Frank Wedekind is perhaps the most daring dramatic spirit in Germany.
Coming to the fore much later than Sudermann and Hauptmann, he did not
follow in their path, but set out in quest of new truths. More boldly
than any other dramatist Frank Wedekind has laid bare the shams of
morality in reference to sex, especially attacking the ignorance
surrounding the sex life of the child and its resultant tragedies.
Wedekind became widely known through his great drama "The Awakening of
Spring," which he called a tragedy of childhood, dedicating the work to
parents and teachers. Verily an appropriate dedication, because parents
and teachers are, in relation to the child's needs, the most ignorant
and mentally indolent class. Needless to say, this element entirely
failed to grasp the social significance of Wedekind's work. On the
contrary, they saw in it an invasion of their traditional authority and
an outrage on the sacred rights of parenthood.
The critics also could see naught in Wedekind, except a base, perverted,
almost diabolic nature bereft of all finer feeling. But professional
critics seldom see below the surface; else they would discover beneath
the grin and satire of Frank Wedekind a sensitive soul, deeply stirred
by the heart-rending tragedies about him. Stirred and grieved especially
by the misery and torture of the child,--the helpless victim unable to
explain the forces germinating in its nature, often crushed and
destroyed by mock modesty, sham decencies, and the complacent morality
that greet its blind gropings.
Never was a more powerful indictment hurled against society, which out
of sheer hypocrisy and cowardice persists that boys and girls must grow
up in ignorance of their sex functions, that they must be sacrificed
on the altar of stupidity and convention which taboo the enlightenment
of the child in questions of such elemental importance to health and
well-being.
The most criminal phase of the indictment, however, is that it is
generally the most promising children who are sacrificed to sex
ignorance and to the total lack of appreciation on the part of teachers
of the latent qualities and tendencies in the child: the one slaying the
body and soul, the other paralyzing the function of the brain; and both
conspiring to give to the world mental and physical mediocrities.
"The Awakening of Spring" is laid in three acts and fourteen scenes,
consisting almost entirely of dialogues among the children. So close is
Wedekind to the soul of the child that he succeeds in unveiling before
our eyes, with a most gripping touch, its joys and sorrows, its hopes
and despair, its struggles and tragedies.
The play deals with a group of school children just entering the age of
puberty,--imaginative beings speculating about the mysteries of life.
_Wendla_, sent to her grave by her loving but prudish mother, is an
exquisite, lovable child; _Melchior_, the innocent father of _Wendla's_
unborn baby, is a gifted boy whose thirst for knowledge leads him to
inquire into the riddle of life, and to share his observations with his
school chums,--a youth who, in a free and intelligent atmosphere, might
have developed into an original thinker. That such a boy should be
punished as a moral pervert, only goes to prove the utter unfitness of
our educators and parents. _Moritz_, _Melchior's_ playfellow, is driven
to suicide because he cannot pass his examinations, thanks to our stupid
and criminal system of education which consists in cramming the mind to
the bursting point.
Wedekind has been accused of exaggerating his types, but any one
familiar with child life knows that every word in "The Awakening of
Spring" is vividly true. The conversation between _Melchior_ and
_Moritz_, for instance, is typical of all boys not mentally inert.
_Melchior._ I'd like to know why we really are on earth!
_Moritz._ I'd rather be a cab-horse than go to school!--Why do we go
to school?--We go to school so that somebody can examine us!--And
why do they examine us?--In order that we may fail. Seven must fail,
because the upper classroom will hold only sixty.--I feel so queer
since Christmas.--The devil take me, if it were not for Papa, I'd
pack my bundle and go to Altoona, to-day!
_Moritz._ Do you believe, Melchior, that the feeling of shame in man
is only a product of his education?
_Melchior._ I was thinking over that for the first time the day
before yesterday. It seems to me deeply rooted in human nature. Only
think, you must appear entirely clothed before your best friend. You
wouldn't do so if he didn't do the same thing.--Therefore, it's more
or less of a fashion.
_Moritz._ Have you experienced it yet?
_Melchior._ What?
_Moritz._ How do you say it?
_Melchior._ Manhood's emotion?
_Moritz._ M--'hm.
_Melchior._ Certainly.
_Moritz._ I also ...
_Melchior._ I've known that for a long while!--Almost for a year.
_Moritz._ I was startled as if by lightning.
_Melchior._ Did you dream?
_Moritz._ Only for a little while--of legs in light blue tights,
that strode over the cathedral--to be correct, I thought they wanted
to go over it. I only saw them for an instant.
_Melchior._ George Zirschnitz dreamed of his mother.
_Moritz._ Did he tell you that?... I thought I was incurable. I
believed I was suffering from an inward hurt.--Finally I became calm
enough to begin to jot down the recollections of my life. Yes, yes,
dear Melchior, the last three weeks have been a Gethsemane for
me.... Truly they play a remarkable game with us. And we're expected
to give thanks for it. I don't remember to have had any longing for
this kind of excitement. Why didn't they let me sleep peacefully
until all was still again. My dear parents might have had a hundred
better children. I came here, I don't know how, and must be
responsible myself for not staying away.--Haven't you often
wondered, Melchior, by what means we were brought into this whirl?
_Melchior._ Don't you know that yet either, Moritz?
_Moritz._ How should I know it? I see how the hens lay eggs, and
hear that Mamma had to carry me under her heart. But is that
enough?... I have gone through Meyer's "Little Encyclopedia" from A
to Z. Words--nothing but words and words! Not a single plain
explanation. Oh, this feeling of shame!--What good to me is an
encyclopedia that won't answer me concerning the most important
question in life?
Yes, of what good is an encyclopedia or the other wise books to the
quivering, restless spirit of the child? No answer anywhere, least of
all from your own mother, as _Wendla_ and many another like her have
found out.
The girl, learning that her sister has a new baby, rushes to her mother
to find out how it came into the world.
_Wendla._ I have a sister who has been married for two and a half
years, I myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I
haven't the least idea how it all comes about--Don't be cross,
Mother dear, don't be cross! Whom in the world should I ask but you!
Please tell me, dear Mother! Tell me, dear Mother! I am ashamed for
myself. Please, Mother, speak! Don't scold me for asking you about
it. Give me an answer--How does it happen?--How does it all come
about?--You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen
years old, still believe in the stork.
_Frau Bergmann._ Good Lord, child, but you are peculiar!--What ideas
you have!--I really can't do that!
_Wendla._ But why not, Mother?--Why not?--It can't be anything ugly
if everybody is delighted over it!
_Fran Bergmann._ O--O God, protect me!--I deserve--Go get dressed,
child, go get dressed.
_Wendla._ I'll go--And suppose your child went out and asked the
chimney sweep?
_Fran Bergmann._ But that would be madness!--Come here, child, come
here, I'll tell you! I'll tell you everything-- ... In order to have
a child--one must love--the man--to whom one is married--love him, I
tell you--as one can only love a man! One must love him so much with
one's whole heart, so--so that one can't describe it! One must love
him, Wendla, as you at your age are still unable to love--Now you
know it!
How much _Wendla_ knew, her mother found out when too late.
_Wendla_ and _Melchior_, overtaken by a storm, seek shelter in a
haystack, and are drawn by what _Melchior_ calls the "first emotion of
manhood" and curiosity into each other's arms. Six months later
_Wendla's_ mother discovers that her child is to become a mother. To
save the family honor, the girl is promptly placed in the hands of a
quack who treats her for chlorosis.
_Wendla._ No, Mother, no! I know it. I feel it. I haven't chlorosis.
I have dropsy--I won't get better. I have the dropsy, I must die,
Mother--O, Mother, I must die!
_Frau Bergmann._ You must not die, child! You must not die--Great
heavens, you must not die!
_Wendla._ But why do you weep so frightfully, then?
_Frau Bergmann._ You must not die, child! You haven't the dropsy,
you have a child, girl! You have a child! Oh, why did you do that to
me!
_Wendla._ I haven't done anything to you.
_Frau Bergmann._ Oh, don't deny it any more, Wendla!--I know
everything. See, I didn't want to say a word to you.--Wendla, my
Wendla--!
_Wendla._ But it's not possible, Mother.... I have loved nobody in
the world as I do you, Mother.
The pathos of it, that such a loving mother should be responsible for
the death of her own child! Yet _Frau Bergmann_ is but one of the many
good, pious mothers who lay their children to "rest in God," with the
inscription on the tombstone: "Wendla Bergmann, born May 5th, 1878, died
from chlorosis, Oct. 27, 1892. Blessed are the pure of heart."
