Sienkiewicz is indeed a mighty man--someone has ironically called him a literary blacksmith. There is nothing decadent in his nature. Compared with many English, German, and French writers, who seem at times to express an anaemic and played-out civilisation, he has the very exuberance of power and an endless wealth of material. It is as if the world were fresh and new. And he has not only delighted us with the pageantry of chivalry, and with the depiction of our complex modern civilisation, he has for us also the stimulating influence of a great moral force.
VII
HERMANN SUDERMANN
Walking along Michigan Avenue in Chicago one fine day, I stopped in front of the recently completed hall devoted to music. On the facade of this building had been placed five names, supposed to represent the five greatest composers that the world has thus far seen. It was worth while to pause a moment and to reflect that those five men were all Germans.
Germany"s contribution to music is not only greater than that of any other nation, it is probably greater than that of all the other countries of the earth put together, and multiplied several times. In many forms of literary art,--especially perhaps in drama and in lyrical poetry,--Germany has been eminent; and she has produced the greatest literary genius since Shakespeare. To-day the Fatherland remains the intellectual workshop of the world; men and women flock thither to study subjects as varied as Theology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Music. All this splendid achievement in science and in culture makes poverty in the field of prose fiction all the more remarkable. For the fact is, that the total number of truly great world-novels written in the German language, throughout its entire history, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
In the making of fiction, from the point of view solely of quality, Germany cannot stand an instant"s comparison with Russia, whose four great novelists have immensely enriched the world; nor with Great Britain, where masterpieces have been produced for nearly two hundred years; nor with France, where the names of notable novels crowd into the memory; and even America, so poor in literature and in genuine culture, can show at least one romance that stands higher than anything which has come from beyond the Rhine. Germany has no reason to feel ashamed of her barrenness in fiction, so pre-eminent is she in many other and perhaps n.o.bler forms of art. But it is interesting to enquire for a moment into possible causes of this phenomenon, and to see if we can discover why Teutonic fiction is, relatively speaking, so bad.
One dominant fault in most German novels is a lack of true proportion.
The principle of selection, which differentiates a painting from a photograph, and makes the artist an Interpreter instead of a Recorder, has been forgotten or overlooked. The high and holy virtue of Omission should be cultivated more sedulously. The art of leaving out is the art that produces the real illusion--where, by the omission of unessential details, things that are salient can be properly emphasised. And what German novels lack is emphasis. This cannot be obtained by merely s.p.a.cing the letters in descriptions and in conversations; it can be reached only by remembering that prose fiction is as truly an art form as a Sonata. Instead of novels, the weary reader gets long and tiresome biographies of rather unimportant persons; people whom we should not in the least care to know in real life. We follow them dejectedly from the cradle to the grave. Matters of no earthly consequence either to the reader, to the hero, or to the course of the plot, are given as much prominence as great events. In _Jorn Uhl_, to take a recent ill.u.s.tration, the novel is positively choked by trivial detail. Despite the enormous vogue of this story, it does not seem destined to live. It will fall by its own weight.
Another great fault is an excess of sentimentality. For the Germans, who delight in destroying old faiths of humanity, and who remorselessly hammer away at the shrines where we worship in history and religion, are, notwithstanding their iconoclasm, the most sentimental people in the world. Many second-and third-rate German novels are ruined for an Anglo-Saxon reader by a lush streak of sentimental gush, a curious blemish in so intellectual and sceptical a race. This excess of soft material appears in a variety of forms; but to take one common manifestation of it, I should say that the one single object that has done more than anything else to weaken and to destroy German fiction, is the Moon. The Germans are, by nature and by training, scientific; and what their novels need is not the examination of literary critics, but the thoughtful attention of astronomers. The Moon is overworked, and needs a long rest. An immense number of pages are illumined by its chaste beams, for this satellite is both active and ubiquitous. It behaves, it must be confessed, in a dramatic manner, but in a way hopelessly at variance with its methodical and orderly self. In other words, the Moon, in German fiction, is not astronomical, but decorative.
I have read some stories where it seems to rise on almost every page, and is invariably full. When Stevenson came to grief on the Moon in _Prince Otto_, he declared that the next time he wrote a novel, he should use an almanac. He unwittingly laid his finger on a weak spot in German fiction. The almanac is, after all, what is most sorely needed.
