Anarchism and Other Essays [90]
in Magda's defiant words of the woman grown to conscious independence of thought and action: ". . .I'll say what I think of you--of you and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you that I must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold upon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increase my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years? Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built up my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become what I am."
The general theme of HEIMAT was not original. It had been previously treated by a master hand in FATHERS AND SONS. Partly because Turgeniev's great work was typical rather of Russian than universal conditions, and still more because it was in the form of fiction, the influence of FATHERS AND SONS was limited to Russia. But HEIMAT, especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world factor.
The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG*, refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth, both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy, and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit parents.
---------- * BEFORE SUNRISE. ----------
During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmann stands a colossal figure before the world.
When DIE WEBER* first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists, "workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!"
---------- * THE WEAVERS. ----------
Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J'ACCUSE!
Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this drama that capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that wealth can not be hoarded except through the channels of poverty, hunger, and cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lest the victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is the purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the oppressed; and that, indeed, was the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann in depicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia. Human beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning enough for bread and fuel; human beings living in broken, wretched huts half covered with snow, and nothing but tatters to protect them from the cold; infants covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure; pregnant women in the last stages of consumption. Victims of a benevolent Christian era, without life, without hope, without warmth. Ah, yes, it was too much!
Hauptmann's dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions, he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental
The general theme of HEIMAT was not original. It had been previously treated by a master hand in FATHERS AND SONS. Partly because Turgeniev's great work was typical rather of Russian than universal conditions, and still more because it was in the form of fiction, the influence of FATHERS AND SONS was limited to Russia. But HEIMAT, especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world factor.
The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG*, refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth, both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy, and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit parents.
---------- * BEFORE SUNRISE. ----------
During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmann stands a colossal figure before the world.
When DIE WEBER* first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists, "workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!"
---------- * THE WEAVERS. ----------
Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J'ACCUSE!
Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this drama that capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that wealth can not be hoarded except through the channels of poverty, hunger, and cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lest the victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is the purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the oppressed; and that, indeed, was the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann in depicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia. Human beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning enough for bread and fuel; human beings living in broken, wretched huts half covered with snow, and nothing but tatters to protect them from the cold; infants covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure; pregnant women in the last stages of consumption. Victims of a benevolent Christian era, without life, without hope, without warmth. Ah, yes, it was too much!
Hauptmann's dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions, he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental