VII
HERMANN SUDERMANN
Walking along Michigan Avenue in Chicago one fine day, I stopped infront of the recently completed hall devoted to music. On the facade ofthis building had been placed five names, supposed to represent the fivegreatest composers that the world has thus far seen. It was worth whileto pause a moment and to reflect that those five men were all Germans.Germany's contribution to music is not only greater than that of anyother nation, it is probably greater than that of all the othercountries of the earth put together, and multiplied several times. Inmany forms of literary art,--especially perhaps in drama and in lyricalpoetry,--Germany has been eminent; and she has produced the greatestliterary genius since Shakespeare. To-day the Fatherland remains theintellectual workshop of the world; men and women flock thither to studysubjects as varied as Theology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Music. Allthis splendid achievement in science and in culture makes poverty in thefield of prose fiction all the more remarkable. For the fact is, thatthe total number of truly great world-novels written in the Germanlanguage, throughout its entire history, can be counted on the fingersof one hand.
In the making of fiction, from the point of view solely of quality,Germany cannot stand an instant's comparison with Russia, whose fourgreat novelists have immensely enriched the world; nor with GreatBritain, where masterpieces have been produced for nearly two hundredyears; nor with France, where the names of notable novels crowd into thememory; and even America, so poor in literature and in genuine culture,can show at least one romance that stands higher than anything which hascome from beyond the Rhine. Germany has no reason to feel ashamed of herbarrenness in fiction, so pre-eminent is she in many other and perhapsnobler forms of art. But it is interesting to enquire for a moment intopossible causes of this phenomenon, and to see if we can discover whyTeutonic fiction is, relatively speaking, so bad.
One dominant fault in most German novels is a lack of true proportion.The principle of selection, which differentiates a painting from aphotograph, and makes the artist an Interpreter instead of a Recorder,has been forgotten or overlooked. The high and holy virtue of Omissionshould be cultivated more sedulously. The art of leaving out is the artthat produces the real illusion--where, by the omission of unessentialdetails, things that are salient can be properly emphasised. And whatGerman novels lack is emphasis. This cannot be obtained by merelyspacing the letters in descriptions and in conversations; it can bereached only by remembering that prose fiction is as truly an art formas a Sonata. Instead of novels, the weary reader gets long and tiresomebiographies of rather unimportant persons; people whom we should not inthe least care to know in real life. We follow them dejectedly from thecradle to the grave. Matters of no earthly consequence either to thereader, to the hero, or to the course of the plot, are given as muchprominence as great events. In _Joern Uhl_, to take a recentillustration, the novel is positively choked by trivial detail. Despitethe enormous vogue of this story, it does not seem destined to live. Itwill fall by its own weight.
Another great fault is an excess of sentimentality. For the Germans, whodelight in destroying old faiths of humanity, and who remorselesslyhammer away at the shrines where we worship in history and religion,are, notwithstanding their iconoclasm, the most sentimental people inthe world. Many second-and third-rate German novels are ruined for anAnglo-Saxon reader by a lush streak of sentimental gush, a curiousblemish in so intellectual and sceptical a race. This excess of softmaterial appears in a variety of forms; but to take one commonmanifestation of it, I should say that the one single object that hasdone more than anything else to weaken and to destroy German fiction, isthe Moon. The Germans are, by nature and by training, scientific; andwhat their novels need is not the examination of literary critics, butthe thoughtful attention of astronomers. The Moon is overworked, andneeds a long rest. An immense number of pages are illumined by itschaste beams, for this satellite is both active and ubiquitous. Itbehaves, it must be confessed, in a dramatic manner, but in a wayhopelessly at variance with its methodical and orderly self. In otherwords, the Moon, in German fiction, is not astronomical, but decorative.I have read some stories where it seems to rise on almost every page,and is invariably full. When Stevenson came to grief on the Moon in_Prince Otto_, he declared that the next time he wrote a novel, heshould use an almanac. He unwittingly laid his finger on a weak spot inGerman fiction. The almanac is, after all, what is most sorely needed.Even Herr Sudermann, for whom we entertain the highest respect, placesin _Es War_ a young crescent Moon in the eastern sky! But it is in hisstory, _Der Katzensteg_, that the lunar orb plays its heaviest role. Itrises so constantly that after a time the very words "_der Mond_" geton one's nerves. At the climax, when the lover looks down on the stream,he there beholds the dead body of his sweetheart. By some scientificprocess, "unknown to me and which 'twere well to know," she is floatingon her back in the water, while the Moon illumines her face, leaving therest of her remains in darkness. This constitutes a striking picture;and is also of material assistance to the man in locating thewhereabouts of the girl. He descends, rescues her from the flood, anddigs a grave in which to bury her. The Moon actively and dramaticallytakes part in this labour. Finally, he has lowered the corpse into thebottom of the cavity. The Moon now shines into the grave in such amanner that the dead woman's face is bright with its rays, whereas therest of her body and the walls of the tomb are in obscurity. Thisphenomenon naturally makes a powerful impression on the mourner's mind.