Even Herr Sudermann, for whom we entertain the highest respect, places in _Es War_ a young crescent Moon in the eastern sky! But it is in his story, _Der Katzensteg_, that the lunar orb plays its heaviest role. It rises so constantly that after a time the very words "_der Mond_" get on one"s nerves. At the climax, when the lover looks down on the stream, he there beholds the dead body of his sweetheart. By some scientific process, "unknown to me and which "twere well to know," she is floating on her back in the water, while the Moon illumines her face, leaving the rest of her remains in darkness. This const.i.tutes a striking picture; and is also of material a.s.sistance to the man in locating the whereabouts of the girl. He descends, rescues her from the flood, and digs a grave in which to bury her. The Moon actively and dramatically takes part in this labour. Finally, he has lowered the corpse into the bottom of the cavity. The Moon now shines into the grave in such a manner that the dead woman"s face is bright with its rays, whereas the rest of her body and the walls of the tomb are in obscurity. This phenomenon naturally makes a powerful impression on the mourner"s mind.
If such things can happen in the works of a writer like Sudermann, one can easily imagine the reckless behaviour of the Moon in the common run of German fiction. The Moon, in fact, is in German novels what the calcium light is in American melodrama. If one "a.s.sists" at a performance of, let us say, _No Wedding Bells for Her_, and can take his eye a moment from the stage, he may observe up in the back gallery a person working the calcium light, and directing its powerful beams in such a fashion that no matter where the heroine moves, they dwell exclusively on her face, so that we may contemplate her features convulsed with emotion. Now in _Der Katzensteg_, the patient Moon follows the heroine about with much the same a.s.siduity, and accuracy of aim. Possibly Herr Sudermann, since the composition of that work, has really consulted an almanac; for in _Das hohe Lied_, the Moon is practically ignored, and never gets a fair start. Toward the end, I felt sure that it would appear, and finally, when I came to the words, "The weary disk of the full moon (_matte Vollmondscheibe_) hung somewhere in the dark sky," I exclaimed, "Art thou there, truepenny?"--but the next sentence showed that the author was playing fast and loose with his old friend. "It was the illuminated clock of a railway-station." Can Sudermann have purposely set a trap for his moon-struck const.i.tuency?
From the astronomical point of view, I have seldom read a novel that contained so much moonlight as _Der Katzensteg_, and I have never read one that contained so little as _Das hohe Lied_. Perhaps Sudermann is now quietly protesting against what he himself may regard as a national calamity, for it is little less than that. Be this as it may, the lack of proportion and the excess of sentimentality are two great evils that have militated against the final success of German fiction.
Hermann Sudermann was born at a little village in East Prussia, near the Russian frontier. The natal landscape is dull, depressing, gloomy, and the skies are low and threatening. The clouds return after the rain.
Dame Care has spread her grey wings over the flat earth, and neither the scenery nor the quality of the air are such as to inspire hope and vigour. The boy"s parents were desperately poor, and the bitter struggles with poverty so frequently described in his novels are reminiscent of early experiences. In the beautiful and affectionate verses, which const.i.tute the dedication to his father and mother, and which are placed at the beginning of _Frau Sorge_, these privations of the Sudermann household are dwelt on with loving tenderness. At the age of fourteen, the child was forced to leave school, and was apprenticed to a chemist--something that recalls chapters in the lives of Keats and of Ibsen. But, like most boys who really long for a good education, Sudermann obtained it; he continued his studies in private, and later returned to school at Tilsit. In 1875 he attended the University at Konigsberg, and in 1877 migrated to the University of Berlin. His first impulse was to become a teacher, and he spent several years in a wide range of studies in philosophy and literature. Then he turned to journalism, and edited a political weekly. He finally forsook journalism for literature, and for the last twenty years he has been known in every part of the intellectual world.
Like Mr. J. M. Barrie, Signor D"Annunzio, and other contemporaries, Sudermann has achieved high distinction both as a novelist and as a dramatist. Indeed, one of the signs of the times is the recruiting of playwrights from the ranks of trained experts in prose fiction. It may perhaps be regarded as one more evidence of the approaching supremacy of the Drama, which many literary prophets have foretold. After he had published a small collection of "Zw.a.n.glose Geschichten," called _Im Zwielicht_, Sudermann issued his first real novel, _Dame Care_ (_Frau Sorge_). This was followed by two tales bound together under the heading _Geschwister_, one of them being the morbidly powerful story, _The Wish_ (_Der Wunsch_). Soon after came _Der Katzensteg_, translated into English with the t.i.tle, _Regina_. Then, after a surprisingly short interval, came his first play, _Die Ehre_ (1889), which appeared in the same year as his rival Hauptmann"s first drama, _Vor Sonnenaufgang_.
