Chapter III: Part 3

In the opinion of the _Pastor_, St. John's night represents a religious phase, too holy for flippant pagan joy.

_Pastor._ On such a dreamy night, different emotions are aroused
within us. We seem to be able to look into the future, and imagine
ourselves able to fathom, all mystery and heal all wounds. The
common becomes elevated, our wishes become fate; and now we ask
ourselves: What is it that causes all this within us--all these
desires and wishes? It is _love_, brotherly love, that has been
planted in our souls, that fills our lives: and, it is life itself.
Am I not right? And now, with one bound, I will come to the point.
In the revelation you will find: "God is love." Yes, God is love;
and that is the most beautiful trait of our religion--that the best,
the most beautiful within us, has been granted us by Him above. Then
how could I, this very evening, so overcome with feeling for my
fellow-man--how could I pass Him by? Therefore, Mr. Brauer, no
matter, whether pastor or layman, I must confess my inability to
grant your wish, and decline to give you a genuine pagan toast--

But Christian symbolism having mostly descended from primitive pagan custom, _George's_ view is perhaps the most significant.

_George._ Since the Pastor has so eloquently withdrawn, I will give
you a toast. For, you see, my dear Pastor, something of the old
pagan, a spark of heathenism, is still glowing somewhere within us
all. It has outlived century after century, from the time of the old
Teutons. Once every year that spark is fanned into flame--it flames
up high, and then it is called "The Fires of St. John." Once every
year we have "free night." Then the witches ride upon their
brooms--the same brooms with which their witchcraft was once driven
out of them--with scornful laughter the wild hordes sweep across the
tree-tops, up, up, high upon the Blocksberg! Then it is, when in our
hearts awake those wild desires which our fates could not
fulfill--and, understand me well, dared not fulfill--then, no matter
what may be the name of the law that governs the world on that day,
in order that one single wish may become a reality, by whose grace
we prolong our miserable existence, thousand others must miserably
perish, part because they were never attainable; but the others,
yes, the others, because we allowed them to escape us like wild
birds, which, though already in our hands, but too listless to
profit by opportunity, we failed to grasp at the right moment. But
no matter. Once every year we have "free night." And yonder tongues
of fire shooting up towards the heavens--do you know what they are?
They are the spirits of our dead perished wishes! That is the red
plumage of our birds of paradise we might have petted and nursed
through our entire lives, but have escaped us! That is the old
chaos, the heathenism within us; and though we be happy in sunshine
and according to law, to-night is St. John's night. To its ancient
pagan fires I empty this glass. To-night they shall burn and flame
up high--high and again high!

_George_ and _Marie_ meet. They, too, have had their instinct locked away even from their own consciousness. And on this night they break loose with tremendous, primitive force. They are driven into each other's arms because they feel that they belong to each other; they know that if they had the strength they could take each other by the hand, face their benefactor and tell him the truth: tell him that it would be an unpardonable crime for _George_ to marry _Gertrude_ when he loves another woman.

Now they all but find courage and strength for it, when the pitiful plaint reaches them, "Oh, mine Mamie, mine daughter, mine child." And _Marie_ is cast down from the sublime height of her love and passion, down to the realization that she also, like her pariah mother, must go out into the world to struggle, to fight, to become free from the bondage of gratitude, of charity and dependence.

Not so _George_. He goes to the altar, like many another man, with a lie upon his lips. He goes to swear that all his life long he will love, protect and shelter the woman who is to be his wife.

This play is rich in thought and revolutionary significance. For is it not true that we are all bound by gratitude, tied and fettered by what we think we owe to others? Are we not thus turned into weaklings and cowards, and do we not enter into new relationships with lies upon our lips? Do we not become a lie to ourselves and a lie to those we associate with? And whether we have the strength to be true to the dominant spirit, warmed into being by the fires of St. John; whether we have the courage to live up to it always or whether it manifests itself only on occasion, it is nevertheless true that there is the potentiality of freedom in the soul of every man and every woman; that there is the possibility of greatness and fineness in all beings, were they not bound and gagged by gratitude, by duty and shams,--a vicious network that enmeshes body and soul.

