PAUL HEYSE (1910)--GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912)
The prize of 1910 has been awarded:
Heyse, Paul, born 1830, died April 2, 1914: “as a mark of esteem of
an artistry, finished and marked by an ideal conception, which he has
shown during a long and significant activity as lyric dramatist, and
as an author of romances and famous short stories.”[72]
Two German scholars had been winners of the Nobel prize in literature
in 1904 and 1908--Theodor Mommsen and Rudolf Eucken. Two more
distinguished authors with international reputations were added in 1910
and 1912, making four awards to German literature within eight years.
Paul Heyse, the versatile author of the year 1910 has been difficult
to classify, because he is dramatist, poet, novelist, and writer of a
form of short story known as the _Novelle_. More than one hundred and
fifty of these tales are accredited to him, in addition to prodigious
industry in other literary forms. The _Novelle_ bears some resemblance
to the short stories of Hoffmann, Tieck, Alfred de Musset, and the
American masters of this type, Poe, Hawthorne, and O. Henry. In more
definite method than some of these _conteurs_, Heyse developed a
principle which he applied and explained, in part, in his Introduction
to his _Deutscher Novellenschatz_; he stresses the fact that the
essential foundation of this form is “what children call the story” but
he adds, “A strong silhouette should not be lacking.” The “silhouette
will be a brief summary of conditions which underlie the focal scene
or incident.” Thus Heyse became creator, or developer, of this form of
fiction, with a wide range of incidents and characters, in which keen
observation of life and faithful recital were blended with idealism of
a distinctive motive--that of “glorifying nature,” human and inanimate.
Johann Ludwig Paul Heyse was born in Berlin, March 15, 1830; he was
eighty years old when the Nobel honor was received. His father, Karl
Ludwig Heyse, with a firm, Teutonic nature, was a famous philologist
and professor at the University of Berlin. His mother came from a
Jewish family of wealth and social rank. In his _Memoirs_, her son
recalls her as “passionate and imaginative”; from her he inherited his
bent toward story-telling and delight in the sensuous which mingled
with the rationalistic trend of mind, bequeathed by his father. In
the home of the Heyses gathered scholars, authors, and artists. The
atmosphere fostered the natural precocity of the boy, Paul. One
of his older friends was Kugler, the historian of art, who had an
inspirational influence upon the youth; in manhood, Heyse married the
gifted daughter of this friend.
At the University of Bonn, where Heyse went from Berlin, he showed
much interest in Romance languages. He was fascinated with Spanish,
especially the writings of Cervantes and Calderon. In 1849, and again
in 1852, he traveled in Italy, adding Dante, Boccaccio, and Leopardi
to his list of literary heroes. The homes of artists were open to him
and he found Italy an ideal land of “colour and grace.” Shakespeare
received his tribute throughout his literary life. He began to write
dramas and lyric poems, tales in verse and prose with youthful zest and
marks of great promise. In 1854, King Max of Bavaria offered to him a
position at the Court of Munich, at a salary of 1500 florins. Munich
was an environment sure to awaken his talent and satisfy his love of
beauty. Under Louis I it had been favored with some fine buildings; an
atmosphere of culture was pervasive. Among the poets and scholars, with
whom Heyse became associated here, were Geibel, Bodenstedt, Wilbrandt,
Luogg, and Schack, the historian. In 1868, when Louis II, successor to
King Max, insulted Geibel, the poet, and caused him to leave the city,
Heyse was depressed although he stayed in Munich, living in a charming
villa there until his death in 1914.
From the early years of his authorship, Heyse showed an aristocratic
culture which did not dim his interest in fisherfolk, peasants, and
rural characters. Although family sorrows came upon him, and he
suffered, from 1880 to 1900, from attacks by the ardent followers
of Zola and Ibsen, yet he never lost his serenity of character and
his belief in individualistic expression. “Instinct” was his guide,
as he has exemplified in scores of his tales and dramas. The “child
of nature,” or the man or woman of inherent nobility, was incapable
of any low or mean action according to his belief. In _Salamander_,
which Mr. Georg Brandes regards as his best _Novelle_ in versified
form,[73] he expresses his creed of the vigorous life, of allegiance to
nature, in spite of failings and adverse judgments against him by the
“naturalistic school”:
I never yet of virtue or of failing
Have been ashamed, nor proudly did adorn
Myself of one, nor thought my sins of veiling.
Beyond all else, betwixt the nobly born
And vulgar herd, this marks the separation,--
The cowards whose hypocrisy we scorn.
Him I call noble, who, with moderation,
Carves his own honor, and but little heeds
His neighbors’ slander or their approbation.[74]
Another character, familiar to readers of Heyse, Toinette of _Kinder
der Welt_ (_Children of the World_) speaks words of similar trend often
quoted; “There is but _one_ genuine nobility; to remain true to one’s
self.... He who bears within himself the true rank, lives and dies
through his own grace, and is, therefore, sovereign.”
To Italy, Heyse turns for sensuous delights in many of his tales.
_L’Arrabiata_, probably the best known of any of his _Novellen_ by
students of German in colleges and classes, written when he was
twenty-three, has an interesting history.[75] Paul Heyse as a young
man, and his friend, Joseph Victor Scheffel, were at an inn at
Sorrento. They had been together at Capri and had planned to hold a
“literary joust,” to read to each other, at Sorrento, some new tale or
poem. Scheffel contributed the poem, _Der Trumpeter von Gättingen_;
Heyse read _L’Arrabiata_. Piquant is this tale of the maiden’s love
for Antonio, the boatman, and her maidenly pride and resistance to his
love until the injury to his arm and his plea to her, in memory of her
mother, brings about a romantic sequel. Twenty-five years later Heyse
was again at Sorrento; he sent a greeting, in rhyme, to this friend of
earlier days and later life. He told him that he had seen again his
model, “Laurella,” on the street but she did not recognize him; she was
far removed from the “madcap” of fifteen, the “cross-patch,” with her
youthful charm and wistful appeal. The background of this tale, against
Naples and Vesuvius, is painted with that vivid photography which
characterizes Heyse’s scenes in drama and fiction. Unlike Balzac or
Turgenieff, he wrote few words of description but “created atmosphere”
that was alive. Striking examples are the familiar tales, “Barbarossa,”
“At the Ghost Hour” and “The Dead Lake.”
In the later _Novellen_, as well as the novels and plays of other
years, Heyse showed tendencies towards realism and less romanticism.
On the other hand, he never lost his urge for sensuous beauty, his
determination “to follow one’s bent” (“sich gehen zu lassen”). He
would not compel himself to irksome writing; he would yield to
impulse and mood. “The real sin is against nature” was his keynote,
reiterated from the short tale of “Reise nach dem Glück” (“Journey
After Happiness”) to the longer novels, _Kinder der Welt_ (_Children
of the World_) and _Im Paradiese_ (_In Paradise_). In philosophy he
has been called both fatalistic and epicurean. The conflicts between
restraint and self-surrender, especially in women, are germ-ideas
in such diverse writings as _L’Arrabiata_, _The Sabine Women_ (with
the heroine, Tullia) and _In Paradise_, with the forceful character
of Irene. In the dialogue, in _Children of the World_, between
Balder, the invalid-idealist and Franzel, the socialist-printer, the
author’s convictions are unfolded. Balder declares that life is full
of enjoyment to him, in spite of outward sufferings, because “he can
experience past and future,” because he can “conjure up” all the
periods of his life and find a totality, a completeness of enjoyment.
So the young baron in the novel, _In Paradise_, which has been
vehemently discussed for two generations, sins against his own nature
and his friend and, for a time, his “inner harmony” is destroyed but
after sufferings, portrayed with analytical skill, harmony is restored.
The city of Munich, in its varied aspects as related to society and
the arts, forms the “chorus” and subtle influence in this dramatic
story.[76]
Heyse has written more than sixty dramas yet too few of them are
translated adequately into English; too often they have failed in stage
presentation. Many are historical; _The Sabine Women_ is erotic and
less consistent in development than _Hans Lange_, _Hadrian Colberg_,
and _Mary of Magdala_; the last play has been translated by William
Winter and by Lionel Vale. The old philologist, Zipfel, in _Colberg_,
may have been modeled, in part, from Heyse’s father. His speech,
relating the story of Leonidas and the Persian War, reaches a climax
of courage and self-sacrifice, with an application to later days of
struggle between the French and Germans. In Henning, the old servant in
_Hans Lange_, the author emphasizes his belief in the redemptive power
of nobler nature, in spite of incentives to revenge against the young
squire.
