The drama represents the thought which seeks to become a deed through action or suffering. The narrative is really not a pure form, but a combination of the lyric and dramatic elements,—a combination which differs from the drama in that it develops the outer life from the inner, whereas in the drama the inner proceeds from the outer.

Let us now examine what Theodor Koerner and Heinrich von Kleist have accomplished, in the first place, as lyric poets. Kleist (unhappily) has left us very little in this field, Koerner (again unhappily) all the more. Koerner's war-songs have, in this stage of our investigation, the precedence over his other lyric productions, for two reasons: in the first place, they found the largest public and earned for their author, beside the royalties, the title of a German Tyrtaeus; and in the second place, Theodor Koerner's soul was most ardently engrossed with the supposed and the real sufferings of his time, with the dignity and the misfortune of his people, and with the necessity and sacredness of the war. Let no one scent any bombast in all this, but, on the contrary, let him admire my cleverness in condensing into three lines, everything that Theodor Koerner expressed in a whole volume, in Lyre and Sword! If, therefore, his war-songs are bad, we shall be justified in concluding that we need expect still less from his other poems, in which he is concerned with sentiments which certainly affected him more slightly than those which placed the sword in his hand. I turn over the index of his war-songs, and find Call to the German Nation, Before the Battle, Germany,—in short, titles that all point to material very often handled, and therefore grown trivial. I do not, indeed, immediately conclude therefrom that the poems are trivial, but I have the right to conclude that the man who attempts such worn out subjects must be either a very great or a very small poet. May I be permitted to analyze one of these poems? I will choose, as the most significant, the well known Battle Song of the Confederation. In this poem the poet has striven to collect everything that could serve to make the soldiers who were to take part in the battle of Danneberg more indifferent to the bullets. I should not, however, have liked to advise the commanding general actually to use it for this purpose. Mr. Koerner quite forgets with what sort of people he is dealing when, in the third strophe, he expects the soldiers to let themselves be slaughtered for German art and German song. This is more than a joke, for I have the right to demand that a Battle-Song of the Confederation shall be comprehensible and intelligible to all who are to take part in the battle; and art and song are, in any case, not important enough to be named together with the causes that made the fighting of a battle necessary, together with the enslavement of a people; quite apart from the fact that both, art and song, belong to those national treasures which are most secure in the time of hostile invasion. But in order not to give my logic a bad reputation, I will begin at the beginning. Mr. Koerner not only began there but even ended there—this in parenthesis. The first strophe aims to give the picture of a battle; but it is fortunate that we already know, from the superscription, with what battle we are concerned; we should scarcely find it out from this first strophe, which finishes, but does not complete the picture. In the second strophe we learn rather more; we learn that the beloved German oak is broken, that the language—thank God, not the women—has been violated, and we find it quite natural that revenge should blaze up at last, even though we cannot escape a slight feeling of surprise that dishonor, shame and such like, already lay behind those heroes, and therefore had been endured. We have already tasted of the sweets of the third strophe; in spite of this, we see there is a great deal still remaining in this strophe, a happy hope, a golden future, a whole heaven, etc., etc.—it must be the fault of my eyes that, notwithstanding, I can see nothing at all in it. In the fourth strophe courage comes along on regular seven league boots, and I wish the critic had as much reason to be satisfied with its contents, as had the Fatherland, to which a splendid vow is sworn therein. The fifth strophe contains a real human sentiment; it might exclaim with Falstaff, "Heaven send me better company!" In the sixth strophe we learn that the poet was not blustering in the fourth strophe, but that the fighting is really going to begin: at the same time it contains the principal beauty of the song, namely the end. Now, I ask, apart from the school-boyish, crude composition of the poem, which throws suspicion merely on the taste, not precisely on the power, of a poet—where is even the faintest tinge of poetry? And the muse was a battle!

We have finished, then, with the poetic part of this poem; it now remains to investigate in how far it is a real German product, that is to say, such an one as could have been produced only on German soil by a German. Every one will find that it might very easily have been written by some person from the Sultan's seraglio, and used by any people who found themselves in a like situation. Even the French, although it is directed against them, could gain inspiration from it, if their good taste did not preserve them from doing so. Let no one throw the German oaks (strophe four) in my way; I must stumble along over whole oak trees.

Let us now compare with Koerner's Battle-Song of the Confederation, Kleist's poem To Germany, as I believe it is called. I am glad that I am not able to characterize the separate strophes of this poem; they are, what the divisions of a poem should be, nothing, when they are detached from the whole. "Germans," exclaims the poet—"Your forests have long been cleared, serpents and foxes ye have destroyed, only the Frenchman I still see slinking!" This is a folk song; the vast, the great, is associated with the simplest and most familiar objects, and the figures chosen are not only beautiful, but at the same time inevitable.

I will pass on to consider the achievements of Koerner and Heinrich von Kleist in the field of the drama. In this both have been very active, but in order to avoid boredom for a time at least, I shall begin with the analysis of a piece by Kleist, choosing first a tragedy, his Prince of Homburg which, to be sure, is entitled simply "a drama" by its author. I do not know whether he did this because of the circumstances that the Prince, as the hero of the piece, happily escapes with his life, or, what is more likely, in order to humor the public, who think the tragic can only exist where there are rivers of blood; neither will I censure it, but only call attention to the fact that in my opinion that which makes a tragedy lies only in the struggle of the individual, never in the outcome of this struggle. The outcome is in the hands of the gods, says an old proverb, well then, acts of the gods—as events may very well be called which are the effects of fate—can never be anything else for the dramatic poet than what curtain and wings are for the stage; they limit without completing. I defined drama, above, as a representation of the thought which seeks to become a deed through action or suffering. What this thought may be like—upon that very little depends; but that it really should be there, that it should fill the entire man, so much, of a surety, is necessary. What is, then, the thought that, in the play under discussion, fills the soul of the Prince oL Homburg, the chief hero? We find it expressed in scene two of the second act, in the place where the Prince says to Kottwitz, who reminds him, the man thirsting for deeds, of the Elector's orders:

"Orders? Eh, Kottwitz, do you ride so slow? Have you not heard the orders of your heart?"

The thought is this: strength stands above the law, and courage recognizes no other barrier but itself. Kleist, in the fifth scene of the first act, with which the fifth scene of the fifth act corresponds, appears to have taken pains to set up as the lever of the piece, not so much this thought as rather a mere accident, namely the inattention of the Prince when the plan of battle was being dictated, but it is really only in appearance. For though he makes Hohenzollern, properly enough, lay great stress on this circumstance, that signifies little; only if the Prince himself—a thing which never happens—had laid stress upon it, could it have had an influence on the economy of the piece. Let us proceed to a more detailed development of the tragedy.

The historical part of it is based on the famous battle which the Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg fought against the Swedes at Fehrbellin. The story of the play is briefly as follows: The Prince of Homburg, to whom has been confided the commandment of the cavalry of the Mark of Brandenburg, arbitrarily disobeys the orders given him, and advances too soon. He wins the battle, but is placed on trial before a court martial by Frederick William and condemned to death for insubordination.

And truly—I should add, if I did not know that poetic enthusiasm is very ridiculous in a criticism—the action is brought before us with such power that this tragedy may very well be compared to a German oak, on which every branch flourishes luxuriantly, and whose summit is nearer to heaven than to earth. The whole play contains nothing but characters, not a single puppet—which can seldom be said of the work of even the greatest master—and I regret that I can develop in detail only the character of the Prince of Homburg, and, for the others, can merely touch upon those sides which come into contact with him.

I am not inclined, like Zimmermann, to see in the first scene simply an endeavor on the part of the poet to provide a mystic background for his picture. I do not see why a young man, who happens to be afflicted with the sleep-walking malady, should not walk in his sleep even on the night before a battle, and why a young hero who has long been nursing the most high-flown thoughts concerning glory and immortality, should not, on such a night, make himself an oak-wreath. In the day time, to be sure, an occupation of that sort would not look very well, but night is the realm of phantasy and the wreath is the emblem of glory. Then, too, I find that this first scene—the naturalness of which I hope I have proved—is of deep significance for the play. In order to explain psychologically the Prince's headstrong disobedience of the Elector's express order, a great excitement of mind was needed. Now I really do not know where Kleist could better have derived this than precisely from a half-waking dream, in which the Prince supposedly received in advance all that constituted the highest goal of his hopes, and which should have been the most valued fruit of his endeavors—the making of the wreath points to this, and the fourth scene of the first act confirms it. The absent-mindedness which this dream causes in the Prince in the fifth scene, and particularly the monologue with which the first act closes, prove that I am not mistaken in my opinion concerning the significance which the poet placed upon the scene in question.