If such things can happen in the works of a writer like Sudermann, onecan easily imagine the reckless behaviour of the Moon in the common runof German fiction. The Moon, in fact, is in German novels what thecalcium light is in American melodrama. If one "assists" at aperformance of, let us say, _No Wedding Bells for Her_, and can take hiseye a moment from the stage, he may observe up in the back gallery aperson working the calcium light, and directing its powerful beams insuch a fashion that no matter where the heroine moves, they dwellexclusively on her face, so that we may contemplate her featuresconvulsed with emotion. Now in _Der Katzensteg_, the patient Moonfollows the heroine about with much the same assiduity, and accuracy ofaim. Possibly Herr Sudermann, since the composition of that work, hasreally consulted an almanac; for in _Das hohe Lied_, the Moon ispractically ignored, and never gets a fair start. Toward the end, I feltsure that it would appear, and finally, when I came to the words, "Theweary disk of the full moon (_matte Vollmondscheibe_) hung somewhere inthe dark sky," I exclaimed, "Art thou there, truepenny?"--but the nextsentence showed that the author was playing fast and loose with his oldfriend. "It was the illuminated clock of a railway-station." CanSudermann have purposely set a trap for his moon-struck constituency?
From the astronomical point of view, I have seldom read a novel thatcontained so much moonlight as _Der Katzensteg_, and I have never readone that contained so little as _Das hohe Lied_. Perhaps Sudermann isnow quietly protesting against what he himself may regard as a nationalcalamity, for it is little less than that. Be this as it may, the lackof proportion and the excess of sentimentality are two great evils thathave militated against the final success of German fiction.
Hermann Sudermann was born at a little village in East Prussia, near theRussian frontier. The natal landscape is dull, depressing, gloomy, andthe skies are low and threatening. The clouds return after the rain.Dame Care has spread her grey wings over the flat earth, and neither thescenery nor the quality of the air are such as to inspire hope andvigour. The boy's parents were desperately poor, and the bitterstruggles with poverty so frequently described in his novels arereminiscent of early experiences. In the beautiful and affectionateverses, which constitute the dedication to his father and mother, andwhich are placed at the beginning of _Frau Sorge_, these privations ofthe Sudermann household are dwelt on with loving tenderness. At the ageof fourteen, the child was forced to leave school, and was apprenticedto a chemist--something that recalls chapters in the lives of Keats andof Ibsen. But, like most boys who really long for a g
ood education,Sudermann obtained it; he continued his studies in private, and laterreturned to school at Tilsit. In 1875 he attended the University atKoenigsberg, and in 1877 migrated to the University of Berlin. His firstimpulse was to become a teacher, and he spent several years in a widerange of studies in philosophy and literature. Then he turned tojournalism, and edited a political weekly. He finally forsook journalismfor literature, and for the last twenty years he has been known in everypart of the intellectual world.
Like Mr. J. M. Barrie, Signor D'Annunzio, and other contemporaries,Sudermann has achieved high distinction both as a novelist and as adramatist. Indeed, one of the signs of the times is the recruiting ofplaywrights from the ranks of trained experts in prose fiction. It mayperhaps be regarded as one more evidence of the approaching supremacy ofthe Drama, which many literary prophets have foretold. After he hadpublished a small collection of "Zwanglose Geschichten," called _ImZwielicht_, Sudermann issued his first real novel, _Dame Care_ (_FrauSorge_). This was followed by two tales bound together under the heading_Geschwister_, one of them being the morbidly powerful story, _The Wish_(_Der Wunsch_). Soon after came _Der Katzensteg_, translated intoEnglish with the title, _Regina_. Then, after a surprisingly shortinterval, came his first play, _Die Ehre_ (1889), which appeared in thesame year as his rival Hauptmann's first drama, _Vor Sonnenaufgang_._Die Ehre_ created a tremendous sensation, and Sudermann was excitedlyread and discussed far beyond the limits of his native land. He reacheda wild climax of popularity a few years later with his play _Heimat_(English version _Magda_), which has been presented by the greatestactresses in the world, and is familiar to everybody. With the exceptionof the long novel, _Es War_ (English translation, _The Undying Past_),which appeared in 1894, Sudermann devoted himself exclusively to thestage for almost twenty years, and most of us believed he had definitelyabandoned novel-writing. From 1889 to 1909, he produced nineteen plays,nearly every one of them successful. Then last year he astonishedeverybody by publishing a novel of over six hundred closely printedpages, called _Das hohe Lied_, translated into English as _The Song ofSongs_. This has had an enormous success, and for 1908-1909, is the bestselling work of fiction in the large cities of Germany.