_Melchior_, like _Wendla_, was also "pure of heart"; yet how was he
"blessed"? Surely not by his teachers who, discovering his essay on the
mystery of life, expel the boy from school. Only Wedekind could inject
such grim humor into the farce of education--the smug importance of the
faculty of the High School sitting under the portraits of Rousseau and
Pestalozzi, and pronouncing judgment on their "immoral" pupil
_Melchior_.
_Rector Sonnenstich._ Gentlemen: We cannot help moving the expulsion
of our guilty pupil before the National Board of Education; there
are the strongest reasons why we cannot: we cannot, because we must
expiate the misfortune which has fallen upon us already; we cannot,
because of our need to protect ourselves from similar blows in the
future; we cannot, because we must chastise our guilty pupil for the
demoralizing influence he exerted upon his classmates; we cannot,
above all, because we must hinder him from exerting the same
influence upon his remaining classmates. We cannot ignore the
charge--and this, gentlemen, is possibly the weightiest of all--on
any pretext concerning a ruined career, because it is our duty to
protect ourselves from an epidemic of suicide similar to that which
has broken out recently in various grammar schools, and which until
to-day has mocked all attempts of the teachers to shackle it by any
means known to advanced education.... We see ourselves under the
necessity of judging the guilt-laden that we may not be judged
guilty ourselves.... Are you the author of this obscene manuscript?
_Melchior._ Yes--I request you, sir, to show me anything obscene in
it.
_Sonnenstich._ You have as little respect for the dignity of your
assembled teachers as you have a proper appreciation of mankind's
innate sense of shame which belongs to a moral world.
_Melchior's_ mother, a modern type, has greater faith in her child than
in school education. But even she cannot hold out against the pressure
of public opinion; still less against the father of _Melchior_, a firm
believer in authority and discipline.
_Herr Gabor._ Anyone who can write what Melchior wrote must be
rotten to the core of his being. The mark is plain. A half-healthy
nature wouldn't do such a thing. None of us are saints. Each of us
wanders from the straight path. His writing, on the contrary,
tramples on principles. His writing is no evidence of a chance slip
in the usual way; it sets forth with dreadful plainness and a
frankly definite purpose that natural longing, that propensity for
immorality, because it is immorality. His writing manifests that
exceptional state of spiritual corruption which we jurists classify
under the term "moral imbecility."
Between the parents and the educators, _Melchior_ is martyred even as
_Wendla_. He is sent to the House of Correction; but being of sturdier
stock than the girl, he survives.
Not so his chum _Moritz_. Harassed by the impelling forces of his
awakened nature, and unable to grapple with the torturous tasks demanded
by his "educators" at the most critical period of his life, _Moritz_
fails in the examinations. He cannot face his parents: they have placed
all their hope in him, and have lashed him, by the subtle cruelty of
gratitude, to the grindstone till his brain reeled. _Moritz_ is the
third victim in the tragedy, the most convenient explanation of which is
given by _Pastor Kahlbauch_ in the funeral sermon.
_Pastor Kahlbauch._ He who rejects the grace with which the
Everlasting Father has blessed those born in sin, he shall die a
spiritual death!--He, however, who in willful carnal abnegation of
God's proper honor, lives for and serves evil, shall die the death
of the body!--Who, however, wickedly throws away from him the cross
which the All Merciful has laid upon him for his sins, verily,
verily, I say unto you, he shall die the everlasting death! Let us,
however, praise the All Gracious Lord and thank Him for His
inscrutable grace in order that we may travel the thorny path more
and more surely. For as truly as this one died a triple death, as
truly will the Lord God conduct the righteous unto happiness and
everlasting life....
It is hardly necessary to point out the revolutionary significance of
this extraordinary play. It speaks powerfully for itself. One need only
add that "The Awakening of Spring" has done much to dispel the mist
enveloping the paramount issue of sex in the education of the child.
To-day it is conceded even by conservative elements that the conspiracy
of silence has been a fatal mistake. And while sponsors of the Church
and of moral fixity still clamor for the good old methods, the message
of Wedekind is making itself felt throughout the world, breaking down
the barriers.
The child is the unit of the race, and only through its unhampered
unfoldment can humanity come into its heritage. "The Awakening of
Spring" is one of the great forces of modern times that is paving the
way for the birth of a free race.