GERARDO. PROFESSOR DUeHRING. Later a piano teacher.
Professor Duehring, seventy years old, dressed in black, long, white
beard, his aquiline nose tinged with red, suggesting fondness for wine,
gold ringed spectacles, frock coat and silk hat, carries the score of
an opera under his arm, enters without knocking.
GERARDO (turning around). What do you want?
DUeHRING. Mr. Gerardo, I--I have ...
GERARDO. How did you get in here?
DUeHRING. I've been watching my chance for two hours down on the
sidewalk, Mr. Gerardo.
GERARDO (recollecting). Let me see, you are ...
DUeHRING. For fully two hours I've been standing down on the sidewalk.
What else was I to do?
GERARDO. But, my dear sir, I haven't the time.
DUeHRING. I don't mean to play the whole opera to you now.
GERARDO. I haven't the time left ...
DUeHRING. You haven't the time left! How about _me_! You are thirty. You
have attained success in your art. You can continue following your bent
through the whole long life that still is before you. I will ask you to
listen only to your own part in my opera. You promised to do so when
you came to town.
GERARDO. It's to no purpose, Sir. I am not my own master ...
DUeHRING. Please, Mr. Gerardo! Please, please! Look at me, here's an old
man lying before you on his knees who has known only one thing in life:
his art. I know what you would reply to me, you, a young man who has
been carried aloft on the wings of angels, one might say. "If you would
have the goddess of Fortune find you, don't hunt for her." Do you
imagine, when one has cherished but a single hope for fifty years, one
could possibly have overlooked any means whatsoever within human reach,
to attain that hope? First one turns cynical and then serious again.
One tries to get there by scheming, one is once more a light hearted
child, and again an earnest seeker after one's artistic ideals--not for
ambition's sake, not for conviction's sake, cannot help it, because
it's a curse which has been laid on one by a cruel omnipotence to which
the life-long agony of its creature is a pleasing offering! A pleasing
offering, I say, for we whom art enthralls rebel against our lot as
little as does the slave of a woman against his seductress, as little
as does the dog against his master who whips him.
GERARDO (in despair). I am powerless ...
DUeHRING. Let me tell you, my dear Sir, the tyrants of antiquity who, as
you know, would have their slaves tortured to death just for a pleasant
pastime, they were mere children, they were harmless innocent little
angels as compared with that divine providence which thought it was
creating those tyrants in its own image.
GERARDO. While I quite comprehend you ...
DUeHRING (while GERARDO vainly tries several times to interrupt him; he
follows GERARDO through the room and repeatedly blocks his attempt to
reach the door). You do not comprehend me. You cannot comprehend me.
How could you have had the time to comprehend me! Fifty years of
fruitless labor, Sir, that is more than you can comprehend, if one has
been a favorite child of fortune like you. But I'll try to make you
realize it approximately, at least. You see, I am too old to take my
own life. The proper time to do that is at twenty-five, and I have
missed my opportunity. I must live out my life now, my hand has grown
too unsteady. But would you know what an old man like me will do! You
ask me how I got in here. You have put your valet on guard at the hotel
entrance. I did not try to slip by him, I've known for fifty years what
he will tell me: the gentleman is not in. But with my score here I
stood at the corner of the building for two hours in the rain until he
went up for a moment. Then I followed him, and while you were speaking
to him in here, I concealed myself on the staircase--I need not tell
you where. And then, when he had gone down again, I entered here.
That's what a man of my years will do to reach one who might be his
grandson. Please, Sir, please, let not this moment be without result
for me even though it cost you a day, even though it cost you a whole
week. It will be to your advantage as well as mine. A week ago, when
you came to town on your starring tour, you promised me to let me play
my opera to you; and since that time I've called every day. You either
were rehearsing or had lady visitors. And now you are about to depart,
which would mean that an old man like me in vain spent a whole week
standing around in the street! And all it would cost you is a single
word: "I will sing your Hermann." Then my opera will be performed. Then
you will thank God for my intrusiveness, for--you sing "Siegfried,"
you sing "Florestan"--but you haven't in your repertory a more grateful
part, one more adapted to a singer of your resources than that of
"Hermann." Then with loud acclaim they will draw me out of my
obscurity, and perhaps I'll have the opportunity of giving to the world
at least a part of what I might have given, if it had not cast me out
like a leper. But the great material gain resulting from my long
struggle will not be mine, you alone will ...
