Theaters should stop competing with the cinema. By doing so, they
are thereby achieving --rejoice, friends of the theater the
opposite of what they want: they are perishing.
The best way for these theaters to maintain themselves is to make
concessions to the cinema; they make neither concessions in the
selection of plays, nor in scope. This can be explained. What
movies giving in to the instincts of the crowd offer can never be
produced in the same dimensions and amount by theater, bound as it is
by its limits. Shaking its head, the public notices the helpless
effort. And runs to the movies. For what should bind the public
most to the theater: art, is for the most part shamefully neglected.
(As when makers of felt hats had the idea, when straw hats were worn
by everyone, to bring to the market felt hats shaped and colored like
straw hats.)
Before movies came along, the many second-class theaters were by far
a much greater danger to the theater. Characteristically
organizations of this kind are threatened most by movies. Some will
remain for a while, because of the skill of their directors or
through other accidents. Second-class theater undoubtedly will die
out in a short time. The public, which found this sort of thing to
their taste, has, in the movies, a much more luxurious substitute:
death and homicide in abundance. Comedy until you burst. Juicy
melodrama. And the movie actor with his heavy-handed emphases for
example, in a tragic, many-colored story of adultery (in period
costumes) surpasses the hammy Hamlet in heart-gripping effect.
Theaters that want to survive are compelled to think again about what
they are doing. Directors must cultivate the pure art of theater.
Actors in contrast to "filmers", or better still "ciners" or
"cinekers" to maintain their reputations, must abandon all tricks
and gimmicks. The public that goes to the theater in spite of movies
is discriminating and cant be taken in.
There cannot be too many movies. As a member of the cultural police
I would order that half a dozen be opened on every street.
The more people rush into the movies, the more a part of the fraud
will become tiresome. Of the hundred thousands who throng the movies,
a few hundred every year will return once more to the theater.
The number of theaters in the future will be smaller, but their
average quality will be disproportionately better. The incompetent
directors, dramatists, and other squabblers, who until now were
parasites on the theater, will find in movie-making a place more
suited to their capabilities. The many mediocre and bad actors who
now help keep prices down and block the way will become wonderful
cinikers. A talented shoemaker in the future will not go to theater
schools but to film schools. Lispers, cripples, hunchbacks, mutes,
and similar handicapped mimes will be able, more easily and more
happily, to find relief in the movies.
(The cinema of boundless possibilities )
But the theater, thanks to the movies free of hindering ballast and
harmful influences, will have to return to the sacred dramatic art.
CHAPTER FROM A FRAGMENTARY NOVEL
translated by Harry Radford
Doctor Bryller did become a senior teacher after all. A furious
enemy of his had predicted such a destiny years ago, in the
out-of-date periodical "The Other A". At that time he was deeply
distressed about this insight of his enemy, the truth of which, after
thinking intensely about it, he could not deny. He wrote an
intemperate article which was not accepted for publication anywhere.
And one evening he got a little drunk on French sparkling wine, to
kill the innate fear which prevented him from beating up his enemy.
But his cowardice did not leave him, even in drunkenness.
Unspeakably unhappy, he gave up the idea of taking revenge.
Now in earnest he began to live a solitary and transfigured life. He
let this be known in an in flammatory manner, just as he had so often
done when announcing the agenda of a new trend in art. And with the
profoundest solemnity, as though he were at an important funeral. He
even exploited his failure in order to feel superior. In point of
fact, he lived hardly differently than before. The only change was
that he had actually become more hopeless in an emotional sense. Now
he had to calm himself with the thought: Even if I could achieve what
I wanted to, I would achieve nothing. While previously his line of
thinking ran: Unfortunately it is indeed true that I can achieve
nothing, but what I can achieve is rather good.
Practically minded as Berthold Bryller was in certain ways, he was
able to cast his weaknesses in common human terms, so that the
despair, which at first had revealed itself in hysterical attacks of
a special kind, soon gave way--except in rare conditions--to a
feeling of lofty indifference. He still wrote his impudent and
careless letters, which did him considerable harm; he published
particularly clever, slightly demented essays in the few journals
with whose editors he didn't happen to be quarreling with; he founded
both clubs which then expelled him, and periodicals in which he was
attacked. Everywhere, and in other ways, he continued to make
himself impossible even by his very presence. The uninitiated might
interpret his absence from the Café Klößchen as a sign of his inward
transformation, if it were not for a poster fixed to the door of the
Cafe:
No admittance to Bryller!
which suggested that an argument with the manager was the reason for
his absence.
But gradually the hopelessness of his literary existence became
inescapable to Doctor Bryller, who was certainly no idiot. In
addition, his funds for the foreseeable future were exhausted. So,
incapable of killing himself if it were to become necessary, he had
to focus his energy on working to earn a living. His writing
activity was financially unsuccessful. He would not have the heart
to take a permanent literary job--something like an editorship--aside
from the fact that no one would take him. What other option did he
have but to use the rest of his money to continue his interrupted
university training, take the necessary state examinations, and then
find himself a secure and pleasant position as a senior teacher. In
point of fact, this profession seemed thoroughly comfortable to him.
