The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This translation is Volume 31 of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner and from Bn 31.2.21. This is a first English translation, revised as of June, 2016.

We are now living in the time of reformation. The “people” want, from the bottom up, to bring about new conditions of governance from above down. Therefore, one should not be surprised when thoughts of reformation emerge from various quarters regarding the most conservative institutions of our public life: the universities. I am not speaking of such superfluous things as the so-called “Lex Arons.” It will be a harmless law, if not abused. But what law does not give rise to abuse! If one abuses this law, then it will be harmful; if one does not abuse it, then it is unnecessary. But it is futile constantly to pose the question to the legislative assemblies: “Toward what end?” After all, one also had the wish to do something, to speak about something, and ... to need to reform something. I would like to speak about something else, which appears to me important because it originates from a man who has experience in the relevant area, and whose occupation it is to generate improvement in one sphere to which he has devoted himself with all his powers. Ernst Bernheim has just published a pamphlet that deals with the theme of University Education and the Demands of the Present Time. The author knows how to uncover deeply-seated detrimental tendencies. Detrimental tendencies that are known. For he proceeds from the notion that “today” students skip class more often than was the case in any previous time, and that this, measured by the most modest of standards, is desirable. And—certainly in contrast to many of his colleagues—the author does not seek for the cause of this in the students themselves, but rather in the peculiarities of university education. He discovers that the lecture courses for the students have become too uninteresting. He finds the reason for this fact in the trend toward specialization in the sciences, which currently necessitates that the lecturers compose their so-called private lectures from narrow areas of study involving the elaboration of infinite details.

Earlier, such a course would cover, for example, general world history, general history of ancient times, of the Middle Ages, and of more recent times; now hardly anyone undertakes to provide such courses of study; one lectures on the history of the Middle Ages, for example, in particular fragments, such as the history of the migrations of peoples, of the time of the German Caesar, from the Interregnum until the Reformation—indeed, in still shorter fragments; in addition, constitutional history, economic history, church and art history are studied in separate colleges. Now this is very well and good for one who wants to train as a researcher and—to stay with our example—has chosen to take something of the Middle Ages into his field of work; but one who intends to become a teacher and wants to take his state examination in history sees himself so overwhelmed with this kind of lecture course—in which he must get to know antiquity, the modern era, etc., in the same manner—that he does not know which way to turn. At first, he sets out with the confidence of a newcomer—boldly taking on five, six, seven private lectures; but soon his strength does not suffice to be attentive and taking notes for so many hours a day. In the best case, one will be so sensible as to abandon several of the courses completely and limit oneself to the regular attendance of only a few—and thereby hold as a top priority the commitment not to allow the task originally taken up to fall into such complete lawlessness that one ultimately ends up disgusted with the whole thing, discouraged and indifferent.

Bernheim raises these conditions in relation to the question of whether it is at all justified to maintain the establishment of private lectures, considering the now sweeping specialization of the sciences. Today, if the teacher intends to bring forward all the details of his area of expertise, then he has to lose himself to such a great extent in the specific that he has no time left to offer the great, essential vantage-points according to his personal understanding. In addition to this is the fact that it is no longer even necessary to provide this sum of details in the lecture courses. For we currently possess compendiums of these details, which are excellent, and whose current level of comprehensiveness would earlier have been inconceivable to us. On the basis of these considerations, Bernheim comes to the conclusion that one should structure the private lectures differently. They should comprise much shorter periods of time. In them, one should renounce the enumeration and critical evaluation of the particular details, and instead set oneself the task of holding orientation lectures in which one develops an overall understanding of a certain subject, a general point of view. By contrast, [the author further proposes that] the practical exercises at the universities, the work in seminars, should see a greater expansion. Such work should not, as is currently the case, begin only in later semesters, but already at the beginning of university studies. Here the students should learn the methods of scientific investigation; here one should concretely train oneself to become a researcher.

I do not fail to see the benefits to be had from a college education established in the sense of these suggestions. In particular, it seems to me very advantageous to reformulate the private lectures in the sense envisioned by the author. For it cannot be denied that much of what is said today at the lectern is actually easier and more convenient to gain from the existing manuals. And most importantly, such a reform will better allow the personality of the university professor to emerge into the foreground. And nothing works on people more than precisely the personality. A receptive spirit will be more inspired by a peculiar, even if ever so subjectively colored perspective, than by a myriad of “objective” facts.

In contrast, I would not so readily agree with Bernheim's proposal concerning the practical exercises. It may be beneficial for the average student if, under the guidance of a professor, he or she were to learn the method of research, down into the details. But one should not always concern oneself with the average person.One could do so if it were true that the gifted spirit breaks through no matter what, even against all fettering hindrances. But that is not in fact true.The things one does to help the average person hinder the gifted spirit in the unfolding of his individuality. They cause his originality to atrophy. And if the institutional examinations require one to have proof—as is the case for the present writer—of having taken part in a certain number of practical exercises, then for the one who intends to go his own way, such a measure becomes a shackle. The focal point of university education must consist in the personal inspiration brought about through the professor. Thus we see the value of lectures on general themes that are furthermore delivered from a personally-won point of view. As for the exercises, let those partake in them who have the need. But at the time of examination, do not ask someone what he has pushed himself through during his time of study, but rather what he is now able to achieve. How he has attained his competence must be a matter of indifference. One can offer practical exercises for those who need them, but one should not make them into an obligation for those who are able to meet the requirements of the examination without them.

At this point, where we usually talk so often about books and those who write them, I would also like to say a few words about those who read them. The former is more convenient, however. A book is a self-contained whole and can be judged as such. The author is a certain individuality about whose significance we can form an opinion. In both cases, therefore, the object we are writing about is tangible. But if we want to write about the "readers", someone may object: "Readers in general" do not exist at all; the object to be discussed cannot be considered a specific one at all; we can only be dealing with a very nebulous idea. It must be admitted that the expression "So many minds, so many senses" is also fully applicable to the reading public. So my observations will not apply to Mr. Schulze in Oberholzhausen or to the Frau Müllerin in Alt-Gabelsberg. But I am not one of those people who believe that in order to have an opinion about something, one must first examine all the cases under consideration. You couldn't reach a verdict on anything until the end of time and put your reason out of action for the time being.

Whoever has eyes for a peculiarity prevailing in a certain time, a few characteristic phenomena are enough to notice it.

