CHAPTER VIII

PAUL HEYSE (1910)--GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912)

The prize of 1910 has been awarded:

Heyse, Paul, born 1830, died April 2, 1914: “as a mark of esteem of an artistry, finished and marked by an ideal conception, which he has shown during a long and significant activity as lyric dramatist, and as an author of romances and famous short stories.”[72]

Two German scholars had been winners of the Nobel prize in literature in 1904 and 1908--Theodor Mommsen and Rudolf Eucken. Two more distinguished authors with international reputations were added in 1910 and 1912, making four awards to German literature within eight years. Paul Heyse, the versatile author of the year 1910 has been difficult to classify, because he is dramatist, poet, novelist, and writer of a form of short story known as the _Novelle_. More than one hundred and fifty of these tales are accredited to him, in addition to prodigious industry in other literary forms. The _Novelle_ bears some resemblance to the short stories of Hoffmann, Tieck, Alfred de Musset, and the American masters of this type, Poe, Hawthorne, and O. Henry. In more definite method than some of these _conteurs_, Heyse developed a principle which he applied and explained, in part, in his Introduction to his _Deutscher Novellenschatz_; he stresses the fact that the essential foundation of this form is “what children call the story” but he adds, “A strong silhouette should not be lacking.” The “silhouette will be a brief summary of conditions which underlie the focal scene or incident.” Thus Heyse became creator, or developer, of this form of fiction, with a wide range of incidents and characters, in which keen observation of life and faithful recital were blended with idealism of a distinctive motive--that of “glorifying nature,” human and inanimate.

Johann Ludwig Paul Heyse was born in Berlin, March 15, 1830; he was eighty years old when the Nobel honor was received. His father, Karl Ludwig Heyse, with a firm, Teutonic nature, was a famous philologist and professor at the University of Berlin. His mother came from a Jewish family of wealth and social rank. In his _Memoirs_, her son recalls her as “passionate and imaginative”; from her he inherited his bent toward story-telling and delight in the sensuous which mingled with the rationalistic trend of mind, bequeathed by his father. In the home of the Heyses gathered scholars, authors, and artists. The atmosphere fostered the natural precocity of the boy, Paul. One of his older friends was Kugler, the historian of art, who had an inspirational influence upon the youth; in manhood, Heyse married the gifted daughter of this friend.

At the University of Bonn, where Heyse went from Berlin, he showed much interest in Romance languages. He was fascinated with Spanish, especially the writings of Cervantes and Calderon. In 1849, and again in 1852, he traveled in Italy, adding Dante, Boccaccio, and Leopardi to his list of literary heroes. The homes of artists were open to him and he found Italy an ideal land of “colour and grace.” Shakespeare received his tribute throughout his literary life. He began to write dramas and lyric poems, tales in verse and prose with youthful zest and marks of great promise. In 1854, King Max of Bavaria offered to him a position at the Court of Munich, at a salary of 1500 florins. Munich was an environment sure to awaken his talent and satisfy his love of beauty. Under Louis I it had been favored with some fine buildings; an atmosphere of culture was pervasive. Among the poets and scholars, with whom Heyse became associated here, were Geibel, Bodenstedt, Wilbrandt, Luogg, and Schack, the historian. In 1868, when Louis II, successor to King Max, insulted Geibel, the poet, and caused him to leave the city, Heyse was depressed although he stayed in Munich, living in a charming villa there until his death in 1914.

From the early years of his authorship, Heyse showed an aristocratic culture which did not dim his interest in fisherfolk, peasants, and rural characters. Although family sorrows came upon him, and he suffered, from 1880 to 1900, from attacks by the ardent followers of Zola and Ibsen, yet he never lost his serenity of character and his belief in individualistic expression. “Instinct” was his guide, as he has exemplified in scores of his tales and dramas. The “child of nature,” or the man or woman of inherent nobility, was incapable of any low or mean action according to his belief. In _Salamander_, which Mr. Georg Brandes regards as his best _Novelle_ in versified form,[73] he expresses his creed of the vigorous life, of allegiance to nature, in spite of failings and adverse judgments against him by the “naturalistic school”:

I never yet of virtue or of failing Have been ashamed, nor proudly did adorn Myself of one, nor thought my sins of veiling.