Convinced of the incorrigibility of human imperfection, which he had
experienced first hand, and utterly convinced of the complete
uselessness of physical and intellectual striving, he gladly gave
free rein to any and all base impulse. He could satisfy his cravings
for power, his other ambitions, even his erotic needs, most readily
as a senior teacher.
Despite his moodiness and frequent peculiar behaviour, Doctor Bryller
was one of the most popular teachers at the Horror High School. The
small pupils idolized him, the bigger ones clung to him passionately.
Of course there also were pupils who didn't like him. For example,
the second-year pupil Max Mechenmal whose face he had slapped a few
times without obvious reason. This could have had the most
unpleasant consequences for Doctor Berthold Bryller. On the occasion
of the teacher meeting called by director Rudolf Richter after the
highly indignant complaint of the pupil, a large majority of the
colleagues, unlike the pupils, turned out to have unfriendly feelings
for the Doctor. When he, questioned about why he had pupil,
smilingly replied that Mechenmal displeased him, they wanted to
recommend to the authorities, following the suggestion of the
respected colleague Lothar Laaks, that he be removed for a
considerable time for the purpose of mental recovery in a sanatorium.
Only the happenstance that the aggrieved pupil Mechenmal was hated
equally by teachers and pupils, because of his overfriendly
awkwardness and his malicious secret rabble-rousing, impeded such a
decision. Although colleague Laaks--the only one who found words of
appreciation for Mechenmal--advocated it heatedly with the use of
much dirty dialectic. The colleagues were content to warn Doktor
Bryller of the inappropriateness of his behavior.
One day, about a half year before the final incarceration of Berthold
Bryller for life, in an insane asylum subsidized by the state, a
yelling arose in the schoolyard of the Horror High School. A crowd
of mostly smaller pupils surged behind a dwarfish, care-worn,
lop-sided boy whose back showed the slight beginnings of a hump.
They teased him cheerfully and spitefully--the words were
unintelligible because of the noise but surely malicious. He was
pushed so that he stumbled. Many older high school pupils looked on,
amused at the lively rough-housing. Even senior teacher Laaks, who
was supervising, failed to suppress an amused smile. In a window was
the motionless face of Doctor Bryller.
The malformed boy continued walking without defending himself. With
bent head. Often he had to wipe his eyes with his hand. Only once,
when one of most impudent youths who else but the second-year pupil
Mechenmal--spat into his face while the others raucously clapped
approval, did he throw himself sobbing deeply against the attacker,
who immediately ran away. Through the middle of the shrieking crowd,
which blocked his way in all directions, the crying humpback pursued
his schoolmate. Perhaps he would have reached Mechenmal if the
perennial fourth-year pupil Spinoza Spass hadn't suddenly grasped his
hump as if with a hook. Spinoza Spass grinned comfortably and
maliciously into the monkey-shaped, longingly apathetic face, as he
propelled the little despairing Kohn like a weight slowly through the
sunny spring air. By this heroic deed he became one of the most
famous fourth-year pupils of the Horror High School.
Some sympathetic older high school pupils put an early end to the
strange spectacle. The gaunt, pale senior Paulus snatched the tiny
unfortunate boy from the venemously peering Spass and threatened to
beat up anyone who annoyed the lop-sided little Kohn further. For
fear of Paulus and some other like-minded boys, they left the flushed
humpback in peace--at least for the time being. He walked along,
pressing himself against the gray walls. And would have most happily
sunk into the ground. When the school bell rang, he was glad to
disappear into the classrooms.
The senior Peter Paulus was already walking along the somewhat dark
corridor to the spacious room in which the parish priest Leopold
Lehmann gave Hebrew lessons to the pupils in the upper classes, when
the senior teacher Laaks caught up with him, called to him, and
engaged him in a mysterious, very excited conversation. Laaks was
apparently reprimanding Paulus. It was strange, however, that he
didn't look like a teacher chastising a pupil, but rather like a
mistrustful relative who believes himself taken advantage of in an
inheritance matter. The behavior of the senior was also by no means
the behavior of a subordinate...
The discussion between the two must have lasted a very long time.
For when Peter Paulus entered more pale than usual and explained that
his late arrival was caused by an official conversation, the priest
Lehmann had long since concluded the topic of that days curriculum.
He was engaged in a religious discussion which, following the modern
trend, he linked regularly to the Hebrew lesson. They were speaking
at the moment about God and the nature of student life, but came,
after a few unimportant discussions, to the main topic: abortion and
the inner life, which gave them pause. The discussion was triggered
by a report in an art journal that someone had cut out and brought
for the purpose of discussion. The priest read out loud: