Part 2
It had little that was new to offer. _Schloss Wetterstein_ is an engrossing, if extravagant, sex-tragedy in three semi-independent acts, reminiscent of the _Lulu_ plays but laid in an aristocratic environment. The Jack the Ripper of its grewsome end is an American millionaire--an artist in sadism. Had Wedekind been reading of Harry Thaw? _Franziska_ is a parody of _Faust_, a sort of feminine Faust, a phantasmagoria in which there every now and then outcrops a striking, profound, or even beautiful moment. Franziska finishes not in Faust’s heaven, but in domesticity, and one cannot clearly discover whether this is mockery or a real change of view. _Samson_, or _Shame and Jealousy_, and _Herakles_, are blank-verse plays of Hebrew or Hellenic legends, written with lessening power and intensity,--plays dramatic, poetic, passionate enough to rank with Hauptmann’s work of the same period but not “so fair, so wild, so brightly flecked” as Wedekind once had been. In the first year of the War, finally, appeared a curiously objective historical character-study in eight scenes, _Bismarck_, plainly forerunning Drinkwater’s _Lincoln_ and its successors, and utterly un-Wedekindian in style--not a word of sex, of satire, or of himself. The full tale of his work includes, besides the above, four very light satiric farces--one of them, _The World of Youth_, dated 1889, a most interesting prelude to nearly all his later ideas; two esoteric verse-dialogues, two pantomime scenarios constructed in the ’90’s, the time of his greatest power, and anticipating modern movie and ballet technique; a large number of poems, mostly erotic ballads that he sang to his own accompaniment (I was reminded of them, and him, when I first heard Bobby Edwards of Greenwich Village), and some prose tales, shorter than _Minne-haha_.
Always he dealt in will, in inner urges, often specifically in “the hellish drive out of which no joy remains alive.” His characters, no matter how often balked, derided, or wounded, return to the attack Until they are killed. Emotion is an inexhaustible force. The drama of opposed views, of contrasted attitudes on points of conduct or belief, can offer nothing so enthralling as this insatiable struggle for the most fundamental pleasures humanity knows--which never ultimately or for long are pleasures! And the same Satanic return to the attack, repeated efforts at destruction, are seen in Wedekind’s own life, hurling play after play against conventional society. At last, after his death, conventional society broke down, and the forces of disruption honored him, and the confused masses sought in his other, Utopian, constructive work for light upon the society that is to come. To few writers is such posthumous homage given; by few can such a reversal of judgment be expected. Wedekind remained ever true to himself, his deeply divided, contrary self, now appearing through his plays, now vanishing again behind his characters, but always vividly alive: one could feel _him_, one had the sense of human passion and struggle, of something personally experienced and sweated out, in almost all his work. Hence, in the last analysis, his hold upon our later generation: we too want life, not literature--personality, not limpid art--original thought, even destructive and extravagant, not old truths, even the deepest, newly dressed. Wedekind, like Strindberg, like Andreiev, and like Shaw, meets these demands. If America should ever have reason to turn pessimistic, Wedekind will be waiting; and even as America is, in Wedekind she can find much that is vital, life-promoting, of immediate power and worth.
SAMUEL A. ELIOT, JR. Smith College, January, 1923.