_Die Ehre_ created a tremendous sensation, and Sudermann was excitedly read and discussed far beyond the limits of his native land. He reached a wild climax of popularity a few years later with his play _Heimat_ (English version _Magda_), which has been presented by the greatest actresses in the world, and is familiar to everybody. With the exception of the long novel, _Es War_ (English translation, _The Undying Past_), which appeared in 1894, Sudermann devoted himself exclusively to the stage for almost twenty years, and most of us believed he had definitely abandoned novel-writing. From 1889 to 1909, he produced nineteen plays, nearly every one of them successful. Then last year he astonished everybody by publishing a novel of over six hundred closely printed pages, called _Das hohe Lied_, translated into English as _The Song of Songs_. This has had an enormous success, and for 1908-1909, is the best selling work of fiction in the large cities of Germany.
The immense vogue of his early plays had much to do with the wide circulation of his previously published novels. Despite the now universally acknowledged excellence of _Frau Sorge_, it attracted, at the time of its appearance, very little attention. It is going beyond the facts to say with one German critic that "it dropped stillborn from the press"; but it did not give the author anything like the fame he deserved. After the first night of _Die Ehre_, the public became inquisitive. A search was made for everything the new author had written, and the two novels _Frau Sorge_, and the very recent _Katzensteg_, were fairly pounced upon. The small stock on hand was immediately exhausted, and the presses poured forth edition after edition. At first _Der Katzensteg_ received the louder tribute of praise; it was hailed by many otherwise sane critics as the greatest work of fiction that Germany had ever produced. But after the tumult and the shouting died, the people recognised the superiority of the former novel. To-day _Der Katzensteg_ is, comparatively speaking, little read, and one seldom hears it mentioned. _Frau Sorge_, on the other hand, has not only attained more editions than any other work, either play or novel, by its author, but it bears the signs that mark a cla.s.sic. It is one of the very few truly great German novels, and it is possible that this early written story will survive everything that Sudermann has since produced, which is saying a good deal. It looks like a fixed star.
Sudermann"s four novels, _Frau Sorge_, _Der Katzensteg_, _Es War_, and _Das hohe Lied_, show a steady progression in s.p.a.ce as well as in Time.
The first is the shortest; the second is larger; the third is a long book; the fourth is a leviathan. If novelists were heard for their much speaking, the order of merit in this output would need no comment. But the first of these is almost as superior in quality as it is inferior in size. When the author prepared it for the press, he was an absolutely unknown man. Possibly he put more work on it than went into the other books, for it apparently bears the marks of careful revision. It is a great exception to the ordinary run of German novels in its complete freedom from superfluous and clogging detail. Turgenev used to write his stories originally at great length, and then reduce them to a small fraction of their original bulk, before offering them to the public. We thus receive the quintessence of his thought and of his art. Now _Frau Sorge_ has apparently been subjected to some such process. Much of the huge and varied cargo of ideas, reflections, comments, and speculations carried by the regulation German freight-novel of heavy draught, has here been jettisoned. Then the craft itself has been completely remodelled, and the final result is a thing of grace and beauty.
_Frau Sorge_ is an admirable story in its absolute unity, in its harmonious development, and in its natural conclusion. I do not know of any other German novel that has a more attractive outline. It ought to serve as an example to its author"s countrymen.
It is in a way an anatomy of melancholy. It is written throughout in the minor key, and the atmosphere of melancholy envelops it with as much natural charm as though it were a beautiful piece of music. The book is profoundly sad, without any false sentiment and without any revolting coa.r.s.eness. It is as far removed from the silly sentimentality so common in Teutonic fiction, as it is from the filth of Zola or of Gorky.
The deep melancholy of the story is as natural to it as a cloudy sky.
The characters live and move and have their being in this grey medium, which fits them like a garment; just as in the early tales of Bjornson we feel the strong sunshine and the sharp air. The early environment of the young author, the depressing landscape of his boyhood days, the daily fight with grim want in his father"s house--all these elements are faithfully reflected here, and lend their colour to the narrative. And this surrounding melancholy, though it overshadows the whole book, is made to serve an artistic purpose. It contrasts favourably with Ibsen"s harsh bitterness, with Gorky"s maudlin dreariness, and with the hysterical outbursts of pessimism from the manikins who try to see life from the mighty shoulders of Schopenhauer. At the very heart of the work we find no sentiment of revolt against life, and no cry of despair, but true tenderness and broad sympathy. It is the clear expression of a rich, warm nature.
