The great versatility of Gerhart Hauptmann is perhaps nowhere so
apparent as in "The Sunken Bell," the poetic fairy tale of the tragedy
of Man, a tragedy as rich in symbolism as it is realistically true--a
tragedy as old as mankind, as elemental as man's ceaseless struggle to
cut loose from the rock of ages.
_Heinrich_, the master bell founder, is an idealist consumed by the fire
of a great purpose. He has already set a hundred bells ringing in a
hundred different towns, all singing his praises. But his restless
spirit is not appeased. Ever it soars to loftier heights, always
yearning to reach the sun.
Now once more he has tried his powers, and the new bell, the great
Master Bell, is raised aloft,--only to sink into the mere, carrying its
maker with it.
His old ideals are broken, and _Heinrich_ is lost in the wilderness of
life.
Weak and faint with long groping in the dark woods, and bleeding,
_Heinrich_ reaches the mountain top and there beholds _Rautendelein_,
the spirit of freedom, that has allured him on in the work which he
strove--"in one grand Bell, to weld the silver music of thy voice with
the warm gold of a Sun-holiday. It should have been a master-work! I
failed, then wept I tears of blood." _Heinrich_ returns to his faithful
wife _Magda_, his children, and his village friends--to die. The bell
that sank into the mere was not made for the heights--it was not fit to
wake the answering echoes of the peaks!
_Heinrich._
* * * * *
'Twas for the valley--not the mountain-top!
I choose to die. The service of the valleys
Charms me no longer, ... since on the peak I stood.
Youth--a new youth--I'd need, if I should live:
Out of some rare and magic mountain flower
Marvelous juices I should need to press--
Heart-health, and strength, and the mad lust of triumph,
Steeling my hand to work none yet have dreamed of!
_Rautendelein_, the symbol of youth and freedom, the vision of new
strength and expression, wakes _Heinrich_ from his troubled sleep,
kisses him back to life, and inspires him with faith and courage to work
toward greater heights.
_Heinrich_ leaves his wife, his hearth, his native place, and rises to
the summit of his ideal, there to create, to fashion a marvel bell whose
iron throat shall send forth
The first waking peal
Shall shake the skies--when, from the somber clouds
That weighed upon us through the winter night,
Rivers of jewels shall go rushing down
Into a million hands outstretched to clutch!
Then all who drooped, with sudden power inflamed,
Shall bear their treasure homeward to their huts,
There to unfurl, at last, the silken banners,
Waiting--so long, so long--to be upraised,
* * * * *
And now the wondrous chime again rings out,
Filling the air with such sweet, passionate sound
As makes each breast to sob with rapturous pain.
It sings a song, long lost and long forgotten,
A song of home--a childlike song of Love,
Born in the waters of some fairy well--
Known to all mortals, and yet heard of none!
* * * * *
And as it rises, softly first, and low,
The nightingale and dove seem singing, too;
And all the ice in every human breast
Is melted, and the hate, and pain, and woe,
Stream out in tears.
Indeed a wondrous bell, as only those can forge who have reached the
mountain top,--they who can soar upon the wings of their imagination
high above the valley of the commonplace, above the dismal gray of petty
consideration, beyond the reach of the cold, stifling grip of
reality,--higher, ever higher, to kiss the sun-lit sky.
_Heinrich_ spreads his wings. Inspired by the divine fire of
_Rautendelein_, he all but reaches the pinnacle. But there is the
_Vicar_, ready to wrestle with the devil for a poor human soul; to buy
it free, if need be, to drag it back to its cage that it may never rise
again in rebellion to the will of God.
_The Vicar._
You shun the church, take refuge in the mountains;
This many a month you have not seen the home
Where your poor wife sits sighing, while, each day,
Your children drink their lonely mother's tears!
* * * * *
For this there is no name but madness,
And wicked madness. Yes. I speak the truth.
Here stand I, Master, overcome with horror
At the relentless cruelty of your heart.
Now Satan, aping God, hath dealt a blow--
Yes, I must speak my mind--a blow so dread
That even he must marvel at his triumph.
... Now--I have done.
Too deep, yea to the neck, you are sunk in sin!
Your Hell, decked out in beauty as high Heaven,
Shall hold you fast. I will not waste more words.
Yet mark this, Master: witches make good fuel,
Even as heretics, for funeral-pyres.
... Your ill deeds,
Heathen, and secret once, are now laid bare.
Horror they wake, and soon there shall come hate.
* * * * *
Then, go your way! Farewell! My task is done.
The hemlock of your sin no man may hope
To rid your soul of. May God pity you!
But this remember! There's a word named rue!
And some day, some day, as your dreams you dream,
A sudden arrow, shot from out the blue,
Shall pierce your breast! And yet you shall not die,
Nor shall you live. In that dread day you'll curse
All you now cherish--God, the world, your work,
Your wretched self you'll curse. Then ... think of me!
That bell shall ring again! Then think of me!
Barely does _Heinrich_ escape the deadly clutch of outlined creeds,
superstitions, and conventions embodied in the _Vicar_, than he is in
the throes of other foes who conspire his doom.
Nature herself has decreed the death of _Heinrich_. For has not man
turned his back upon her, has he not cast her off, scorned her
beneficial offerings, robbed her of her beauty, devastated her charms
and betrayed her trust--all for the ephemeral glow of artifice and sham?
Hence Nature, too, is _Heinrich's_ foe. Thus the Spirit of the Earth,
with all its passions and lusts, symbolized in the Wood Sprite, and
gross materialism in the person of the _Nickelmann_, drive the intruder
back.
_The Wood Sprite._
He crowds us from our hills. He hacks and hews,
Digs up our metals, sweats, and smelts, and brews.
The earth-man and the water-sprite he takes
To drag his burdens, and, to harness, breaks.
* * * * *
She steals my cherished flowers, my red-brown ores,
My gold, my precious stones, my resinous stores.
She serves him like a slave, by night and day.
'Tis he she kisses--us she keeps at bay.
Naught stands against him. Ancient trees he fells.
The earth quakes at his tread, and all the dells
Ring with the echo of his thunderous blows.
His crimson smithy furnace glows and shines
Into the depths of my most secret mines.
What he is up to, only Satan knows!
_The Nickelmann._
Brekekekex! Hadst thou the creature slain,
A-rotting in the mere long since he had lain--
The maker of the bell, beside the bell.
And so when next I had wished to throw the stones,
The bell had been my box--the dice, his bones!
But even they are powerless to stem the tide of the Ideal: they are
helpless In the face of _Heinrich's_ new-born faith, of his burning
passion to complete his task, and give voice to the thousand-throated
golden peal.
_Heinrich_ works and toils, and when doubt casts its black shadow
athwart his path, _Rautendelein_ charms back hope. She alone has
boundless faith in her Balder,--god of the joy of Life--for he is part
of her, of the great glowing force her spirit breathed into the
Heinrichs since Time was born--Liberty, redeemer of man.
_Heinrich._
I am thy Balder?
Make me believe it--make me know it, child!
Give my faint soul the rapturous joy it needs,
To nerve it to its task. For, as the hand,
Toiling with tong and hammer, on and on,
To hew the marble and to guide the chisel,
Now bungles here, now there, yet may not halt.
... But--enough of this,
Still straight and steady doth the smoke ascend
From my poor human sacrifice to heaven.
Should now a Hand on high reject my gift,
Why, it may do so. Then the priestly robe
Falls from my shoulder--by no act of mine;
While I, who erst upon the heights was set,
Must look my last on Horeb, and be dumb!
But now bring torches! Lights! And show thine Art!
Enchantress! Fill the wine-cup! We will drink!
Ay, like the common herd of mortal men,
With resolute hands our fleeting joy we'll grip!
Our unsought leisure we will fill with life,
Not waste it, as the herd, in indolence.
We will have music!
While _Heinrich_ and _Rautendelein_ are in the ecstasy of their love and
work, the spirits weave their treacherous web--they threaten, they
plead, they cling,--spirits whose pain and grief are harder to bear
than the enmity or menace of a thousand foes. Spirits that entwine one's
heartstrings with tender touch, yet are heavier fetters, more oppressive
than leaden weights. _Heinrich's_ children, symbolizing regret that
paralyzes one's creative powers, bring their mother's tears and with
them a thousand hands to pull _Heinrich_ down from his heights, back to
the valley.
"The bell! The bell!" The old, long buried bell again ringing and
tolling. Is it not the echo from the past? The superstitions instilled
from birth, the prejudices that cling to man with cruel persistence, the
conventions which fetter the wings of the idealist: the Old wrestling
with the New for the control of man.
* * * * *
"The Sunken Bell" is a fairy tale in its poetic beauty and glow of
radiant color. But stripped of the legendary and symbolic, it is the
life story of every seeker for truth, of the restless spirit of
rebellion ever striving onward, ever reaching out toward the sun-tipped
mountain, ever yearning for a new-born light.
Too long had _Heinrich_ lived in the valley. It has sapped his strength,
has clipped his wings. "Too late! Thy heavy burdens weigh thee down; thy
dead ones are too mighty for thee." _Heinrich_ has to die. "He who has
flown so high into the very Light, as thou hast flown, must perish, if
he once fall back to earth."
Thus speak the worldly wise. As if death could still the burning thirst
for light; as if the hunger for the ideal could ever be appeased by the
thought of destruction! The worldly wise never feel the irresistible
urge to dare the cruel fates. With the adder in Maxim Gorki's "Song of
the Falcon" they sneer, "What is the sky? An empty place.... Why disturb
the soul with the desire to soar into the sky?... Queer birds," they
laugh at the falcons. "Not knowing the earth and grieving on it, they
yearn for the sky, seeking for light in the sultry desert. For it is
only a desert, with no food and no supporting place for a living body."
The Heinrichs are the social falcons, and though they perish when they
fall to earth, they die in the triumphant glory of having beheld the
sun, of having braved the storm, defied the clouds and mastered the air.
The sea sparkles in the glowing light, the waves dash against the shore.
In their lion-like roar a song resounds about the proud falcons: "O
daring Falcon, in the battle with sinister forces you lose your life.
But the time will come when your precious blood will illumine, like the
burning torch of truth, the dark horizon of man; when your blood shall
inflame many brave hearts with a burning desire for freedom."
The time when the peals of Heinrich's Bell will call the strong and
daring to battle for light and joy. "Hark!... 'Tis the music of the
Sun-bells' song! The Sun ... the Sun ... draws near!" ... and though
"the night is long," dawn breaks, its first rays falling on the dying
Heinrichs.