I’ll kneel at your feet
and put my head in your lap. Cover my head with your apron and talk and
talk as if you were sitting all soul alone in the room. I won’t move a
muscle, I won’t make a sound; I’ll keep perfectly still and listen, no
matter what may come!
MRS. BERGMANN--Heaven knows, Wendla, it isn’t my fault! The good God
knows me.--Come, in His name!--I will tell you, little girl, how you
came into this world--so listen, Wendla....
WENDLA--[_Under her apron._] I’m listening.
MRS. BERGMANN--[_Incoherent._] But it’s no use, child! That’s all! I
can’t justify it.--I know I deserve to be put in prison,--to have you
taken from me....
WENDLA--[_Under her apron._] Pluck up heart, Mother!
MRS. BERGMANN--Well, then, listen....
WENDLA--[_Trembling._] O God, O God!
MRS. BERGMANN--To have a child--you understand me, Wendla?----
WENDLA--Quick, mother! I can’t bear it much longer!
MRS. BERGMANN--To have a child--one must love the man--to whom one is
married--=love= him, I say,--as one can only love a man! You must love
him so utterly--with all your heart--that--that--it can’t be =told=!
You must love him, Wendla, as you at your age can’t possibly love
anyone yet.... Now you know.
WENDLA--[_Getting up._] Great--God--in Heaven!
MRS. BERGMANN--Now you know what tests lie before you!
WENDLA--And that is all?
MRS. BERGMANN--God help me, yes, all!--Now pick up the basket there
and go down to Ina. You’ll get some chocolate there, and cakes with
it.--Come here--let me just look you over--laced boots, silk gloves,
sailor-blouse, a rose in your hair.... But your little dress is really
getting too short now, Wendla!
WENDLA--Have you got meat for dinner already, motherkin?
MRS. BERGMANN--God bless you and keep you!--I must find time to sew
another breadth of ruffles round your skirt.
CURTAIN
SCENE III.--_A toilet--not to be thought of as equipped with modern
plumbing._ HANSY RILOW _enters, a light in his hand; bolts the
door and opens the lid_.
HANSY--Hast thou prayed to-night, Desdemona? [_He draws from his
bosom a reproduction of the Venus of Palma Vecchio._] I shouldn’t say
you looked like “Our Father Who Art in Heaven,” darling:--awaiting
contemplatively whoever may be coming, just as in that delicious
moment of dawning rapture when I beheld thee lying in Schlesinger’s
shop-window--these supple limbs just as beguiling still, these softly
swelling hips, these young, upstanding breasts!--Oh, how giddy with joy
must the great master have felt when the fourteen-year-old original lay
stretched on the divan before his eyes!
And wilt thou sometimes visit me in dreams? With eager arms will
I receive thee, and kiss thee till thy breath is gone. Thou wilt
take possession of me as the lawful heiress takes possession of her
desolated castle. Gate and door spring open as by invisible hands, and
below in the park the fountain joyously begins to plash!
“It is the cause! It is the cause!”--That I am not lightly moved to
murder thee, thou may’st learn from the fearful throbbing in my
breast. My throat contracts at the thought of my lonely nights. I swear
to thee, dear, upon my soul, it is not satiety inspires me! Who would
dare boast that he was satiated with =thee=?
But thou dost suck the marrow from my bones! Thou crook’st my back,
and rob’st my eyes of their last gleam of youth. You claim too much
of me with your inhuman coyness, you wear me out with your unmoving
limbs!--It’s you or I!--and _I_ who have prevailed!
If I should count them up--those vanished ones with all of whom I
have fought this same fight here!--Psyche by Thumann--one legacy yet
from that dried-up Mlle. Angelique, that rattlesnake in the Eden of
my childhood; Io by Correggio; Galathea by Lossow; then an Amor of
Bouguereau’s; Ada by J. van Beers--that Ada whom I had to abduct from
a secret drawer in father’s desk, to add her to my harem; a quivering,
thrilling Leda by Makart, that I found by chance among my brother’s
college lecture-notes; seven, O thou doomed in thy perfect flower, who
have rushed before thee down this path into Tartarus! Let that give
thee comfort, and seek not to heighten my pangs into agony with these
supplicating looks!