The story is realistic, with a veil of Romanticism. The various scenes of the tale seem almost photographically real. The daily life on the farm, the struggles with the agricultural machine, the peat-bogs, the childish experiences at school, the brutality of the boys, the graphic picture of the funeral,--these would not be out of place in a genuine experimental novel. But we see everything through an imaginative medium, like the impalpable silver-grey mist on the paintings of Andrea del Sarto. The way in which the difficult conception of _Frau Sorge_--part woman, part vague abstraction--is managed, reminds one in its shadowy nature of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This might have been done clumsily, as in a crude fairy-tale, but it exhibits the most subtle art. The first description of Frau Sorge by the mother, the boy"s first glimpse of the supernatural woman, his father"s overcoat, the Magdalene in church, the flutter of Frau Sorge"s wings,--all this gives us a realistic story, and yet takes us into the borderland between the actual and the unknown.
From one point of view we have a plain narrative of fact; from another an imaginative poem, and at the end we feel that both have been marvellously blended.
The simplicity of the style gives the novel a high rank in German prose.
It has that nave quality wherein the Germans so greatly excel writers in other languages. It is a surprising fact that this tongue, so full of difficulties for foreigners, and which seems often so confused and involved, can, in the hands of a master, be made to speak like a little child. The literary style of _Frau Sorge_ is nave without ever being trivial or absurd. It is pleasant to observe, by the way, that to some extent this book is filling the place in American educational programmes of German that _L"Abbe Constantin_ has for so long a time occupied in early studies of French. Both novels are masterpieces of simplicity.
But what we remember the most vividly, years after we have finished this story, is not its scenic background, nor its unearthly charm, nor the grace of its style; it is the character and temperament of the boy-hero.
It is the first, and possibly the best, of Sudermann"s remarkable psychological studies. The whole interest is centred in young Paul. He is not exactly the normal type of growing boy,--compare him with Tom Sawyer!--but because he is not ordinary, it does not follow that he is unnatural. To many thoroughly respectable Philistine readers, he may appear not only abnormal, but impossible; but the book was not intended for Philistines. I believe that this boy is absolutely true to life, though I do not recall at this moment any other novel where this particular kind of youth occupies the centre of the stage.
For _Frau Sorge_ is a careful study and a.n.a.lysis of _bashfulness_, a characteristic that causes more exquisite torture to many boys and girls than is commonly recognised. Many of us, when we laugh at a boy"s bashfulness, are brutal, when we mean to be merely jocular. Paul is intensely self-conscious. He is not at all like a healthy, practical, objective child, brought up in a large family, and surrounded by the noisy progeny of neighbours. His life is perforcedly largely subjective.
He would give anything could he a.s.sociate with schoolmates with the ease that makes a popular boy sure of his welcome. His accursed timidity makes him invariably show his most awkward and unattractive side. He is not in the least a _Weltkind_. He has none of the coa.r.s.eness and none of the clever shirking of work and study so characteristic of the perfectly normal small boy. He does his duty _without any reservations_, and without understanding why. The narrative of his mental life is deeply pathetic. It is impossible to read the book without a lump in the throat.
Paul is finally saved from himself by the redeeming power of love. The little heroine Elsbeth is shadowy,--a merely conventional picture of hair, complexion, and eyes,--but she is, after all, _das Ewigweibliche_, and draws Paul upward and onward. She rescues him from the Slough of Despond. There is no touch of cynicism here. Sudermann shows us the healing power of a good woman"s heart.