SPRING’S AWAKENING
(FRÜHLINGS ERWACHEN)
A Children’s Tragedy
_Dedicated to_
THE MUFFLED GENTLEMAN
CHARACTERS
MELCHIOR GABOR } MORITZ STIEFEL } HÄNSCHEN RILOW } ERNEST ROEBEL } _Schoolboys, aged 14 to 17_ LÄMMERMEIER } OTTO } GEORGE } ROBERT }
DIETHELM } REINHOLD } RUPRECHT } _Boys in a House of Correction_ HELMUTH } GASTON }
MR. GABOR, a Judge } MRS. FANNY GABOR } _Melchior’s Parents_
MR. STIEFEL, _Moritz’s Father_ MR. ZIEGENMELKER, _his Friend_ MR. PROBST, _Moritz’s Uncle_ REV. MR. KAHLBAUGH, _Pastor_
DR. SONNENSTICH, Principal } DR. AFFENSCHMALZ } DR. KNOCHENBRUCH } _The Faculty of the DR. ZUNGENSCHLAG } Boys’ School_ DR. KNÜPPELDICK } DR. HUNGERGURT } DR. FLIEGENTOD }
HABEBALD, _the School Beadle_ DR. PROKRUSTES, _Head of the House of Correction_ A LOCKSMITH DR. VON BRAUSEPULVER, M.D. THE MUFFLED GENTLEMAN
MRS. BERGMANN INA MÜLLER, _her married daughter_ WENDLA BERGMANN, _her 14-year-old daughter_ MARTHA BESSEL } THEA } _Wendla’s Friends_ ILSE, _an older girl, an artist’s model_
The Scene is laid in Southern Germany or in Switzerland. The Time is from May to November, 1892.
A NOTE ON THE STAGING
SPRING’S AWAKENING is divided into Nineteen Scenes as follows:
ACT I: SCENE 1. In Mrs. Bergmann’s House. SCENE 2. A Park. SCENE 3. The Same. SCENE 4. The School Yard. SCENE 5. In the Woods.
ACT II: SCENE 1. Melchior’s Study. SCENE 2. Same as I, 1. SCENE 3. In the Rilow House. SCENE 4. A Hayloft. SCENE 5. Mrs. Gabor’s Room. SCENE 6. The Bergmann Garden. SCENE 7. A Path near the River.
ACT III: SCENE 1. The Faculty Room at the School. SCENE 2. By the Wall of the Graveyard. SCENE 3. In the Gabor House. SCENE 4. In the House of Correction. SCENE 5. Wendla’s Bedroom. SCENE 6. A Vineyard. SCENE 7. The Graveyard.
It will be noted that the scenes concluding the acts, long scenes all of them, are intended to occupy the full stage, and that the prior scenes in each act may be played in the foreground.
Two of the scenes, II, 3, and III, 6, have nothing to do with the story and to save time may be omitted, though the latter has another importance, lightening with its idyllic atmosphere the squalor and bitterness of the last act. If it _is_ omitted, III, 4, and III, 5, might be played in reverse order.
The simplest arrangement of the stage would be a neutral proscenium, six or seven feet deep, pierced with doors. Behind this, different backwalls can be lowered, and all the interior scenes played in this shallow front space. On the back of the stage should be sloping ground covered with underbrush, and a path winding down through it. In the middle-stage can be set the properties for special scenes--a bench in a box-hedge for I, 2 and 3; a huge oak-trunk for I, 5; a garden wall with grass and violets for II, 6; the graveyard wall with Moritz’s grave for III, 2, etc. The swiftest possible sequence of scenes within the act is of prime importance.
ACT I
SCENE I.--_A pretty little room, with a window looking out on an early spring garden._ WENDLA’S _bed in one corner, wardrobe in the other, table and two chairs between. Doors just below bed and wardrobe._
WENDLA _stands at the foot of the bed, all dressed except for her frock, which hangs on the chair in front of her. Her mother stands on the other side of the table, with a long dress in her hands._
WENDLA--Why did you make the dress so long for me, mother?
MRS. BERGMANN--You’re fourteen years old to-day!
WENDLA--If I had known you were going to make my dress so long, I’d rather not have been fourteen.
MRS. BERGMANN--It isn’t too long, Wendla. What do you want? Can I help my girl’s growing two inches taller every spring? A girl as grown up as you can’t go round in a little princess-dress!
WENDLA--All the same, my little princess-dress looks better on me than that nightgown. Let me wear it just once more, mother! Just this summer! That penitence-frock will suit me just as well at fifteen as at fourteen: let’s hang it up till my =next= birthday! Now I’d only tread on the braid.
MRS. BERGMANN--I don’t know what I ought to say. I’d like so much to keep you this way, child,--just as you are. Other girls are overgrown and awkward at your age. You’re just the opposite. Who knows what you will be like when the others are fully developed?