GERHART HAUPTMANN

LONELY LIVES

Gerhart Hauptmann is the dramatist of whom it may be justly said that he revolutionized the spirit of dramatic art in Germany: the last Mohican of a group of four--Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, and Hauptmann--who illumined the horizon of the nineteenth century. Of these Hauptmann, undoubtedly the most human, is also the most universal.

It is unnecessary to make comparisons between great artists: life is sufficiently complex to give each his place in the great scheme of things. If, then, I consider Hauptmann more human, it is because of his deep kinship with every stratum of life. While Ibsen deals exclusively with _one_ attitude, Hauptmann embraces all, understands all, and portrays all, because nothing human is alien to him.

Whether it be the struggle of the transition stage in "Lonely Lives," or the conflict between the Ideal and the Real in "The Sunken Bell," or the brutal background of poverty in "The Weavers," Hauptmann is never aloof as the iconoclast Ibsen, never as bitter as the soul dissector Strindberg, nor yet as set as the crusader Tolstoy. And that because of his humanity, his boundless love, his oneness with the disinherited of the earth, and his sympathy with the struggles and the travail, the hope and the despair of every human soul. That accounts for the bitter opposition which met Gerhart Hauptmann when he made his first appearance as a dramatist; but it also accounts for the love and devotion of those to whom he was a battle cry, a clarion call against all iniquity, injustice and wrong.

In "Lonely Lives" we see the wonderful sympathy, the tenderness of Hauptmann permeating every figure of the drama.

_Dr. Vockerat_ is not a fighter, not a propagandist or a soapbox orator; he is a dreamer, a poet, and above all a searcher for truth; a scientist, a man who lives in the realm of thought and ideas, and is out of touch with reality and his immediate surroundings.

His parents are simple folk, religious and devoted. To them the world is a book with seven seals. Having lived all their life on a farm, everything with them is regulated and classified into simple ideas--good or bad, great or small, strong or weak. How can they know the infinite shades between strong and weak, how could they grasp the endless variations between the good and the bad? To them life is a daily routine of work and prayer. God has arranged everything, and God manages everything. Why bother your head? Why spend sleepless nights? "Leave it all to God." What pathos in this childish simplicity!

They love their son _John_, they worship him, and they consecrate their lives to their only boy; and because of their love for him, also to his wife and the newly born baby. They have but one sorrow: their son has turned away from religion. Still greater their grief that _John_ is an admirer of Darwin, Spencer and Haeckel and other such men,--sinners, heathens all, who will burn in purgatory and hell. To protect their beloved son from the punishment of God, the old folks continuously pray, and give still more devotion and love to their erring child.

_Kitty_, _Dr. Vockerat's_ wife, is a beautiful type of the Gretchen, reared without any ideas about life, without any consciousness of her position in the world, a tender, helpless flower. She loves _John_; he is her ideal; he is her all. But she cannot understand him. She does not live in his sphere, nor speak his language. She has never dreamed his thoughts,--not because she is not willing or not eager to give the man all that he needs, but because she does not understand and does not know how.

Into this atmosphere comes _Anna Mahr_ like a breeze from the plains. _Anna_ is a Russian girl, a woman so far produced in Russia only, perhaps because the conditions, the life struggles of that country have been such as to develop a different type of woman. _Anna Mahr_ has spent most of her life on the firing line. She has no conception of the personal: she is universal in her feelings and thoughts, with deep sympathies going out in abundance to all mankind.

When she comes to the Vockerats, their whole life is disturbed, especially that of _John Vockerat_, to whom she is like a balmy spring to the parched wanderer in the desert. She understands him, for has she not dreamed such thoughts as his, associated with men and women who, for the sake of the ideal, sacrificed their lives, went to Siberia, and suffered in the underground dungeons? How then could she fail a Vockerat? It is quite natural that _John_ should find in _Anna_ what his own little world could not give him,--understanding, comradeship, deep spiritual kinship.

The Anna Mahrs give the same to any one, be it man, woman or child. For theirs is not a feeling of sex, of the personal; it is the selfless, the human, the all-embracing fellowship.