The immense vogue of his early plays had much to do with the widecirculation of his previously published novels. Despite the nowuniversally acknowledged excellence of _Frau Sorge_, it attracted, atthe time of its appearance, very little attention. It is going beyondthe facts to say with one German critic that "it dropped stillborn fromthe press"; but it did not give the author anything like the fame hedeserved. After the first night of _Die Ehre_, the public becameinquisitive. A search was made for everything the new author hadwritten, and the two novels _Frau Sorge_, and the very recent_Katzensteg_, were fairly pounced upon. The small stock on hand wasimmediately exhausted, and the presses poured forth edition afteredition. At first _Der Katzensteg_ received the louder tribute ofpraise; it was hailed by many otherwise sane critics as the greatestwork of fiction that Germany had ever produced. But after the tumult andthe shouting died, the people recognised the superiority of the formernovel. To-day _Der Katzensteg_ is, comparatively speaking, little read,and one seldom hears it mentioned. _Frau Sorge_, on the other hand, hasnot only attained more editions than any other work, either play ornovel, by its author, but it bears the signs that mark a classic. It isone of the very few truly great German novels, and it is possible thatthis early written story will survive everything that Sudermann hassince produced, which is saying a good deal. It looks like a fixed star.
Sudermann's four novels, _Frau Sorge_, _Der Katzensteg_, _Es War_, and_Das hohe Lied_, show a steady progression in Space as well as in Time.The first is the shortest; the second is larger; the third is a longbook; the fourth is a leviathan. If novelists were heard for their muchspeaking, the order of merit in this output would need no comment. Butthe first of these is almost as superior in quality as it is inferior insize. When the author prepared it for the press, he was an absolutelyunknown man. Possibly he put more work on it than went into the otherbooks, for it apparently bears the marks of careful revision. It is agreat exception to the ordinary run of German novels in its completefreedom from superfluous and clogging detail. Turgenev used to write hisstories originally at great length, and then reduce them to a smallfraction of their original bulk, before offering them to the public. Wethus receive the quintessence of his thought and of his art. Now _FrauSorge_ has apparently been subjected to some such process. Much of thehuge and varied cargo of ideas, reflections, comments, and speculationscarried by the regulation German freight-novel of heavy draught, hashere been jettisoned. Then the craft itself has been completelyremodelled, and the final result is a thing of grace and beauty.
_Frau Sorge_ is an admirable story in its absolute unity, in itsharmonious development, and in its natural conclusion. I do not know ofany other German novel that has a more attractive outline. It ought toserve as an example to its author's countrymen.
It is in a way an anatomy of melancholy. It is written throughout in theminor key, and the atmosphere of melancholy envelops it with as muchnatural charm as though it were a beautiful piece of music. The book isprofoundly sad, without any false sentiment and without any revoltingcoarseness. It is as far removed from the silly sentimentality socommon in Teutonic fiction, as it is from the filth of Zola or of Gorky.The deep melancholy of the story is as natural to it as a cloudy sky.The characters live and move and have their being in this grey medium,which fits them like a garment; just as in the early tales of Bjoernsonwe feel the strong sunshine and the sharp air. The early environment ofthe young author, the depressing landscape of his boyhood days, thedaily fight with grim want in his father's house--all these elements arefaithfully reflected here, and lend their colour to the narrative. Andthis surrounding melancholy, though it overshadows the whole book, ismade to serve an artistic purpose. It contrasts favourably with Ibsen'sharsh bitterness, with Gorky's maudlin dreariness, and with thehysterical outbursts of pessimism from the manikins who try to see lifefrom the mighty shoulders of Schopenhauer. At the very heart of the workwe find no sentiment of revolt against life, and no cry of despair, buttrue tenderness and broad sympathy. It is the clear expression of arich, warm nature.