In the second act we must first notice the second scene. In this the real action begins and ends. That which precedes and that which follows are connected with it like cause and effect. The Prince wrests the victory from the enemy, and earns for himself death. Then the eighth scene of this act is of the greatest importance; in it the Prince declares his love to Princess Nathalie of Orange. I am minded to count this scene among the most important dramatic achievements ever accomplished by the greatest poets of Germany. Let us picture the exposition that introduces it. A rumor has been spread abroad that the Elector has fallen in the battle. The Electress, with her ladies, is a prey to the greatest anxiety. Homburg arrives and confirms the rumor. Nathalie says:[6]

"Who now will lead us in this terrible war And keep these Swedes in subjugation?—

THE PRINCE of HOMBURG (taking her hand).

I, lady, take upon myself your cause! The Elector hoped, before the year turned tide, To see the Marches free. So be it! I Executor will be on that last will.

NATHALIE. My cousin, dearest cousin!

PRINCE. Nathalie! What holds the future now in store for you?

NATHALIE. Oh, I am orphaned now a second time.

PRINCE. Oh, friend, sweet friend, were this dark hour not given To grief, to be its own, thus would I speak: Oh, twine your branches here about this breast!

NATHALIE. My dear, good cousin!

PRINCE. Will you, will you?"

I believe that during this love-scene, lovers will not be the only ones to find amusement, though this is the case as a rule. The tenth scene of this act is the turning point of the play. The Prince hastens to the Elector with the conquered flags, rejoicing in the victory and in the certitude that the latter still lives. The Elector commands that his sword be taken from him and orders a court martial to be convoked. Let us not overlook what this scene is in itself, through the contrasts presented. It is moreover the chief argument for the correctness of the opinion I have already expressed concerning the idea of the play. For the Prince is far from being sensible of the fault committed, and when Hohenzollern says to him,

"The ordinance demands obedience," he replies bitterly: "So—so, so, so!"

And later:

"My cousin Frederick hopes to play the Brutus— By God, in me he shall not find a son Who shall revere him 'neath the hangman's axe!" etc.

He cannot as yet be just to the Elector, because he is still too indulgent to himself.

In the first scene of the third act he has come a step nearer the truth. He calls himself a plant which has burst into bloom too swiftly and opulently. But he still says,

"Come, was it such a capital offense, Two little seconds ere the order said, To have laid low the stoutness of the Swede?"

The dignity of the code of war, upon which the Elector's mode of action is based, still lies too remote from his comprehension; therefore he is persuaded that:

"Ere, at a kerchief's fall, he yields this heart, That loves him truly, to the muskets' fire, Ere that, I say, he'll lay his own breast bare And spill his own blood, drop by drop, in dust."

And when Hohenzollern lets fall a word about the mission of the Swedish ambassador to ask for the hand of the Princess of Orange, the Prince is even inclined to think unworthily of the Elector. He is capable of believing that the Elector will let him die because the Princess has be trothed herself to him. This is genuinely psychological, and here, where Homburg's character begins to appear in a dubious light, is actually the real touch-stone of it. That he loves and admires the Elector, he has already proved, that he has taken great trouble to find a reason for the latter's conduct that is not unworthy of him, is self-evident; for the human heart knows no greater pain than to have given admiration where it should have bestowed contempt. When, therefore, the Prince nevertheless believes that his betrothal to Nathalie has provoked the Elector's severity, he shows thereby that he has absolutely no comprehension of the dignity and necessity of the code of war, that consequently his violation of the ordinance could not have been caused by boyish petulancy, but by a grievous error, which, as an error, could be forgiven in a man. But for that very reason it is not inconsistent with his heroic character for him to exclaim "Oh, friend! Then help me! Save me! I am lost!" For a man shows himself as such when he gives up for lost a possession which is lost, not when he, like a madman, renounces everything for the sake of making fine phrases: and the Prince only does his duty when he tries in whatever way he can, to rescue his life from the despotic will of an individual. In the fifth scene, where he implores the Electress to intercede for him, he says:

"You would not speak thus, mother mine, if death Had ever terribly encompassed you As it doth me. With potencies of heaven, You and my lady, these who serve you, all The world that rings me round, seem blest to save The very stable-boy, the meanest, least, That tends your horses, pleading I could hang About his neck crying: Oh, save me, thou!"

Even that is, in my opinion, fine and human, for it is the first ebullition of emotion; and when is the feeling of painful loss ever separated from the lively desire to preserve the endangered possession? I do not make this statement because I believe I am saying something new, but because I think it is something old which has not been sufficiently taken to heart. For the rest, this fifth scene is very beautiful and produces a deep effect. Who does not feel annihilated with the Prince when he exclaims:

"Since I beheld my grave, life, life, I want, And do not ask if it be kept with honor."

And farther on,

"And tell him this, forget it not, that I Desire Nathalie no more, for her All tenderness within my heart is quenched."

And how wonderful, how splendid does Nathalie appear in her calm nobility! How absolutely true to nature it is that her strength first begins gently and noiselessly to unfold its wings when the man, whom she had looked upon as her ideal, from whom she had expected all things, has succumbed. And how genuinely womanly are the words with which she attempts to raise him up once more:

"Return, young hero, to your prison walls, And, on your passage, imperturbably Regard once more the grave they dug for you. It is not gloomier, nor more wide at all Than those the battle showed a thousand times!"

But poetic beauty is like the fragrance of flowers—it cannot be described, but only perceived.

Nathalie's character is rounded off in the first scene of the fourth act when she begs the Elector to liberate Homburg. She could have borne the death of the Prince, but this timorous misrepresentation of himself she cannot bear:

"I never guessed a man could sink so low Whom history applauded as her hero. For look—I am a woman and I shrink From the mere worm that draws too near my foot; But so undone, so void of all control, So unheroic quite, though lion-like Death fiercely came, he should not find me thus! Oh, what is human greatness, human fame!"

It is then that the Elector decides to make the Prince himself the judge of his offense, and writes him the following letter:

"My Prince of Homburg, when I made you prisoner Because of your too premature attack, I thought that I was doing what was right— No more; and reckoned on your acquiescence. If you believe that I have been unjust, Tell me I beg you in a word or two, And forthwith I will send you back your sword."

He gives this letter to Nathalie for her to deliver to the Prince. I must set down the words with which she receives the letter:

"I do not know and do not seek to know What woke your favor, liege, so suddenly. But truly this, I feel this in my heart, You would not make ignoble sport of me. The letter hold whate'er it may—I trust That it hold pardon—and I thank you for it!"

Many another writer would have believed it was not enough for Nathalie to prove herself a heroine, but that she must stride onward with seven league boots and become an Amazon as well. Kleist, however, had looked deeply into feminine nature, he knew that woman's greatness only blooms above the abyss, and that she loses her wings the moment that earth again offers her a spot where she can safely and firmly tread. Nathalie sighs only once: "Oh what is human greatness, human fame!" But she rejoices when she has the saving letter of the Elector in her possession, and, without troubling herself further about its contents, she hastens, enraptured, to the Prince of Homburg.

The Prince receives the letter. He reads it aloud while Nathalie listens. She grows pale; for she feels what a man must do who is called upon to be his own judge. Nevertheless she urges the Prince to write the words which the Elector requires; she snatches the letter from the Prince's hand; when he hesitates, she reminds him of the open grave he has already seen. But neither is the Prince any longer in doubt concerning the significance of the moment, concerning the Elector, concerning his own guilt. He says,

"I will not face the man who faces me So nobly, with a knave's ignoble front! Guilt, heavy guilt, upon my conscience weighs, I fully do confess—"

He writes this to the Elector, and Nathalie embraces him exclaiming:

"And though twelve bullets made You dust this instant, I could not resist Caroling, sobbing, crying: 'Thus you please me!'"