Thou diest not for =thy= sins, but for =mine=! Need to defend myself
against myself drives me with bleeding heart to do this seventh murder
on a mate. There =is= something tragic in the rôle of Bluebeard. I
guess that all his murdered wives together suffered less than he did
in the strangling of each single one.
But my conscience will grow calmer and my body stronger when thou,
she-devil, residest no longer in the red-silk cushions of my
jewel-casket. Then in thy stead I will have the Lorelei of Bodenhausen
or the Forsaken Lass of Linger or the Loni of Defregger occupy that
voluptuous pleasure-chamber--provided I shall have recovered the
quicker for this! A bare three months more, perhaps, and your unveiled
Jehoshaphat, sweet soul, would have begun devouring my poor brain as
the sun a butter-ball. It was high time to effect the separation from
bed and board!
Brrr! I feel a Heliogabalus in me! Moritura me salutat!--O girl, girl,
why do you press your knees together?--why still even now,--in the
face of inscrutable eternity?--One spasm, and I will let thee live!
One feminine movement, one sign of sensuality, of sympathy, girl! and
I will frame thee in gold and hang thee above my bed. Art thou not
conscious that it is thy =purity=, nothing more, begets my excesses?
Woe, woe to the unhuman!
Anyone can see that she’s had the advantage of a model
education!--Well, =so have _I_ too=.
Hast thou prayed to-night, Desdemona?
My heart contracts in convulsions---- Silly!--Holy St. Agnes died for
her continence too, and was not half so naked as thou!--One more kiss
on your virginal body, your child-like, budding breast, your sweetly
rounded--cruel, unyielding knees....
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause!----
[_The picture falls into the depths. He shuts the lid._]
CURTAIN
SCENE IV.--_A hayloft. Murky light, the smell of fresh hay_, MELCHIOR
_lying in it_. WENDLA _comes up the ladder_.
WENDLA--So =here’s= where you hid! Everybody’s looking for you. The
wagon’s gone out again. You must help. There’s a storm coming up.
MELCHIOR--Get away from me!--Get away from me!
WENDLA--What’s the matter with you?--Why do you hide your face?
MELCHIOR--Get out! Get out!--Or I’ll throw you down on the barn-floor!
WENDLA--Now I certainly won’t go. [_She kneels beside him._] Why won’t
you come out on the hayfield with us, Melchior? Here it’s so sultry and
dark! What if we =do= get wet to the skin--we don’t care!
MELCHIOR--The hay smells so wonderful.--The sky outside must be as
black as a pall.--I can’t see anything but the gleaming poppy at your
breast,--and your heart, I hear it beating!----
WENDLA--Don’t kiss me, Melchior!--Don’t kiss me!
MELCHIOR--Your heart--I hear it beating----
WENDLA--People love each other--when they kiss---- Don’t! Don’t!----
MELCHIOR--Oh, believe me, there’s no such thing as love!--Self-seeking,
egoism,--that’s all there is!--I love you as little as you love me.----
WENDLA--Don’t!-------- Don’t, Melchior!----
MELCHIOR-- ... Wendla!
WENDLA--Oh, Melchior!----don’t--don’t----
CURTAIN
SCENE V.--MRS. GABOR _sits and writes_.
[_Or else she may be shown in a dark room, in silhouette against
the window, reading her letter over by its failing light._]
MRS. GABOR--My dear Moritz Stiefel!
I take up my pen with a heavy heart after twenty-four hours of
considering and reconsidering everything that you write me. The money
for passage to America I am not able, I give you my solemn word, to
furnish you. In the first place I have not that much at my disposal,
and in the second, even if I had, it would be doing you the greatest
wrong I can imagine to put into your hands the means of carrying out
so rash and critical a venture. You would do me bitter injustice,
Moritz Stiefel, if you saw in this refusal of mine any sign of failing
affection. On the contrary, it would be the grossest failure in my duty
as your friend and counselor for me to be willing to let your momentary
loss of judgment cause me too to lose my head and blindly follow my
first, most natural impulses. I am willing and ready, if you wish me
to, to write to your parents and try to convince them that throughout
the course of this last term you have done all you could and drawn so
heavily upon your strength that a severe attitude towards what has
happened to you would not only be unwarranted but, more seriously,
might have the gravest effect upon your mental and physical health.
Your implied threat that you will take your own life in case your
flight is not made feasible has--to speak frankly, Moritz,--rather
taken me aback. No matter how undeserved a misfortune may be, we
should never let ourselves be driven to ignoble measures. The way in
which you seem to wish to make me--who have never shown you anything
but kindness--answerable for a possible shocking outrage on your
part, might, to a person inclined to think evil, look very much like
blackmail. I must confess that this mode of acting from you, who
usually are so well aware of what a man owes himself, was the very last
I should have expected. For the present, I cherish the firm conviction
that you were still suffering too much from the first shock to be able
to realize fully what you were doing.
And so I am confidently hoping that these words of mine will find
you already in a more composed state of mind. Take the affair as it
stands. To my way of thinking, it is wholly inadmissible that a young
man should be judged by his school marks. We have too many examples of
very bad scholars who have become remarkable men, and conversely of
excellent scholars who have not distinguished themselves in life. In
any case I assure you that so far as I am concerned your mishap will
not cause any change in your relations with Melchior. It will always
give me pleasure to see my son in the company of a young man who--let
the world judge of him as it will--deserved and won not only his but my
most cordial sympathy.
And so--up with your chin, Moritz Stiefel! Such crises, of this kind
or of that, come upon us all and must just be got over. If everyone so
placed should snatch forthwith at dagger and poison, there might easily
soon be no more men and women in the world. Let us hear from you soon
again, and believe me cordially and steadfastly
Your maternal friend,
FANNY G.
CURTAIN
SCENE VI.--_The_ BERGMANN _Garden in the radiance of the morning sun_.
WENDLA--[_Discovered._] Why have you stolen out of the house?--To look
for violets!--Because mother sees me smiling.--And why can’t you stop,
and shut your lips tight any more?--I don’t know.--Oh, I don’t know--I
can’t find words....
The path is like a plush carpet underfoot--not one little stone, not
a thorn.--My feet don’t touch the ground.... Oh, how I did sleep last
night.
Here’s where they used to be. [_Kneels._] They make me feel as solemn
as a nun at communion.--Dear violets!--All right, motherling! I’ll put
on my penitence-dress!--Oh, God, if somebody would only come whom I
could hug and tell!
CURTAIN
SCENE VII.--_Twilight. The sky is lightly overcast. The path winds
through low growth and sedgegrass. Not far away the river sounds._
MORITZ _sits facing the audience, his back to some bushes and the
path_.
MORITZ--It is better so.--I don’t fit in. Let them mount and climb upon
each other’s heads.--I will pull the door to behind me, and step into
the open. I won’t pay so much just to let myself be pushed around.
I didn’t put myself forward. Why should I put myself forward now?--I
have no compact with God. Let them distort the thing any way they have
a mind to. I was pressed.--I don’t say my parents are responsible.
After all, they had to be prepared for the worst. They were old enough
to know what they were doing. I was an infant when I came into the
world--otherwise even I might have been cunning enough to become
another person. Why should I pay the penalty for all the others’ being
there already!
I suppose I must have fallen on my head.... If anyone gives me a
present of a mad dog, I give him his mad dog back; and if he won’t take
his mad dog back, then I am humane and....
Yes, I just must have fallen on my head!