The story is realistic, with a veil of Romanticism. The various scenesof the tale seem almost photographically real. The daily life on thefarm, the struggles with the agricultural machine, the peat-bogs, thechildish experiences at school, the brutality of the boys, the graphicpicture of the funeral,--these would not be out of place in a genuineexperimental novel. But we see everything through an imaginative medium,like the impalpable silver-grey mist on the paintings of Andrea delSarto. The way in which the difficult conception of _Frau Sorge_--partwoman, part vague abstraction--is managed, reminds one in its shadowynature of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This might have been done clumsily, as ina crude fairy-tale, but it exhibits the most subtle art. The firstdescription of Frau Sorge by the mother, the boy's first glimpse of thesupernatural woman, his father's overcoat, the Magdalene in church, theflutter of Frau Sorge's wings,--all this gives us a realistic story, andyet takes us into the borderland between the actual and the unknown.From one point of view we have a plain narrative of fact; from anotheran imaginative poem, and at the end we feel that both have beenmarvellously blended.
The simplicity of the style gives the novel a high rank in German prose.It has that naive quality wherein the Germans so greatly excel writersin other languages. It is a surprising fact that this tongue, so full ofdifficulties for foreigners, and which seems often so confused andinvolved, can, in the hands of a master, be made to speak like a littlechild. The literary style of _Frau Sorge_ is naive without ever beingtrivial or absurd. It is pleasant to observe, by the way, that to someextent this book is filling the place in American educational programmesof German that _L'Abbe Constantin_ has for so long a time occupied inearly studies of French. Both novels are masterpieces of simplicity.
But what we remember the most
vividly, years after we have finished thisstory, is not its scenic background, nor its unearthly charm, nor thegrace of its style; it is the character and temperament of the boy-hero.It is the first, and possibly the best, of Sudermann's remarkablepsychological studies. The whole interest is centred in young Paul. Heis not exactly the normal type of growing boy,--compare him with TomSawyer!--but because he is not ordinary, it does not follow that he isunnatural. To many thoroughly respectable Philistine readers, he mayappear not only abnormal, but impossible; but the book was not intendedfor Philistines. I believe that this boy is absolutely true to life,though I do not recall at this moment any other novel where thisparticular kind of youth occupies the centre of the stage.
For _Frau Sorge_ is a careful study and analysis of _bashfulness_, acharacteristic that causes more exquisite torture to many boys and girlsthan is commonly recognised. Many of us, when we laugh at a boy'sbashfulness, are brutal, when we mean to be merely jocular. Paul isintensely self-conscious. He is not at all like a healthy, practical,objective child, brought up in a large family, and surrounded by thenoisy progeny of neighbours. His life is perforcedly largely subjective.He would give anything could he associate with schoolmates with the easethat makes a popular boy sure of his welcome. His accursed timiditymakes him invariably show his most awkward and unattractive side. He isnot in the least a _Weltkind_. He has none of the coarseness and none ofthe clever shirking of work and study so characteristic of the perfectlynormal small boy. He does his duty _without any reservations_, andwithout understanding why. The narrative of his mental life is deeplypathetic. It is impossible to read the book without a lump in thethroat.
Paul is finally saved from himself by the redeeming power of love. Thelittle heroine Elsbeth is shadowy,--a merely conventional picture ofhair, complexion, and eyes,--but she is, after all, _das Ewigweibliche_,and draws Paul upward and onward. She rescues him from the Slough ofDespond. There is no touch of cynicism here. Sudermann shows us thehealing power of a good woman's heart.