In the invigorating presence of _Anna Mahr_, _John Vockerat_ begins to live, to dream and work. Another phase of him, as it were, comes into being; larger vistas open before his eyes, and his life is filled with new aspiration for creative work in behalf of a liberating purpose.

Alas, the inevitability that the ideal should be besmirched and desecrated when it comes in contact with sordid reality! This tragic fate befalls _Anna Mahr_ and _John Vockerat_.

Old _Mother Vockerat_, who, in her simplicity of soul cannot conceive of an intimate friendship between a man and a woman, unless they be husband and wife, begins first to suspect and insinuate, then to nag and interfere. Of course, it is her love for _John_, and even more so her love for her son's wife, who is suffering in silence and wearing out her soul in her realization of how little she can mean to her husband.

_Mother Vockerat_ interprets _Kitty's_ grief in a different manner: jealousy, and antagonism to the successful rival is her most convenient explanation for the loneliness, the heart-hunger of love. But as a matter of fact, it is something deeper and more vital that is born in _Kitty's_ soul. It is the awakening of her own womanhood, of her personality.

_Kitty._ I agree with Miss Mahr on many points. She was saying
lately that we women live in a condition of degradation. I think she
is quite right there. It is what I feel very often.... It's as
clear as daylight that she is right. We are really and truly a
despised and ill-used sex. Only think that there is still a law--so
she told me yesterday--which allows the husband to inflict a
moderate amount of corporal punishment on his wife.

And yet, corporal punishment is not half as terrible as the punishment society inflicts on the Kittys by rearing them as dependent and useless beings, as hot-house flowers, ornaments for a fine house, but of no substance to the husband and certainly of less to her children.

And _Mother Vockerat_, without any viciousness, instills poison into the innocent soul of _Kitty_ and embitters the life of her loved son. Ignorantly, _Mother Vockerat_ meddles, interferes, and tramples upon the most sacred feelings, the innocent joys of true comradeship.

And all the time _John_ and _Anna_ are quite unaware of the pain and tragedy they are the cause of: they are far removed from the commonplace, petty world about them. They walk and discuss, read and argue about the wonders of life, the needs of humanity, the beauty of the ideal. They have both been famished so long: _John_ for spiritual communion, _Anna_ for warmth of home that she had known so little before, and which in her simplicity she has accepted at the hand of _Mother Vockerat_ and _Kitty_, oblivious of the fact that nothing is so enslaving as hospitality prompted by a sense of duty.

_Miss Mahr._ It is a great age that we live in. That which has so
weighed upon people's minds and darkened their lives seems to me to
be gradually disappearing. Do you not think so, Dr. Vockerat?

_John._ How do you mean?

_Miss Mahr._ On the one hand we were oppressed by a sense of
uncertainty, of apprehension, on the other by gloomy fanaticism.
This exaggerated tension is calming down, is yielding to the
influence of something like a current of fresh air, that is blowing
in upon us from--let us say from the twentieth century.

_John._ But I don't find it possible to arrive at any real joy in
life yet. I don't know....

_Miss Mahr._ It has no connection with our individual fates--our
little fates, Dr. Vockerat!... I have something to say to you--but
you are not to get angry; you are to be quite quiet and good.... Dr.
Vockerat! we also are falling into the error of weak natures. We
must look at things more impersonally. We must learn to take
ourselves less seriously.

_John._ But we'll not talk about that at present.... And is one
really to sacrifice everything that one has gained to this cursed
conventionality? Are people incapable of understanding that there
can be no crime in a situation which only tends to make both parties
better and nobler? Do parents lose by their son becoming a better,
wiser man? Does a wife lose by the spiritual growth of her husband?

_Miss Mahr._ You are both right and wrong.... Your parents have a
different standard from you. Kitty's again, differs from theirs. It
seems to me that in this we cannot judge for them.

_John._ Yes, but you have always said yourself that one should not
allow one's self to be ruled by the opinion of others--that one
ought to be independent?

_Miss Mahr._ You have often said to me that you foresee a new, a
nobler state of fellowship between man and woman.