It is basically a general trait of our entire intellectual life, which is also expressed in the choice of what we prefer to read. Many of our contemporaries live with their nerves more than has been the case with any other sex.¹ They are not looking for opportunities for energetic will, not for satisfaction in high thoughts, not for the sublime regions of art in which Goethe's "Iphigenia" or "Tasso" hover, but for exciting impressions, for rare sensations. Schiller's words are still little understood: "The master's true artistic secret lies in overcoming the material through the form." Today, we revel in the impressions made by the raw material. We no longer look at the world with our minds, but with our nerves. It is not what the world reveals to our minds that we seek, but the "secrets" that we find in all kinds of hidden holes. We have no patience to wait until an impression has found its way into the brain, but we lurk to see what processes are taking place on the periphery of our body. The harmony of colors that the eye conveys is no longer interesting, but the excitement that the tickled optic nerve gets into is something you would love to observe.

This life with nerves is also reflected in our audience's choice of reading material. Today, people also read with nerves. What's in a book is less important than the excitement you get from all kinds of stylistic perfumes that don't belong to the subject matter. I love Nietzsche as much as anyone, but his effect on many people seems to me to be due not to the content of his thoughts, but to the mystical effects of his style, which owe their existence to a diseased nervous system. One does not read Nietzsche in order to follow him to the heights of his ideas, but to be excited by the stimuli of his style. Nor do I believe that Dostoyevsky owes his fame to the deep psychology of his characters, but to those "mysteries" that take effect before they reach the brain. A writer must be able to do two things if he wants to have a great effect today: he must lull the mind with narcotic agents and excite the body with all kinds of stimuli.

There are people who see progress in the fact that we have arrived at the art of "secret nerves" and who denounce all those who have not achieved such a culture of nerves as wretched philistines. There is no arguing with such people, because arguing involves judgment; and judgment is not in the nerves.

But where does the real evil lie? Does it lie in the writers who dominate the reading world today? Or is it the public, which is being steered along unnatural paths by a social motor? The answer to the former question is definitely no. Who wants to blame Dostoyevsky's psychological rummaging in his grandiose portrayal, the profound interpretations that Tolstoy gives to human life, for the way they are read by the public? Here, in the: How one reads today, that is where it lies. For those who objectively devote themselves to the problems presented, the artistic form of Zola will also take precedence over the sensual excitement of reading. However, our contemporaries at their advanced cultural level are just as concerned with this as their uneducated fellow human beings are with their robber novels and murder mysteries.

But the readers themselves are even less to be blamed than those they are guided by. A generation of critics has arisen who persuade the public that this is only the right, modern taste.

"True" is what art must be above all else, as one person says to another. These critics really believe that their worn-out copper coins of concepts are enough to put them in possession of what rightly deserves to be called truth. You don't learn such things in coffee houses. I have read them by the dozen, the books of the latest aesthetes, and I never tire of following their views day after day in the newspapers. Over and over again, I keep telling myself: The must must clarify itself. But the new ones are always joined by newer and newer ones that outdo their predecessors in obscurity and illiteracy. Today we can see that people who want to be intellectually productive have only traced German literature back to 1885. They often do so to the applause of the public, which again relies on the critics.

I am always amazed at the sufficiency with which these critics wield their pens. You have to forgive them for having no idea how much they might know, because no one can know what is beyond their horizon. But they must know, and they do know, that they have learned nothing. They know it because they do everything they can to keep better products away from the public. A higher level of education among readers would be dangerous for our critics. No one should realize that there are intellectual products that stand high above what the critic of his favorite newspaper is able to judge. That is why the silence system was invented. A book that becomes uncomfortable is simply put aside.

And this is a second cancer of our time: In this dependence of the public on the after-judgments of often quite inferior people. These judgments are often hair-raising, but they cling to a work like a label. As long as our public does not free itself from the hypnotic influence of the printed word and continues to believe that there must be some meaning in the ink, the evils just discussed will not be eliminated, and we will not have a true public opinion in intellectual matters. Only when the readers rise to the point of view where they listen to the writer because they want to measure and clarify their opinion against another, then the communication between writers and readers will be a satisfying one. The critic should be an advisor, a thought-provoker, not an authority.

• 1. I know that the course of culture on the whole has nothing to do with the mental direction of those of our contemporaries I am talking about here. The height of modern scientific views and the healthy art of our day, the social insights and tendencies determine this course. But I do not want to speak here of the development of the world view, which has to do with the leading spirits and ideas, but of a side shoot that is disturbing for us present-day people and impairs healthy development.

Died on December 10, 1889

Death snatched our two greatest spirits from us Germans in Austria in quick succession. First, Robert Hamerling, the poet of German idealism, who led us up to the heights of world-embracing thought, closed his eyes. A few days ago, he was followed by Ludwig Anzengruber, the great connoisseur and portrayer of the soul of our people.

Our immediate present is almost incapable of coming to a fair, all-round appreciation of both. Party struggle on the one hand, scholarly arrogance on the other are the obstacles that stand in the way of such an appreciation of their greatness. Insensitive to the genuinely artistic, the humanly great in the poet, the party only looks for catchwords in his works to make him one of their own. His writings are only valid to the extent that they are evidence for their party purposes. Contemporary scholarship, on the other hand, which by virtue of the position and task of its bearers should keep its gaze free and open for all that is great and beautiful, contributes less today than ever to the recognition of what the present is achieving that is significant. The most worthless intellectual products of centuries long past, which have never had any influence on humanity, are tracked down and processed in scholarly treatises and academic lectures, but the literature of the present is treated as if it were of no concern to the masters. It will probably be decades before literary historians approach Hamerling and Anzengruber, produce critical editions and write historical appraisals. These circles know nothing of the fact that scholarship actually has the task of helping contemporaries to understand the present, and that all knowledge of the past is only of value if it brings us closer to what is going on around us, touches us directly.

Then there is the mendacity of our daily press, which does not shy away from any shameful act when it wants to distort the image of a contemporary who was either not entirely to its liking or whose achievements go against the grain. We experienced this a few months ago with Hamerling, and now with Anzengruber. The reports about him in the Viennese daily papers testified to an ignorance of his life and his works and were full of deliberate distortions of his work as a person and as a poet. Our experience with Anzengruber was no better. What he really is, what he is for his people and for German poetry, to express this in a worthy manner, one felt absolutely no calling to do so. After all, his fiftieth birthday passed a few weeks ago without any of Vienna's leading daily newspapers running a literary feature on him.

This happens to the greatest sons of our nation! And Anzengruber was one of them. Gifted with an original, naive spirit and strong poetic talent, he conquered a whole new area of German literature. He is a poet of the people, but in the sense that he captures the soul of the people where it rises to the most important questions of humanity, where it is moved by those problems which, in their further development, have led to the most profound works of our generation. The question of right and wrong, of guilt and responsibility, of freedom and lack of freedom of the will, of existence and the goodness of God, insofar as they are reflected in the naïve mind of the common man and stir up the greatest passions in his heart, provoking the strongest conflicts, these are the things that underlie Anzengruber's works. The "Woe to you that you are a grandson" has never been treated more effectively by a classical poet than in Anzengruber's "Fourth Commandment". The fact that all law is a matter of human opinion and that there is no eternal, unchangeable natural law, a question that has occupied the deepest minds, is expressed in her own way by "old Liesl" in "Meineidbauer". How we are the play of fate, how we are dependent on the outside world, which plants the seeds of evil or good in us, so that human responsibility is in a bad way, is the view of "Vroni" as she contemplates her own life's destiny. This is the great thing about Anzengruber, that he portrays the "simple man" as the "whole man", everything human, lives itself out in him. The liberation of the human breast from traditional prejudices, the appeal to the voice of one's own reason, all this takes place in the man of the people no less than in the spirit that walks on the heights of humanity. Everything that takes place on the great plan of world history also spreads its waves into the popular mind. Our poet's works are the sharpest possible proof of this. The great world-historical upheaval that is currently taking place in the religious ideas of mankind has also taken hold of the people with power. Blind faith is giving way to a thinking grasp of the truth. Reason wants to take its place. This trend of the times, as it also appears in the lowest classes of the people, is so masterfully embodied in Anzengruber's "Kreuzelschreibern" and the "Pfarrer von Kirchfeld" that this alone ensures the value of these works for all time.

These poems have been interpreted as tendency poems, but they are by no means so, nor is Hamerling's "Homunculus". If the poet confronts reality and embodies it artistically, then one cannot speak of tendency. For that is his highest task. Anzengruber did not write to say: country clergy, peasants, become this or that, but to show: this is how they are, these country people of today. In him, a whole slice of human life has found its poetic transfiguration.

Goethe sees the poet's perfection in succeeding in bringing his characters to life in such a way that they compete with reality. Anzengruber fulfills this condition like few others. He does not copy reality anywhere, as the school of modern realistic perversity would have it, but he does create characters who, as they appear in the drama, could also exist directly. And that is the task of the true poet. Whatever figure we may take from him, everything is naturally possible, everything psychologically true; nowhere is there a single trait to be discovered that would contradict the nature of the person. Indeed, in the art of characterization Anzengruber is one of the most important dramatists of all time, and this art is precisely the basis of drama, especially modern drama. Here all events, all conflicts are only justified insofar as they flow from the human interior. Fate, which for the ancients was an external force, has been internalized, has become a consequence of the character's disposition. The drama of the present day shows us man insofar as he wants to be the master of his fate and insofar as he himself is the forger of his own happiness. Anzengruber allows everything that happens to follow entirely from the characters. Nothing is left out of this iron consistency, as he imagines it in the human soul. Once we have understood the people who appear, we have understood the entire course of a play. Nothing is sacrificed for the sake of a theatrical effect, a pleasantly touching course of action, etc., as the illusory greats of our dramatic daily literature do. Because of this trait, Anzengruber is a born dramatist. And he is also a dramatist as a storyteller. His great stories: "Der Sternsteinhof", "Einsam" etc., are full of dramatic power and depth; indeed, even his shorter stories are dominated by the same trait. Scholarly aesthetes may rack their brains as to what aesthetic template they can therefore place his prose under; indeed, they may even come to the conclusion that this prose is not significant at all because it does not preserve the character of pure epic representation; but we would like to enjoy the wonderful things that Anzengruber had to produce due to his peculiar nature, even if the traditional terms that could classify it do not apply.

March 20, 1898

Fifty years ago, when the wild storms of revolution roared through Europe, Henrik Ibsen was twenty years old. He greeted the freedom movement with the strongest sympathy. The passion of the revolutionaries was closely related to the feelings that lived in his own soul. Looking back on this time, he later said:

"The time was very turbulent, the February Revolution, the uprisings in Hungary, the Schleswig War - all of this had a powerful impact on my development. I addressed thunderous poems to the Magyars in which I urgently exhorted them in the interests of freedom and human rights to persevere in the just struggle against the tyrants."

The revolution that the twenty-year-old experienced was a harbinger and symptom of a larger one, of the revolutionization of minds. The political revolution could not achieve what the spirits had promised. Movements to reshape the human order are only victorious if they are the expression of new-born world views. Christianity was able to establish a new order of human relations because it emerged from a revolution of the entire emotional life. Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed a new relationship to the world and life. He gave the human mind a new direction. The actual circumstances had to follow the changed direction of the heart. The revolution of the year forty-eight was a purely political one. It was not supported by any new world view.

It was not until ten years after this revolution that Charles Darwin proclaimed to people the gospel that they needed to give content to a new way of life. Goethe already possessed this gospel. He had already come to the great realization of the purely natural, unified entity that brought forth the dead stone, the silent plant, the unreasoning animal, and which also called man into existence, and beside which there is nothing divine in man. He regards man as the most perfect natural being. Nature has the power to bring forth the rational animal at its peak; no divine breath needs to be blown into this rational animal.¹

But Goethe gained his view of life as a spiritual aristocrat. Only through his individual course of development was it possible to read the book of nature in such a way that it made this revelation. Darwin proclaimed the same insight in a democratic way. Everyone could imitate his intellectual steps. It is not what he proclaims that makes a man a prophet, but how he proclaims it.

The great secret was revealed to Goethe at the sight of the Greek works of art in Italy. When he saw these works, he exclaimed: 'There is necessity, there is God. I have the suspicion that the artists, when they produced these works of art, acted according to the same laws according to which nature works, and which I am on the trail of. The work of man is only a continuation of the work of nature: Goethe recognized that at this moment. What man creates does not come to him as a gift of grace from heaven, but through the development of the same forces of nature that are active in plants and animals to a higher level. One would have to emulate Goethe's life if one wanted to arrive at his insight in the same way as he did. Darwin taught the same thing. But he pointed to common facts that express such truth - to facts that are accessible to everyone. He expressed in popular form what Goethe proclaimed for the select few.

It now became an absurdity to attribute to the creative power that comes from above what nature could obviously produce of itself. The entire human emotional life must change under the influence of the new world view. Man sees that he is something higher, something more perfect than that from which he has developed. He used to believe that someone above him had transplanted him into existence. Now his gaze can no longer be directed upwards. He is dependent on himself and on what is below him.

For centuries, the human heart has become accustomed to submitting to this upward gaze. Since Darwin's emergence, it has endeavored to wean itself off such a direction of sensation.

It is relatively easy for the mind to assimilate the new knowledge; it is infinitely difficult for the heart to transform itself in accordance with this knowledge. This is why the most difficult battles between mind and heart took place in the souls of the best minds of the last half-century. Unclear, disharmonious, doubting, searching natures are typical of this half-century.

Most of those who walk among us today with a more serious disposition still feel these struggles within them. And even the best only have the feeling that satisfaction is yet to come, but not that it has already arrived. Countless questions arise from these struggles; we only hope for answers in the future.

The future historian of our time will have to tell of wrestling, of questioning people. And if he wants to describe a single personality in whose soul all the struggles that have moved five decades have been reflected, he will have to describe Henrik Ibsen. All the questionable figures that our half-century had to produce: they confront us in Ibsen's dramas. And all the questions that this time raised: we find them again in these works. And because this time is one of questions to which only the future will provide answers, Ibsen's dramas end with questions; and that is why he had to say of himself:

"I usually ask, but answering is not my office."

One must give the truth its due and admit that Ibsen was not the man who knew the answers to the great questions of his time. He knew how to ask with all his might: he was unable to answer. He felt this himself when he said:

"For my part, I shall be satisfied with the success of my week's work if this work can serve to prepare the mood for tomorrow. But first and foremost, I will be satisfied if it can help to strengthen the spirits for the week of work that follows."

I would like to consider it fortunate that Ibsen is only a questioner. For by not being able to arrive at answers, he is able to question deeply and thoroughly. And because we taste with him the full, deep seriousness of the highest questions, those who follow will arrive at deeper answers. The brokenness and dissatisfaction that we carry within us today when we come from his dramas will turn into happiness for those who will untie what we tie.

This is how I understand Ibsen. To me, he is a nature that is strong enough to feel the problems of our time as its own pain, but not strong enough to realize our highest goals.

I see Ibsen as a master builder who builds the towers from which we are supposed to look out over our world, but who is overcome with vertigo when he himself is supposed to stand on the top of these towers.

I imagine that it must be difficult to be old in our time. Those who are young today believe that they can still keep up with the intellectual culture in which we live. To the old man of today, such a following seems impossible. Ibsen's heart is too deeply intertwined with the sentiments that past centuries have instilled in us for him to be satisfied with the proud tower of knowledge that he helped to create.

In his "Baumeister Solneß", he confessed in the manner of a great man that he was seized by dizziness at his own work.

I think the old master will be pleased if we tell him today, on his birthday, that we have understood him. In fifty years of work, he wanted to lead people to freedom. And we want to preserve our own freedom towards him. Not blind reverence; reverent knowledge is what he should see in us when we greet him on this day.

• 1. We do not consider it superfluous, because today we read quickly and therefore often superficially, to draw attention to the fact that Dr. R. Steiner is not reproducing his own views here, but those of a time that looked at things through Darwin's glasses, which can also be looked at more deeply. Even if it is the same direction in which the modern spiritual researcher looks - the gate of knowledge of nature, it is a different matter to stop in front of the open gate or to walk through it and see new horizons. It is necessary to penetrate through that gate - but then one must go on. (Note by Marie Steiner.)

On the occasion of his hundredth birthday (June 29, 1898)

There are personalities who, when we look at them, we forget everything that is going on around them. They seem to draw all the strength for their existence from themselves. We ask about the peculiar nature of their souls if we want to understand the character of their deeds. The fact that they live in a period of time with quite specific cultural conditions is hardly more important to us than the fact that they breathe the air of a certain part of the world. These personalities appear like self-contained circles filled with their own content. I do not mean merely those spirits who are the leaders of world history, and whom Emerson calls the "representatives of the human race". People whose lives pass without a trace for mankind can also be natures built on their own.

In contrast to these characters, there are others whose actions and activities remind us of their surroundings, the age in which they live and often even the place where they were born. We are more interested in their relationship to their environment than in themselves. And if they belong to the past, then any individual interest in them ceases; we only see them as typical representatives of a certain era. That's how I feel about Willibald Alexis (Wilhelm Heinrich Häring).

His works were written between the third and seventh decade of our century. The world view that the most advanced minds profess today was only just emerging at that time. Ideas in which we are currently being educated were present in individual, particularly enlightened minds. The majority of educated people, however, grew up in a world of ideas that is alien to our present-day sensory life. And in the art and the conception of art of that time, this world of ideas that is alien to us lived on. At that time, people wanted an impersonal, objective art. The artist was supposed to create selflessly, with an expression of his personality. The more he stepped back behind his work, the more he was valued. It was not his subjective idiosyncrasies that people wanted to discover in his creation, but something objectively beautiful that was subject to eternal laws, free of any personal private inclination. Let us remember what Schopenhauer demands of the artist in the spirit of this view: he should "leave his interest, his will, his purpose, completely out of sight, thus completely divesting himself of his personality for a time in order to remain as a purely recognizing subject, a clear world-eye". Philosophers, who incidentally fought each other fiercely, were united in this basic view. Hegel, the man whom Schopenhauer hated like perhaps no other, would hardly have objected to the above sentence. And I have heard a follower of Herbart, Robert Zimmermann, who refuted Schopenhauer and Hegel with the ease so characteristic of philosophers, defend the same conception of art. They were all children of their time, the middle third of our century. And Willibald Alexis was an artist of that very time.

Alexis was so selfless that it almost borders on the psychologically impossible. You can't deny his essence any more than he did. In his history of "German Poetry of the Nineteenth Century", Karl Julius Schröer recounts a conversation he had with the poet. Alexis particularly emphasized his romantic natural disposition. Among other things, he said that as a boy he had heard a poem that began: "Hüll' O Sonne, deine Strahlen..." The meaning of this poem was unknown to him. But the sound of the words "Hüll' O" inspired him. Nevertheless, Alexis became a poet who was primarily interested in the objective representation of real conditions. And anyone looking for something in his works that points to his natural disposition as described above will search in vain. He tries to capture the sense of past times, he tries to be objectively faithful, he strives to suppress the original romantic trait. Alexis' relationship with Walter Scott has the character of a complete self-expression. Scott's manner has often been described as romantic. It always seems to me that this is like describing black as white because it is created when light is removed from it. Even the Brothers Grimm's objective immersion in the German past has been given the epithet romantic, because both the [Brothers] Grimm and the Romantics had a tendency to immerse themselves in the past of our people, and because both have a certain temporal connection. What matters, however, is not the burying in past times, but the tendency from which this burying emanates. And for the Romantics, this is the satisfaction of a tendency towards the mystical, the nebulous, which is met by the history of the past running into obscurity; for the Brothers Grimm, it is the endeavor to comprehend historical development in a clear, scientifically transparent manner. And just as clarity relates to mysticism, so Walter Scott relates to Romanticism. Walter Scott is crude in his grasp of past reality, strictly realistic. And if Willibald, who was born to be a Romantic, took Alexis Scott as his model, this could only happen by completely giving up his personality.

As if to prove this to us, Alexis published two novels in 1823 and 1827: "Walladmor, freely adapted from the English of Walter Scott" and "Castle Avalon, freely adapted from the English of Walter Scott". He imitated the Englishman's style in such a way that the works could have been mistaken for translations. This can only happen with a personality who gives up his own essence.

It was therefore as if Willibald Alexis had been created to artistically depict past times, their battles and victories, their personalities and their circumstances with historical fidelity. In "Cabanis" he depicts German life during the Seven Years' War in this way, in "Roland von Berlin" the battles between the city representatives of Berlin and the old nobility, in "Falscher Waldemar" the conditions of city and knightly life. In his later novels "Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow", "Ruhe ist die erste Bürgerpflicht" and "Isegrimm", the same artistic attitude prevails.

Willibald Alexis thought like his time. The only thing he had ahead of his contemporaries was the power to create. That may be a lot, but one must not confuse such natures as he was with the truly productive spirits, who not only create what everyone feels, but who also have unique feelings.

On his hundredth birthday

June 21 [1898] was Wolfgang Menzel's hundredth birthday. He is a forgotten man today, even though he wrote seventy volumes in his lifetime and for a long time was a literary critic who was listened to in Germany. The "Literaturblatt", which he edited and which appeared in Cotta's publishing house, was an authoritative critical organ for decades. It is strange that so little is currently said about Menzel. For quite a few of our contemporaries are filled with his spirit. This spirit is that of a narrow-minded, narrow-minded, moralizing criticism that measures everything great with the yardstick of philistinism and dismisses genius with a philistine mind. Higher artistic sensibilities and an aesthetic world view were alien to Menzel. He fought against Goethe, Heine and "Young Germany". He did not understand the artistic intentions of those he fought against. He had formed certain views of what was morally good and evil, views that only a philistine could have. And because Goethe, Heine and "Young Germany" created works that were not tailored to philistine morals, he fought against them. Even today we find critics and writers who write in his spirit. We have a literary history of König. We also have literary historians who scold Heine, just as Menzel once scolded him. We've got rid of Menzel, but Menzel has remained. Menzel's rant against Goethe is particularly repugnant. He hated Goethe because he did not allow himself to be kept from admiring Napoleon's personality by a narrow-minded national sense; he hated him because he portrayed human nature from all sides and did not want to force it into stereotyped, moralistic forms; he hated him because he took life as it was to be taken and did not fight like a bull against what had become natural. Menzel fought against the healthy sensuality that "Young Germany" strove to portray because he found it "immoral". He was a man of narrow-minded nationalism, so much so that his comments make us think of the anti-Semites and German nationalists of today. However, he surpassed them in terms of the force and accuracy of his expression and the art of his presentation.

It is easy to doubt the sincerity of his judgments. In his youth, he paid homage to revolutionary principles and was a fervent fraternity member. Later, he was an accomplice to reaction and anti-progressive efforts. His denunciatory writings were important documents for the governments that wanted to suppress liberal aspirations. Heine is of the opinion that he was only fibbing about his inclinations for freedom and revolution. Whether this is the case is difficult to decide today. There is no doubt, however, that Menzel is one of those literary figures who, because of their narrow-mindedness, come to impudent judgments expressed with vain confidence. They talk with the air of the know-it-all about things they don't know the first thing about. There is hardly anything more worthless in German literature than the seventy volumes of Menzel's works.

On the centenary of his birth

In Honore de Balzac, a man was born in France on May 20, 1799 who, as an artist, expressed the world view of our century with all the one-sidedness that it initially needed in order to effectively assert itself against the school of thought that centuries of Christology had inculcated in people. If this modern world view is to be characterized in one word, it must be said that it sought to understand man on the basis of scientific knowledge. Just as we seek to understand the composition and movements of the universe purely in terms of natural law, today we also seek to explain the actions of human beings. We no longer think about why God allows evil in the world, but we seek to understand the human organization in order to be able to say how it comes to such expressions that are regarded as evil. Balzac exaggerated this current of thought. He wanted to be the naturalist of human society. Just as Dante wrote a "divine" comedy, he wanted to write a "human" one, because he thought: "There are social species, just as there are zoological species. Just as in the animal world the difference between [lion] and dog, between mammal and bird must be understood, so in human society the difference between civil servant and merchant, between financier and aristocrat by birth. One thing is overlooked. The animal species lion is so exhausted by the single individual that nothing else about it can interest us essentially once we have grasped the peculiarity of its species. The old maid may still have a special interest in the individual peculiarities of her lapdog. Such peculiarities cannot attract general attention. The situation is quite different with humans. Every individual becomes a problem for us here. The species is not limited to the individual. Each person presents us with a riddle. A psychological riddle for the explainer; an artistic task for the performer. Balzac did not understand this. That is why he did not portray individuals. All his characters lack the latter. We see in them representatives of their social types. The interests, goals and lifestyles of their class dominate them and hover over their heads like fixed ideas. The social costume, the milieu alone is drawn. Man is only a specimen. The truth of Balzac's view of the world will only be revealed when the individual, which he ignores, is clearly presented to us in a scientific way. This is how we must understand Balzac today. Then we will see in him the ancestor of many a contemporary representative of the new world view, who basically did not penetrate to the point where the individual begins. To name one of the greatest, it is Nietzsche's intellectual tragedy that he never pursued man into the secrets of individuality. For Nietzsche, so often characterized as an individualist, almost only generic ideas exist in broad areas. Nietzsche saw the proletarian, the Christian, the woman, the scholar and many others only as genera. And this circumstance explains many of Nietzsche's contradictions. Basically, all of Nietzsche's assertions, which he makes as an observer, as a philosopher, contradict the conclusions and judgments he forms. What he should have said of the individual, he asserts as generally characteristic truths. He suffers from the same prejudice under which Balzac wrote novels. Both lack the ability to draw the final conclusions, the truly unbiased view of reality. They cannot apply the truths gained from natural science to human society. They simply transfer what is valid there to here. But this literal transfer is wrong. When we today wind our way through the long series of Balzac's novels, we stand there, like Hölderlin before the people of his time: we see masters and servants, aristocrats and people, peasants and burghers; but we do not see people. Finally, we must realize that we can only understand the great prophets of the modern worldview if we understand how to go beyond them at the right moment. We do not understand Goethe today by organizing celebrations in his honour, by repeating and commenting on his words, but by drawing conclusions from his views that he was not yet able to draw. History only concerns us to the extent that it promotes our own activities.