WENDLA--Who knows? Perhaps I shan’t =be= at all.
MRS. BERGMANN--Child, child, what makes you think such things!
WENDLA--Don’t, mother dear; oh, don’t be sad.
MRS. BERGMANN--[_Kissing her._] My only darling!
WENDLA--They come to me so, night-times, when I can’t go to sleep. They don’t make me a bit sad, and I know I sleep better afterwards. Is it wrong, mother, to think about things like that?
MRS. BERGMANN--Go, dear, and hang the “penitence-frock” away, and put on your princess-dress again, God bless you! When I get the chance I’ll put another breadth of ruffles on the bottom of it.
WENDLA--[_Hanging the dress in the wardrobe._] No! Then I might as well be all of twenty right away!
MRS. BERGMANN--If only you don’t get too cold. In its time that little dress was plenty long enough for you, but now----
WENDLA--Now, with summer coming? Oh, mother, not even little children get diphtheria in their knees! Why are you so scary? At my age nobody freezes, least of all in the legs. Do you think it would be better if I got too hot, mother? Thank the good God if your darling doesn’t cut off her sleeves some morning and come to you at twilight without her shoes and stockings!--When I wear my penitence-frock I’ll dress like a fairy queen under it.... Don’t scold, motherkin,--nobody’ll see how, then!
CURTAIN
SCENE II.--_Sunday evening. A gravel walk in front of a park bench; shrubbery and tree-tops behind. MELCHIOR enters, followed by the other boys_.
MELCHIOR--I’m tired of that: I don’t want to any more.
OTTO--Then the rest of us can just as well stop, too. Have you done your work, Melchior?
MELCHIOR--Go on playing, why don’t you!
MORITZ--Where are you going?
MELCHIOR--For a walk.
GEORGE--It’ll be dark soon.
ROBERT--Have you done your work already?
MELCHIOR--And why shouldn’t I go for a walk in the dark?
ERNEST--Central America!--Louis XV!--Sixty lines of Homer!--Seven equations!
MELCHIOR--Damn the work!
GEORGE--Oh, if only Latin Comp. didn’t come to-morrow!
MORITZ--One can’t think of anything without some work coming in between!
OTTO--I’m going home.
GEORGE--I, too, home to work!
ERNEST--Me, too; me, too.
ROBERT--Good night, Melchior.
MELCHIOR--Sleep well!... [_All make off except_ MORITZ.] Gosh, I’d like to know what we’re in the world for!
MORITZ--School makes me wish I’d been a cabhorse sooner!--What do we go to school for? So that somebody can examine us. And what are we examined for? To make us flunk! Seven of us have got to flunk just because the classroom upstairs only holds sixty.--I’ve felt so queer since Christmas! Devil take me, if it weren’t for Papa I’d tie up my bundle this very night and be off to Altoona!
MELCHIOR--Let’s talk about something else. [_They go for a walk._]
[In practice, MELCHIOR can here fling himself down on the bench; MORITZ remain standing.]
MORITZ--Do you see the black cat there with its tail stuck up?
MELCHIOR--Do you believe in omens?
MORITZ--I don’t quite know.--It came from over there.--Means nothing!
MELCHIOR--I believe that’s a Charybdis everyone falls into who has struggled up out of the Scylla of religious nonsense. Let’s sit down under this beech. The warm spring wind is streaming over the mountains. I’d like to be a young Dryad in the woods up there letting herself be rocked and swung in the highest tree-tops all night long to-night....
MORITZ--Unbutton your vest, Melchior.
MELCHIOR--Ah, how it blows through one’s clothes!
MORITZ--It’s getting so jolly dark you can’t see your hand before your face. Where are you? [_He draws_ MELCHIOR _down beside him. Only their voices, from here on, come out of the darkness._] Don’t you believe too, Melchior, that modesty in people is just the effect of their bringing-up?