_John._ Yes, I feel that it will come some time--a relationship in
which the human will preponderate over the animal tie. Animal will
no longer be united to animal, but one human being to another.
Friendship is the foundation on which this love will rise,
beautiful, unchangeable, a miraculous structure. And I foresee more
than this--something nobler, richer, freer still.

_Miss Mahr._ But will you get anyone, except me, to believe this?
Will this prevent Kitty's grieving herself to death?... Don't let us
speak of ourselves at all. Let us suppose, quite generally, the
feeling of a new, more perfect relationship between two people to
exist, as it were prophetically. It is only a feeling, a young and
all too tender plant which must be carefully watched and guarded.
Don't you think so, Dr. Vockerat? That this plant should come to
perfection during our lifetime is not to be expected. We shall not
see or taste its fruits. But we may help to propagate it for future
generations. I could imagine a person accepting this as a life-task.

_John._ And hence you conclude that we must part.

_Miss Mahr._ I did not mean to speak of ourselves. But it is as you
say ... we must part. Another idea ... had sometimes suggested
itself to me too ... momentarily. But I could not entertain it now.
I too have felt as if it were the presentiment of better things. And
since then the old aim seems to me too poor a one for us--too
common, to tell the truth. It is like coming down from the
mountain-top with its wide, free view, and feeling the narrowness,
the nearness of everything in the valley.

Those who feel the narrow, stifling atmosphere must either die or leave. _Anna Mahr_ is not made for the valley. She must live on the heights. But _John Vockerat_, harassed and whipped on by those who love him most, is unmanned, broken and crushed. He clings to _Anna Mahr_ as one condemned to death.

_John._ Help me, Miss Anna! There is no manliness, no pride left in
me. I am quite changed. At this moment I am not even the man I was
before you came to us. The one feeling left in me is disgust and
weariness of life. Everything has lost its worth to me, is soiled,
polluted, desecrated, dragged through the mire. When I think what
you, your presence, your words made me, I feel that if I cannot be
that again, then--then all the rest no longer means anything to me.
I draw a line through it all and--_close my account_.

_Miss Mahr._ It grieves me terribly, Dr. Vockerat, to see you like
this. I hardly know how I am to help you. But one thing you ought to
remember--that we foresaw this. We knew that we must be prepared for
this sooner or later.

_John._ Our prophetic feeling of a new, a free existence, a far-off
state of blessedness--that feeling we will keep. It shall never be
forgotten, though it may never be realized. It shall be my guiding
light; when this light is extinguished, my life will be extinguished
too.

_Miss Mahr._ John! one word more! This ring--was taken from the
finger of a dead woman, who had followed her--her husband to
Siberia--and faithfully shared his suffering to the end. Just the
opposite to our case.... It is the only ring I have ever worn. Its
story is a thing to think of when one feels weak. And when you look
at it--in hours of weakness--then--think of her--who, far
away--lonely like yourself--is fighting the same secret
fight--Good-bye!

But John lacks the strength for the fight. Life to him is too lonely, too empty, too unbearably desolate. He has to die--a suicide.

* * * * *

What wonderful grasp of the deepest and most hidden tones of the human soul! What significance in the bitter truth that those who struggle for an ideal, those who attempt to cut themselves loose from the old, from the thousand fetters that hold them down, are doomed to lonely lives!

Gerhart Hauptmann has dedicated this play "to those who have lived this life." And there are many, oh, so many who must live this life, torn out root and all from the soil of their birth, of their surroundings and past. The ideal they see only in the distance--sometimes quite near, again in the far-off distance. These are the lonely lives.

This drama also emphasizes the important point that not only the parents and the wife of _John Vockerat_ fail to understand him, but even his own comrade, one of his own world, the painter _Braun_,--the type of fanatical revolutionist who scorns human weaknesses and ridicules those who make concessions and compromises. But not even this arch-revolutionist can grasp the needs of _John_. Referring to his chum's friendship with _Anna_, _Braun_ upbraids him. He charges _John_ with causing his wife's unhappiness and hurting the feelings of his parents. This very man who, as a propagandist, demands that every one live up to his ideal, is quick to condemn his friend when the latter, for the first time in his life, tries to be consistent, to be true to his own innermost being.