One is born quite by accident, and yet, after the most mature
consideration, one is not supposed to---- It’s enough to make one shoot
one’s self dead!
At least the weather shows that it sympathizes. All day it’s looked
like rain, but it’s still holding off.--A rare peace is brooding over
nature: nowhere anything sharp or exciting; heaven and earth like a
transparent spider’s-web. And everything seems to feel so well. The
landscape lovely as a lullaby--“Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf’ ein,”
as Fraülein Snandulia sang. Too bad she holds her elbows awkwardly!--It
was at the feast of St. Cecilia I danced for the last time. Snandulia
only dances at parties. Her silk dress was cut so low, back and
front--behind down to the belt at her waist, and in front low enough to
take away your wits.--She can’t have had a chemise on....
That would be something that might stop me yet!--More just for
curiosity.--It must be an extraordinary sensation--a feeling as if one
were being swept down a torrent---- I shan’t tell anybody that I’ve
come back with the thing undone. I shall act as if I had taken part in
all that.... It’s rather mortifying, to have been human and not got to
know the most human thing of all.--You come from Egypt, my dear sir,
and have not seen the =pyramids=?!
I don’t want to cry again to-day. I don’t want to think any more about
my funeral---- Melchior will lay a wreath upon my casket; Pastor
Kahlbauch will console my parents; old Sonnenstich will cite parallels
from history.--A gravestone I probably won’t get. I should have liked
an urn of snowy marble on a black syenite base,--but, praise God, I
shan’t miss it! Memorials are for the living, not for the dead.
I should need a year to take leave of everything in my thoughts. I
don’t want to cry again. I am so happy that I can look back without
bitterness. How many lovely evenings I have spent with Melchior!--under
the river willows, at the forester’s hut, on the highroad out there
where the five lindens stand, up on castle hill among the peaceful
ruins of Runenburg---- When the hour has come, I shall think with all
my might of whipped cream. Whipped cream doesn’t sustain you, but it’s
filling and leaves a pleasant taste.... And I had thought mankind was
infinitely worse. I haven’t found a soul that wouldn’t have wanted to
do his best; and many a one I have pitied on my account.
I pass to the altar like the youth in ancient Etruria whose dying
rattle buys his brothers’ prosperity through the coming year.--One by
one I go through all the mysterious shudders of deliverance. I gulp
with sorrow at my fate.--Life has given me the cold shoulder. From up
there I see grave, friendly looks beckon me: the headless queen, the
headless queen--sympathy with soft arms awaiting me.... Your tenders
are for children; I carry my free pass within myself. Sinks the shell,
off sails the butterfly: the dream besets us no more.--You should play
no mad games with the fraud! The mist dissolves: life is a matter of
taste. [_His shoulder is suddenly grabbed from behind by_ ILSE.]
ILSE--[_In torn clothes, a gay kerchief round her head._] What have you
lost?
MORITZ--[_Starting to his feet._] Ilse!
ILSE--What are you looking for here?
MORITZ--What d’you frighten me so for?
ILSE--What is it? What have you lost?
MORITZ--But why did you startle me so awfully?
ILSE--I’ve just come from the city.--I’m going home.
MORITZ--I don’t know, what I’ve lost.
ILSE--Then it’s no good your looking. [MORITZ _swears_.] It’s four days
since I was home.
MORITZ--Sneaking like a cat!
ILSE--That’s ’cause I’ve got my dancing-slippers on.--Mother =will=
make eyes!--Come along to the house with me!
MORITZ--Where have you been bumming around again?
ILSE--In =Priapia=!
MORITZ--Priapia?
ILSE--At Nohl’s, at Fehrendorf’s, at Padinsky’s,--with Lenz, Rank,
Spühler,--with everybody you can think of!--Kling, kling,--=she= will
jump!
MORITZ--Are they painting you?
ILSE--Fehrendorf’s painting me as St. Stylites, standing on a
Corinthian capital. Fehrendorf, I must tell you, is a mess.[3] Last
time I stepped on one of his tubes. Squashed it. He wipes his brush on
my hair. I give him one on the ear. He throws his palette at my head.