MELCHIOR--I started thinking about that just the day before yesterday. No, after all it seems to me to be deeply rooted in human nature. Imagine undressing completely before even your best friend! You wouldn’t do it unless he did it, too, at the same time. But it’s also more or less a matter of custom.
MORITZ--I’ve sometimes thought, if I have children, boys and girls, right from the start I’ll have them sleep together in the same room--if possible, on the same bed--and help each other twice a day to dress and undress,--and on hot days, boys and girls alike, let ’em wear nothing at all but a short tunic, white woolen with just a leather belt. It seems to me, if they grew up so, they’d surely, later, be more at ease than we are, usually....
MELCHIOR--Oh, I’m sure of that, Moritz!--The only question is, what if the girls should have children?
MORITZ--How do you mean--have children?
MELCHIOR--I believe there’s a kind of instinct in that matter. I believe, for instance, if you shut up a pair of kittens, male and female, and cut them off from any contact with the outer world--left them absolutely to their own impulses, that is--well, the female sooner or later would get pregnant, though neither she nor the male had anyone to imitate or show them how.
MORITZ--With animals--yes--it must happen all by itself.
MELCHIOR--With people, too, just the same! I ask you, Moritz,--if your boys are sleeping on the same bed as the girls, and all of a sudden the first masculine impulses stir in them.... I’d like to bet with anybody....
MORITZ--Yes, you may be right there. But all the same----
MELCHIOR--And with your girls it would be absolutely the same at the corresponding age. Not that a girl exactly--of course, one can’t tell so well ... at least, it would be natural to expect ... and their curiosity, too, would be there, to do its share.
MORITZ--One question by the way----
MELCHIOR--Well?
MORITZ--You’ll answer?
MELCHIOR--Surely.
MORITZ--True?
MELCHIOR--There’s my hand. Well, Moritz?
MORITZ--Have you written your theme yet?
MELCHIOR--Oh, speak out what you want to say! No one can hear us or see us.
MORITZ--You understand my children would be made to work all day in the yard or the garden, or play games that called for real physical exertion. They’ll have to ride and wrestle and climb, and of all things not sleep so soft at night as we do. We are awfully softened! I don’t believe people dream when they have hard beds!
MELCHIOR--I’m going to sleep from now till vintage time in just my hammock. I’ve shoved my bed behind the stove: they go together. Last winter I dreamt once that I whipped our Lolo till he couldn’t move a limb! That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever dreamt.--What makes you look at me so strangely?
MORITZ--Have you felt them yet?
MELCHIOR--What?
MORITZ--How did you phrase it?
MELCHIOR--Masculine impulses?
MORITZ--M-hm.
MELCHIOR--Yes indeed!
MORITZ--I too.
MELCHIOR--In fact I’ve known that quite a while--nearly a year.
MORITZ--It struck me like a bolt of lightning!
MELCHIOR--You had dreamt?
MORITZ--Oh, just a flash ... of legs in sky-blue tights climbing over the teacher’s desk--to be exact, I thought they were going to climb over it. I only got a glimpse of them.
MELCHIOR--George Zirschnitz dreamt of his =mother=.
MORITZ--Did he tell you that?
MELCHIOR--Out there on the gallows-path.
MORITZ--If you only knew what I’ve gone through since that night!
MELCHIOR--Qualms of conscience?
MORITZ--Qualms of conscience?--Pangs of death!
MELCHIOR--Good God....
MORITZ--I thought I was past cure. I thought I was suffering from some inward weakness.--I only began to feel easier when I set out to take notes on the memories of my life. Oh, yes, Melchior! the last three weeks have been a Gethsemane for me.
MELCHIOR--I had been more or less prepared for it beforehand. I felt a bit ashamed, but that was all.
MORITZ--And yet you’re almost a full year younger than me.
MELCHIOR--On that point, Moritz, I wouldn’t waste much thought. By all I can make out, there is no definite age for this phantom’s first appearance. You know that big Lämmermeier with the straw-colored hair and the big nose? He’s three years older than me, but Hansy Rilow says that to this very day he dreams of nothing but tarts and apricot jelly.
MORITZ--I ask you, how can Hansy Rilow tell about that?
MELCHIOR--He’s asked him.
MORITZ--He’s asked him?--I’d never have dared to ask anybody!
MELCHIOR--You just asked me, didn’t you?
MORITZ--Yes, I did!--Maybe Hansy had made his will too, beforehand!--Isn’t it a queer game the world plays with us?! And we’re supposed to be grateful! I don’t remember having felt the least desire for this sort of disturbance.--Why couldn’t I have been left sleeping quietly until everything was still again! Father and mother could have had a hundred better children. But here I am, with no idea how I got here, and now I must be responsible for not having stayed away!--Haven’t you sometimes thought about that too, Melchior: in what kind of a way exactly we got mixed up in this whirl?
MELCHIOR--Do you mean you don’t know that either, Moritz?
MORITZ--How should I know?--I see how the hens lay eggs and hear how Mama says she carried me under her heart; but is that enough?--And I remember being embarrassed even at five years old when someone turned up the queen of hearts, she was so décolleté. That feeling has gone; but to-day I can scarcely speak to any girl any more without something abominable coming into my head--and I swear to you, Melchior, I don’t know =what=!
MELCHIOR--I’ll tell you the whole thing. I’ve gotten it partly out of books, partly from pictures, partly from observations of nature. You’ll be surprised. It made me an atheist at first. I told George Zirschnitz about it, too. He wanted to tell Hansy Rilow, but Hansy had learned it all from his French governess when he was a kid.
MORITZ--I’ve gone through Meyer’s Abridged from A to Z. Words! just words and more words! Not one simple explanation! Oh, this reticence! What good to me is an encyclopædia that has nothing to say on the most vital question of all?
MELCHIOR--Did you ever see two dogs running about the streets?
MORITZ--No!--Don’t tell me anything yet--not to-day, Melchior! I’ve still got Central America and Louis XV before me, not to speak of the sixty lines of Homer, the seven equations, the Latin Comp.--I should lose out at everything to-morrow again. If I am to drudge successfully I must be as dull as an ox.
MELCHIOR--But come up to my room with me. In three-quarters of an hour I’ll have the Homer, the algebra, and =two= Latin Comp.’s. I’ll put a few harmless blunders into yours, and the thing’s done. Mama’ll make us some lemonade again, and we’ll talk comfortably about propagation.
MORITZ--I can’t!--I can’t talk comfortably about propagation! If you want to help me, give me your information in writing. Write down what you know. Make it as short and plain as you can, and stick it between my books to-morrow at recess. I’ll carry it home without knowing I have it, and come upon it sometime unexpectedly. I won’t be able to help skimming thru it, even if I’m tired.... If it’s absolutely necessary, you can draw something in the margin, too.
MELCHIOR--You’re like a girl.... But just as you like. It’ll be an interesting job for me all right.--One question, Moritz.
MORITZ--Hm?
MELCHIOR--Have you ever =seen= a girl?
MORITZ--Yes!
MELCHIOR--All?
MORITZ--Every bit!
MELCHIOR--I, too.--Then no illustrations will be necessary.
MORITZ--At the Shooting-meet, in Leilich’s Anatomical Museum. If it had come up, I’d have been chucked out of school. As beautiful as the daylight--and oh, so =true=!
MELCHIOR--I was with Mama in Frankfort last summer-- Are you going already, Moritz?
MORITZ--To get my work done.--Good night.
MELCHIOR--So long!
CURTAIN
SCENE III.--_A stormy afternoon._ MARTHA, WENDLA _and_ THEA _are coming along the path_.
MARTHA--How the water gets into your shoes!
WENDLA--How the wind whistles past your cheeks!
THEA--How your heart pounds!
WENDLA--Let’s go out to the bridge. Ilse said the river was full of bushes and trees. The boys have a raft on the water. They say Melchi Gabor nearly got drowned yesterday evening.
THEA--Oh, =he= can swim!
MARTHA--You bet he can, kid!
WENDLA--If he hadn’t been able to swim, I guess he’d have been really drowned.