The next novel, _Der Katzensteg_, is more pretentious than _Frau Sorge_,but not nearly so fine a book. It abounds in dramatic scenes, and glowswith fierce passion. It seems more like a melodrama than a story, andit is not surprising that its author immediately discovered--perhaps inthe very composition of this romance--his genius for the stage. It is ahistorical novel, but the chief interest, as always in Sudermann, ispsychological. The element of Contrast--so essential to true drama, andwhich is so strikingly employed in _Die Ehre_, _Sodoms Ende_, _Heimat_,and _Johannes_--is the mainspring of _Der Katzensteg_. We have here theirrepressible conflict between the artificial and the natural. Theheroine of the story is a veritable child of nature, with absolutelyelemental passions, as completely removed from civilisation as a wildbeast. She was formerly the mistress of the hero's father, and for along time is naturally regarded with loathing by the son. But shetransfers her dog-like fidelity from the dead parent to the morbid scionof the house. The more cruelly the young man treats her, the deeperbecomes her love for him. Nor does he at first suspect the hold she hason his heart. He imagines himself to be in love with the pastor'sdaughter in the village, who has been brought up like a hothouse plant.This simpering, affected girl, who has had all the advantages of carefulnurture and education, is throughout the story contrasted with the wildflower, Regina. The contrast is thorough--mental, moral, physical. Theeducated girl has no real mind; she has only accomplishments. Hermorality has nothing to do with the heart; it is a bundle ofconventions. And finally, while Regina has a magnificent, voluptuousphysique, the hero discovers--by the light of the moon--that the lady ofhis dreams is too thin! This is unendurable. He rushes away from thetown to the heights where stands his lonely dwelling, cursing himselffor his folly in being so long blind to the wonderful charm and devotionof the passionate girl who, he feels sure, is waiting for him. Hehastens on the very wings of love, wild with his new-found happiness.But the very fidelity of the child of nature has caused her death. Shestood out on the bridge--_der Katzensteg_--to warn her lover of hisdanger. There she is shot by her drunken father, and the impatient loversees her dead body in the stream below.
Now he has leisure to reflect on what a fool he has been. He sees howmuch nobler are natural passions than artificial conventions. Regina hadlived "on the other side of good and evil," knowing and caring nothingfor the standards of society. The entire significance of the novel issummed up in this paragraph:--
"And as he thought and pondered, it seemed to him as if the clouds which separate the foundations of human being from human consciousness" (that is, things as they are from our conceptions of them,--_den Boden des menschlichen Seins vom menschlichen Bewusstsein_) "were dispersed, and he saw a space deeper than men commonly see, into the depths of the unconscious. That which men call Good and Bad, moved restless in the clouds around the surface; below, in dreaming strength, lay the _Natural_ (_das Natuerliche_). 'Whom Nature has blessed,' he said to himself, 'him she lets safely grow in her dark depths and allows him to struggle boldly toward the light, without the clouds of Wisdom and Error surrounding and bewildering him.'"
But there is nothing new or original in this doctrine, however daring itmay be. One can find it all in Nietzsche and in Rousseau. The best thingabout the novel is that it once more illustrates Sudermann's sympathyfor the outcast and the despised.
An extraordinarily powerful study in morbid psychology is shown in oneof his short stories, called _Der Wunsch_. The tale is told backward. Itbegins with the discovery of a horrible suicide, the explanation ofwhich is furnished to the prostrated lover by the dead woman'smanuscript. A man and his wife, at first happily married, encounter thedreadful obstacles of poverty and disease; the fatal illness of his wifeplunges the husband into a hard, bitter melancholy. From this he ispartially saved by the appearance of his wife's younger sister on thescene, who comes to take care of the sick woman. The close companionshipof the two, previously fond of each other, and now united daily by theircare of the invalid, results in love; but both are absolutely loyal tothe suffering wife. They cannot help thinking, however, of the wonderfulhappiness that might be theirs, were the man free; nevertheless, they doeverything possible to solace the last hours of the woman for whom theyfeel an immense compassion. One night, as the sister watches at thebedside, and gazes on the face of her sister, she suddenly feels theuncontrollable and fatal _wish_--"Would that she might die!" She is sosmitten with remorse that after the death of the invalid she commitssuicide. For although her wish had nothing to do with this event, shenevertheless regards herself as a murderer, and goes to self-execution.The physician remarks that this psychological _wish_ is not uncommon;that during his professional services he has often seen it legiblywritten on the faces of relatives by the bedside--sometimes actuated byavarice, sometimes by other forms of personal greed.
The next regular novel, _Es War_, is the study of a past sin on a man'scharacter, temperament, and conduct. The hero, Leo, has committedadultery with the wife of a disagreeable husband, and, being challengedby the latter to a duel, has killed him. Thus having broken two of thecommandments, he departs for South America, where for four years helives a joyous, care-free, savage existence, with murder and sensualitya regular part of the day's work. It is perhaps a little hard on SouthAmerica that Leo could live there in such liberty and return to Germanyunscathed by the arm of the law; but this is essential to the story. Hereturns a kind of Superman, rejoicing in his magnificent health andabsolutely determined to repent nothing. He will not allow the past toobscure his happiness. But unfortunately his friend Ulrich, whom he hasloved since childhood with an affection passing the love of women, hasmarried the guilty widow, in blissful unconsciousness of his friend'sguilt. And here the story opens. It is a long, depressing, but intenselyinteresting tale. At the very close, when it seems that wholesaletragedy is inevitable, the clouds lift, and Leo, who has found the Paststronger than he, regains something of the cheerfulness thatcharacterise
s his first appearance in the narrative. Nevertheless _eswar_; the Past cannot be lightly tossed aside or forgotten. It comesnear wrecking the lives of every important character in the novel. Yetthe idea at the end seems to be that although sin entails fearfulpunishment, and the scars can never be obliterated, it is possible totriumph over it and find happiness once more. The most beautiful andimpressive thing in _Es War_ is the friendship between the two men--sodifferent in temperament and so passionately devoted to each other. Alarge group of characters is splendidly kept in hand, and each isindividual and clearly drawn. One can never forget the gluttonous,wine-bibbing Parson, who comes eating and drinking, but who is a terrorto publicans and sinners.
Last year appeared _Das hohe Lied_, which, although it lacks the morbidhorror of much of Sudermann's work, is the most pessimistic book he hasever written. The irony of the title is the motive of the whole novel.Between the covers of this thick volume we find the entire detailedlife-history of a woman. She passes through much debauchery, and wefollow her into many places where we should hesitate to penetrate inreal life. But the steps in her degradation are not put in, as they sooften are in Guy de Maupassant, merely to lend spice to the narrative;every event has a definite influence on the heroine's character. Thestory, although very long, is strikingly similar to that in a recentsuccessful American play, _The Easiest Way_. Lilly Czepanek is notnaturally base or depraved. The manuscript roll of her father's musicalcomposition, _Das hohe Lied_, which she carries with her from childhooduntil her final submission to circumstances, and which saves her bodyfrom suicide but not her soul from death, is emblematic of the _elan_which she has in her heart. With the best intentions in the world, withnoble, romantic sentiments, with a passionate desire to be a rescuingangel to the men and women whom she meets, she gradually sinks in themire, until, at the end, her case is hopeless. She strugglesdesperately, but each struggle finds her stock of resistance reduced.She always ends by taking the easiest way. Like a person in a quicksand,every effort to escape sinks the body deeper; or, like a drowning man,the more he raises his hands to heaven, the more speedy is hisdestruction. Much of Lilly's degradation is caused by what she believesto be an elevating altruistic impulse. And when she finally meets theonly man in her whole career who respects her in his heart, who reallymeans well by her, and whose salvation she can accomplish along with herown,--one single evening, where she begins with the best of intentionsand with a sincere effort toward a higher plane, results in completedamnation. Then, like the heroine in _The Easiest Way_, she determinesto commit suicide, and really means to do it. But the same weakness thathas made it hitherto impossible for her to triumph over seriousobstacles, prevents her from taking this last decisive step. As shehears the splash of her talisman in the cold, dark water, she realisesthat she is not the stuff of which heroines are made, either in life orin death.
"And as she heard that sound, then she knew instantly that she would _never_ do it.--No indeed! Lilly Czepanek was _no_ Heroine. _No_ martyr of her love was Lilly Czepanek. No Isolde, who in the determination not to be, sees the highest self-assertion. She was only a poor brittle, crushed, broken thing, who must drag along through her days as best she can."
And with this realisation she goes wearily back to a rich lover she haddefinitely forsaken, knowing that in saving her life she has now lost itfor ever.