Ellen Key, the subtle psychologist, aptly pointed out in her book "Essays" (Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag, 1899) the deep meaning behind the catchphrase "The freedom of personality" that is so often heard today. "How many really know what it costs to strive hour after hour, day after day, year after year to realize the content of these words?" Away from the circles that seek new figureheads and hierarchies of intellectual life in Vienna, there lives an artist who fights the battle of the soul that Ellen Key points to: Rosa Mayreder. She has emerged as a writer and painter in recent years. Three years ago, her first collection of novellas "Aus meiner Jugend" (From my youth) was published, soon followed by the other, "Übergänge, Novellen" (both published by Pierson, Dresden [1896 and 1897]), and more recently "Idole", the "Geschichte einer Liebe" (Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag 1899). In the psychological sketches collected in the first two volumes, deep problems of the soul are unrolled; in the last work, the more one delves into it, the more one admires a developed connoisseurship of human nature and a mature art in the depiction of what goes on in the grounds and undergrounds of the mind. Anyone who judges Rosa Mayreder's short stories on first impression can easily come to the conclusion that they are a poem of social struggle, a rebellion against the prejudices with which education and society hold back the free development of our soul life. For a large part of these stories depict personalities who live out their lives in an unnatural way, because misguided upbringing and social perversity have turned them into completely different people than they would have been if they had developed in the air of freedom and freedom from prejudice. But anyone who immerses himself more thoroughly in these small works of art will find that the poet is not concerned with this struggle at all, but with finding artistic means to bring the processes of the human soul to light in their full truth, regardless of whether these processes are brought about by life within an inverted social order or by the natural dichotomies in human nature itself. Rosa Mayreder has a profound urge for knowledge and a strong interest in delving deeper into the essence of man. And the love of liberating the personality is at the center of her emotional life. As an artist, she is not interested in expressing her thoughts as such, nor in portraying her love of freedom. Anyone who still doubted this after the publication of her first collections of novellas must have been swayed by "Idole". All of Rosa Mayreder's ideas about human nature have been incorporated here in a poetic and imaginative way. Sharp observations and deep thoughts have flowed completely into the vivid processes. One must admire this purely artistic expression of the poet all the more because she completely dispenses with the older means of narrative art. Anecdotal stylization of external events is completely alien to her. She does not believe that art must transcend nature in order to depict a higher truth, a special "beauty". She is full of the belief that truth is to be sought within nature alone. But at the same time, it is deeply imbued with the realization that art cannot copy nature, but that its ways and means are something independent, something that must be grasped in its own way if it is to depict the truth of nature. For the painter, color and form are a world of their own. From their essence, he must create something that appears as true as nature, even though nature produces the object he is depicting by means other than color and form alone. The incessant immersion in the means of artistic expression is characteristic of Rosa Mayreder's soul life.

This characteristic of hers comes to the fore most clearly in her last work. Gisa loves Doctor Lamaris. She tells how this love arose from the unfathomable depths of her soul when she saw this man for the first time, and how she seized it with magical power. "When this man entered, indeed as soon as I saw him for the first time, he seemed so strangely familiar to me, as if I had known him for a long time. And after he had spoken to me for a few minutes, polite, meaningless words, as every young man addresses them to every young girl, I suddenly got the impression that I was having a very pleasant conversation, that the whole company, who were standing and sitting around in a rather leathery way, were animated as never before." Love fertilizes Gisa's imagination. And this forms an image of Doctor Lamaris, to whom the girl looks up as if to an ideal. And we get an idea of this image when we hear Gisa's concept of the ideal man: "A man with a woman's heart! That is the highest, that is perfection! A man who has everything that characterizes men, all strength, all will, all knowledge, and who is at the same time full of devotion, full of tenderness, full of kind intimacy, who understands everything because he experiences it in himself, who has nothing foreign, who has no unresolved residue in his heart." How different Doctor Lamaris turns out to be when Gisa gets to know him in his true essence! "The idea of a luminous inner life often returned later, but never in his presence. It did not tolerate any contact with reality. Reality stared at me with hurtful impressions that dug into my soul like pinpricks." Gisa thought she saw in Doctor Lamaris a man whose soul contained the most beautiful human inclinations and whose existence consisted of the all-round living out of an elemental personality. In reality, she was confronted by a man who only wanted to see life according to the principles that the science of the doctor provides. An abstract medical idea of the world, embodied in a human being, stands before Gisa, while she thought she had her ideal man before her. The doctor believes that a girl should be pious because that is the best way for her to adapt to life. Gisa is of the opinion: "One is a believer or an unbeliever from an inner state; but not because one should or should not. So what does that mean, a girl should be pious?" Lamaris replies: "It means that it is not beneficial for a woman's psyche to do without the help that religion provides." Medicine incarnate therefore wants "religion to be considered from the point of view of a diet for the soul, of psychological hygiene". For "cultural mankind will have to learn, if it is not to fall into complete ruin, to regard life exclusively from this point of view; it will have to evaluate all affects from this point of view ... Even love, and love first and foremost. For since it is love that usually decides the weal and woe of the future generation, it happens only too often that the union of two people made on the basis of a love affection represents something downright sacrilegious. It is a sentimental aberration to present love as the most desirable basis of marriage. The illusory character of this affectation makes the person afflicted by it quite incapable of making his choice on rational grounds, namely in the sense of racial improvement." - Like Gisa with Doctor Lamaris, he also has a deep affection for the girl. He does not follow this choice. His medical point of view makes it necessary for him to make his choice in the interests of racial improvement. He comes from a family that includes mentally deranged people among its members; he has a profession that makes use of the mind at the expense of the body. Gisa is a girl who also tends to live in the spiritual sphere. He marries a girl from the "sheltered classes".