GERARDO (having given up the attempt to stop his visitor, leans on the
mantle piece of the fireplace. While drumming on the marble slab with
his right hand, something behind the screen seems to excite his
curiosity. He investigates, then suddenly reaches out and draws a piano
teacher forward, dressed in gray. Holding her by the collar, with
outstretched arm, he thus leads her forward in front of the piano and
out through the centre door. Having locked the door, to DUeHRING).
Please, don't let this interrupt you!
DUeHRING. You see, there are performed ten new operas every year which
become impossible after the second night, and every ten years a good
one which lives. Now this opera of mine _is_ a good one, it is well
adapted for the stage, it is sure to be a financial success. If you let
me, I'll show you letters from Liszt, from Wagner, from Rubinstein, in
which these men look up to me as to a superior being. And why has it
remained unperformed to the present day? Because I don't stand in the
public market-place. I tell you, it's like what will happen to a young
girl who for three years has been the reigning beauty at all dancing
parties, but has forgotten to become engaged. One has to give way to
another generation. Besides you know our court theatres. They are
fortresses, I can assure you, compared with which the armor-plate of
Metz and Rastadt is the merest tin. They would rather dig out ten
corpses than admit a single living composer. And it's in getting over
these ramparts that I ask you to lend me a hand. You are inside at
thirty, I am outside at seventy. It would cost you just a word to let
me in, while I am vainly battering my head against stone and steel.
That's why I have come to you (_very passionately_) and if you are not
absolutely inhuman, if your success has not killed off in you the very
last trace of sympathy with striving fellow-artists, you cannot refuse
my request.
GERARDO. I will let you know a week from now. I will play your opera
through. Let me take it along.
DUeHRING. I am too old for that, Mr. Gerardo. Long before a week, as
measured by your chronology, has elapsed, I shall lie beneath the sod.
I've been put off that way too often. (Bringing down his fist on the
piano.) Hie Rhodus! Hie salta! It's five years ago now that I called on
the manager of the Royal Theatre, Count Zedlitz: "What have
you got for me, my dearest professor?" "An opera, your Excellency."
"Indeed, you have written a new opera? Splendid!" "Your Excellency,
I have not written a new opera. It's an old opera. I wrote it
thirteen years ago."--It wasn't this one here, it was my _Maria de
Medicis_.--"But why don't you let us have it then? Why, we are just
hunting for new works. We simply cannot shuffle through any longer,
turning the old ones over and over. My secretary is traveling from one
theatre to another, without finding anything, and you, who live right
here, withhold your production from us in proud disdain of the common
crowd!" "Your Excellency," I replied, "I am not withholding anything
from anybody. Heaven is my witness. I submitted this opera to your
predecessor, Count Tornow, thirteen years ago and had to go to his
office myself three years later to get it back. Nobody had as much as
looked at it." "Now just leave it here, my dear professor. A week from
now at the latest you'll have our answer." And in saying this he pulls
the score from under my arm and claps it into the lowest drawer and
that's where it is lying today! That's where it is lying today, Sir!
But what would I do, child that I am in spite of my white hair, but go
home and tell my Gretchen: they need a new opera here at our theatre.
Mine is practically accepted now! A year later death took her away from
me,--and she was the one friend left who had been with me when I began
to work on it. (Sobs and dries his tears.)
GERARDO. Sir, I cannot but feel the deepest sympathy for you ...
DUeHRING. That's where it is lying today.
GERARDO. May be you actually are a child in spite of your white hair. I
must confess I doubt if I can help you.
DUeHRING (in violent rage). So you can endure the sight of an old man
dragging himself along beside you on the same path on which
your victorious flight carries you to the sun! Who knows but tomorrow
you will lie on your knees before me and boast of knowing me, and today
you see in the agonized groan of a creative artist nothing but a sad
mistake and you cannot wring from your greed of gold the half hour it
would take to rid me of the chains that are crushing me.
GERARDO. Sit down and play, sir! Come!