The next novel, _Der Katzensteg_, is more pretentious than _Frau Sorge_, but not nearly so fine a book. It abounds in dramatic scenes, and glows with fierce pa.s.sion. It seems more like a melodrama than a story, and it is not surprising that its author immediately discovered--perhaps in the very composition of this romance--his genius for the stage. It is a historical novel, but the chief interest, as always in Sudermann, is psychological. The element of Contrast--so essential to true drama, and which is so strikingly employed in _Die Ehre_, _Sodoms Ende_, _Heimat_, and _Johannes_--is the mainspring of _Der Katzensteg_. We have here the irrepressible conflict between the artificial and the natural. The heroine of the story is a veritable child of nature, with absolutely elemental pa.s.sions, as completely removed from civilisation as a wild beast. She was formerly the mistress of the hero"s father, and for a long time is naturally regarded with loathing by the son. But she transfers her dog-like fidelity from the dead parent to the morbid scion of the house. The more cruelly the young man treats her, the deeper becomes her love for him. Nor does he at first suspect the hold she has on his heart. He imagines himself to be in love with the pastor"s daughter in the village, who has been brought up like a hothouse plant.
This simpering, affected girl, who has had all the advantages of careful nurture and education, is throughout the story contrasted with the wild flower, Regina. The contrast is thorough--mental, moral, physical. The educated girl has no real mind; she has only accomplishments. Her morality has nothing to do with the heart; it is a bundle of conventions. And finally, while Regina has a magnificent, voluptuous physique, the hero discovers--by the light of the moon--that the lady of his dreams is too thin! This is unendurable. He rushes away from the town to the heights where stands his lonely dwelling, cursing himself for his folly in being so long blind to the wonderful charm and devotion of the pa.s.sionate girl who, he feels sure, is waiting for him. He hastens on the very wings of love, wild with his new-found happiness.
But the very fidelity of the child of nature has caused her death. She stood out on the bridge--_der Katzensteg_--to warn her lover of his danger. There she is shot by her drunken father, and the impatient lover sees her dead body in the stream below.
Now he has leisure to reflect on what a fool he has been. He sees how much n.o.bler are natural pa.s.sions than artificial conventions. Regina had lived "on the other side of good and evil," knowing and caring nothing for the standards of society. The entire significance of the novel is summed up in this paragraph:--
"And as he thought and pondered, it seemed to him as if the clouds which separate the foundations of human being from human consciousness" (that is, things as they are from our conceptions of them,--_den Boden des menschlichen Seins vom menschlichen Bewusstsein_) "were dispersed, and he saw a s.p.a.ce deeper than men commonly see, into the depths of the unconscious. That which men call Good and Bad, moved restless in the clouds around the surface; below, in dreaming strength, lay the _Natural_ (_das Naturliche_).
"Whom Nature has blessed," he said to himself, "him she lets safely grow in her dark depths and allows him to struggle boldly toward the light, without the clouds of Wisdom and Error surrounding and bewildering him.""
But there is nothing new or original in this doctrine, however daring it may be. One can find it all in Nietzsche and in Rousseau. The best thing about the novel is that it once more ill.u.s.trates Sudermann"s sympathy for the outcast and the despised.
An extraordinarily powerful study in morbid psychology is shown in one of his short stories, called _Der Wunsch_. The tale is told backward. It begins with the discovery of a horrible suicide, the explanation of which is furnished to the prostrated lover by the dead woman"s ma.n.u.script. A man and his wife, at first happily married, encounter the dreadful obstacles of poverty and disease; the fatal illness of his wife plunges the husband into a hard, bitter melancholy. From this he is partially saved by the appearance of his wife"s younger sister on the scene, who comes to take care of the sick woman. The close companionship of the two, previously fond of each other, and now united daily by their care of the invalid, results in love; but both are absolutely loyal to the suffering wife. They cannot help thinking, however, of the wonderful happiness that might be theirs, were the man free; nevertheless, they do everything possible to solace the last hours of the woman for whom they feel an immense compa.s.sion. One night, as the sister watches at the bedside, and gazes on the face of her sister, she suddenly feels the uncontrollable and fatal _wish_--"Would that she might die!" She is so smitten with remorse that after the death of the invalid she commits suicide. For although her wish had nothing to do with this event, she nevertheless regards herself as a murderer, and goes to self-execution.
The physician remarks that this psychological _wish_ is not uncommon; that during his professional services he has often seen it legibly written on the faces of relatives by the bedside--sometimes actuated by avarice, sometimes by other forms of personal greed.
The next regular novel, _Es War_, is the study of a past sin on a man"s character, temperament, and conduct. The hero, Leo, has committed adultery with the wife of a disagreeable husband, and, being challenged by the latter to a duel, has killed him. Thus having broken two of the commandments, he departs for South America, where for four years he lives a joyous, care-free, savage existence, with murder and sensuality a regular part of the day"s work. It is perhaps a little hard on South America that Leo could live there in such liberty and return to Germany unscathed by the arm of the law; but this is essential to the story. He returns a kind of Superman, rejoicing in his magnificent health and absolutely determined to repent nothing. He will not allow the past to obscure his happiness. But unfortunately his friend Ulrich, whom he has loved since childhood with an affection pa.s.sing the love of women, has married the guilty widow, in blissful unconsciousness of his friend"s guilt. And here the story opens. It is a long, depressing, but intensely interesting tale. At the very close, when it seems that wholesale tragedy is inevitable, the clouds lift, and Leo, who has found the Past stronger than he, regains something of the cheerfulness that characterises his first appearance in the narrative. Nevertheless _es war_; the Past cannot be lightly tossed aside or forgotten. It comes near wrecking the lives of every important character in the novel. Yet the idea at the end seems to be that although sin entails fearful punishment, and the scars can never be obliterated, it is possible to triumph over it and find happiness once more. The most beautiful and impressive thing in _Es War_ is the friendship between the two men--so different in temperament and so pa.s.sionately devoted to each other. A large group of characters is splendidly kept in hand, and each is individual and clearly drawn. One can never forget the gluttonous, wine-bibbing Parson, who comes eating and drinking, but who is a terror to publicans and sinners.
Last year appeared _Das hohe Lied_, which, although it lacks the morbid horror of much of Sudermann"s work, is the most pessimistic book he has ever written. The irony of the t.i.tle is the motive of the whole novel.
Between the covers of this thick volume we find the entire detailed life-history of a woman. She pa.s.ses through much debauchery, and we follow her into many places where we should hesitate to penetrate in real life. But the steps in her degradation are not put in, as they so often are in Guy de Maupa.s.sant, merely to lend spice to the narrative; every event has a definite influence on the heroine"s character. The story, although very long, is strikingly similar to that in a recent successful American play, _The Easiest Way_. Lilly Czepanek is not naturally base or depraved. The ma.n.u.script roll of her father"s musical composition, _Das hohe Lied_, which she carries with her from childhood until her final submission to circ.u.mstances, and which saves her body from suicide but not her soul from death, is emblematic of the _elan_ which she has in her heart. With the best intentions in the world, with n.o.ble, romantic sentiments, with a pa.s.sionate desire to be a rescuing angel to the men and women whom she meets, she gradually sinks in the mire, until, at the end, her case is hopeless. She struggles desperately, but each struggle finds her stock of resistance reduced.
She always ends by taking the easiest way. Like a person in a quicksand, every effort to escape sinks the body deeper; or, like a drowning man, the more he raises his hands to heaven, the more speedy is his destruction. Much of Lilly"s degradation is caused by what she believes to be an elevating altruistic impulse. And when she finally meets the only man in her whole career who respects her in his heart, who really means well by her, and whose salvation she can accomplish along with her own,--one single evening, where she begins with the best of intentions and with a sincere effort toward a higher plane, results in complete d.a.m.nation. Then, like the heroine in _The Easiest Way_, she determines to commit suicide, and really means to do it. But the same weakness that has made it hitherto impossible for her to triumph over serious obstacles, prevents her from taking this last decisive step. As she hears the splash of her talisman in the cold, dark water, she realises that she is not the stuff of which heroines are made, either in life or in death.
"And as she heard that sound, then she knew instantly that she would _never_ do it.--No indeed! Lilly Czepanek was _no_ Heroine.
_No_ martyr of her love was Lilly Czepanek. No Isolde, who in the determination not to be, sees the highest self-a.s.sertion. She was only a poor brittle, crushed, broken thing, who must drag along through her days as best she can."
And with this realisation she goes wearily back to a rich lover she had definitely forsaken, knowing that in saving her life she has now lost it for ever.