I would gladly follow the great poet through the fifth act also, but it is not indispensable for the analysis of the play, as the denouement is easy to foresee—namely that the Prince, after already suffering one death through the relinquishment of that idea which has been the guiding principle of his life hitherto, is spared a second death. Finally I must add that I have not chosen the Prince of Homburg as the subject of my criticism because this tragedy is the most successful of all Kleist's plays, but merely because it offers the best opportunity for drawing a comparison between the dramatic achievements of Kleist and those of Koerner. And now, courage. We must start in with Koerner and we will choose that one of his products which is universally declared the greatest, his Zriny.

In discussing the Prince of Homburg I could limit myself to a general outline, as it is not possible that any one who reads the play could ever have the least doubt whether the characters are correctly drawn. We have not such an easy task with Koerner's Zriny, but rather must take the opposite way. In order not to overpass the limits of this essay, however, we will pay less attention to the play as a totality, which, indeed, can occupy our attention only if the first investigation prove favorable to the author.

The idea which kindles Zriny's enthusiasm is unconditional obedience to Emperor and Fatherland. It must be admitted that it is an idea which may have arisen in many a human breast in the year 1566, and which certainly animated the heroic Zriny. It is not sufficient, however, for the dramatic poet to give utterance to what fills the soul of his hero, for that falls to the lot of history to perform. While the historian looks upon every individual as a bomb, whose course and effect he must calculate, but with whose origin he is but slightly concerned, it is the affair of the dramatic poet—who, if he recognizes his high mission, strives to complete history—to show how the character whom he has chosen as a subject for treatment has become what he is. We find this, for example, in Shakespeare, to go back to the Bible of the playwright. Every passion which he describes we see as roots and tree at one and the same time. Theodor Koerner simplified the matter, he only shows us the flame; whence it comes he leaves in doubt, and therefore has himself to thank if we are undecided whether his heroes are pursuing will-o'-the-wisps, or—to use his favorite metaphor—stars. I need not call attention to the fact that this way is by far the easier.

The plot of this play is sufficiently well known. I will therefore turn immediately to a closer examination of the several characters. Honor to whom honor is due; let Sultan Soliman advance. I will not pause at the first scene in which he appears, although even there he reveals damnable weaknesses. After all a Turk may be forgiven for losing his temper because his physician-in-ordinary does not know how long he will live. In the second scene Koerner has tried to outline the hero who demands Vienna for his funeral torch. He has not succeeded as well as he might.

"Karl, Karl!"—cries Soliman in his beard—"If only thou Thy Europe now would lie here at my feet"



Every other hero would have considered that in which Soliman beheld the curse of his life to be the greatest favor fortune could have shown him. I do not expect much from the hound—this parable is very well suited to the Turks—who only fights with little yelping dogs. How far Mr. Koerner has succeeded in spreading the oriental coloring over his picture is shown very plainly in the fourth scene, where Soliman receives his generals with the words:

"I greet you all, supporters of my throne, Most welcome comrades of my victories, I greet you all."

Seldom has the sun shone upon a politer Turk than this Soliman, who, to be sure, afterward throws around not only his oaths but his dagger. That it is no merit of Koerner if we behold in his Soliman a hero and a Turk, must be evident to every one; but let us now examine whether he has succeeded any better in representing the commander-in-chief and the tyrant. We find both in the third scene of the third act. Mehmed reports to the Sultan that the assault has been repulsed.

"A curse upon thee!"

answers the latter; then he inquires who gave the order for the retreat; Mehmed answers that he did; the Janizaries had been slaughtered by the thousands, but in vain, the army was exhausted, and it had been impossible to wrest the victory from the enemy; he intended, however, to bombard the castle the next night and was persuaded that the walls must give way. Soliman flies into a passion:

"But I from them will wrest it (the victory namely), must wrest it!"

In very truth an excellent commander-in-chief, who is not to be persuaded by reasons such as Mehmed advanced, and who differs from a child who is denied his will only in that he bellows where the child screams. But—perhaps we have the tyrant before us where I thought I perceived the nullity of the commander-in-chief. Let us read on:

ALI.

"Remember Malta!

SOLIMAN.

Death and Hell! Ali! Remind me not of Malta, if thy head Is dear to thee. More I endure from thee Than does befit the great lord Soliman!"

Really the beginning promises well.

ALI.

"My life is in thy hands, my Emperor!

SOLIMAN.

Since thou dost know that, yet didst freely speak Thy heart's thought to me, I'll forgive thee. For I love truth which knows no fear of death. In token then of my imperial grace, Thy council shall prevail; I'll not attack!"

I think we do not need to tremble before a tyrant whose fury could be appeased by Ali's paltry words. "My life is in thy hands, my Emperor!" which must have been said to him often enough before. Let no one reproach me if, henceforth, I keep silence on the subject of Soliman. Offenses of this kind are not mere blunders, they are the sign of complete incompetency on the part of the poet, and solely out of curiosity, not because it is necessary to demonstrate my argument, I shall continue to analyze Zriny, Helena, and the other marionettes.

Zriny is an abortive copy of Wallenstein; his originality consists in doing for the Emperor, what the latter does against him. Juranitsch is Max Piccolomini the second, but has the misfortune to stand as far below the first as other people who also happened to be seconds, as for example, Frederick the Second, Joseph the Second, etc., stood above their namesakes. In general, Zriny has made it clear to me that Koerner, had he lived, would, without any doubt, have become a second Schiller, namely, by completely absorbing the first. The plagiarisms which the noble young man has indulged in, in this tragedy, as regards the disposition of the scenes as well as in whole individual speeches and sentences, surpass all belief. I shall perhaps point out some of these in the course of my investigation of the characters.

But before I investigate the claims to heroism of Koerner's Zriny may I be allowed to determine what are the qualities absolutely indispensable for a hero. I will not place my demands very high, but circumspection and firmness I may at least be allowed to require, besides mere courage. Also a certain amount of modesty would not become him ill, perhaps we may even demand this of the hero of a drama; for the dramatic poet must not indeed in any sense idealize, but he should render only the genuinely human, not the purely accidental, which, because accidental, is rare. For an individual to be at the same time a hero and a braggart is, however, quite accidental, and the result merely of a deficient or a perverted education. If one wishes to find firmness in the fact that a man knows in advance what he wants, that he forms his decision before he is acquainted with the controlling circumstances, then certainly this quality cannot be denied our Zriny.

"His loyalty no nobler guerdon asks Than to seek death, a joyful sacrifice, For his own folk and his undying faith."

But it seems to me that a desperate resolution is only justifiable when it can no longer be avoided; whoever takes one before that, is cowardly rather than brave; for he has not the strength to make the sacrifice at the proper moment; therefore he tries, beforehand, to reason himself into being courageous. When Zriny, however, speaks the words quoted, he has already in his possession the letter of the Emperor, informing him that he need hope for no relief; but he cannot know yet how long Soliman will continue to assault Szigeth, and there is likewise no need to inspire his companions with courage by these words, in which he boasts of his own courage, for they were every one of them heroes. I fail, therefore, to find in his braggadocio the firmness that is worthy of a great man, and this is a fault which I may be permitted to charge to Mr. Koerner's account; for he intended it to form part of his Zriny's character. The dear man has an even smaller share of circumspection: read but the sixth scene of the second act where he ponders the question, what he shall do with his wife and child. Truly, when he decides to leave them in the fortress, so that the garrison shall not lose courage, I cannot suppress the thought that the daughter has already had an illegitimate child and the wife has been a heroine in the wrong place; for if he had considered them worth a straw, he could not, for such a reason, have exposed them to such a danger. And is that a courageous garrison which is calm because it believes itself to be still safe? And shall its eyes never be opened simply because it sees that the danger is shared for a while by the wife and child of the commander—for whom, as Zriny himself remarks, there are secret passages which can be used in case of necessity. Mr. Zriny did not consider all this; his circumspection, therefore, is surely not very great. Just one sample of the noble simplicity and modesty of this hero:

"Thou knowest me, Maximilian, I thank thee for thy high imperial trust, Thou knowest Zriny, thou dost not mistake."

It is nauseating to continue, I have the impression at this moment that I am trying to prove that a soap-bubble is really only a soap-bubble. Just one word more about Helena. The tender child, who faints away at the end of the first act when Juranitsch takes leave of her to go into battle, has made such progress in bravery in the seventh scene of the second act, that she exclaims:

"Yes, father, father, send us not from thee!"

and at the conclusion of the fourth (indeed it is time, for in the next act the piece comes to an end) she even says:

"Yes, let us die! What care we for the sun!"