I knock the easel over. He gets after me with the maulstick over couch
and tables and chairs, all round the studio. Behind the stove lay a
sketch! Be good, or I’ll tear it!--He swore amnesty, and then for a
finishing touch he kissed me--kissed me, oh, something terrible!
MORITZ--Where do you spend the night when you stay in town?
ILSE--Last night we were at Nohl’s; night before at Boyokevitch’s;
Sunday with Oikonomopulos. At Padinsky’s there was champagne.
Valabregez had sold his “Man Sick with the Plague.” Adolar drank out of
the ash-tray. Lenz sang “The Murd’ress of Her Child,” and Adolar played
the guitar to pieces. I was so drunk they had to put me to bed.--You’re
still going to school all the time, Moritz?
MORITZ--No, no--this term, I’m getting out.
ILSE--You’re right. Oh, how the time flies when you’re earning
money!--D’you remember how we used to play robbers?--Wendla Bergmann
and you and I and the rest, when you all came out in the evening and
drank new, warm goat’s milk at our house?--What’s Wendla doing? I
remember seeing her at the flood.--What’s Melchi Gabor doing?--Does he
still gaze so deeply into things?--In singing-lesson we used to stand
opposite each other.
MORITZ--He philosophizes.
ILSE--Wendla came to see us a while ago, and brought mother some
preserves. I was sitting that day for Isidor Landauer. He’s using me
for Holy Mary, the Mother of God, with the Christ-child. He’s a ninny,
and disgusting. Whew! like a weathercock!--Have you got a “morning
after” headache?
MORITZ--From last night. We swilled like hippopotamuses. It was five
o’clock when I staggered home.
ILSE--One only needs to look at you.--Were there girls there?
MORITZ--Arabella, the bar-maid,--a Spanish girl. The landlord left us
all, the whole night through, alone with her.
ILSE--One only needs to look at you, Moritz.--I never have these
morning-afters! Last Carnival I went for three days and three nights
without getting into a bed, or even out of my clothes. From masquerade
ball to café; noontimes at the Bellavista, evenings at the cabaret,
nights to another ball! Lena was along, and fatty Viola.--The third
night, Henry found me.
MORITZ--Had he been looking for you?
ILSE--He’d stumbled over my arm. I was lying senseless in the
gutter-snow.--So then I joined up with him. For two weeks I never left
his lodgings. That was a horrible time!--Mornings I had to throw on
his Persian dressing-gown, and evenings walk about the room in a black
page’s costume--white lace at the collar, cuffs, and knees. Every
day he’d photograph me in a new arrangement: one time on the back of
the sofa, as Ariadne, another time as Leda, another as Ganymede, and
once on all fours as a female Nebuchadnezzar. And then he would rave
about killing--about shooting, suicide, and charcoal fumes. Early
mornings he’d bring a pistol into bed, load it full of cartridges and
poke it into my breast: one wink, and I’ll fire!--Oh, he would have
fired, Moritz; he would have fired!--Then he’d stick the thing in
his mouth like a bean-shooter. Maybe that would wake my instinct for
self-preservation! And then--Brrr! the bullet would have gone through
my spine.
MORITZ--Is Henry still alive?
ILSE--How do I know?--Over the bed was a mirror let into the ceiling.
The little room looked tower-high and bright as an opera-house. You
saw yourself actually hanging downwards from the sky. I had the
most frightful dreams at night.--God, O God, when would it be day
again!--Good night, Ilse. When you sleep you’re beautiful for murder!
MORITZ--Is this Henry still alive?