THEA--Your braid’s coming out, Martha, your braid’s coming out!
MARTHA--Pooh, let it! It bothers me so all the time! I can’t wear my hair short, like you; I can’t wear it loose like Wendla; I can’t wear a bang; and at home I even have to put it up--all on account of my aunt!
WENDLA--I’ll bring scissors with me to-morrow to the confirmation-class. While you’re reciting “Well for him who erreth not” I’ll cut it off!
MARTHA--For God’s sake, Wendla! Papa’ll beat me to pieces, and Mama’ll lock me up three nights in the coal-hole!
WENDLA--What’ll he beat you with, Martha?
MARTHA--It often strikes me that they’d miss something, after all, if they didn’t have such a horrid little brat as I am.
THEA--Oh, my dear!
MARTHA--Aren’t you allowed to have a sky-blue ribbon thru the top of your chemise?
THEA--Pink satin! Mama thinks pink goes well with my pitch-black eyes.
MARTHA--Blue’s awfully becoming to me.--Well, Mama yanked me out of bed by the hair--this way; I fell with my hands out on the floor.--You see Mama prays with us night after night....
WENDLA--In your place I’d have run away from them long ago, out into the world.
MARTHA--There! That’s it, that’s just what I’m aiming at. That’s just it.--But she’d like to see me! Oh, she’d just like to see me! At any rate, I shan’t have anything to blame my =mother= for later on!
THEA--Huh--huh--
MARTHA--Can you possibly think, Thea, what Mama meant by that?
THEA--Not I-- Can you, Wendla?
WENDLA--I would simply have asked her.
MARTHA--I lay on the floor and shrieked and screamed. In comes Papa. Rip!--Off with the chemise! Out of the door with me! There now! Maybe I’d like to go down on the street like that, eh?...
WENDLA--Oh, Martha, that just can’t be true!
MARTHA--I froze. I told all about it. Well, I must sleep in the sack the whole night.
THEA--Never in my life could I sleep in a sack!
WENDLA--I really wish I could sleep in your sack =for= you sometime.
MARTHA--If only you’re not beaten----
THEA--But don’t you smother in it?
MARTHA--Your head stays out. It’s tied under your chin.
THEA--And then do they beat you?
MARTHA--No. Only when there’s something special.
WENDLA--What do they beat you =with=, Martha?
MARTHA--Oh, what--with anything handy.--Does your mother think it’s “disreputable” to eat a piece of bread in bed?
WENDLA--No, no.
MARTHA--I do believe they enjoy it, though, even if they never speak of that.--When once I have children I’ll let them grow up like the weeds in our flower-garden. No one bothers himself about =them=, and they stand so high, so thick!--while the roses in the beds are flowering worse and worse each summer.
THEA--When _I_ have children I’ll dress them all in rosy pink--pink hats, pink dresses, pink shoes. Only their stockings--their stockings will be black as night! Then when I go walking I’ll have them march ahead of me.--And you, Wendla?
WENDLA--How do you two know that you’ll have any?
THEA--Well, why shouldn’t we have some?
MARTHA--It’s true Aunt Euphemia hasn’t any.
THEA--Silly! That’s because she’s not married!
WENDLA--Aunty Bauer was married three times, and hasn’t got one.
MARTHA--If you have any, Wendla, which would you rather--boys or girls?
WENDLA--Boys! Boys!
THEA--Me too--boys!
MARTHA--Me too--better twenty boys than three girls.
THEA--Girls are tiresome.
MARTHA--If I weren’t a girl already, I surely wouldn’t want to be one any more!
WENDLA--That’s a matter of taste, I guess, Martha. I’m glad every day that I’m a girl. I wouldn’t exchange with a prince, believe me.--But that’s why I’d only want boys.
THEA--But that’s nonsense, Wendla, rank nonsense!
WENDLA--But look here, child,--mustn’t it be a thousand times more uplifting to be loved by a man than by a girl?
THEA--But you wouldn’t say that forest-inspector Pfälle loved Melitta more than she loves him!