The revolutionary, the social and human significance of "Lonely Lives" consists in the lesson that the real revolutionist,--the dreamer, the creative artist, the iconoclast in whatever line,--is fated to be misunderstood, not only by his own kin, but often by his own comrades. That is the doom of all great spirits: they are detached from their environment. Theirs is a lonely life--the life of the transition stage, the hardest and the most difficult period for the individual as well as for a people.

THE WEAVERS

When "The Weavers" first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the "land of thinkers and poets." "What!" cried Philistia, "workingmen, dirty, emaciated and starved, to be placed on the stage! Poverty, in all its ugliness, to be presented as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!"

Indeed it is too much for the self-satisfied bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It is too much, because of the truth and reality that thunders in the placid ears of society a terrific _J'accuse_!

* * * * *

Gerhart Hauptmann is a child of the people; his grandfather was a weaver, and the only way his father could escape the fate of his parents was by leaving his trade and opening an inn. Little Gerhart's vivid and impressionable mind must have received many pictures from the stories told about the life of the weavers. Who knows but that the social panorama which Hauptmann subsequently gave to the world, had not slumbered in the soul of the child, gaining form and substance as he grew to manhood. At any rate "The Weavers," like the canvases of Millet and the heroic figures of Meunier, represent the epic of the age-long misery of labor, a profoundly stirring picture.

The background of "The Weavers" is the weaving district in Silesia, during the period of home industry--a gruesome sight of human phantoms, dragging on their emaciated existence almost by superhuman effort. Life is a tenacious force that clings desperately even to the most meager chance in an endeavor to assert itself. But what is mirrored in "The Weavers" is so appalling, so dismally hopeless that it stamps the damning brand upon our civilization.

One man and his hirelings thrive on the sinew and bone, on the very blood, of an entire community. The manufacturer _Dreissiger_ spends more for cigars in a day than an entire family earns in a week. Yet so brutalizing, so terrible is the effect of wealth that neither pale hunger nor black despair can move the master.

There is nothing in literature to equal the cruel reality of the scene in the office of _Dreissiger_, when the weavers bring the finished cloth. For hours they are kept waiting in the stuffy place, waiting the pleasure of the rich employer after they had walked miles on an empty stomach and little sleep. For as one of the men says, "What's to hinder a weaver waitin' for an hour, or for a day? What else is he there for?"

Indeed what else, except to be always waiting in humility, to be exploited and degraded, always at the mercy of the few pence thrown to them after an endless wait.

Necessity knows no law. Neither does it know pride. The weavers, driven by the whip of hunger, bend their backs, beg and cringe before their "superior."

_Weaver's wife._ No one can't call me idle, but I am not fit now for
what I once was. I've twice had a miscarriage. As to John, he's but
a poor creature. He's been to the shepherd at Zerlau, but he
couldn't do him no good, and ... you can't do more than you've
strength for.... We works as hard as ever we can. This many a week
I've been at it till far into the night. An' we'll keep our heads
above water right enough if I can just get a bit o' strength into
me. But you must have pity on us, Mr. Pfeifer, sir. You'll please be
so very kind as to let me have a few pence on the next job, sir?
Only a few pence, to buy bread with. We can't get no more credit.
We've a lot o' little ones.

"Suffer little children to come unto me." Christ loves the children of the poor. The more the better. Why, then, care if they starve? Why care if they faint away with hunger, like the little boy in _Dreissiger's_ office? For "little Philip is one of nine and the tenth's coming, and the rain comes through their roof--and the mother hasn't two shirts among the nine."

