No less important is the factor for rebellious awakening in modern literature-Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Andreiev, Gorki, Whitman, Emerson, and scores of others embodying the spirit of universal ferment and the longing for social change.
Still more far-reaching is the modern drama, as the leaven of radical thought and the disseminator of new values.
It might seem an exaggeration to ascribe to the modern drama such an important role. But a study of the development of modern ideas in most countries will prove that the drama has succeeded in driving home great social truths, truths generally ignored when presented in other forms. No doubt there are exceptions, as Russia and France.
Russia, with its terrible political pressure, has made people think and has awakened their social sympathies, because of the tremendous contrast which exists between the intellectual life of the people and the despotic regime that is trying to crush that life. Yet while the great dramatic works of Tolstoy, Tchechov, Gorki, and Andreiev closely mirror the life and the struggle, the hopes and aspirations of the Russian people, they did not influence radical thought to the extent the drama has done in other countries.
Who can deny, however, the tremendous influence exerted by THE POWER OF DARKNESS or NIGHT LODGING. Tolstoy, the real, true Christian, is yet the greatest enemy of organized Christianity. With a master hand he portrays the destructive effects upon the human mind of the power of darkness, the superst.i.tions of the Christian Church.
What other medium could express, with such dramatic force, the responsibility of the Church for crimes committed by its deluded victims; what other medium could, in consequence, rouse the indignation of man"s conscience?
Similarly direct and powerful is the indictment contained in Gorki"s NIGHT LODGING. The social pariahs, forced into poverty and crime, yet desperately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspiration. Lost existences these, blighted and crushed by cruel, unsocial environment.
France, on the other hand, with her continuous struggle for liberty, is indeed the cradle of radical thought; as such she, too, did not need the drama as a means of awakening. And yet the works of Brieux-as ROBE ROUGE, portraying the terrible corruption of the judiciary-and Mirbeau"s LES AFFAIRES SONT LES AFFAIRES-picturing the destructive influence of wealth on the human soul-have undoubtedly reached wider circles than most of the articles and books which have been written in France on the social question.
In countries like Germany, Scandinavia, England, and even in America-though in a lesser degree-the drama is the vehicle which is really making history, disseminating radical thought in ranks not otherwise to be reached.
Let us take Germany, for instance. For nearly a quarter of a century men of brains, of ideas, and of the greatest integrity, made it their life-work to spread the truth of human brotherhood, of justice, among the oppressed and downtrodden. Socialism, that tremendous revolutionary wave, was to the victims of a merciless and inhumane system like water to the parched lips of the desert traveler. Alas! The cultured people remained absolutely indifferent; to them that revolutionary tide was but the murmur of dissatisfied, discontented men, dangerous, illiterate troublemakers, whose proper place was behind prison bars.
Self-satisfied as the "cultured" usually are, they could not understand why one should fuss about the fact that thousands of people were starving, though they contributed towards the wealth of the world. Surrounded by beauty and luxury, they could not believe that side by side with them lived human beings degraded to a position lower than a beast"s, shelterless and ragged, without hope or ambition.
This condition of affairs was particularly p.r.o.nounced in Germany after the Franco-German war. Full to the bursting point with its victory, Germany thrived on a sentimental, patriotic literature, thereby poisoning the minds of the country"s youth by the glory of conquest and bloodshed.
Intellectual Germany had to take refuge in the literature of other countries, in the works of Ibsen, Zola, Daudet, Maupa.s.sant, and especially in the great works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgeniev. But as no country can long maintain a standard of culture without a literature and drama related to its own soil, so Germany gradually began to develop a drama reflecting the life and the struggles of its own people.
Arno Holz, one of the youngest dramatists of that period, startled the Philistines out of their ease and comfort with his FAMILIE SELICKE. The play deals with society"s refuse, men and women of the alleys, whose only subsistence consists of what they can pick out of the garbage barrels. A gruesome subject, is it not? And yet what other method is there to break through the hard sh.e.l.l of the minds and souls of people who have never known want, and who therefore a.s.sume that all is well in the world?
Needless to say, the play aroused tremendous indignation. The truth is bitter, and the people living on the Fifth Avenue of Berlin hated to be confronted with the truth.
Not that FAMILIE SELICKE represented anything that had not been written about for years without any seeming result. But the dramatic genius of Holz, together with the powerful interpretation of the play, necessarily made inroads into the widest circles, and forced people to think about the terrible inequalities around them.
Sudermann"s EHRE[1] and HEIMAT[2] deal with vital subjects. I have already referred to the sentimental patriotism so completely turning the head of the average German as to create a perverted conception of honor. Duelling became an every-day affair, costing innumerable lives. A great cry was raised against the fad by a number of leading writers. But nothing acted as such a clarifier and exposer of that national disease as the EHRE.
Not that the play merely deals with duelling; it a.n.a.lyzes the real meaning of honor, proving that it is not a fixed, inborn feeling, but that it varies with every people and every epoch, depending particularly on one"s economic and social station in life. We realize from this play that the man in the brownstone mansion will necessarily define honor differently from his victims.
The family Heinecke enjoys the charity of the millionaire Muhling, being permitted to occupy a dilapidated shanty on his premises in the absence of their son, Robert. The latter, as Muhling"s representative, is making a vast fortune for his employer in India. On his return Robert discovers that his sister had been seduced by young Muhling, whose father graciously offers to straighten matters with a check for 40,000 marks. Robert, outraged and indignant, resents the insult to his family"s honor, and is forthwith dismissed from his position for impudence. Robert finally throws this accusation into the face of the philanthropist millionaire:
"We slave for you, we sacrifice our heart"s blood for you, while you seduce our daughters and sisters and kindly pay for their disgrace with the gold we have earned for you. That is what you call honor."
An incidental side-light upon the conception of honor is given by Count Trast, the princ.i.p.al character in the EHRE, a man widely conversant with the customs of various climes, who relates that in his many travels he chanced across a savage tribe whose honor he mortally offended by refusing the hospitality which offered him the charms of the chieftain"s wife.
The theme of HEIMAT treats of the struggle between the old and the young generations. It holds a permanent and important place in dramatic literature.
Magda, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz, has committed an unpardonable sin: she refused the suitor selected by her father. For daring to disobey the parental commands she is driven from home. Magda, full of life and the spirit of liberty, goes out into the world to return to her native town, twelve years later, a celebrated singer. She consents to visit her parents on condition that they respect the privacy of her past. But her martinet father immediately begins to question her, insisting on his "paternal rights." Magda is indignant, but gradually his persistence brings to light the tragedy of her life. He learns that the respected Councillor Von Keller had in his student days been Magda"s lover, while she was battling for her economic and social independence. The consequence of the fleeting romance was a child, deserted by the man even before birth. The rigid military father of Magda demands as retribution from Councillor Von Keller that he legalize the love affair. In view of Magda"s social and professional success, Keller willingly consents, but on condition that she forsake the stage, and place the child in an inst.i.tution. The struggle between the Old and the New culminates in Magda"s defiant words of the woman grown to conscious independence of thought and action: "...I"ll say what I think of you-of you and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you that I must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold upon my body, and the l.u.s.tre which surrounds my name, only increase my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years? Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built up my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become what I am."
The general theme of HEIMAT was not original. It had been previously treated by a master hand in FATHERS AND SONS. Partly because Turgeniev"s great work was typical rather of Russian than universal conditions, and still more because it was in the form of fiction, the influence of FATHERS AND SONS was limited to Russia. But HEIMAT, especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world factor.
The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth, both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy, and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann"s head, was the question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit parents.
During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmann stands a colossal figure before the world.
When DIE WEBER[4] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists, "workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner amus.e.m.e.nt? That is too much!"
Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver"s existence. It was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J"ACCUSE!
Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this drama that capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that wealth can not be h.o.a.rded except through the channels of poverty, hunger, and cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lest the victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is the purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the oppressed; and that, indeed, was the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann in depicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia. Human beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning enough for bread and fuel; human beings living in broken, wretched huts half covered with snow, and nothing but tatters to protect them from the cold; infants covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure; pregnant women in the last stages of consumption. Victims of a benevolent Christian era, without life, without hope, without warmth. Ah, yes, it was too much!
Hauptmann"s dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions, he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental and spiritual liberation from the slavery of convention and tradition. Thus Heinrich, the bell-forger, in the dramatic prose-poem, DIE VERSUNKENE GLOCKE[5], fails to reach the mountain peaks of liberty because, as Rautendelein said, he had lived in the valley too long. Similarly Dr. Vockerath and Anna Maar remain lonely souls because they, too, lack the strength to defy venerated traditions. Yet their very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit against a world forever hindering individual and social emanc.i.p.ation.
Max Halbe"s JUGEND[6] and Wedekind"s FRUHLING"S ERWACHEN[7] are dramas which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different direction. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance and narrow Puritanism that meet the awakening of nature. Particularly this is true of FRUHLING"S ERWACHEN. Young boys and girls sacrificed on the altar of false education and of our sickening morality that prohibits the enlightenment of youth as to questions so imperative to the health and well-being of society,-the origin of life, and its functions. It shows how a mother-and a truly good mother, at that-keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter in absolute ignorance as to all matters of s.e.x, and when finally the young girl falls a victim to her own ignorance, the same mother sees her daughter killed by quack medicines. The inscription on her grave states that she died of anaemia, and morality is satisfied.