Spare your sympathy, reader or spectator; you must not think that you have to do with men who care anything for their lives, and who therefore are making a sacrifice—no indeed! They have nothing in common with such a weakling as you.

I hope I shall not be accused of hastiness—I must hurry on to the end, for there are just as many absurdities in Zriny as there are verses—if from all this I draw the conclusion that Theodor Koerner had not the slightest talent for the drama. I promised, a while ago, to specify some plagiarisms from Schiller, but I may safely refer to the whole book. Instead I will make a few more remarks on the death-scene of Helena, scene six, act five.

This scene is not badly constructed. I will not, indeed, examine too closely how far love made it justifiable for a girl to ask of her lover to kill her. For once we will take Helena's word for it that under similar circumstances she would have done the like had Juranitsch demanded it, and then she, as well as the poet, is held excused. We will only listen to what Juranitsch answers when she has made her wish clear to him. He says:

"Thee, I must kill? Thee? no, I cannot kill thee!"

This would be human, but listen to what follows:

"—When the storm wind O'erthrows the oak and rages 'mongst the pines, It leaves unharmed the tender floweret, Its thunders change to gentle whisp'ring zephyrs And shall I wilder be than the wild storm? Shall I destroy life's loveliest vernal wreath? In cruelty the boisterous elements Surpassing, shall I break this floweret To touch which destiny's hand has yet not dared?"

I ask you is it possible to surpass such trivial nonsense?

I shall say no more concerning Koerner's individual scenes. This is not committing an injustice; for it is absolutely unimportant, so far as our investigation is concerned, whether and in how far Koerner had the ability to construct a tragedy, since this faculty—as Goethe's example shows us—has nothing to do with poetry in itself. There is no need for us to draw the parallel between the Prince of Homburg and Zriny; it is quite evident. One reproach, however, which might be made by an attentive reader, I must anticipate: namely, I might be asked why I have subjected the two principal characters of Koerner's tragedy to a regular police examination, and, instead of accepting them in their totality, have required them to render account in how far they were heroes, commanders, tyrants, etc. But since they are, like all creations of mere talent, nothing but arrows which are shot from a certain bow-string toward a certain target, it follows that they can only be judged by the deflections from their course. Herein—be it remarked incidentally—lies the difference, often perceived but seldom explained, between the characters portrayed by Schiller and those portrayed by Goethe. Schiller's characters—to use a play on words which for once expresses the truth—are beautiful because they are self-contained; Goethe's characters because they are unrestrained. Schiller delineates the man who is complete in his own strength, and, a man of iron, is tried by circumstances; for this reason Schiller was great only in the historical drama. Goethe delineates the endless creations of the moment, the eternal modifications of the man caused by every step that he takes; this is the token by which we may recognize genius, and it seems to me that I have discovered it also in Heinrich von Kleist.

At this moment, when I would pass on to review the achievements of Koerner and Kleist in the field of comedy, I remember that I was not sufficiently definite, above, when developing my conception of the drama. I should have added that I cannot, strictly speaking, count comedy as a form of drama, but must include it in the category of dialogue narrative. If one recalls to mind the purpose of high-class comedy—"to describe individual ages and classes," one must admit that I am entitled to do so. I must remark in advance that neither Koerner nor Kleist has done anything for high-class comedy. But Kleist in his Broken Pitcher has drawn a comic character-picture which is so full of life that it reminds us of Shakespeare, if of any one, while Koerner in his Nightwatchman has drawn nothing but a funny caricature; with the former the character shapes the situations, whereas with the latter the situations shape the characters, if I may use this expression. I should be giving myself a great deal of unnecessary trouble if I should engage in a further analysis of the two comedies which I have mentioned, since at all events I could only adduce sundry details, and such details in this case prove absolutely nothing; for the only safe criterion of the truly comic is that the picture as a whole, apart from what wit has done for it, should arouse interest as an organic adaptation of nature. With the rascally, lustful, country judge, Adam, in the Broken Pitcher, this is certainly the case; one can safely take away from him the few witty sallies which he indulges in: but what the nightwatchman Schwalbe would become if one attempted the same procedure with him, I should not like to decide; probably a clown, who has been deprived of his wooden sword and cap and bells, and whose plain, honest features show that he has only executed such droll antics for the sake of his bread and butter. Schwalbe is merely ridiculous, but Adam is comic; the difference, to define it more clearly, consists in this; every caricature, because it diverges from laws which are eternal and necessary, without standing in eternity as a peculiarly constructed whole, has a tinge of incongruity, consequently of ridiculousness; while only that caricature of nature can be comic of which the divergences are self-consistent, which shows therefore that it is founded in itself. The poet should take only the comic as a subject of treatment; for he can never lay stress upon detached separate phenomena, if he cannot prove the connection between them and the general whole, if they do not constitute for him a window through which he looks down into Nature's breast. It is easy to calculate, accordingly, how high Theodor Koerner's services to the comedy should be rated, provided he has actually succeeded with his smaller things, The Nightwatchman, The Green Domino, etc., in furnishing amusing farces. To accomplish this, nothing was required but natural gaiety combined with a talent for representation, and many men who were anything but poets have been equipped with both.

It still remains for us to estimate what Koerner and Kleist have achieved in narrative. In this field Koerner has produced such mere trifles that it would be unjust for one to infer from them the least thing touching his characteristics, as it probably never occurred to him to consider himself a story-writer. Heinrich von Kleist's novels and stories, on the other hand, belong among the best that German literature possesses. Almost all the narratives of our writers, with the exception of a few productions by Hoffmann and Tieck, suffer, if I may say so, from the monstrousness of the subjects chosen, if they do indeed rise at all above mediocrity. There is, however, no very deep psychological insight needed in order to know how the whole man will be affected by an event which sweeps down upon him like a stormwind, and very ordinary talents may safely attempt tasks of this kind; just as, for example, every painter with some technical skill can represent despair, fear, terror, all those emotions, in short, which only permit of one expression; whereas a Rembrandt is required, if a gipsy encampment is to be pictured. Kleist, therefore, set himself other tasks; he knew and had perhaps experienced in his own person, that life's process of destruction is not a deluge but a shower, and that man is superior to every great fatality, but subject to every pettiness. He proceeded from this theory of life, when he delineated his Michael Kohlhaas, and I maintain that in no German novel have the hideous depths of life been projected upon the surface in such vivid fashion as in this, when the theft by a squire, of two miserable horses, forms the first link in a chain, which extends upward from the horse-dealer Kohlhaas to the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and crushes a world by coiling round it. I should like to analyze the novel more in detail, but am glad that the limits of my essay, or rather the patience of my readers and auditors, do not permit me to do so; for the members of the society will thus feel prompted the sooner to acquaint and familiarize themselves with the works of Heinrich von Kleist, if they have not already done so.

While hastening on to the close, I must, in accordance with the introduction to this essay, call attention to the fact that Kleist, no less than Koerner, did not leave unheeded the claims that his country properly made upon him in the portentous age in which he lived. In his breast, as in that of his contemporaries, there glowed the flame of enthusiasm for the honor and freedom of his people; and the oppression that they endured, the internal and external slavery in which he beheld them sunk, placed the pistol in his hand. I mention this because it has been imputed to the poet Koerner as a great merit that he was at the same time a martyr. But Kleist could behold his country unworthily treated without for that reason having unworthy thoughts of the man who was treading it in the dust; he was great enough to be able to forgive Napoleon the pain which he could not endure. He wrote no war-songs for patriotic journeymen-tailors and high-minded counter-jumpers, but he described Hermann's Battle and the battle of Fehrbellin; he called the dead to life in order to arouse the living.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: The extracts from The Prince of Homburg are taken from Mr. Hagedorn's translation, Volume IV of THE GERMAN CLASSICS.]