In this "story of love", two people are seen standing opposite each other. There is no real common ground between them. Because two idols intervene between their personalities. Gisa believes she loves Doctor Lamaris. She loves an idol of his that came before her soul when she came into contact with him. The real Doctor Lamaris cannot have anything attractive for her soul. Doctor Lamaris really loves Gisa; but as an idol of the mind, he places his medical views between himself and his beloved. - This is the intellectual element of the story. Nowhere does it intrude in a pale intellectual form, but it is absorbed by the artistic view. Gisa's character and the nature of her experiences mean that the narrative of the facts is constantly interspersed with the communication of the feelings and reflections that are linked to the events in this girl's psyche. For these inner processes in a girl's soul are the actual content of the story. This soul can only reveal itself in its true form, with all its intimate nuances of thought and feeling, when it speaks. That is why the form Rosa Mayreder has chosen is the only possible one for her task. It can be called a stylized diary. And given Gisa's character, we certainly believe that this is how she puts her experiences before her soul. We can see how the art form corresponds to the poet's inner need for truth.

The more you delve into the story, the more this need for truth becomes apparent. These are things of such a subtle nature that our ideas, which strive for straightforwardness and sharp outlines, can easily destroy the intimacy of the experiences. Rosa Mayreder finds the artistic means to depict this intimacy in the contexts of things and personalities. Any sharp conceptual interpretation of the reasons why Gisa forms her idol could only show the unconscious forces at work in a coarsened form. In her characterization of Doctor Lamaris, Rosa Mayreder hints at an idea that awakens a mystical, symbolic sense of the subtle relationships that prevail here. "The only thing that was completely beautiful about him were his hands, slender, white, well-groomed doctor's hands, which possessed an extraordinary capacity for expression. - There was so much soul in their movements that one almost got the impression of a facial expression. There was something serious and loving about them; they seemed to reveal the most hidden qualities, everything that remains unacknowledged in a person for the longest time, secret benefits, secret sacrifices, tender feelings, that shy nobility of feeling that is carefully concealed under a mask of taciturn reserve." In organs that are little subject to arbitrariness, to reason, the real soul of this man is expressed, which seems to have become completely unfaithful to itself through the medical world view in the area of consciousness. Another feature of the story is fully consistent with this characteristic of the hands. The woman from a "protected social class" whom Doctor Lamaris has chosen bears a striking resemblance to Gisa: "She is like a healthy translation" of Gisa. The soul forces operating below the threshold of his consciousness have thus taken Lamaris down a path that his mind would not allow him to follow. Rosa Mayreder aptly finds the external means of representation that bring our contemplative imagination into the same waters in which our faculty of ideas moves when we contemplate the unconscious background of the conscious processes of the soul. It may be said that in this poetry the intellectual element appears to us completely dissolved in the artistic style. And the unity of this style is preserved throughout the work. We encounter a figure, the old Miss Ludmilla. One of those personalities that life has always pushed into a corner, a shy, withdrawn, old-fashioned creature. When Gisa once handed the old lady a sprig of lilac during a visit, she took it and "inhaled the scent with a long, trembling breath". She whispered: "Oh God! Oh God!" and tears flowed down her cheeks. Gisa would have loved to know the images that ran through Aunt Ludmilla's soul when a branch of lilac in bloom came before her eyes. She never got around to asking the question. "It was perhaps the most beautiful moment of her life, the only moment of happiness, of rising above the commonplace - but if she had told it with her staid remarks and philistine turns of phrase, it would have been spoiled for ever. She had told it as she wept silently over the blossoming branch." In any case, this way of telling Ludmilla's life secret is the one required by the style in which the "Idols" are written.

The two main characters in the story, Gisa and Lamaris, are juxtaposed with others whose characters significantly heighten the impressions made by the former through contrast. Lieutenant von Zedlitz forms a complete contrast to Lamaris, a man of spirit and intellect, a witless renominee who wants to endear himself to everyone and says silly flattery to all the girls. By describing the impression this character makes on Lamaris and Gisa, the poet sheds light on relationships that are relevant to the character portraits she creates. The doctor speaks about the first lieutenant with the words: "He is the type of a healthy, well-developed person! ... His physique is of a perfection that has unfortunately become rare: he must come from a very healthy family. Not a trace of hereditary strain!" And Gisa says: "These banal muscles in an eternal parade posture, these thoughtless hands -." The antithesis of Gisa is her friend Nelly. She is one of those natures who, thanks to the superficiality of her character, easily jumps over the gulf that separates the idol from reality. She also has her idol of a man: "It would have to be a man, a whole man, before whom everyone trembles and bows down, a man with a strong arm who could protect and shield me in all situations in life, a man with a powerful will who could make me his slave with a wave of his eyebrows." - This "idol" is blown away into empty air when her parents choose a man for her who lacks all these qualities but is a "good match".

Psychological problems are Rosa Mayreder's artistic domain. The novellas and sketches in her first two works should also be seen as psychological studies. In one of her first stories, "Die Sonderlinge" ("From My Youth"), this basic character of her work is immediately apparent. The human being, who is merely an imprint of the social conditions from which he has emerged and the profession into which he has grown, stands here alongside the person who stubbornly, ruthlessly wants to live only according to his nature. And the latter is again shown to us in two shades: in the selfish, tyrannical personality and in the devoted idealist.