ILSE--God willing, no!--One day when he went to get some absinthe
I threw my cloak on and slipped out onto the street. The Carnival
was over. The police snapped me up. What was I after in men’s
clothes?--They took me to headquarters, and there came Nohl,
Fehrendorf, Padinsky, Spühler, Oikonomopulos, the whole Priapia, and
bailed me out. In a cab they transported me to Adolar’s studio. Ever
since I’ve been true to the gang. Fehrendorf is a monkey, Nohl is a
pig, Boyokevitch an owl, Loison a hyena, Oikonomopulos a camel--but
that’s why I love them one and all the same, and don’t care to tie
up to anyone else, though the world were full of archangels and
millionaires!
MORITZ--I must go back, Ilse.
ILSE--Come with me as far as our house.
MORITZ--What for?--What for?
ILSE--[_Kidding him._] To drink fresh, warm goat’s milk!--I’ll singe
your forelock and hang a little bell around your neck. And we still
have a rocking-horse that you can play with.
MORITZ--I must get back. I still have the Sassanids, the Sermon on the
Mount and the parallelepipedon on my conscience.--Good night, Ilse.
ILSE--Sweet dreams!--Do you ever go down to the wigwam any more, where
Melchi Gabor buried my tomahawk?--Brrr! Before you catch on, I’ll lie
in the dust-bin! [_She hurries off._]
MORITZ--One word, it would have cost.--[_Calls._] Ilse!--Ilse!----
Praise God, she doesn’t hear!
--I am not in the mood.--For that, one needs a clear head and a joyful
heart.--Too bad, too bad the chance is lost!
... I shall say that I have had huge crystal mirrors over my beds--and
have trained an unruly filly--and made her prance before me across the
carpet in long black silk stockings and patent-leather shoes, and long
black kid gloves and black velvet around her neck;--and how I stifled
her in my pillows, in an access of madness.... I shall smile when the
talk is of lust.... I shall----
=scream!--I shall scream!--Oh to be you,
Ilse!--Priapia!--Unconsciousness!--That takes away my power!--This
favorite of fortune, this sunny creature, this daughter of joy upon my
dolorous path!--Oh!--Oh!=
[_He staggers across the path and falls under the high, dark, cavernous
bushes on the further side, crawling towards the river._]
* * * * *
So have I found it again without trying, the grassy bank? The mulleins
seem to have grown since yesterday. The vista between the willows is
the same still. The river is flowing heavily like melted lead. Don’t
let me forget.... [_He draws_ MRS. GABOR’S _letter from his pocket,
lights a match, and burns it_.]--How the sparks fly--back and forth--up
and down!--Souls!--Shooting stars!----
Before I lit the match you could still see the grasses and a strip of
the horizon.--Now it’s gotten dark. Now I’m not going home any more.
CURTAIN
ACT III
SCENE I.--_The Faculty Room. Two small, high windows, one of them
walled up. Portraits of Pestalozzi and J. J. Rousseau on the
walls. Long, narrow, green table, with a gaspipe and six
flaring burners over it. At one end, on a platform_, PRINCIPAL
SONNENSTICH[4] _sits. Behind the table sit, quite close together,
in a grotesque row_, PROFESSORS AFFENSCHMALZ (_nearest_
SONNENSTICH), KNOCHENBRUCH, FLIEGENTOD, HUNGERGURT, ZUNGENSCHLAG,
_and_ KNÜPPELDICK. HABEBALD, _the beadle or proctor of the school,
cowers near the door_.
SONNENSTICH--May one of the gentlemen perhaps have something further
to remark?--Gentlemen!--If we find ourselves unable to avoid the
necessity of moving the rustication of our crime-laden pupil before
a superior Board of Education, it is for the very weightiest reasons
that we cannot help it. We cannot if only to do our best to atone for
the misfortune that has already burst upon us; still less if we would
insure our institution for the future against further calamities of the
same order. We cannot if we are to discipline our crime-laden pupil for
the demoralizing influence that he has exerted upon his classmates; we
cannot, most conclusively, if so we may prevent him from exerting the
like influence upon the remainder of his classmates. We are compelled
to it--and this, gentlemen, is perhaps the most fundamental ground of
all, against which no protest =can= prevail,--because it is for us
to protect our institution from the ravages of a suicide-=epidemic=,
such as has already broken out at various schools like ours and has so
far defied all efforts to attach the schoolboy to those conditions of
existence best adapted to his education into cultivated manhood.--May
one of the gentlemen still have something to remark?