The fatality of our Puritanic hypocrisy in these matters is especially illumined by Wedekind in so far as our most promising children fall victims to s.e.x ignorance and the utter lack of appreciation on the part of the teachers of the child"s awakening.
Wendla, unusually developed and alert for her age, pleads with her mother to explain the mystery of life:
"I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years. I myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven"t the least idea how it all comes about.... Don"t be cross, Mother, dear! Whom in the world should I ask but you? Don"t scold me for asking about it. Give me an answer.-How does it happen?-You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still believe in the stork."
Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of morality, an affectionate and sensible explanation might have saved her daughter. But the conventional mother seeks to hide her "moral" shame and embarra.s.sment in this evasive reply:
"In order to have a child-one must love-the man-to whom one is married.... One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are still unable to love.-Now you know it!"
How much Wendla "knew" the mother realized too late. The pregnant girl imagines herself ill with dropsy. And when her mother cries in desperation, "You haven"t the dropsy, you have a child, girl," the agonized Wendla exclaims in bewilderment: "But it"s not possible, Mother, I am not married yet.... Oh, Mother, why didn"t you tell me everything?"
With equal stupidity the boy Morris is driven to suicide because he fails in his school examinations. And Melchior, the youthful father of Wendla"s unborn child, is sent to the House of Correction, his early s.e.xual awakening stamping him a degenerate in the eyes of teachers and parents.
For years thoughtful men and women in Germany had advocated the compelling necessity of s.e.x enlightenment. MUTTERSCHUTZ, a publication specially devoted to frank and intelligent discussion of the s.e.x problem, has been carrying on its agitation for a considerable time. But it remained for the dramatic genius of Wedekind to influence radical thought to the extent of forcing the introduction of s.e.x physiology in many schools of Germany.
Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the drama much more than through any other channel. Long before Ibsen appeared on the scene, Bjornson, the great essayist, thundered against the inequalities and injustice prevalent in those countries. But his was a voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen. His BRAND, DOLL"S HOUSE, PILLARS OF SOCIETY, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE have considerably undermined the old conceptions, and replaced them by a modern and real view of life. One has but to read BRAND to realize the modern conception, let us say, of religion,-religion, as an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion as a principle of human brotherhood, of solidarity, and kindness.
Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil of hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is on the four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society. First, the lie upon which rests the life of today; second, the futility of sacrifice as preached by our moral codes; third, petty material consideration, which is the only G.o.d the majority worships; and fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These four recur as the LEITMOTIF in Ibsen"s plays, but particularly in PILLARS OF SOCIETY, DOLL"S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.
Pillars of Society! What a tremendous indictment against the social structure that rests on rotten and decayed pillars,-pillars nicely gilded and apparently intact, yet merely hiding their true condition. And what are these pillars?
Consul Bernick, at the very height of his social and financial career, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of the community, has reached the summit through the channel of lies, deception, and fraud. He has robbed his bosom friend, Johann, of his good name, and has betrayed Lona Hessel, the woman he loved, to marry her step-sister for the sake of her money. He has enriched himself by shady transactions, under cover of "the community"s good," and finally even goes to the extent of endangering human life by preparing the INDIAN GIRL, a rotten and dangerous vessel, to go to sea.
But the return of Lona brings him the realization of the emptiness and meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the waking conscience by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the better life of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soon falls to the ground, as he realizes that truth cannot be built on a lie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared to celebrate the great benefactor of the community with banquet praise, he himself, now grown to full spiritual manhood, confesses to the a.s.sembled townspeople:
"I have no right to this homage- ... My fellow-citizens must know me to the core. Then let everyone examine himself, and let us realize the prediction that from this event we begin a new time. The old, with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety, and its pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum, open for instruction."
With A DOLL"S HOUSE Ibsen has paved the way for woman"s emanc.i.p.ation. Nora awakens from her doll"s role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.
"While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealed them, because he would not have approved. He used to call me his doll child, and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. You settled everything according to your taste, and I got the same taste as you, or I pretended to. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald, but you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong."
In vain Helmer uses the old philistine arguments of wifely duty and social obligations. Nora has grown out of her doll"s dress into full stature of conscious womanhood. She is determined to think and judge for herself. She has realized that, before all else, she is a human being, owing the first duty to herself. She is undaunted even by the possibility of social ostracism. She has become sceptical of the justice of the law, the wisdom of the const.i.tuted. Her rebelling soul rises in protest against the existing. In her own words: "I must make up my mind which is right, society or I."
In her childlike faith in her husband she had hoped for the great miracle. But it was not the disappointed hope that opened her vision to the falsehoods of marriage. It was rather the smug contentment of Helmer with a safe lie-one that would remain hidden and not endanger his social standing.
When Nora closed behind her the door of her gilded cage and went out into the world a new, regenerated personality, she opened the gate of freedom and truth for her own s.e.x and the race to come.