Who is to blame? Ask the Dreissigers. They will tell you, "The poor have too many children." Besides--

_Dreissiger._ It was nothing serious. The boy is all right again.
But all the same it's a disgrace. The child's so weak that a puff of
wind would blow him over. How people, how any parents can be so
thoughtless is what passes my comprehension. Loading him with two
heavy pieces of fustian to carry six good miles! No one would
believe it that hadn't seen it. It simply means that I shall have to
make a rule that no goods brought by children will be taken ever. I
sincerely trust that such things will not occur again.--Who gets all
the blame for it? Why, of course the manufacturer. It's entirely our
fault. If some poor little fellow sticks in the snow in winter and
goes to sleep, a special correspondent arrives post-haste, and in
two days we have a blood-curdling story served up in all the papers.
Is any blame laid on the father, the parents, that send such a
child?--Not a bit of it. How should they be to blame? It's all the
manufacturer's fault--he's made the scapegoat. They flatter the
weaver, and give the manufacturer nothing but abuse--he's a cruel
man, with a heart like a stone, a dangerous fellow, at whose calves
every cur of a journalist may take a bite. He lives on the fat of
the land, and pays the poor weavers starvation wages. In the flow of
his eloquence the writer forgets to mention that such a man has his
cares too and his sleepless nights; that he runs risks of which the
workman never dreams; that he is often driven distracted by all the
calculations he has to make, and all the different things he has to
take into account; that he has to struggle for his very life against
competition; and that no day passes without some annoyance or some
loss. And think of the manufacturer's responsibilities, think of the
numbers that depend on him, that look to him for their daily bread.
No, No! none of you need wish yourselves in my shoes--you would soon
have enough of it. You all saw how that fellow, that scoundrel
Becker, behaved. Now he'll go and spread about all sorts of tales of
my hardheartedness, of how my weavers are turned off for a mere
trifle, without a moment's notice. Is that true? Am I so very
unmerciful?

The weavers are too starved, too subdued, too terror-stricken not to accept _Dreissiger's_ plea in his own behalf. What would become of these living corpses were it not for the rebels like _Becker_, to put fire, spirit, and hope in them? Verily the Beckers are dangerous.

Appalling as the scene in the office of _Dreissiger_ is, the life in the home of the old weaver _Baumert_ is even more terrible. His decrepit old wife, his idiotic son _August_, who still has to wind spools, his two daughters weaving their youth and bloom into the cloth, and _Ansorge_, the broken remnant of a heroic type of man, bent over his baskets, all live in cramped quarters lit up only by two small windows. They are waiting anxiously for the few pence old _Baumert_ is to bring, that they may indulge in a long-missed meal. "What ... what ... what is to become of us if he don't come home?" laments _Mother Baumert_. "There is not so much as a handful o' salt in the house--not a bite o' bread, nor a bit o' wood for the fire."

But old _Baumert_ has not forgotten his family. He brings them a repast, the first "good meal" they have had in two years. It is the meat of their faithful little dog, whom _Baumert_ could not kill himself because he loved him so. But hunger knows no choice; _Baumert_ had his beloved dog killed, because "a nice little bit o' meat like that does you a lot o' good."

It did not do old _Baumert_ much good. His stomach, tortured and abused so long, rebelled, and the old man had to "give up the precious dog." And all this wretchedness, all this horror almost within sight of the palatial home of _Dreissiger_, whose dogs are better fed than his human slaves.

Man's endurance is almost limitless. Almost, yet not quite. For there comes a time when the _Baumerts_, even like their stomachs, rise in rebellion, when they hurl themselves, even though in blind fury, against the pillars of their prison house. Such a moment comes to the weavers, the most patient, docile and subdued of humanity, when stirred to action by the powerful poem read to them by the _Jaeger_.

The justice to us weavers dealt
Is bloody, cruel, and hateful;
Our life's one torture, long drawn out:
For Lynch law we'd be grateful.

Stretched on the rack day after day,
Heart sick and bodies aching,
Our heavy sighs their witness bear
To spirit slowly breaking.

The Dreissigers true hangmen are,
Servants no whit behind them;
Masters and men with one accord
Set on the poor to grind them.

You villains all, you brood of hell ...
You fiends in fashion human,
A curse will fall on all like you,
Who prey on man and woman.

The suppliant knows he asks in vain,
Vain every word that's spoken.
"If not content, then go and starve--
Our rules cannot be broken."