This is the last page of the story, but unfortunately it does not end here. Herr Sudermann has chosen to add one paragraph after the word "_Schluss_." By this we learn that in the spring of the following year the aforesaid rich lover _marries_ Lilly, and takes her on a bridal trip to Italy, which all her life had been in her dreams the celestial country. She is thus saved from the awful fate of the streets, which during the whole book had loomed threatening in the distance. But this ending leaves us completely bewildered and depressed. It seems to imply that, after all, these successive steps in moral decline do not make much difference, one way or the other; for at the very beginning of her career she could not possibly have hoped for any better material fate than this. The reader not only feels cheated; he feels that the moral element in the story, which through all the scenes of vice has been made clear, is now laughed at by the author. This is why I call the book the most pessimistic of all Sudermann"s writings. A novel may take us through woe and sin, and yet not produce any impression of cynicism; but one that makes a careful, serious study of subtle moral decay through over six hundred pages, and then implies at the end that the distinction between vice and virtue is, after all, a matter of no consequence, leaves an impression for which the proverbial "bad taste in the mouth" is utterly inadequate to describe. Some years ago, Professor h.e.l.ler, in an admirable book on Modern German Literature, remarked, in a comparison between Hauptmann and Sudermann, that the former has no working theory of life, which the latter possessed. That Hauptmann"s dramas offer no solution, merely giving sordid wretchedness; while Sudermann shows the conquest of environment by character. Or, as Mr.
h.e.l.ler puts it, there is the contrast between the "driving and the drifting." I think this distinction in the main will justify itself to anyone who makes a thoughtful comparison of the work of these two remarkable men. Despite the depreciation of Sudermann and the idolatry of Hauptmann, an att.i.tude so fashionable among German critics at present, I believe that the works of the former have shown a stronger grasp of life. But the final paragraph of _Das hohe Lied_ is a staggering blow to those of us who have felt that Sudermann had some kind of a _Weltanschauung_. It is like Chopin"s final movement in his great Sonata; mocking laughter follows the solemn tones of the Funeral March.
Up to this last bad business, _Das hohe Lied_ exhibits that extraordinary power of psychological a.n.a.lysis that we have come to expect from Sudermann. Lilly, apart from her personal beauty, is not, after all, an interesting girl; her mind is thoroughly shallow and commonplace. Nor are the numerous adventures through which she pa.s.ses particularly interesting. And yet the long book is by no means dull, and one reads it with steady attention. The reason for this becomes clear, after some reflexion. Not only are we absorbed by the contemplation of so masterly a piece of mental a.n.a.lysis, but what interests us most is the constant attempt of Lilly to a.n.a.lyse herself. We often wonder how people appear to themselves. The unspoken dialogues between Lilly and her own soul are amazingly well done. She is constantly surprised by herself, constantly bewildered by the fact that what she thought was one set of motives, turns out to be quite otherwise. All this comes to a great climax in the scene late at night when she writes first one letter, then another--each one meaning to be genuinely confessional.
Each letter is to give an absolutely faithful account of her life, with a perfectly truthful depiction of her real character. Now the two letters are so different that in one she appears to be a low-lived adventuress, and in the other a n.o.ble woman, deceived through what is n.o.blest in her. Finally she tears both up, for she realises that although each letter gives the facts, neither tells the truth. And then she sees that the truth cannot be told; that life is far too complex to be put into language.
In the attempts of German critics years ago to "cla.s.sify" Sudermann, he was commonly placed in one of the three following groups. Many insisted that he was merely a Decadent, whose pleasure it was to deal in unhealthy social problems. That his interest in humanity was pathological. Others held that he was a fierce social Reformer, a kind of John the Baptist, who wished to reconstruct modern society along better lines, and who was therefore determined to make society realise its own rottenness. He was primarily a Satirist, not a Decadent.
Professor Calvin Thomas quoted (without approbation) Professor Litzmann of Bonn, who said that Sudermann was "a born satirist, not one of the tame sort who only tickle and scratch, but one of the stamp of Juvenal, who swings his scourge with fierce satisfaction so that the blood starts from the soft, voluptuous flesh." A reading of _Das hohe Lied_ will convince anyone that Sudermann, wherever he is, is not among the prophets. Finally, there were many critics who at the very start recognised Sudermann as primarily an artist, who chooses to paint the aspects of life that interest him. This is undoubtedly the true viewpoint. We may regret that he prefers to a.n.a.lyse human characters in morbid and abnormal development, but that, after all, is his affair, and we do not have to read him unless we wish to. Professor Thomas, in an admirable article on _Das Gluck im Winkel_, contributed in 1895 to the New York _Nation_, said, "Sudermann is a man of the world, a psychologist, and an artist, not a voice crying in the wilderness. The immortality of Juvenal or Jeremiah would not be to his taste." It is vain to quarrel with the direction taken by genius; however much we may deplore its course. Sudermann is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of Germany"s living writers, and every play or novel from his pen contains much material for serious thought.
VIII
ALFRED OLLIVANT