Beyond all else, betwixt the nobly born And vulgar herd, this marks the separation,-- The cowards whose hypocrisy we scorn.

Him I call noble, who, with moderation, Carves his own honor, and but little heeds His neighbors’ slander or their approbation.[74]

Another character, familiar to readers of Heyse, Toinette of _Kinder der Welt_ (_Children of the World_) speaks words of similar trend often quoted; “There is but _one_ genuine nobility; to remain true to one’s self.... He who bears within himself the true rank, lives and dies through his own grace, and is, therefore, sovereign.”

To Italy, Heyse turns for sensuous delights in many of his tales. _L’Arrabiata_, probably the best known of any of his _Novellen_ by students of German in colleges and classes, written when he was twenty-three, has an interesting history.[75] Paul Heyse as a young man, and his friend, Joseph Victor Scheffel, were at an inn at Sorrento. They had been together at Capri and had planned to hold a “literary joust,” to read to each other, at Sorrento, some new tale or poem. Scheffel contributed the poem, _Der Trumpeter von Gättingen_; Heyse read _L’Arrabiata_. Piquant is this tale of the maiden’s love for Antonio, the boatman, and her maidenly pride and resistance to his love until the injury to his arm and his plea to her, in memory of her mother, brings about a romantic sequel. Twenty-five years later Heyse was again at Sorrento; he sent a greeting, in rhyme, to this friend of earlier days and later life. He told him that he had seen again his model, “Laurella,” on the street but she did not recognize him; she was far removed from the “madcap” of fifteen, the “cross-patch,” with her youthful charm and wistful appeal. The background of this tale, against Naples and Vesuvius, is painted with that vivid photography which characterizes Heyse’s scenes in drama and fiction. Unlike Balzac or Turgenieff, he wrote few words of description but “created atmosphere” that was alive. Striking examples are the familiar tales, “Barbarossa,” “At the Ghost Hour” and “The Dead Lake.”

In the later _Novellen_, as well as the novels and plays of other years, Heyse showed tendencies towards realism and less romanticism. On the other hand, he never lost his urge for sensuous beauty, his determination “to follow one’s bent” (“sich gehen zu lassen”). He would not compel himself to irksome writing; he would yield to impulse and mood. “The real sin is against nature” was his keynote, reiterated from the short tale of “Reise nach dem Glück” (“Journey After Happiness”) to the longer novels, _Kinder der Welt_ (_Children of the World_) and _Im Paradiese_ (_In Paradise_). In philosophy he has been called both fatalistic and epicurean. The conflicts between restraint and self-surrender, especially in women, are germ-ideas in such diverse writings as _L’Arrabiata_, _The Sabine Women_ (with the heroine, Tullia) and _In Paradise_, with the forceful character of Irene. In the dialogue, in _Children of the World_, between Balder, the invalid-idealist and Franzel, the socialist-printer, the author’s convictions are unfolded. Balder declares that life is full of enjoyment to him, in spite of outward sufferings, because “he can experience past and future,” because he can “conjure up” all the periods of his life and find a totality, a completeness of enjoyment. So the young baron in the novel, _In Paradise_, which has been vehemently discussed for two generations, sins against his own nature and his friend and, for a time, his “inner harmony” is destroyed but after sufferings, portrayed with analytical skill, harmony is restored. The city of Munich, in its varied aspects as related to society and the arts, forms the “chorus” and subtle influence in this dramatic story.[76]

Heyse has written more than sixty dramas yet too few of them are translated adequately into English; too often they have failed in stage presentation. Many are historical; _The Sabine Women_ is erotic and less consistent in development than _Hans Lange_, _Hadrian Colberg_, and _Mary of Magdala_; the last play has been translated by William Winter and by Lionel Vale. The old philologist, Zipfel, in _Colberg_, may have been modeled, in part, from Heyse’s father. His speech, relating the story of Leonidas and the Persian War, reaches a climax of courage and self-sacrifice, with an application to later days of struggle between the French and Germans. In Henning, the old servant in _Hans Lange_, the author emphasizes his belief in the redemptive power of nobler nature, in spite of incentives to revenge against the young squire.

There is unevenness of workmanship among the many _Novellen_. _Felice_, the tale of the peasant girl who “listened to reason rather than the call of passion,” is a vital expression of the author’s creed of obedience to “impulse of the heart.” The later tales are more keen and realistic than the photographic, romantic scenes laid in Italy and Southern Germany. Heyse became more of an analyst of all kinds of humanity, with their conflicting “impulses,” but he never acquiesced in the scenes of squalor and moral slime that delighted some of his contemporaries of the “naturalistic school.” By contrast, he was an idealist with a strong vein of poetry. One of his best stories of later period, _The Last Centaur_, expresses his revolt against the materialistic spirit of his age. The creature who represents the age of myths and imagination is driven back into the wood by the evil ways and heartless gibes of the modern villages; in turn, he scorns their opposition with “an exhalted humor.” It seems almost a modern version of the old tale of _Baucis and Philemon_. In another tale, _The Incurable_, the hero keeps faith in the ideal, in spite of the “rabble in kid gloves.” _Die Blinden_ (_The Blind_) is an appealing story, with colorful pictures of garden and ravens and flocks, and two children, Clement and Marlene, waiting with tense emotion for the doctors to restore their sight. The stern father, obsessed with his idea of “duty,” is a strong character. “Nils mit der offenen Hand” is a fairy tale that defies adequate translation into English but has situations of dramatic skill, notably that of the gulls biting the rope at the execution of Nils, and the brave deed of Stina, the princess who loves Nils.

Heyse was more successful in portraying women than men. He was long called “the favorite of maidens.” He had insight to see fairly and to balance well the traits of normal maidenhood--beauty, coyness, love of prowess and adventure, ardent but concealed love until the lover came to whom she would yield her “maidenly pride” (“Mädschenstoltz”). There are traces of the influence of Goethe in certain passages in _Kinder der Welt_, and such _Novellen_ as _The Broiderer of Treviso_, _The Prodigal Son_, and _The Spell of Rothenburg_. In the last story, there are comments upon art, interwoven with humor and irony as the characters journey from Ausbach to Würzburg. Originality, however, marks his drama and his fiction--that “ideal conception and fine literary craftsmanship” which won for him the Nobel inscription.

Mr. Georg Brandes believes that Heyse was, primarily, a pupil of Eichendorf, as his poetry indicates.[77] The poems by Heyse are less familiar than his prose, although he wrote both epics and lyrics. “Salamander” ranks among his best long poems; “The Fury” and “The Fairy Child” are examples of his lyrics. He delighted to translate--or transpose--troubadour lays, folk songs from the Spanish and the Italian. Like Mendelssohn, to whom he has been compared in temperament, he lacked dynamic force but he was sensitive, artistic, and idealistic in his basic character.

GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912)

The prize of 1912 has been awarded:

Hauptmann, Gerhart, born 1862: “principally for his rich, versatile, and prominent activity in the realm of the drama.”[78]

During the quarter century since the first Nobel prize was awarded, it has happened, at intervals, that two representatives of the same nation but different generations, are found on the lists in literature. Thus Björnson and Hamsun, among Norwegian novelists, Echegaray and Benavente in Spanish Drama, and Heyse and Hauptmann in German literature of the imagination, are exponents of succeeding generations of thought and expression. Heyse stood for the older, more poetic and romantic forms; he decreed a philosophy of nobleness in man and contentment in life. Gerhart Hauptmann, who received the prize only two years later than Heyse, in 1912, was ranked by some critics with the realists of the modern, restless type, whose criticism of society in general was world-disturbing. After 1900 the fame of Heyse had declined among the younger, more progressive writers. His award, at eighty years, revived interest in his writings, especially the _Novellen_; translations and articles about his personality were widely printed in current journals.

One of the authors whom Heyse had censured for his naturalism and depressing dramas had been Gerhart Hauptmann. When the announcement was made that the prize of 1912 was again given to a German novelist and playwright, racial pride ran high but critics of other countries asked, “How could idealism be perverted in meaning so that it would apply to the author of _Before Dawn_, _Lonely Lives_, _The Weavers_ and _Michael Kramer_?” Unfairly, the name of Hauptmann was linked constantly with that of Sudermann by the most bitter malcontents with this award. Such an attitude was biassed and unjust. That Hauptmann has written some of the most photographic, haunting dramas of industrial strife and social vices is true; but it is as true that he has produced two, possibly three, of the really poetic, symbolic plays in modern German literature--_The Assumption of Hannele_, _The Sunken Bell_, and _Parsival_.

[Illustration: _From an original etching by Hermann Struck. Reproduced by permission of the artist and courtesy of the New York Public Library_

GERHART HAUPTMANN]

There are two distinctive, but not wholly contradictory, personalities in Hauptmann as he reveals himself to his readers. It was as author of _The Sunken Bell_, especially, that he was chosen for the Nobel prize; it had certain autobiographical suggestions of this conflict between the material and the spiritual in the nature of its author. Recognizing that he is often associated with Sudermann, the brilliant, relentless novelist and dramatist, it is interesting to find these two writers well differentiated by Otto Heller in _Studies in Modern German Literature_ (Boston, 1905). He compares the nervous, sensitive mind of Hauptmann, “possessed of a reproductive, feminine talent,” in contrast with the masculine personality of Sudermann, less subtle, more virile and coarse, with broader knowledge of life but lacking the intuitive perceptions of Hauptmann. One may question some of these adjectives used by Mr. Heller, but the general contrast is well phrased, especially as applied to the poetic dramas by Hauptmann, like _The Sunken Bell_, _And Pippa Dances_, and _Parsival_.

Before Hauptmann conceived any of this work that entitles him to rank among the idealists, he had written grim tragedies, similar in trend to those by Ibsen, Zola, Tolstoy, Max Nordau, and Arno Holz. As realist he has been censured as weak in plots and sometimes strained in his social tenets: there are such defects in _The Beaver Coat_, _Rose Bernd_, and _The Conflagration_. That he had a poetic instinct, a true lyric quality, was acknowledged from occasional lines in such gloomy plays as _Lonely Lives_, _Colleague Crampton_, and _The Weavers_. Among the plays of industrial upheaval and suffering, _The Weavers_ has tense feeling, with lines of irony and suppressed aspirations. It was dedicated to Robert Hauptmann, father of the author, in affectionate words that express the source of its inspiration and the allegiance of Gerhart Hauptmann to his forefathers: “You, dear father, know what feelings lead me to dedicate this work to you, and I am not called upon to analyze them here. Your stories of my grandfather, who in his young days sat at the loom, a poor weaver like those here depicted, contained the germ of my drama. Whether it possesses the vigor of life or is rotten at the core, it is the best ‘so poor a man as Hamlet is,’ can offer.”

While this grandfather had been a poor weaver, he met with better fortunes in later life, and the father of Gerhart Hauptmann was owner of three hotels. The boy was born at Salzbrunn, a seaside town in Silesia, in 1862; thus he was thirty-two years younger than Heyse--a full generation in time and standards of literature. His mother was “one of the people.” The boy was inclined to study sculpture and he was sent to art schools in Breslau, Jena, and in Italy. He was a slow pupil; his brother, Carl, seemed almost the only person who expressed faith in his gifts or future success. With his art studies he combined agriculture and history. After a brief apprenticeship as modeler, he decided that he would be an actor; he had a lisp that interfered with the continuance of this histrionic hope. He married a woman of wealth and moved to Berlin, in 1885, where he became identified with “The Free Stage” movement and began to write plays. Byron had been one of his earlier literary heroes; in _The Fate of the Children of Prometheus_, he recorded some impressions of travel along the same route as _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_.