LUDOLF WIENBARG'S "THE DRAMATISTS OF THE PRESENT DAY"

A REVIEW (1839)

By FRIEDRICH HEBBEL

TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING

It is probable that no German who is able to appreciate the power of the theatre, its silent influence on the people, and the consequent reaction on the development of dramatic talent, has looked on indifferently at the decay and complete ruin of our stage. The drama of a nation, conceived in a worthy sense, represents that nation in its self-consciousness; it is the burning-mirror which receives the separate rays of the nation's innermost being while passing history is enticing them out of the depths, which condenses and concentrates them and thus kindles one century by means of another, and calls to life one glorious deed by means of another. Tragedy represents a people in its relation to the most important problems, its own as well as those of humanity in general. Comedy paints it in its natural aberrations and abnormalities, in its tendencies and endeavors which are directed earthward. Both must subsist together, in common development, and on an equal elevation, if we are to sum up the entire life of a nation, and give a true, eternal picture of its will-power and capacity, of its vacillations and defeats. This is the object which dramatic literature must always keep in view if it would be effectual. To be sure, it is possible to conceive a still higher species of drama, a tragedy which deals with man only in the abstract, with man in himself, in his mysterious relation to God and Nature; a comedy which lays nationalities themselves in their coffin and gaudily dresses up the corpse. But it is still an open question whether, under such a general domination of the idea of humanity as is presupposed in that case, art can continue to exist at all; and at any rate the time of this spirit-like domination is still far off, although literature has witnessed the production of many dramatic poems which seem to be designed for it.

It was many years ago that Tieck, on the subject of some wretched stuff by Clauren, made the remark that we had at last reached the cellar and must begin to ascend again. He was right in his remark, but, unhappily, not in the hope with which he accompanied it. Very far from hastening to leave the cellar, we have found it very comfortable down there; we have made ourselves at home as well as we could, and are hideously satisfied! Instead of the heroic spirit of our past ages, Jack Pudding now staggers out of the wings in a torn jacket and shows us what kind of humor is engendered by stupidity and brandy, when they have a rendezvous in the head of a porter. If Schiller and Goethe dare once to come out of their exile, then Nestroy's plum-pudding jinnee steps in their path, and they of course modestly give way to him. The magic worlds of Shakespeare and Calderon are already suffocated in their birth by the head-shaking of the stage-manager who must keep his machinery together for Raimund's bedlam hocus-pocus. Let us be just, however, let us remember that our theatre, in spite of the great talents which have been dedicated to it, was not what it should have been, even in its most brilliant period, and this perhaps not quite through its own fault. We have never had a real comedy; farces and absurdities take its place, and the critics themselves, if we except Schlegel, never seemed to divine that tragedy and comedy sprout from one and the same root, and that the former absolutely cannot unfold in all its greatness if the latter remains behind it. Confining the conception of comedy to the narrow etymological meaning of its name, and inferring the intrinsic impossibility of the poem from the accidental lack of a poet, we have imagined that we could not have a comedy, when on the contrary we, precisely, should and ought to have the very best, for reasons which cannot be developed thus in passing. Our tragedy, on the other hand, wished to take the second step before the first; it was not satisfied to start out to conquer the world from our own territory; it preferred to wander about as a homeless vagabond among all the peoples of the earth; and only when it had fully persuaded itself that one cannot grow fat off begged bread did it return in shame to its mother's breast. But, in Germany, in the meantime, the enthusiasm which can seldom or never be re-awakened had evaporated, and when Wallenstein and William Tell, when Hermann's Battle and the Prince of Homburg appeared, the fusion of the theatre with life, which might perhaps have still been possible at the time of Iphigenia, was no longer to be thought of. People had become used to looking upon the stage as a source of amusement, and, as a rule, whatever sinks to the level of a pastime is forever degraded. This was the cause of all the evil; this was the reason why for a long time dogs and monkeys, prestidigitators and modern athletes, celebrated their triumphs where art should have proclaimed her most profound oracles, and where a people should have found refreshment and elevation in quiet self-enjoyment, in the mild exertion of all their powers, and in the sensation of arousing their most secret sympathies and antipathies.

Wienbarg believes that a turning point has now been reached. To this belief we owe his present literary contribution "which consists in seeking critically to elucidate, in irregularly appearing pamphlets, modern dramatic literature—especially book-dramas, which are rarely or not at all seen on the stage. He is guided in his selection each time by some dramatic-educational purpose for author and public, and continually bears in mind an ideal centre of taste in the historic-poetic consciousness of the nation." Such an undertaking, carried out by a man who combines insight into the subject with the gift of presenting it as the times require, deserves full recognition. Only that criticism which knows how to make itself respected, can regain for the muse of the drama her temple, the stage; this cannot be done by the muse herself, who, every time she seeks to enter, is, with the politest of bows, shoved into the corner again by her noble priesthood. Criticism must, in view of the voluntary poverty of our repertory, draw attention to the neglected riches of our dramatic literature; it must, by characterization and analysis, act as mediator between the genius of the poet and the talent of the actor, and it sins heavily against the present when it turns its attention chiefly to the recent past which has not yet been canonized. It can, as a general rule, never look back often enough.

Wienbarg begins with Uhland. From the point of view he has chosen he was quite right to leave unnoticed for the present Heinrich von Kleist's magnificent Hermann's Battle and Prince of Homburg. Of all our poets Uhland has unearthed in the purest form the treasure of German nationality: all the dreaming and longing, the hoping and enduring, but also all the courage, all the strength which steps into the first rank only in battle, not on the parade ground. One cannot blame Uhland without blaming Germany at the same time, but one can praise Uhland without at the same time praising Germany; for all poetry idealizes because it frames as in a mirror, but on account of its limits it compresses scattered details into a seemingly well ordered whole, which, however, does not by any means exist so harmoniously in nature. Uhland's poetry is a tear, forced from the flashing dark eye by the intolerable pain which dilates the heart and finds no more room there; but how much more beautiful is the pain than the wound, and how much more beautiful is the tear than the pain! Such tears are suffocated deeds. If our supineness and sentimentality only did not so often degrade holy water to the base uses of ablution!

Wienbarg introduces his characterization of Uhland with some excellent remarks. We cannot take enough to heart what he says on page 17: "Our literature is a ghost, most of the species of poetry are spectres, and faith or unbelief in them is called esthetics. Fresh young life is sucked out, architectonic powers are misused in order to spiritualize and propagate lifeless forms and satisfy the vanity of literature by means of so-called works of art." If philosophy is destroyed by systematizing how much more so is poetry, which can exist only so long as it is free. The instinct to make an end of everything, and wilfully and arbitrarily to pen up what is not confined to time and space, is the ugliest trait in human nature. Life, in whatever phase it may be, always has a form, though sometimes one not to be seized with hands; it is always in fermentation, never in putrefaction; but its form is lost when we try to bring it into harmony with the tyrannical generalities which are bequeathed from grandfather to grandchild; then it congeals, and the stream that might have afforded us the most delicious bath can, at the most, be transformed into a sledge-road. Protect yourself against the sea but do not strive to hamper and dam up its movement; if this ever succeeded, the sea would become a swamp, and all of you—not only the sailors—would die a miserable death. To begin with, it is a misfortune that human society requires the form of the State, which cannot be traced back to any primitive foundation; for the individual tendencies and developments that are most full of genius are thus nipped in the bud, and it is an open question whether those that remain, which to be sure are better protected against wind and weather inside the ramparts and walls than elsewhere, can, even when yielding their most abundant profits, make compensation for those that are held back and crushed. Will you go even further than necessity forces you; will you compel the spirit, even in its most peculiar sphere, to accept a constitution under the lamblike innocent name of esthetics? Of what advantage will it be to you? You can then, to be sure, lawfully scold and punish; today you can lock up a sentiment in the guardhouse for drunkenness: tomorrow you can drag off a thought to imprisonment for offense against your sovereign majesty; and the day after you can send a phantasy to the mad house on account of its all too bold flight. Life is its own law and its own rule, but you never want to adore the god until after you have crucified him. As long as the tree is green you cut off its branches, and out of the dried hewn-down one you make, not an axle for your mill-wheel, but an idol.