DUeHRING (sits down at the piano, opens his score, and strikes two
chords). No, that's not the way it reads. I have to get back into it
first. (Strikes three chords, then turns several leaves.) That is the
overture; I won't detain you with it.--Now here comes the first scene
... (Strikes two chords.) Here you stand at the deathbed of your
father. Just a moment until I get my bearings ...
GERARDO. Perhaps all you say is quite true. But at any rate you
misjudge my position.
DUeHRING (plays a confused orchestration and sings in a deep grating
voice).
Alas, now death has come to the castle
As it is raging in our huts.
It moweth down both great and small ...
(Interrupting himself.) No, that's the chorus. I had thought of playing
it to you because it's very good. Now comes your turn. (Resumes the
accompaniment and sings hoarsely:)
My life unto this fateful hour
Was dim and gray like the breaking morn.
Tortured by demons, I roamed about.
My eye is tearless!
Oh let me kiss once more thy hoary hair!
(Interrupting himself.) Well? (Since GERARDO does not answer, with
violent irritation.) These anaemic, threadbare, plodding, would-be
geniuses who are puffing themselves up today! Whose technique is so
sublime, it makes them sterile, impotent at twenty! Meistersingers,
philistines, that's what they are, whether they are starving or
basking in the public favor. Fellows that go to the cookbook rather
than to nature to satisfy their hunger. They think, indeed, they've
learned her secret--naivete! Ha--ha!--Tastes like plated brass!--They
make art their starting-point rather than life! Write music for
musicians rather than for yearning mankind! Blind, benighted
ephemerons! Senile youths whom the sun of Wagner has dried and
shriveled up! (Seizing GERARDO'S arm violently.) To judge a man's
creative genius, do you know where I take hold of him first?
GERARDO (stepping back). Well?
DUeHRING (putting his right hand around his own left wrist and feeling
his pulse). This is where I take hold of him first of all. Do you see,
right here! And if he hasn't anything here--please, let me go on
playing. (Turning more leaves.) I won't go through the whole monologue.
We shouldn't have the time anyway. Now here, scene three, end of the
first act. That's where the farm laborer's child, who had grown up with
you in the castle, suddenly enters. Now listen--after you have taken
leave of your highly revered mother. (Rapidly reading the text:) Demon,
who art thou? May one enter? (To GERARDO.) Those words are hers, you
understand. (Continues reading.) Barbette! Yes, it is I. Is your father
dead? There he lies! (Plays and sings in the highest falsetto.)
Full often did he stroke my curls.
Wherever he met me he was kind to me.
Alas, this is death.
His eyes are closed ...
(Interrupting himself, looking at GERARDO with self-assurance.) Now
isn't that music?
GERARDO. Possibly.
DUeHRING (striking two chords). Isn't that something more than the
_Trumpeter of Saekkingen_?
GERARDO, Your confidence compels me to be candid. I cannot imagine how
I could use my influence with any benefit to you.
DUeHRING. In other words you mean to tell me that it is antiquated
music.
GERARDO. I would much rather call it modern music.
DUeHRING. Or modern music. Pardon my slip of the tongue, Mr. Gerardo.
It's what will happen when one gets old. You see, one manager will
write me: We cannot use your opera, it is antiquated music--and another
writes: We cannot use it because it is modern music. In plain language
both mean the same: We don't want any opera of yours, because as a
composer _you don't count_.
GERARDO. I am a Wagner singer, Sir, I am no critic. If you want to see
your opera performed, you had better apply to those who are paid for
knowing what is good and what is bad. My judgment in such matters,
don't doubt that for a moment, Sir, counts the less, the more I am
recognized and esteemed as a singer.
DUeHRING. My dear Mr. Gerardo, you may rest assured, I don't believe in
your judgment either. What do I care for your judgment! I think I know
what to expect of a tenor. I am playing this opera to you to make you
say: I'll sing your Hermann! I'll sing your Hermann!
GERARDO. It won't avail you anything. I must do what I am asked to do;
I am bound by my contracts. You can afford to stand down in the street
for a week. A day more or less makes no difference to you. But if _I_
do not leave here by the next train, my prospects in this world are
ruined. May be, in another world they will engage singers who break
their contracts! My chains are drawn more tightly than the harness of a
carriage horse. If anybody, even an absolute stranger, asks me
for material assistance lie will find I have an open hand, although the
sacrifice of happiness my calling exacts of me is not paid for with
five hundred thousand francs a year. But if you ask of me the slightest
assertion of personal liberty, you are expecting too much of a slave
such as I am. I _can not_ sing your Hermann as long as you don't count
as a composer.
DUeHRING. Please, Sir, let me continue. It will give you a desire for
the part.
GERARDO. If you but knew, Sir, how often I have a desire for things
which I must deny myself and how often I must assume burdens for which
I have not the least desire! I have absolutely no choice in the matter.
You have been a free man all your life. How can you complain of not
being in the market? Why don't you go and put yourself in the market?
DUeHRING. Oh, the haggling--the shouting--the meanness you meet with! I
have tried it a hundred times.
GERARDO. One must do what one is capable of doing and not what one is
incapable of doing.
DUeHRING. Everything has to be learned first.
GERARDO. One must learn that which one is capable of learning. How am I
to know if the case is not very much the same with your work as a
composer.
DUeHRING. I _am_ a composer, Mr. Gerardo.
GERARDO. You mean by that, you have devoted your whole strength to the
writing of operas.
DUeHRING. Quite so.
GERARDO. And you hadn't any left to bring about a performance.
DUeHRING. Quite so.
GERARDO. The composers whom I know go about it just the other way. They
slap their operas on paper the best way they know and keep their
strength for bringing about a performance.
DUeHRING. They are a type of composer I don't envy.
GERARDO. They would reciprocate that feeling, Sir. These people do
count. One must be _something_. Name me a single famous man who did not
_count_! If one is not a composer, one is something else, that's all,
and there's no need of being unhappy about it, either. I was something
else myself before I became a Wagner singer--something, my efficiency
at which nobody could doubt, and with which I was entirely satisfied.
It is not for _us_ to say what we are intended for in this world. If it
were, any Tom, Dick, or Harry might come along! Do you know what I was
before they discovered me? I was a paperhanger's apprentice. Do you
know what that is like! (Indicating by gesture.) I put paper on
walls--with paste. I don't conceal my humble origin from anybody. Now
just imagine, that as a paperhanger I should have taken it into my head
to become a Wagner singer! Do you know what they would have done to me?
DUeHRING. They would have sent you to the madhouse.
[Illustration: LEO TOLSTOY]
_Permission Albert Langen, Munich_
FROM OLAF GULBRANSSON'S "FAMOUS CONTEMPORARIES"
GERARDO. Exactly, and rightly so. Whoever is dissatisfied with what he
is will not get anywhere as long as he lives. A healthy man does that
at which he is successful; if he fails, he chooses another calling. You
spoke of the judgment of your friends. It does not take much to obtain
expressions of approbation and admiration which do not cost those
anything who utter them. Since my fifteenth year I have been paid for
every labor I've performed and should have considered it a disgrace to
be compelled to do something for nothing. Fifty years of fruitless
struggling! Can anybody be so stubborn as not to have that convince him
of the impossibility of his dreams! What did you get out of your life?
You have sinfully wasted it! I have never striven for anything out of
the ordinary; but, Sir, I can assure you of one thing: that since my
earliest childhood days I have never had enough time left to stand out
in the street for a whole week. And if I were to think that in
my old days I might be compelled to do that very thing--Sir, I am
speaking only for myself now--but I cannot imagine how I could still
muster the courage to look people in the face.
DUeHRING. What? With such an opera in your hands! Remember, I am not
doing it for my own sake; I am doing it for art's sake.
GERARDO. You overestimate art. Let me tell you that art is something
quite different from what people make themselves believe about it.
DUeHRING. I know nothing higher on earth!