This is the last page of the story, but unfortunately it does not endhere. Herr Sudermann has chosen to add one paragraph after the word"_Schluss_." By this we learn that in the spring of the following yearthe aforesaid rich lover _marries_ Lilly, and takes her on a bridal tripto Italy, which all her life had been in her dreams the celestialcountry. She is thus saved from the awful fate of the streets, whichduring the whole book had loomed threatening in the distance. But thisending leaves us completely bewildered and depressed. It seems to implythat, after all, these successive steps in moral decline do not makemuch difference, one way or the other; for at the very beginning of hercareer she could not possibly have hoped for any better material fatethan this. The reader not only feels cheated; he feels that the moralelement in the story, which through all the scenes of vice has been madeclear, is now laughed at by the author. This is why I call the book themost pessimistic of all Sudermann's writings. A novel may take usthrough woe and sin, and yet not produce any impression of cynicism;but one that makes a careful, serious study of subtle moral decaythrough over six hundred pages, and then implies at the end that thedistinction between vice and virtue is, after all, a matter of noconsequence, leaves an impression for which the proverbial "bad taste inthe mouth" is utterly inadequate to describe. Some years ago, ProfessorHeller, in an admirable book on Modern German Literature, remarked, in acomparison between Hauptmann and Sudermann, that the former has noworking theory of life, which the latter possessed. That Hauptmann'sdramas offer no solution, merely giving sordid wretchedness; whileSudermann shows the conquest of environment by character. Or, as Mr.Heller puts it, there is the contrast between the "driving and thedrifting." I think this distinction in the main will justify itself toanyone who makes a thoughtful comparison of the work of these tworemarkable men. Despite the depreciation of Sudermann and the idolatryof Hauptmann, an attitude so fashionable among German critics atpresent, I believe that the works of the former have shown a strongergrasp of life. But the final paragraph of _Das hohe Lied_ is astaggering blow to those of us who have felt that Sudermann had somekind of a _Weltanschauung_. It is like Chopin's final movement in hisgreat Sonata; mocking laughter follows the solemn tones of the FuneralMarch.
Up to this last bad business, _Das hohe Lied_ exhibits thatextraordinary power of psychological analysis that we have come toexpect from Sudermann. Lilly, apart from her personal beauty, is not,after all, an interesting girl; her mind is thoroughly shallow andcommonplace. Nor are the numerous adventures through which she passesparticularly interesting. And yet the long book is by no means dull, andone reads it with steady attention. The reason for this becomes clear,after some reflexion. Not only are we absorbed by the contemplation ofso masterly a piece of mental analysis, but what interests us most isthe constant attempt of Lilly to analyse herself. We often wonder howpeople appear to themselves. The unspoken dialogues between Lilly andher own soul are amazingly well done. She is constantly surprised byherself, constantly bewildered by the fact that what she thought was oneset of motives, turns out to be quite otherwise. All this comes to agreat climax in the scene late at night when she writes first oneletter, then another--each one meaning to be genuinely confessional.Each letter is to give an absolutely faithful account of her life, witha perfectly truthful depiction of her real character. Now the twoletters are so different that in one she appears to be a low-livedadventuress, and in the other a noble woman, deceived through what isnoblest in her. Finally she tears both up, for she realises thatalthough each letter gives the facts, neither tells the truth. And thenshe sees that the truth cannot be told; that life is far too complex tobe put into language.
In the attempts of German critics years ago to "classify" Sudermann, hewas commonly placed in one of the three following groups. Many insistedthat he was merely a Decadent, whose pleasure it was to deal inunhealthy social problems. That his interest in humanity waspathological. Others held that he was a fierce social Reformer, a kindof John the Baptist, who wished to reconstruct modern society alongbetter lines, and who was therefore determined to make society realiseits own rottenness. He was primarily a Satirist, not a Decadent.Professor Calvin Thomas quoted (without approbation) Professor Litzmannof Bonn, who said that Sudermann was "a born satirist, not one of thetame sort who only tickle and scratch, but one of the stamp of Juvenal,who swings his scourge with fierce satisfaction so that the blood startsfrom the soft, voluptuous flesh." A reading of _Das hohe Lied_ willconvince anyone that Sudermann, wherever he is, is not among theprophets. Finally, there were many critics who at the very startrecognised Sudermann as primarily an artist, who chooses to paint theaspects of life that inter
est him. This is undoubtedly the trueviewpoint. We may regret that he prefers to analyse human characters inmorbid and abnormal development, but that, after all, is his affair, andwe do not have to read him unless we wish to. Professor Thomas, in anadmirable article on _Das Glueck im Winkel_, contributed in 1895 to theNew York _Nation_, said, "Sudermann is a man of the world, apsychologist, and an artist, not a voice crying in the wilderness. Theimmortality of Juvenal or Jeremiah would not be to his taste." It isvain to quarrel with the direction taken by genius; however much we maydeplore its course. Sudermann is one of the greatest, if not thegreatest, of Germany's living writers, and every play or novel from hispen contains much material for serious thought.