There is unevenness of workmanship among the many _Novellen_. _Felice_,
the tale of the peasant girl who “listened to reason rather than the
call of passion,” is a vital expression of the author’s creed of
obedience to “impulse of the heart.” The later tales are more keen
and realistic than the photographic, romantic scenes laid in Italy
and Southern Germany. Heyse became more of an analyst of all kinds of
humanity, with their conflicting “impulses,” but he never acquiesced
in the scenes of squalor and moral slime that delighted some of his
contemporaries of the “naturalistic school.” By contrast, he was an
idealist with a strong vein of poetry. One of his best stories of
later period, _The Last Centaur_, expresses his revolt against the
materialistic spirit of his age. The creature who represents the age
of myths and imagination is driven back into the wood by the evil
ways and heartless gibes of the modern villages; in turn, he scorns
their opposition with “an exhalted humor.” It seems almost a modern
version of the old tale of _Baucis and Philemon_. In another tale, _The
Incurable_, the hero keeps faith in the ideal, in spite of the “rabble
in kid gloves.” _Die Blinden_ (_The Blind_) is an appealing story, with
colorful pictures of garden and ravens and flocks, and two children,
Clement and Marlene, waiting with tense emotion for the doctors to
restore their sight. The stern father, obsessed with his idea of
“duty,” is a strong character. “Nils mit der offenen Hand” is a fairy
tale that defies adequate translation into English but has situations
of dramatic skill, notably that of the gulls biting the rope at the
execution of Nils, and the brave deed of Stina, the princess who loves
Nils.
Heyse was more successful in portraying women than men. He was long
called “the favorite of maidens.” He had insight to see fairly and to
balance well the traits of normal maidenhood--beauty, coyness, love
of prowess and adventure, ardent but concealed love until the lover
came to whom she would yield her “maidenly pride” (“Mädschenstoltz”).
There are traces of the influence of Goethe in certain passages in
_Kinder der Welt_, and such _Novellen_ as _The Broiderer of Treviso_,
_The Prodigal Son_, and _The Spell of Rothenburg_. In the last story,
there are comments upon art, interwoven with humor and irony as the
characters journey from Ausbach to Würzburg. Originality, however,
marks his drama and his fiction--that “ideal conception and fine
literary craftsmanship” which won for him the Nobel inscription.
Mr. Georg Brandes believes that Heyse was, primarily, a pupil of
Eichendorf, as his poetry indicates.[77] The poems by Heyse are less
familiar than his prose, although he wrote both epics and lyrics.
“Salamander” ranks among his best long poems; “The Fury” and “The
Fairy Child” are examples of his lyrics. He delighted to translate--or
transpose--troubadour lays, folk songs from the Spanish and the
Italian. Like Mendelssohn, to whom he has been compared in temperament,
he lacked dynamic force but he was sensitive, artistic, and idealistic
in his basic character.
GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912)
The prize of 1912 has been awarded:
Hauptmann, Gerhart, born 1862: “principally for his rich, versatile,
and prominent activity in the realm of the drama.”[78]
During the quarter century since the first Nobel prize was awarded,
it has happened, at intervals, that two representatives of the same
nation but different generations, are found on the lists in literature.
Thus Björnson and Hamsun, among Norwegian novelists, Echegaray
and Benavente in Spanish Drama, and Heyse and Hauptmann in German
literature of the imagination, are exponents of succeeding generations
of thought and expression. Heyse stood for the older, more poetic
and romantic forms; he decreed a philosophy of nobleness in man and
contentment in life. Gerhart Hauptmann, who received the prize only two
years later than Heyse, in 1912, was ranked by some critics with the
realists of the modern, restless type, whose criticism of society in
general was world-disturbing. After 1900 the fame of Heyse had declined
among the younger, more progressive writers. His award, at eighty
years, revived interest in his writings, especially the _Novellen_;
translations and articles about his personality were widely printed in
current journals.
One of the authors whom Heyse had censured for his naturalism and
depressing dramas had been Gerhart Hauptmann. When the announcement
was made that the prize of 1912 was again given to a German novelist
and playwright, racial pride ran high but critics of other countries
asked, “How could idealism be perverted in meaning so that it would
apply to the author of _Before Dawn_, _Lonely Lives_, _The Weavers_
and _Michael Kramer_?” Unfairly, the name of Hauptmann was linked
constantly with that of Sudermann by the most bitter malcontents with
this award. Such an attitude was biassed and unjust. That Hauptmann has
written some of the most photographic, haunting dramas of industrial
strife and social vices is true; but it is as true that he has produced
two, possibly three, of the really poetic, symbolic plays in modern
German literature--_The Assumption of Hannele_, _The Sunken Bell_, and
_Parsival_.
[Illustration: _From an original etching by Hermann Struck. Reproduced
by permission of the artist and courtesy of the New York Public Library_
GERHART HAUPTMANN]
There are two distinctive, but not wholly contradictory, personalities
in Hauptmann as he reveals himself to his readers. It was as author
of _The Sunken Bell_, especially, that he was chosen for the Nobel
prize; it had certain autobiographical suggestions of this conflict
between the material and the spiritual in the nature of its author.
Recognizing that he is often associated with Sudermann, the brilliant,
relentless novelist and dramatist, it is interesting to find these two
writers well differentiated by Otto Heller in _Studies in Modern German
Literature_ (Boston, 1905). He compares the nervous, sensitive mind of
Hauptmann, “possessed of a reproductive, feminine talent,” in contrast
with the masculine personality of Sudermann, less subtle, more virile
and coarse, with broader knowledge of life but lacking the intuitive
perceptions of Hauptmann. One may question some of these adjectives
used by Mr. Heller, but the general contrast is well phrased,
especially as applied to the poetic dramas by Hauptmann, like _The
Sunken Bell_, _And Pippa Dances_, and _Parsival_.
Before Hauptmann conceived any of this work that entitles him to rank
among the idealists, he had written grim tragedies, similar in trend to
those by Ibsen, Zola, Tolstoy, Max Nordau, and Arno Holz. As realist
he has been censured as weak in plots and sometimes strained in his
social tenets: there are such defects in _The Beaver Coat_, _Rose
Bernd_, and _The Conflagration_. That he had a poetic instinct, a true
lyric quality, was acknowledged from occasional lines in such gloomy
plays as _Lonely Lives_, _Colleague Crampton_, and _The Weavers_. Among
the plays of industrial upheaval and suffering, _The Weavers_ has
tense feeling, with lines of irony and suppressed aspirations. It was
dedicated to Robert Hauptmann, father of the author, in affectionate
words that express the source of its inspiration and the allegiance
of Gerhart Hauptmann to his forefathers: “You, dear father, know what
feelings lead me to dedicate this work to you, and I am not called upon
to analyze them here. Your stories of my grandfather, who in his young
days sat at the loom, a poor weaver like those here depicted, contained
the germ of my drama. Whether it possesses the vigor of life or is
rotten at the core, it is the best ‘so poor a man as Hamlet is,’ can
offer.”
While this grandfather had been a poor weaver, he met with better
fortunes in later life, and the father of Gerhart Hauptmann was owner
of three hotels. The boy was born at Salzbrunn, a seaside town in
Silesia, in 1862; thus he was thirty-two years younger than Heyse--a
full generation in time and standards of literature. His mother was
“one of the people.” The boy was inclined to study sculpture and he
was sent to art schools in Breslau, Jena, and in Italy. He was a slow
pupil; his brother, Carl, seemed almost the only person who expressed
faith in his gifts or future success. With his art studies he combined
agriculture and history. After a brief apprenticeship as modeler, he
decided that he would be an actor; he had a lisp that interfered with
the continuance of this histrionic hope. He married a woman of wealth
and moved to Berlin, in 1885, where he became identified with “The Free
Stage” movement and began to write plays. Byron had been one of his
earlier literary heroes; in _The Fate of the Children of Prometheus_,
he recorded some impressions of travel along the same route as _Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage_.