Then think of all our woe and want,
O ye, who hear this ditty!
Our struggle vain for daily bread
Hard hearts would move to pity.

But pity's what you've never known,--
You'd take both skin and clothing,
You cannibals, whose cruel deeds
Fill all good men with loathing.

The _Dreissigers_, however, will take no heed. Arrogant and secure in the possession of their stolen wealth, supported by the mouthpieces of the Church and the State, they feel safe from the wrath of the people--till it is too late. But when the storm breaks, they show the yellow streak and cravenly run to cover.

The weavers, roused at last by the poet's description of their condition, urged on by the inspiring enthusiasm of the _Beckers_ and the _Jaegers_, become indifferent to the threats of the law and ignore the soft tongue of the dispenser of the pure word of God,--"the God who provides shelter and food for the birds and clothes the lilies of the field." Too long they had believed in Him. No wonder _Pastor Kittelhaus_ is now at a loss to understand the weavers, heretofore "so patient, so humble, so easily led." The _Pastor_ has to pay the price for his stupidity: the weavers have outgrown even him.

The spirit of revolt sweeps their souls. It gives them courage and strength to attack the rotten structure, to drive the thieves out of the temple, aye, even to rout the soldiers who come to save the sacred institution of capitalism. The women, too, are imbued with the spirit of revolt and become an avenging force. Not even the devout faith of _Old Hilse_, who attempts to stem the tide with his blind belief in his Saviour, can stay them.

_Old Hilse._ O Lord, we know not how to be thankful enough to Thee,
for that Thou hast spared us this night again in Thy goodness ...
an' hast had pity on us ... an' hast suffered us to take no harm.
Thou art the All-merciful, an' we are poor, sinful children of
men--that bad that we are not worthy to be trampled under Thy feet.
Yet Thou art our loving Father, an' Thou wilt look upon us an'
accept us for the sake of Thy dear Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. "Jesus' blood and righteousness, Our covering is and
glorious dress." An' if we're sometimes too sore cast down under Thy
chastening--when the fire of Thy purification burns too ragin'
hot--oh, lay it not to our charge; forgive us our sin. Give us
patience, heavenly Father, that after all these sufferin's we may be
made partakers of Thy eternal blessedness. Amen.

The tide is rushing on. _Luise_, _Old Hilse's_ own daughter-in-law, is part of the tide.

_Luise._ You an' your piety an' religion--did they serve to keep the
life in my poor children? In rags an' dirt they lay, all the
four--it didn't as much as keep 'em dry. Yes! I sets up to be a
mother, that's what I do--an' if you'd like to know it, that's why
I'd send all the manufacturers to hell--because I am a mother!--Not
one of the four could I keep in life! It was cryin' more than
breathin' with me from the time each poor little thing came into the
world till death took pity on it. The devil a bit you cared! You sat
there prayin' and singin', and let me run about till my feet bled,
tryin' to get one little drop o' skim milk. How many hundred nights
has I lain an' racked my head to think what I could do to cheat the
churchyard of my little one? What harm has a baby like that done
that it must come to such a miserable end--eh? An' over there at
Dittrich's they're bathed in wine an' washed in milk. No! you may
talk as you like, but if they begins here, ten horses won't hold me
back. An' what's more--if there's a rush on Dittrich's, you will see
me in the forefront of it--an' pity the man as tries to prevent
me--I've stood it long enough, so now you know it.

Thus the tide sweeps over _Old Hilse_, as it must sweep over every obstacle, every hindrance, once labor awakens to the consciousness of its solidaric power.

An epic of misery and revolt never before painted with such terrific force, such inclusive artistry. Hence its wide human appeal, its incontrovertible indictment and its ultra-revolutionary significance, not merely to Silesia or Germany, but to our whole pseudo-civilization built on the misery and exploitation of the wealth producers, of Labor. None greater, none more universal than this stirring, all-embracing message of the most humanly creative genius of our time--Gerhart Hauptmann.

THE SUNKEN BELL

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.

FRANK WEDEKIND

THE AWAKENING OF SPRING

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?