In 1889 “The Free Stage Society” was formed in Berlin; it was, in a way, “an imitation of Antoine’s Free Theatre, organized two years before,” says Barrett H. Clark in _A Study of the Modern Drama_.[79] Among the founders were Otto Brahm, Maximilian Harden, Theodor Wolff and others who wished to produce plays of varied types, especially the work of naturalistic writers. Hauptmann came under the influences of Bruno Wille, the socialist, and Arno Holz, the dramatist; certain reactions from this companionship of minds may be traced in his plays _Before Dawn_, _Colleague Crampton_, and _Florian Geyer_. Brahm was the director of this Free Stage Society which, in 1894, after fulfilling its mission for Germany, was merged into the Deutsches Theatre. Among the plays by Hauptmann written under this stimulus, in addition to the three mentioned above, were _The Festival of Peace_, _Lonely Lives_, _The Weavers_, _The Beaver Coat_, and _The Assumption of Hannele_. _Before Dawn_, written in the Silesian mountains and staged in Berlin, in 1889, was a haunting tragedy with loose construction. The ribald father and his low associates, and the daughter, who kills herself to escape assault at their hands, combine to make a gripping, repulsive story with certain dramatic possibilities that are not fulfilled.

_The Weavers_ showed progress in technic and characterization of a group. Here no single individual plays the leading part; the group of weavers, the mob at the time of crisis, are the principal actors. There are marked contrasts in setting between the home of the rich capitalist and the poverty of the weavers, between the government’s indifference and the industrial slavery of the victims of rapacity. One of the most poignant passages is the monologue of old Ansorge, in Act II; he cannot believe that the King will fail to help them, if word is sent to him of their needs. When Jaeger assures him it is futile, that the rich people are as “cunning as the devil,” his lament for the home that must be sacrificed, where his father sat at the loom for more than forty years, is pathetic and dramatic.

_The Assumption of Hannele_, which appeared in 1893 and had a germ-idea not unlike that of _Before Dawn_, created sharp discussion in Germany. There was protest against its performance. The next year it was brought to the United States, to be staged at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York. It was translated into English by William Archer and by Charles Henry Meltzer. Reformers of many kinds denounced the play without a hearing. They threatened the author, who had come to this country to see the performance and to advise with his publisher, with arrest; the same fate was to fall upon the translator, Charles Henry Meltzer, and the actress who was to play the leading rôle. “Some representatives of the press, with critics and authors, were bidden to a private performance and the next day the newspapers, with a few impenitent exceptions, published eulogies of _Hannele_! No one was arrested. And the public performance took place.”[80]

The American translator of both _The Assumption of Hannele_ and _The Sunken Bell_, Mr. Charles Henry Meltzer, has described Hauptmann at this period, in the Foreword to _The Sunken Bell_. He had expected to meet an aggressive, self-satisfied man. On the contrary, he found one who seemed like a student, with shy, boyish manners; he might have been classified as a curate or a teacher; “A painful, introspective, hunted earnestness was stamped upon his face--the face of a thinker, a dreamer, a genius” (Foreword). _Hannele_ was not a success theatrically in New York. _The Weavers_, at the Irving Place Theatre, attracted somewhat more attention but the time was too indifferent to such plays in America; one could not forecast the cordial reception for problem plays and grim tragedies, with mystic elements, three decades later.

It was eighteen years before the Swedish Academy gave world recognition and honor to Hauptmann. A few men and women of literary insight--or foresight--proclaimed a future for the creator of such a “dream-poem” as _Hannele_. Gradually, readers became interested and stirred by this strange play based upon the weird apparitions of the fevered brain of the little waif, the poetic chorus of the angels, the comfort of her mother and Pastor Gottwald, in contrast with the terrifying fear of her father’s return, the stormy December evening in this mountain almshouse, and the poems of “The Stranger” which cast a spell of religious peace upon the reader, as the mystic, green light fell upon the face of dying Hannele. This “dream-poem,” as Hauptmann called it, won for him the Grillparzer prize in Germany. Two years later, after the failure of _Florian Geyer_ to win plaudits of dramatic critics, he wrote another play of symbolism and anapestic meters, combining the realities of life with mystic allurements, and he called it “A Fairy-Tale Play,” _Die versunkene Glocke_. His most severe critics were convinced of his lyrical quality and dramatic power.

The basic material for this play, _The Sunken Bell_, says its translator, Mr. Meltzer, is found in Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology. Here are the characters of the bell maker, his wife, the elfish spirit, the schoolmaster and the vicar, and other factors interwoven with the allegorical and mystical. Hauptmann visualized these characters with consummate skill. Heinrich, the bell forger, who seeks the sun and a new, marvellous chime of bells, Magda, his faithful wife eager to free him from domestic toils, Rautendelein, the spirit of nature that lures him away and stirs his soul to unfulfilled aspirations, and Wittikin, the wise woman, the village priest and barber--all are alive and convincing. The evasive and mystical element becomes a part of the atmosphere of this “fairy-tale play”; the dramatic unities are well maintained.

What is the meaning of _The Sunken Bell_? Each reader may make his own answer, for several are possible. It is as futile to analyze it, as it is to destroy the fantasy and mystery of _Peter Pan_ or _The Blue Bird_ or _Dear Brutus_. It is too subtle, too delicate to be treated by rigid rules of criticism. However, Mr. Meltzer makes three pertinent explanations; it may be a parable, the effort of all artists to reach their ideals; it may be the effort of a reformer to remold society by visionary ambitions; or Heinrich may embody any human being, striving for the goal of truth and light. As Rautendelein symbolizes Nature which offers freedom, so Wittikin expresses the eternal philosophy of life, opposed to the conventional creeds of the world, like those of the barber and the vicar, that are stumbling-blocks in the path of lofty idealism. Heinrich fails to attain his ideal; he cannot weld the pagan and Christian truths into one gospel, because he is _human_, with limitations. He cannot stay on the pinnacle of the mountain, with its mystic light and its new sun-bells, but he has not lost the influence of these in his life. When the vicar rejoices that “the old Heinrich” has returned, he answers:

That man am I, and yet ... another man. Open the windows--Light and God stream in.[81]

This play proved a moderate success, especially when played by Sothern, and has been repeated in academic circles, although it has not been so popular in America as have been the plays by Ibsen, Rostand, and Maeterlinck. It is one of the dramas that yields more of its beauty and symbolic message to the reader than to the spectator. The play, _Henry of Aue_, or _Der arme Heinrich_, which was called a fable (1902) has sometimes been listed as a sequel to _The Sunken Bell_ but they are unlike in setting and theme. Heinrich, the crusader, is attacked with leprosy at the summit of his glory--a punishment for his insolence to God. The healing begins when he purges his soul of despair and hatred and begins to recognize “Beneficence” in Nature and Life. There are well drawn characters, especially Heinrich, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried, Brigitta, and Ottegebe, the farmer’s daughter, whose influence is strong in the “cure” for the hero. As dramatic art this play is inferior to _Hannele_ or _The Sunken Bell_, but the reader’s interest is sustained in the leading character, from his tragic condition as an outcast, with a wooden clapper to warn people of his approach, to the last scene of his redemption by love.

During the years since he received the Nobel prize, Hauptmann has written several plays and novels that continue to reveal his dual traits as realist and idealist. The writings during the World War have a tang of bitterness. Ludwig Lewisohn has edited eight volumes of Hauptmann’s _Dramatic Works_ (Huebsch, New York, 1915-1925). The introductions are informing and the translations are clear and strong. In the series are included several Social and Domestic Plays as well as “Symbolic and Legendary Dramas.” _Parsival_, a play translated by Oakley Williams, has an ethical or religious tone with sympathetic insight into humanity. “Heartache” was the name of Parsival’s mother; said her creator, “I should hate to make anyone sad, but I believe we might call every mother, at any rate, very, very, many mothers by this name.”[82] There are symbolism and poetic sermonizing in this drama of Parsival, “Bearer of Burdens”; his development from a care-free youth to later responsibilities for world burdens is well portrayed. Traces of irony and humor are found. The setting of the play, _And Pippa Dances_, is picturesque, in the Silesian mountains. Wann is a grotesque element and the tales of “the Wild Huntsman” are entertaining; Pippa, the fair-haired daughter of the glass blower, is the persuasive character. There is a lack of dramatic unity in certain scenes. Translations of this play, and of _Elga_, have been made by Mary Harned in _Poet Lore_ (Boston, 1906-1909). _And Pippa Dances_ is included in Volume V of the plays edited by Mr. Lewisohn.