In 1889 “The Free Stage Society” was formed in Berlin; it was, in a
way, “an imitation of Antoine’s Free Theatre, organized two years
before,” says Barrett H. Clark in _A Study of the Modern Drama_.[79]
Among the founders were Otto Brahm, Maximilian Harden, Theodor Wolff
and others who wished to produce plays of varied types, especially
the work of naturalistic writers. Hauptmann came under the influences
of Bruno Wille, the socialist, and Arno Holz, the dramatist; certain
reactions from this companionship of minds may be traced in his plays
_Before Dawn_, _Colleague Crampton_, and _Florian Geyer_. Brahm was the
director of this Free Stage Society which, in 1894, after fulfilling
its mission for Germany, was merged into the Deutsches Theatre. Among
the plays by Hauptmann written under this stimulus, in addition to the
three mentioned above, were _The Festival of Peace_, _Lonely Lives_,
_The Weavers_, _The Beaver Coat_, and _The Assumption of Hannele_.
_Before Dawn_, written in the Silesian mountains and staged in Berlin,
in 1889, was a haunting tragedy with loose construction. The ribald
father and his low associates, and the daughter, who kills herself to
escape assault at their hands, combine to make a gripping, repulsive
story with certain dramatic possibilities that are not fulfilled.
_The Weavers_ showed progress in technic and characterization of a
group. Here no single individual plays the leading part; the group
of weavers, the mob at the time of crisis, are the principal actors.
There are marked contrasts in setting between the home of the rich
capitalist and the poverty of the weavers, between the government’s
indifference and the industrial slavery of the victims of rapacity. One
of the most poignant passages is the monologue of old Ansorge, in Act
II; he cannot believe that the King will fail to help them, if word is
sent to him of their needs. When Jaeger assures him it is futile, that
the rich people are as “cunning as the devil,” his lament for the home
that must be sacrificed, where his father sat at the loom for more than
forty years, is pathetic and dramatic.
_The Assumption of Hannele_, which appeared in 1893 and had a germ-idea
not unlike that of _Before Dawn_, created sharp discussion in Germany.
There was protest against its performance. The next year it was brought
to the United States, to be staged at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New
York. It was translated into English by William Archer and by Charles
Henry Meltzer. Reformers of many kinds denounced the play without a
hearing. They threatened the author, who had come to this country to
see the performance and to advise with his publisher, with arrest; the
same fate was to fall upon the translator, Charles Henry Meltzer, and
the actress who was to play the leading rôle. “Some representatives
of the press, with critics and authors, were bidden to a private
performance and the next day the newspapers, with a few impenitent
exceptions, published eulogies of _Hannele_! No one was arrested. And
the public performance took place.”[80]
The American translator of both _The Assumption of Hannele_ and _The
Sunken Bell_, Mr. Charles Henry Meltzer, has described Hauptmann at
this period, in the Foreword to _The Sunken Bell_. He had expected to
meet an aggressive, self-satisfied man. On the contrary, he found one
who seemed like a student, with shy, boyish manners; he might have
been classified as a curate or a teacher; “A painful, introspective,
hunted earnestness was stamped upon his face--the face of a thinker, a
dreamer, a genius” (Foreword). _Hannele_ was not a success theatrically
in New York. _The Weavers_, at the Irving Place Theatre, attracted
somewhat more attention but the time was too indifferent to such plays
in America; one could not forecast the cordial reception for problem
plays and grim tragedies, with mystic elements, three decades later.
It was eighteen years before the Swedish Academy gave world recognition
and honor to Hauptmann. A few men and women of literary insight--or
foresight--proclaimed a future for the creator of such a “dream-poem”
as _Hannele_. Gradually, readers became interested and stirred by this
strange play based upon the weird apparitions of the fevered brain
of the little waif, the poetic chorus of the angels, the comfort of
her mother and Pastor Gottwald, in contrast with the terrifying fear
of her father’s return, the stormy December evening in this mountain
almshouse, and the poems of “The Stranger” which cast a spell of
religious peace upon the reader, as the mystic, green light fell upon
the face of dying Hannele. This “dream-poem,” as Hauptmann called it,
won for him the Grillparzer prize in Germany. Two years later, after
the failure of _Florian Geyer_ to win plaudits of dramatic critics,
he wrote another play of symbolism and anapestic meters, combining
the realities of life with mystic allurements, and he called it “A
Fairy-Tale Play,” _Die versunkene Glocke_. His most severe critics were
convinced of his lyrical quality and dramatic power.