What Wienbarg says of Uhland, the ballad-writer, is very pretty, but it was refuted before it was even written. Uhland, the ballad-writer, is not the dramatic poet, "broken into a thousand pieces;" the poems appeared in 1815, the first drama in 1818. I would not advance this superficial argument if it were not connected with an essential one. All these full, flowing songs and romances were finished before the nobly calm power that called them into being concentrated itself for the creation of a dramatic work; and in truth they do not bear on their forehead the red fever spot of aspiration groping in the dark, which does not find what it seeks and therefore clasps in its arms the object over which it stumbles; they breathe that smiling, lovely, self-absorbed contentment, without which there may be intoxication, but no joy, no life. It is true that through the songs as well as through the ballads, the dramatic genius which was later to produce Duke Ernest and Louis the Bavarian already treads softly like a sleep-walker; this it is which gives them the firm form, the deeper meaning which is so scandalously lacking in those good people who now and then innocently versify a legend or some trifling emotion. But the dramatic element is, strange as this assertion may sound, just as much an essential in poetry—one without which poetry would crumble away into dust—as the lyrical; from the former, poetry receives its body; from the latter, its soul, and both are mutually dependent upon one another. Is not suffering itself, only action turned inward!

On page twenty-one we read: "Do you know what it is that I love in Uhland's imperfect dramas? It is the pure, vital, German-dramatic poetry, which, piercing the tawdry veneer of culture and the prevailingly wretched appearances of our life, strikes fire from the bed-rock of spiritual life itself, and with its divining rod points to the golden veins in the foundations of the national character. German-dramatic! that is the right word! and this is saying a great deal, for German and dramatic are contradictory terms. Just because Uhland is so German-dramatic he might give our theatre the national consecration which it lacks, and which alone can assure it intrinsic worth and dignity, efficacy and stability. Goethe's Goetz is not adapted to the stage, and it will be difficult for the scissors to make it so. Schiller's Wallenstein, in spite of its extensiveness, is only a character picture; the Thirty Years' War merely peeps through shyly now and again when the Duke's eloquence fails him, and when Max and Thekla take a rest from their love-making. With all due respect for the great dead, from whose laurel tree I do not intend to pluck a single leaf, be it said that the piece has something ridiculous about it when it is played; it is a thunderstorm during which two turtle-doves are billing and cooing. There is some difference in William Tell, Bertha and Rudenz are more modest and more sparing with their sighs, tears, and premonitions. But the depicted situation is accidental, and under similar circumstances is repeated everywhere, therefore one cannot judge the Germanic nature by it—even if we include Switzerland as a representative of this nature—any more than one can judge of a man by the portrait which has been made of him during his illness. Neither am I able to find the spectacle of the strength that breaks external fetters so edifying as many others do: Why did it allow itself to be enchained? Kleist's Hermann's Battle and his Prince of Homburg carry us, the one too far back and the other too far forward. Uhland chose historic events better than Kleist, he treated them more worthily and more nobly than Schiller. For this reason, if for no other, he stands in the foreground of this discussion."

In the same place the question is raised: What is the conception of religion or fate from which our tragic drama has emanated? Wienbarg skips over the question, or at least takes the answers to it too lightly. Nevertheless here is the root of the whole tree. Human nature and human destiny, these are the two riddles that the drama strives to solve. The difference between the drama of the ancients and the drama of the moderns lies in this: the ancients sought to illumine the labyrinths of fate by means of the torch of poetry; we moderns try to refer human nature, in whatever form or contortion it presents itself before us, to certain eternal and changeless principles, as to an immovable foundation. What to us is the means, was to them the end, and vice versa.

With the ancients the suffering results from the action; their tragedy was really a triumph of instinct. The first bold lightning flash of half-awakened consciousness illuminated the empty Olympus, and because man found the halls of the gods deserted, he sought in his own breast a centre for the circle of his existence. But when, revolving around himself and thereby denying the pole of the world, he stood, in his stubborn isolation, in the way of the great whole, the invisible fly-wheel which drives the universe seized him with tremendous power and flung him mockingly into an abyss. He felt that he had sinned, and did not know in what way. He found himself justified in his earthly relations and yet could not shake off the oppressive nightmare of a secret monstrous guilt. Then he shudderingly divined that sin can go further than knowledge, that in things and in events, as well as in human thought and feeling, there lies a mysterious final something, which, of whatever nature it may be and whatever its effect, must be regarded as holy. Let us remember Oedipus and the way in which in this drama one riddle is always solved by another riddle.

In the modern drama, on the contrary, the suffering as a rule first begets action. The hero gets into the whirlpool, he does not himself know how, but when near destruction he shows himself to be a brave, fearless swimmer. This comes from the attempt, not so much to reconcile, as to compare the idea of Freedom with the idea of Necessity. Modern tragedy has, therefore, when placed beside the ancient, a sickly hue, which is still further intensified by the circumstance that its point of departure is the individual. I should like to have time to indicate all the consequences of these opposite conceptions.

If I should be asked to express in brief the fundamental idea of modern tragedy I should find it in the harsh fetters that bind the highest nobility of human nature, in suffering and death, and in the resistance of the world—occasioned thereby, nay presupposed as a necessity—which the world offers to all greatness as it strives for self-realization.

Wienbarg, after his general preliminary remarks, proceeds to make an analysis of Uhland's drama, Louis the Bavarian. It is excellent and accomplishes everything that it should accomplish, by combining the characterization of the poet with the characterization of the German drama in its totality, of which totality the individual drama is an organic part. Of course every reader will wish that Wienbarg had rendered the tragedy, Duke Ernest, the same friendly service, of which Uhland's dramas, in their unostentatious simplicity, stand so much in need, if they are ever to receive the appreciation which they deserve. Were it fitting to prolong the criticism of a criticism to such an extent, I should myself attempt to elucidate this most German of tragedies in all its ramifications; perhaps this will be done in another place. We are rich and consider ourselves poor; we have the diamonds, and there shall not be wanting people who know how to cut them. May the second part of Wienbarg's treatise very soon appear! Many a one is now pushing forward the hand on the horologe of time and hastening nothing thereby but the hour of his own execution. Wienbarg is not one of these.



REVIEW OF HEINRICH VON KLEIST'S PLAY

THE PRINCE OF HOMBURG, OR THE BATTLE OF FEHRBELLIN (1850)

By FRIEDRICH HEBBEL

TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING

THE PRINCE OF HOMBURG is one of the most peculiar creations of the German mind, for the reason that in it, through the mere horror of death, through death's darkening shadow, has been achieved what in all other tragedies (this work is a tragedy) is achieved only through death itself: that is to say, the moral purification and apotheosis of the hero. The whole drama is planned to bring about this result, and what Tieck, in a well known passage, declares to be, the kernel of it, namely the illustration of what subordination is, in reality is only the means to an end. Neither do I agree with Tieck when he remarks further that the sleep-walking scene with which the piece begins, and the final denouement connected with it add to the other merits of the drama by lending it the charm of a pleasing and attractive fairy-tale. On the contrary, this feature is to be censured because it is disturbing, and if, as in Kaethchen of Heilbronn, it were intimately inwoven in the organism of the work it would deprive the latter of its claim to be considered a classic. For man must not be forced to do penance for the mischief which the moon causes; otherwise we might be obliged to call it a tragedy if a man, having climbed up to the apex of the roof in his sleep, and been spied there by his sweetheart, who, in the first terror of surprise, called his name, should fall at her feet crushed to pieces! Happily, however, we can eliminate the whole sleep-walking episode and the work continues to be what it is; it stands immovable on a solid psychological foundation, and the rank weeds of Romanticism, have only twined themselves around it like superfluous arabesques. That, indeed, must not be understood to mean that half of the first and half of the last act could be struck out. If such a barbaric procedure were possible, Kleist would not be what, he is, a true poet, whom, like every original God-given growth, one must accept as a whole or must reject as a whole. No, we shall have to leave the Prince his garland-wreathing and the glove which he catches as a consequence of it. But the incident is by no means essential to the rest of the drama. The structure has, beside these artificial supports, other very different and entirely solid ones, and there is no need to enlarge upon the former unless one is animated with a desire to find fault. Here we have a youth who had the misfortune to have fortune smile upon him prematurely, and who loves where perhaps—he has as yet no certainty of it—he should not love; what more is needed to enable us to comprehend the arrogance displayed in the first catastrophe and the pusillanimity in the second? Kleist has put a set of pulleys in motion where the simplest lever would have sufficed, but the pulleys have been connected with the lever, and the purpose has been thoroughly accomplished, though not by the most direct, and therefore the best means.