GERARDO. That's a view shared only by people like yourself to whose
interest it is to make this view prevail generally. We artists are
merely one of bourgeoisie's luxuries in paying for which they will
outbid each other. If you were right, how would an opera like _Walkuere_
be possible which deals with things the exposure of which is absolutely
abhorrent to the public. Yet when _I_ sing the part of Siegmund, the
most solicitous mothers will not hesitate to bring in their thirteen or
fourteen year old daughters. And indeed, as I am standing on the stage,
I know for certain that not one person in the audience any longer pays
the slightest attention to the action itself. If they did they would
get up and out. That's what they actually did when the opera was still
new. Now they have accustomed themselves to ignoring it. They notice it
as little as they notice the air separating them from the stage. That,
you see, is the meaning of what you call art! To this you have
sacrificed fifty years of your life! Our real duty as artists is to
produce ourselves to the paying public night after night under one
pretense or another. Nor is its interest limited to such exhibitions;
it fastens itself as tenaciously upon our private life. One belongs to
the public with every breath one draws; and because we submit to this
for money, people never know which they had better do most, idolize us
or despise us. Go and find out how many went to the theatre
yesterday to hear me sing and how many came to gape at me as they would
gape at the emperor of China if he were to come to town tomorrow. Do
you know what the public is after in its pursuit of art? To shout
bravos, to throw flowers and wreaths upon the stage, to have something
to talk about, to be seen by others, to say Ah and Oh, once in a while
to take a hand in unhitching a performer's horses--these are the
public's real wants, and I satisfy them. If they pay me half a million,
I in return furnish a living to a legion of cabmen, writers, milliners,
florists, tavernkeepers. The money is made to circulate. People's blood
is made to circulate. Young girls become engaged, old maids get
married, wives fall victims to their husbands' friends, and
grandmothers get no end of topics for gossip. Accidents and crimes are
made to happen. At the ticket office a child is trampled to death, a
lady is robbed of her pocketbook, a gentleman in the audience becomes
insane during a performance. That creates business for physicians,
lawyers ... (he is seized by a fit of coughing.) And to think in this
condition I am to sing Tristan tomorrow!--I am not telling you these
things out of vanity but to cure you of your delusion. The standard by
which to judge a man's importance in this world is the world itself and
not some fixed conviction one may have acquired through years of
brooding meditation. I did not put myself in the market either; they
discovered me. There are no unappreciated, neglected geniuses. We are
not the makers and masters of our own fate; man is born a slave!
DUeHRING (who has been turning the leaves of his manuscript). Please,
before I go, let me play to you the first scene of the second act. It's
laid in a park, you know, just like the famous picture: _Embarquement
pour Cythere_ ...
GERARDO. But I told you I haven't the time! Besides what am I to gather
from a few detached scenes'?
DUeHRING (slowly packing up his manuscript). I am afraid, Mr. Gerardo,
you are somewhat misjudging me. After all, I am not quite so unknown to
the rest of the world as I am to you. My person and name are known.
Wagner himself mentions me often enough in his writings. And let me
tell you, if I die today, my works will be performed tomorrow. I am as
sure of that as I know that my music will retain its value. My Berlin
publisher writes me every day: All that's needed is for you to die. Why
then in the world don't you?
GERARDO. All I can reply to you is this: that since Wagner's death
there hasn't been a call for new operas anywhere. If you offer new
music, you have all conservatories, all singers and the whole public
against you from the start. If you want to see your works performed,
write a music which does not differ the least from what is in vogue
today; just copy; steal your opera in bits and scraps from the whole of
Wagner's operas. Then you may count with considerable probability on
having it accepted. My tremendous hit last night should prove to you
that the old music is all that's needed for years to come. And my
opinion is that of every other singer, of every manager and of the
whole paying public. Why should I go out of my way to have a new music
whipped into me when the old music has already cost me such inhuman
whippings?
DUeHRING (offers him his trembling hand). I am sorry but I fear I'm too
old to learn to steal. That's the kind of thing one has to begin young
or one will never learn.
GERARDO. I hope I haven't offended you, Sir.--But, my dear Sir,--if you
would permit me--the thought that life means a hard struggle to
you--(speaking very rapidly) it so happens that I have received five
hundred marks more than I ...
DUeHRING (looks at GERARDO with his eyes wide open, then suddenly starts
for the door). Please, please, I beg of you, no! Don't finish what you
meant to say. No, no, no! That is not what I came for. You know what a
great sage has said:--They are all of them good-natured, but ...!--No,
Mr. Gerardo, I did not ask you to listen to my opera in order to
practise extortion on you. I love my child too much for that. No
indeed, Mr. Gerardo ...
[Exit through the centre door.]
GERARDO (escorting him to the door). Oh please. Sir.--Happy to have
known you, Sir.