KNÜPPELDICK--[_Furthest away; middle-aged._] I can no longer repel the
conviction that it may at last be about time to open a window somewhere.
ZUNGENSCHLAG--[_Next him, bearded, choleric._] There--there prevails
here an at-at-atmosphere like that in subterranean cata-catacombs,
like tha-tha-that in the archive-repositories of the quo-quondam
star-chamber tribunal at We-Wetzlar!
SONNENSTICH--Habebald!
HABEBALD--Yes, Mr. Sonnenstich?
SONNENSTICH--Open a window. We have, Heaven be praised, atmosphere
enough out-of-doors.--May one of the gentlemen have anything further to
remark?
FLIEGENTOD--[_The Secretary, with the minutebook; bearded, ponderous._]
If my worthy colleagues wish to have a window opened, I have nothing,
personally, to object against it; only might I ask that they will not
wish to have that window opened which is directly at my back?
SONNENSTICH--Habebald!
HABEBALD--Yes, Mr. Sonnenstich?
SONNENSTICH--Open the other window!--May one of the gentlemen have
something still further to remark?
HUNGERGURT--[_Small, mild, spectacled; between_ FLIEGENTOD _and_
ZUNGENSCHLAG.] Without any wish on my part to aggravate the
controversy, might I recall the fact that the other window has been
walled up since the autumn holidays?
SONNENSTICH--Habebald!
HABEBALD--Yes, Mr. Sonnenstich?
SONNENSTICH--Leave the other window closed!--I see myself compelled,
gentlemen, to bring the matter to a vote. I request those colleagues
who are =for= opening the only window that can enter into the question,
to indicate it by standing. [_The three furthest from him stand._] One,
two three. [_Counting the seated ones, too._] One, two, three. Habebald!
HABEBALD--Yes, Mr. Sonnenstich?
SONNENSTICH--Leave the one window likewise closed.--I for my part am
of the opinion that our atmosphere leaves nothing to be desired!--May
one of the gentlemen still have something to remark?--Gentlemen!--Let
us make the supposition that we omit to move the rustication of our
crime-laden pupil before a superior Board of Education. =We= will then
be held accountable, by the Ministry of Education, for the disaster
that has befallen us. Of the various schools that have been visited
by this suicide-epidemic, those in which twenty-five per cent of the
pupils have fallen victims to the ravages of the suicide-epidemic
have been temporarily =closed= by the Ministry of Education. To
preserve our Institution from this most staggering blow is our duty,
as the guardians and safekeepers of our institution. It grieves us
deeply, gentlemen and colleagues, that we are in no position to let
our crime-laden pupil’s qualifications in other respects count as
mitigating circumstances. A mild procedure, which might be justifiable
towards our crime-laden pupil singly, is at this time, when the very
existence of our institution is imperilled in the most dangerous manner
conceivable, certainly =not= justifiable! We see ourselves reduced to
the necessity of passing judgment on the guilty lest we, the innocent,
be judged.--Habebald!
HABEBALD--Yes, Mr. Sonnenstich?
SONNENSTICH--Bring him up. [HABEBALD _goes out_.]
ZUNGENSCHLAG--If it is settled that the pre-prevailing a-a-a-atmosphere
leaves little or nothing to be desired, I should like to move
that during the summer vacation the other window as well should
be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be walled up!
FLIEGENTOD--If our dear colleague Zungenschlag does not find our
sanctum satisfactorily ventilated, I should like to set the machinery
in motion toward having a ventilator installed in our dear colleague
Zungenschlag’s high and cavernous brow.