The action, conceived from the point of view just described, is, briefly summed up, as follows: It is the evening, or rather the night, before the battle of Fehrbellin. The Great Elector, surrounded by his family, has gathered his generals about him and is making known to them, by his field-marshal, the plan which he has devised for the battle on the morrow. Each officer, Homburg among them, is informed what part he is to play in the bloody work of the following day; the Prince receives the most difficult post for one of his age and temperament, since he is to remain outside the firing line with the cavalry which he commands during the actual battle, and not until the victory is practically won can he come into action; even then he is to await a definite order from the Elector, and is merely to assist in completely routing the vanquished enemy. Here, be it noted, his ordeal already begins. It is not an accident that the Elector has assigned him a post which must necessarily bring him into conflict with his passions and the demands of his blood; the sovereign does it purposely in order that he may learn to control both. The Prince is scarcely listening to the field-marshal when his turn comes; he is absent-minded, for Nathalie, the Princess of Orange, an orphan who has taken refuge at the Brandenburg Court, and whom he secretly loves, is present, and the Electress is leaving with her and the other ladies while his orders are being dictated. However, be scarcely requires such pedantic instructions, for he sees in a battle only an opportunity for personal distinction in one form or another, not a moral task which can be properly executed only in one way. Nevertheless, he learns from his friend Hohenzollern exactly what the service requires of him; but of what avail is it? His friend can only lend him his ears, not his judgment, and thus the first act ends, conformably to this stage of his development, with a monologue, in which we learn that he is only thinking of the laurels and the girl at whose feet he will lay them, not of his duty and his country. Thus we see that the sleep-walking scene, and all that is connected with it, can easily be omitted; the exposition is complete without it, and therein lies the actual proof of the correctness of my view of the work. A youth always dreams of the man whom he already believes himself to be; there is therefore no need of a double-dream. The glove might have been replaced by a glance from the Princess, surprised unawares, followed by a sudden blush. Was it intended for me or for you? That is enough to occupy a youth to such an extent that he would pay no attention to Mars himself were he to descend to earth. The battle takes place and what was to be expected, occurs. The Prince attacks too soon, and the victory is indeed gained, but it is not as complete a one as it would have been possible to win. He knows very well what he is doing; it is impossible that he should not know it, and therefore the poet might have spared himself the carefully detailed description of his absent-mindedness in the first act. Colonel Kottwitz, who is second in command, reminds him, with the gruffness of an old man who might be at the same time his father and his teacher, of the order that he should await from his sovereign, and another officer even advises that his sword be taken from him. But he curtly inquires of old Kottwitz whether he has not received the order from his own heart, and he uses violence to the officer, then he dashes away crying: "Now, gentlemen, the countersign: A knave who follows not his general to the fight!" He arrives on the battlefield itself just at the moment when the rumor is spreading that the Elector has fallen. He performs marvels of valor, and we learn how much he loved his sovereign by seeing how he avenges him. This is one of the most brilliant episodes of the plot, and, truly, it alone is worth more than a whole catalogue full of the ordinary dramas that one hears applauded in our theatres. Sprinkled with blood, he hurries then into the peasant's but where the Electress, with her court of ladies, has had to take refuge because a, wheel of her coach broke while on the journey, and here he meets his Nathalie. The women, who have also heard the terrible rumor, are crushed; the Electress has fainted and the Princess, overcome by the gravity of the situation, laments in a few simple, touching words her complete loneliness. The Prince had not betrayed his affection for her at the Elector's Court, but now that fortune seems to have abandoned the fatherless and motherless girl, who was entirely dependent upon her powerful uncle, he allows his heart to utter the first sound, and to this sound she responds. Here we catch a gleam of his native, inborn nobility of soul, which at the end of the whole purifying process is to shine forth in perfect serenity, and we feel air unshakable confidence in him. This love scene, which is brought about by death, belongs to the highest sphere of art, and even the embarrassment which is evident in the words exchanged between the Prince and the Princess, is warranted by the relation in which they have hitherto stood to one another. They do not dare to speak out plainly.

The scene is hardly over when the rumor which occasioned it is proved to be false. The Elector lives and is already on the road to Berlin; the battle has decided the whole war, and peace promptly follows. There is infinite rejoicing, above all in the soul of the Prince. In the emotion of his overflowing heart he tells the Electress his sweet secret, and begs for her consent; she answers, "Not a suppliant on earth could I deny today, whate'er he ask, and you, our battle-hero, least of all." He is the happiest of mortals, and challenging "Caesar Divus" himself, as a rival in Fortune's favor, he, with the ladies, follows his sovereign to Berlin.

We must lay the proper weight upon this phase if we wish to comprehend the further development of the tragedy. Arrived in Berlin he hurries at once to the Elector, and places at his feet three flags captured from the enemy. The Elector asks him sternly whether he was in command at Fehrbellin, and when the Prince, in astonishment, replies in the affirmative, he orders his sword to be taken from him. It had been reported to the Elector that the Prince was wounded, and before knowing definitely whether Homburg or Colonel Kottwitz-whom he believed to be also capable of the deed-had led the cavalry into battle before receiving the order, the Sovereign had declared that the commanding officer was to be summoned before a court-martial and condemned to death without respect of person. Now he simply carries out the sentence. The Prince does not comprehend in the slightest; he would find it just as natural if the trees should begin to speak and the stones to fly. He must indeed obey, but as he gives up his sword, he declares bitterly that if his "Cousin Frederick" wishes to play the role of Brutus, he will not find in him a son who reveres him even under the executioner's ax. That is all the more natural, as he is conscious of what he felt and did on the battlefield in the moment when he received the news of the death of his present judge. His friends try to calm him. The Elector pays no attention to his passionate behavior, but with calm majesty reads the inscriptions on the Swedish flags, and the Prince is led off to prison. The noblest style is maintained throughout this scene, which would have delighted the English of Shakespeare's day.

In the third act we find the Prince somewhat changed, but not to any great extent. After thinking over the matter in solitude he has finally grasped that the Elector could not allow the violation of his express command to pass without some sort of punishment. But is it not sufficient punishment for him to have spent some days in prison, and does he not, moreover, deserve a reward because he entered it voluntarily and did not strangle the jailer? Therefore he knows positively that the first person to visit him will announce that he is free, and when his friend Hohenzollern enters his cell, he exclaims "Well, then, I'm free of my imprisonment." But when the latter examines his position with very different eyes, when, by producing a series of threatening facts each one more ominous than the other, he gradually silences the Prince's emotion, which demonstrates exactly what the Elector can do and what he cannot do, when he even tells him at last that the death warrant is about to be brought for signature to the Elector's cabinet, the Prince finally loses his foolish feeling of security, and then of course he goes to the opposite extreme. Nay, when the anxious Hohenzollern further informs him that the Swedish ambassador, who has arrived on the occasion of the peace negotiations, would ask the hand of the Princess of Orange for his master, but that the Princess seems to have made her choice already and thus is apparently thwarting the Elector's plan, and when he asks the Prince if he is not in some way tangled up in all this, the latter cries out despairingly "I am lost," and hurries off to the Electress to entreat her to intervene in his behalf.

On the way he receives a last impressive confirmation of the seriousness of his situation. He sees his grave being dug by torchlight. In the apartment of the Electress now takes place the much decried scene, which people refuse to comprehend, and therefore, of course, will not forgive the poet for writing. The Prince, in the presence of the girl he loves, begs for his life. He does so in the most ignominious fashion; indeed, in order to remove what he considers one of the worst rocks of offense, he even renounces Nathalie, while she stands by shuddering at the state of humiliation in which she beholds her heart's ideal. Certainly that is utterly unworthy of a hero and of a man, and we may unquestionably depend upon it that the poet, who in the same piece created the Elector beside the Prince, knew that as well as any of us. In fact, this scene has no other purpose than to show us that the Prince is not yet either a hero or a man, and that along the path he has trodden so far nobody can become either the one or the other. Up to this time he has led a hollow, sham existence, which could very well fill his head with giddy intoxication, but could not put any real backbone into him. Now, however, the true meaning of life, at least in one form, in the form of love, has at last come close enough to him to make the continuation of this sham existence impossible; therein lies the real import of the scene in which he and Nathalie declare their love, the great significance of which I pointed out above. If that had not taken place he would probably have become a duelling-celebrity, and after the first shock of surprise he would have been able to show the same contempt of death as a professional fencer accustomed to the duelling-ground, who, with perfect right, considers life—his own namely—to be a mere cipher; he would have awaited the bullets defiantly, with his arms crossed a la Napoleon, and the Elector would have had him shot, would indeed have been forced to have him shot. He can no longer sink to such depths as that now, but still less can he find the real moral strength soberly to make up his mind to take voluntary leave of the world; for he has as yet no feeling of completed existence and of duty performed to take away with him; his life is still a blank. Therefore at this moment he must act exactly as he does act; to be sure, the poet must not leave him in this doubtful stage for any length of time; but neither, indeed, does he do so. The Electress considers that any further step would be useless, as she has already of her own accord done her utmost. Nathalie, however, with death in her heart, promises to venture one last word with her uncle for the fallen man, but bitterly advises the Prince in any case to take another look at his grave, and to persuade himself that it is not one whit gloomier than the battle has showed it a thousand times.

In the fourth act Nathalie keeps her promise, and the Elector sends her with a mysterious letter to the Prince in his prison. He tells her laconically that the Prince is saved just as surely as pardon lies in his own wish. She brings the letter to the prisoner and he reads: "If you believe that I have been unjust, tell me, I beg you, in a word or two, and forthwith I will send you back your sword." Such words could be used only by the majesty which would be revered even without a crown, and the Prince feels it at once. "I cannot tell him that!" he cries out when Nathalie presses him to write as the letter bids him. "What matter?" he answers curtly, when she assures him that the regiment has been detailed, which is to render the burial honors above his grave by the thunder of their muskets. "I will tell him 'You did right!'" he cries, when she continues to urge him; and he does so! He realizes that the sovereign who summons him to judge himself, cannot have acted thus toward him, in order to play the Brutus, or from heartless despotism. It becomes clear to him that war, yes the State itself, rests upon the principle of subordination, and that the commander must first perform in his own person what he would require from his subordinates. He determines,—and this too, be it noted, in the presence of the girl he loves,—to make satisfaction to the offended code of war, and thus crush again the Hydra of anarchy, which his arbitrary action, crowned with victory though it was, might very well lead to. "And though twelve bullets made you bite the dust this instant," cries Nathalie transported with admiration, "I could not resist rejoicing, sobbing, crying: 'Thus you please me.'" Truly she is right; now the man and the hero is complete and never again in all eternity can he be seized with another paroxysm of hollow self-glorification or of petty cowardice—which, indeed, were intimately connected one with the other. The Prince has become a stoutly forged link in the moral order of the universe, and the more difficult it was for him, the more firmly he will endure. Whoever does not find in this scene complete compensation for the preceding one with the Electress—in which it is rooted like the flower in the black earth; and whoever does not understand at the same time that the one was not possible without the other, and that cause and effect cannot be separated, to that person I must deny all capability of comprehending a drama in its totality. The change effected by the Elector is one of the most sublime conceptions that any literature can show, and is very far from having an equal in our own.

The fifth act brings the necessary test. The Elector is entreated on all sides to pardon the Prince; his family, the army, the Princess, all urge him, indeed the latter—a fine touch—repeats the offense of her lover. On her own authority, she calls a regiment of which she is chief, to Fehrbellin, in order that the officers there may also sign their names to a petition which is being circulated, and thus she could, in her turn, actually be amenable to a court martial. The Elector allows nothing to be wrung from him by coaxing or by bullying, but no one who has an idea of the structure of the play need tremble any longer for the Prince. It can already be seen that the Elector has no intention of allowing matters to be carried to extremities from the leniency with which he is inclined to treat old Kottwitz, who has suddenly arrived with the cavalry, with out his knowledge and, as he believes, without his orders. When Kottwitz presses him hard, and heatedly assures him that at the very first opportunity he will repeat the act of the Prince, which he once condemned but now must approve,—since for one case where the impulse of the heart, the sudden instinct, does harm, there are ten in which it alone can lead to the goal,—the Elector answers that lie does not know how to convince him, but he will call an advocate who is able to teach the old gentleman better than he can what discipline and obedience are. Then he sends for the Prince, and the latter, solemnly and of his own accord, declares before the entire body of generals that he wishes by a voluntary death to glorify the code of war, which he had criminally violated in the sight of the whole army, and that the only favor he asks of the Elector, to whose just sentence he bows unconditionally, is that he will not try, on behalf of the King of Sweden, to force Nathalie's inclinations. This is granted him and he returns to prison, which he leaves immediately after, to start, with bandaged eyes, on the way which he perforce must think his last, and in the moment when he expects the end he deservedly receives from the hands of the Elector his life, his freedom, and his love.

Of course the romantic accessories of the first act have an unsatisfactory sequel in the last, as the poet here too feels obliged to take a roundabout road instead of the direct one. But we surely do not need to prove thus late that the fault is quite as immaterial here as there.

It is without doubt obvious to every one that in this drama the evolution of an important man is presented with absolute directness, in a way in which it is done nowhere else; that we gaze into the characteristic medley of rough forces and wild impulses which as a rule are the original ingredients of such a man, and that we accompany him from the lowest stage up to the zenith, where the unrestrained roving comet, that in its disorderliness was exposed to the danger of self-destruction, is transformed into a clear self-dependent fixed star. Do we need any other proof that the work is capable of producing a most unprecedented effect? Even though it gave us nothing but the deep psychological unfolding of this evolution, such an effect would perforce be produced, for our dramatic authors, on general principles, seldom give us opportunity to become acquainted with more than the outside skin of the man, which, to be sure, is the same for Napoleon as for his most insignificant corporal. In exceptional cases when they allow us a glimpse into the heart and reins, they expect us to take a narrow interest in a peculiarly organized individual, and are wanting in every kind of background. However the psychological side in our drama is, with extraordinary art, reduced to a mere substratum, out of which an entirely new figure of tragedy develops, which combines in a wonderful fashion the deepest tragic shudder with the gentle transports of a hope that is not extinguished even in the blackest night. We are reminded of a smiling May morning over which the first thunderstorm breaks with a horrible crash; and that is a triumph of dramatic technique.

I would gladly examine the innumerable beauties of detail of this drama, and in particular call attention to the central points of the plot, abounding in the most vigorous life, into which a situation or a character or the action itself is sometimes concentrated. But this would lead me too far afield; moreover, since the most glaring differences of opinion usually crop up precisely on this subject, I could not avoid the dangerous ground on which, according to Goethe's profound saying, the categorical imperative and the authority of the man who pronounces it, form the last court of appeal. Or if some one, with a liking for gaudy paint and iridescent rags, should prefer a puppet show to the living figures of the piece, vital to their very finger tips, but, to be sure, going about in very simple, sometimes even slovenly garments, how could we decide the matter otherwise than in the well known manner of Cato? The categorical imperative which occasionally found favor with the old Romans is, however, terribly unpopular with the Germans.

One question, notwithstanding, I dare not leave unanswered, the question of how it is possible that the Prince of Homburg, in view of its great literary importance and its abundant vitality, could up to this time have met with so very little success on the stage? The answer is easy. The great public, who in general suppose the poetical to lie in that which is opposed to real life, has a strange conception of dramatic heroism, and the greater part of the critics who should instruct the public unfortunately share the same opinion. Because, in most cases, the hero is entirely finished and manufactured to the last filament when he makes his appearance in the drama, it is taken for granted that it must be so under all circumstances. Therefore it follows that the poet fares badly when, instead of leaving the development exclusively to the action, he occasionally transfers it in part to the principal character, and thus does not arouse the sympathy which he needs for his hero until the end of the piece, instead of doing so in the very beginning. For we immediately take for granted, even when we already know the poet, that he has made a mistake, that he is growing enthusiastic over something imperfect, immature, immoral, and that he demands of us to be enthusiastic with him. That puts us out of humor, we do not await the end, and even when we do, and become aware of his real intention, we only partly abandon our former prejudice. This has already been proved on various occasions. Kleist, in his Prince of Homburg, moreover, touched what in his day was a most sensitive spot—when Theodor Koerner made his characters run a race to see who could die first. Fear of death and a hero! That was really going too far! It was an insult to every ensign "You ask a piece of bread and butter of me! I will not give you that! But my life you may have with pleasure!"