Among interesting, intensive studies of Hauptmann as dramatist, is the thesis by Walter H. P. Trumbaeur, on _Gerhart Hauptmann and John Galsworthy; a Parallel_ (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1917).[83] The parallelism is traced, with occasional excess of effort, between their careers, their themes, and certain plays like _Hannele_ and _The Little Dream_, _Michael Kramer_ and _A Bit o’ Love_, and _The Weavers_ and _Strife_. Both dramatists, says the critic, seek to escape social bondage; both are vitally concerned in social problems; both are realists temperamentally; both have a purpose to enlighten rather than to delight; both see moral values and, also, _the irony of things_. Hauptmann is more interested in characters while Galsworthy’s main interest lies in the _relations_ between characters. In both writers, there is a strain of idealism, seeking _truth_, material and spiritual. Another interesting thesis is by Mary Ayres Quimby, on _Nature Background in the Dramas of Gerhart Hauptmann_ (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1918). Among later plays _A Winter Ballad_ and _The Festival Play_ register the fearless assault of this dramatist upon vices and the exaltation of an idealism which is “union with Nature.”

The best work of Hauptmann in fiction has been attracting attention and becoming familiar to English readers. _The Fool in Christ: Emanuel Quint_ has been translated by Thomas Seltzer (Huebsch, 1911); _Atlantis_, translated by Adele and Thomas Seltzer (1912), and _Phantom_ and _The Heretic of Soana_, both translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan (1922-1923). The characterizations are forceful, with humor that is sometimes broad and, again, subtle. Daring satire and exposition of modern social problems are qualities that arrest the interest of the reader and attest the brilliant mind of the writer, in the recent, neo-romantic novel, _The Island of the Great Mother_, translated this year by Willa and Edwin Muir (Huebsch). The leaders in this “Women’s State” are delineated with shrewd, ironical skill. Phaon, the solitary “masculine” on the island, passes through strange adventures before he reaches maturity and finds his “ideal woman.” In his keen, illumining analysis of Hauptmann’s poetic plays, _Hannele_ and _The Sunken Bell_, in _A Study of the Modern Drama_ (New York, 1925), Barrett H. Clark accepts the statement of other critics that these are not “well-made plays,” but he finds in them the qualities which are high lights in this writer’s masterpieces--“psychological interest, dramatic as distinguished from purely lyrical poetry, a fairly well constructed plot and an atmosphere of beauty.”[84]

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1910.

[73] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, New York, 1924.

[74] _Gesammelte Werke_: Vol. III, p. 300, translated in _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ (by Georg Brandes) by Rasmus B. Anderson, New York, 1924. By permission of Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

[75] Introduction by Mary A. Frost to edition of _L’Arrabiata_, published by Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1896.

[76] An excellent study of Heyse is by Professor von Klenze in _German Classics_ edited by Kuno Francke, German Publication Society.

[77] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, New York, 1924, Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

[78] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1912.

[79] D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1925.

[80] _The Sunken Bell_: a Fairy Play in Five Acts by Gerhart Hauptmann, freely rendered into English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York, 1913, Foreword. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[81] _The Sunken Bell_ by Gerhart Hauptmann, freely rendered into English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York, 1913, Act III. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[82] _Parsival_, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann, translated by Oakley Williams, New York, 1915. By permission of The Macmillan Co.

[83] By permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

[84] P. 82. By permission of D. Appleton & Co.

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