ZUNGENSCHLAG--Th-th-that is too much for me to put up
with!--Ru-rudenesses are more than I need to put up with!--I am in
possession of my five senses...!
SONNENSTICH--I must request our colleagues, Messrs. Fliegentod and
Zungenschlag, to preserve decorum. I think I hear our crime-laden pupil
already on the stairs. [HABEBALD _opens the door, whereupon_ MELCHIOR,
_pale but composed, steps before the assemblage_.] Step up nearer to
the table.--When Mr. Stiefel had been informed of his son’s impious and
wicked act, he searched in his grief and perplexity among the effects
that his son Moritz had left behind him, in hopes that so he might
happen to find the moving cause of that abominable outrage. So doing,
he stumbled, in an irrelevant place, upon a piece of writing which,
without yet making the abominable outrage understandable in itself,
yet offers, I regret to say, an explanation only too conclusive of the
moral obliquity in the criminal which must have underlain his act. I am
speaking of a twenty-page treatise in dialogue form entitled “Coition,”
accompanied by life-sized drawings, rank with the most shameless
obscenities, and responding to the most perverted demands that a
depraved debauchee could possibly make upon lascivious literature----
MELCHIOR--I have----
SONNENSTICH--You have to keep quiet.--Mr. Stiefel handed this
manuscript over to us, and we promised the distracted father at any
cost to identify its author. The handwriting was accordingly compared
with the hands of each one of the dead profligate’s schoolmates,
and it proved, in the unanimous judgment of the whole faculty and in
perfect accord with the specialist’s opinion of our esteemed colleague
in calligraphy, to have the closest conceivable similarity to yours----
MELCHIOR--I have----
SONNENSTICH--You have to keep quiet.--Notwithstanding the crushing fact
that this resemblance has been marked by unimpeachable authorities,
we believe that we may refrain for the moment from taking any further
steps till we have first circumstantially interrogated the guilty
student concerning his crime against morals, in conjunction with
the instigation to self-murder arising from it, with which he is
accordingly charged.
MELCHIOR--I have----
SONNENSTICH--You have to answer to the particular questions which I
shall put to you, in order, one after the other, with a simple, modest
“Yes” or “No.”--Habebald!
HABEBALD--Yes, Mr. Sonnenstich?
SONNENSTICH--The documents!--I trust that our Secretary, Mr.
Fliegentod, will from now on record the proceedings as nearly verbatim
as possible. [_To_ MELCHIOR.] Do you recognize this manuscript?
MELCHIOR--Yes.
SONNENSTICH--Do you know what this manuscript contains?
MELCHIOR--Yes.
SONNENSTICH--Is the writing in this manuscript yours?
MELCHIOR--Yes.
SONNENSTICH--Does this obscene manuscript originate from you?
MELCHIOR--Yes.--I beg you, Mr. Sonnenstich, to show me one obscenity
in it.
SONNENSTICH--You are to answer the particular questions I put to you
with a simple, modest “Yes” or “No”!
MELCHIOR--I have written no more and no less than what is very well
known to you to be fact.
SONNENSTICH--Insolence.
MELCHIOR--I ask you to show me one offense against morals in that paper!
SONNENSTICH--Do you imagine I’d have a mind to act the clown for you?
Habebald!...
MELCHIOR--I have----
SONNENSTICH--You have as little respect for the dignity of your
assembled teachers as you have decent sensibility for mankind’s inbred
feeling for the modesty of the shamefastness of the moral order of the
world!--Habebald!
HABEBALD--Yes, Mr. Sonnenstich?
SONNENSTICH--It’s in fact the Langenscheidt for the learning in three
hours of agglutinative Volapük![5]
MELCHIOR--I have----
SONNENSTICH--I instruct our Secretary, Mr. Fliegentod, to close the
minutes!
MELCHIOR--I have----
SONNENSTICH--You have to keep quiet!--Habebald.
HABEBALD--Yes, Mr. Sonnenstich?
SONNENSTICH--Take him down!
CURTAIN