The basic material for this play, _The Sunken Bell_, says its
translator, Mr. Meltzer, is found in Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology. Here
are the characters of the bell maker, his wife, the elfish spirit,
the schoolmaster and the vicar, and other factors interwoven with the
allegorical and mystical. Hauptmann visualized these characters with
consummate skill. Heinrich, the bell forger, who seeks the sun and a
new, marvellous chime of bells, Magda, his faithful wife eager to
free him from domestic toils, Rautendelein, the spirit of nature that
lures him away and stirs his soul to unfulfilled aspirations, and
Wittikin, the wise woman, the village priest and barber--all are alive
and convincing. The evasive and mystical element becomes a part of the
atmosphere of this “fairy-tale play”; the dramatic unities are well
maintained.
What is the meaning of _The Sunken Bell_? Each reader may make his own
answer, for several are possible. It is as futile to analyze it, as
it is to destroy the fantasy and mystery of _Peter Pan_ or _The Blue
Bird_ or _Dear Brutus_. It is too subtle, too delicate to be treated by
rigid rules of criticism. However, Mr. Meltzer makes three pertinent
explanations; it may be a parable, the effort of all artists to reach
their ideals; it may be the effort of a reformer to remold society by
visionary ambitions; or Heinrich may embody any human being, striving
for the goal of truth and light. As Rautendelein symbolizes Nature
which offers freedom, so Wittikin expresses the eternal philosophy of
life, opposed to the conventional creeds of the world, like those of
the barber and the vicar, that are stumbling-blocks in the path of
lofty idealism. Heinrich fails to attain his ideal; he cannot weld the
pagan and Christian truths into one gospel, because he is _human_, with
limitations. He cannot stay on the pinnacle of the mountain, with its
mystic light and its new sun-bells, but he has not lost the influence
of these in his life. When the vicar rejoices that “the old Heinrich”
has returned, he answers:
That man am I, and yet ... another man.
Open the windows--Light and God stream in.[81]
This play proved a moderate success, especially when played by Sothern,
and has been repeated in academic circles, although it has not been
so popular in America as have been the plays by Ibsen, Rostand, and
Maeterlinck. It is one of the dramas that yields more of its beauty
and symbolic message to the reader than to the spectator. The play,
_Henry of Aue_, or _Der arme Heinrich_, which was called a fable
(1902) has sometimes been listed as a sequel to _The Sunken Bell_
but they are unlike in setting and theme. Heinrich, the crusader, is
attacked with leprosy at the summit of his glory--a punishment for his
insolence to God. The healing begins when he purges his soul of despair
and hatred and begins to recognize “Beneficence” in Nature and Life.
There are well drawn characters, especially Heinrich, Hartmann von
Aue, Gottfried, Brigitta, and Ottegebe, the farmer’s daughter, whose
influence is strong in the “cure” for the hero. As dramatic art this
play is inferior to _Hannele_ or _The Sunken Bell_, but the reader’s
interest is sustained in the leading character, from his tragic
condition as an outcast, with a wooden clapper to warn people of his
approach, to the last scene of his redemption by love.
During the years since he received the Nobel prize, Hauptmann has
written several plays and novels that continue to reveal his dual
traits as realist and idealist. The writings during the World War
have a tang of bitterness. Ludwig Lewisohn has edited eight volumes
of Hauptmann’s _Dramatic Works_ (Huebsch, New York, 1915-1925). The
introductions are informing and the translations are clear and strong.
In the series are included several Social and Domestic Plays as well
as “Symbolic and Legendary Dramas.” _Parsival_, a play translated by
Oakley Williams, has an ethical or religious tone with sympathetic
insight into humanity. “Heartache” was the name of Parsival’s mother;
said her creator, “I should hate to make anyone sad, but I believe we
might call every mother, at any rate, very, very, many mothers by this
name.”[82] There are symbolism and poetic sermonizing in this drama of
Parsival, “Bearer of Burdens”; his development from a care-free youth
to later responsibilities for world burdens is well portrayed. Traces
of irony and humor are found. The setting of the play, _And Pippa
Dances_, is picturesque, in the Silesian mountains. Wann is a grotesque
element and the tales of “the Wild Huntsman” are entertaining; Pippa,
the fair-haired daughter of the glass blower, is the persuasive
character. There is a lack of dramatic unity in certain scenes.
Translations of this play, and of _Elga_, have been made by Mary Harned
in _Poet Lore_ (Boston, 1906-1909). _And Pippa Dances_ is included in
Volume V of the plays edited by Mr. Lewisohn.
Among interesting, intensive studies of Hauptmann as dramatist, is
the thesis by Walter H. P. Trumbaeur, on _Gerhart Hauptmann and John
Galsworthy; a Parallel_ (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
1917).[83] The parallelism is traced, with occasional excess of effort,
between their careers, their themes, and certain plays like _Hannele_
and _The Little Dream_, _Michael Kramer_ and _A Bit o’ Love_, and
_The Weavers_ and _Strife_. Both dramatists, says the critic, seek to
escape social bondage; both are vitally concerned in social problems;
both are realists temperamentally; both have a purpose to enlighten
rather than to delight; both see moral values and, also, _the irony of
things_. Hauptmann is more interested in characters while Galsworthy’s
main interest lies in the _relations_ between characters. In both
writers, there is a strain of idealism, seeking _truth_, material and
spiritual. Another interesting thesis is by Mary Ayres Quimby, on
_Nature Background in the Dramas of Gerhart Hauptmann_ (University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1918). Among later plays _A Winter Ballad_
and _The Festival Play_ register the fearless assault of this dramatist
upon vices and the exaltation of an idealism which is “union with
Nature.”
The best work of Hauptmann in fiction has been attracting attention
and becoming familiar to English readers. _The Fool in Christ:
Emanuel Quint_ has been translated by Thomas Seltzer (Huebsch, 1911);
_Atlantis_, translated by Adele and Thomas Seltzer (1912), and
_Phantom_ and _The Heretic of Soana_, both translated by Bayard Quincy
Morgan (1922-1923). The characterizations are forceful, with humor that
is sometimes broad and, again, subtle. Daring satire and exposition
of modern social problems are qualities that arrest the interest of
the reader and attest the brilliant mind of the writer, in the recent,
neo-romantic novel, _The Island of the Great Mother_, translated this
year by Willa and Edwin Muir (Huebsch). The leaders in this “Women’s
State” are delineated with shrewd, ironical skill. Phaon, the solitary
“masculine” on the island, passes through strange adventures before he
reaches maturity and finds his “ideal woman.” In his keen, illumining
analysis of Hauptmann’s poetic plays, _Hannele_ and _The Sunken Bell_,
in _A Study of the Modern Drama_ (New York, 1925), Barrett H. Clark
accepts the statement of other critics that these are not “well-made
plays,” but he finds in them the qualities which are high lights in
this writer’s masterpieces--“psychological interest, dramatic as
distinguished from purely lyrical poetry, a fairly well constructed
plot and an atmosphere of beauty.”[84]
FOOTNOTES:
[72] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1910.
[73] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, New
York, 1924.
[74] _Gesammelte Werke_: Vol. III, p. 300, translated in _Creative
Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ (by Georg Brandes) by Rasmus B.
Anderson, New York, 1924. By permission of Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
[75] Introduction by Mary A. Frost to edition of _L’Arrabiata_,
published by Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1896.
[76] An excellent study of Heyse is by Professor von Klenze in _German
Classics_ edited by Kuno Francke, German Publication Society.
[77] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, New
York, 1924, Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
[78] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1912.
[79] D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1925.
[80] _The Sunken Bell_: a Fairy Play in Five Acts by Gerhart Hauptmann,
freely rendered into English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York,
1913, Foreword. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.
[81] _The Sunken Bell_ by Gerhart Hauptmann, freely rendered into
English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York, 1913, Act III. By
permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.
[82] _Parsival_, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann, translated by Oakley
Williams, New York, 1915. By permission of The Macmillan Co.
[83] By permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.
[84] P. 82. By permission of D. Appleton & Co.