Rosa Mayreder traces the manifold forms that the mysterious thing we call the human soul takes; and everywhere she looks for the reasons why this being is of this or that kind, and what suffering and joys life imposes on it because it has received a certain imprint. The typical contrast between intellectual and intuitive natures runs through a number of her stories like a basic motif. The cold souls, dominated by reflection, and the emotional and imaginative people, who draw their impulses from the immediacy of their nature, repeatedly become a problem for the poet. This contrast is particularly stark in the sketch "Klub der Übermenschen" (in "Übergänge"). The relationship between two people is portrayed here, one of whom is entirely sentimental, the other entirely intellectual. The stories that describe the struggle into which the individual soul is driven by the fact that it cannot find a balance within itself between reflection and emotion, reason and passion are particularly appealing. "Lilith and Adam", "His Ideal", in the "Transitions", are captivating depictions of this struggle. This artist knows how to characterize the many-branched currents into which the psyche is torn and which determine the inner fate of a human life from a deep observation. "Das Stammbuch" ("Transitions") depicts one such current in the relationship between a man and a married woman.

Whoever gets to know Rosa Mayreder as a painter will notice how she follows the same paths in this art as in her poetry. In the latter it is the psychological, in painting the coloristic problem that she pursues. She seeks to eavesdrop on the secret of the colors, through which we can express what nature speaks to us. She does not see Cornelius and Kaulbach as painters in the true sense of the word, for they merely used colors and forms to give visible expression to their abstract world of ideas. The eye alone has to judge, not the intellect, when it comes to the world of shapes and colors.

Rosa Mayreder's art was born out of an intense urge to familiarize herself with the contexts of reality, out of the need to solve the riddles of her own existence as well as those of the phenomena that penetrate our senses. And the little stories in which she expresses the highest questions of knowledge in the form of fables bear witness to the depths of this urge. One of these fables is told in this booklet. The higher the thought rises, the less the processes that express it in the outer symbol can lead an independent life. However, Rosa Mayreder must be conceded that she has succeeded in finding such symbolic events for the embodiment of great worldview issues that the ideal is completely absorbed in the image; and that this image does not work like a wooden allegory, but like a symbol in which the thought is clothed without constraint, as if by its own will for illustration. It is as if the poet had not put the thought into the picture, but had taken it out of it.

Rosa Mayreder reveals the same side of her nature in her sonnets. One senses everywhere the necessity with which a stanzaic form expresses a thought structure. A basic idea is divided into two parts, which find their harmonious union again in a comprehensive higher idea. The first two four-line stanzas belong to the first two elements of the idea, the last two three-line stanzas to the overarching idea.

Rosa Mayreder shows us on every page she has written that she has expended considerable energy to discover the organs within herself that show her the world and life in a way that satisfies her. As a result, however, a peculiar atmosphere emanates from all her achievements, which bears witness to the great style of her view of things.

On her seventieth birthday on September 13, 1900

She sees the world as it is; but from the point of view of the distinguished Austrian salon. This sentence could briefly summarize the strengths and weaknesses of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, who celebrates her seventieth birthday on 13 September. The living and educational conditions of the social class emerge as the background to her narrative art, which once allowed Count Anton Auersperg to mature into the much-celebrated poet Anastasius Grün. He was the poet of freedom that emerges when not the son of the people, but the cavalier who descends to the people and is filled with the general ideas of human dignity and cultural progress becomes a singer. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach is the aristocratic lady with a heart filled with infinite kindness for all things human, who unabashedly depicts the darker side of noble circles as well as the life of the working classes, but the latter not without the share that belonging gives, and the latter not without the tinge of strangeness that is created when one has only come into contact with the people as the noble lady of the castle servant. No matter how intimate and warm the poet's description of a child of the people in her story "Bozena" (1876), with its unpretentious sufferings and joys, one does not hear someone speaking who has suffered and rejoiced with her, but the kind lady with the mild view of life and light-heartedness. You can clearly see what is being referred to here if you read a village story by Peter Rosegger immediately after Ebner-Eschenbach's "Dorf- und Schlossgeschichten" (1883 and 1886). Here the man speaks who, as an itinerant journeyman tailor, sat at table with the people, there the lady of the manor who never got much further than shaking hands with the people. Do not misunderstand this. There is no hint of that "condescending" manner in the stories of this poetess that must offend; but nowhere can she deny the count's blood that flows in her veins, nowhere can she deny the aristocratic upbringing she has enjoyed, nowhere can she deny the sentiments of the social circles in which her life has moved.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach was born Countess Dubsky in the Moravian castle of Zdislavic to an aristocratic family. She was an imaginative, exceptionally impressive girl. At an early age, she developed a decided tendency to expand her knowledge of the world and people in all directions. Those who knew her as a girl have much to say about her vivacity and enterprising nature. The Moravian aristocratic circles from which she grew up had long been characterized by liberal, progressive views. This distinguished them favorably from the reactionary Bohemian aristocracy. The people with whom the young countess came into contact had something extraordinarily interesting about their way of life. The Zdislavic estate is not far from the Hungarian border; when you grow up in such an area, you get to know the most diverse customs and habits offered by the mixture of the most varied tribes. Through her marriage, in 1848, to Baron von Ebner, Countess Dubsky was transplanted into Viennese society. She can only be fully understood from the ideas of this society. A prominent trait of this society is the cult of the "good heart". With this good heart alone, it is believed that the great world-shaking issues of the present can be mastered. It is significant that an Austrian member of parliament, whose thoughts are rooted in this society, said publicly not long ago that nothing could be achieved by legal means to equalize the great social differences; the most effective means of combating the suffering of the proletariat could only be private charity, the goodwill of the better-off. Love and benevolence are the leitmotifs that emerge in almost all of Ebner-Eschenbach's works. The same character trait led another Lower Austrian aristocrat, Berta von Suttner, to launch the well-known peace movement.

Another characteristic of this Austrian aristocratic society is a preference for moderation, for a certain beauty of external forms. The poet's art of storytelling accommodated this preference to a high degree. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's portrayal is not without passion; but this passion has something detached about it; it remains within certain limits. Anything tempestuous, anything radical is missing in the calmly flowing description; the desires and demands of life are always accompanied by the admonition to renounce. The calm, balanced view of the world, which has brought her increasing recognition as a storyteller over the last two decades, made it impossible for Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach to achieve success in the field in which she first sought it, as a dramatic poet. Although the most influential and insightful stage directors took an interest in her performances, her dramatic creations remained without effect. Her tragedy "Mary Stuart in Scotland" was performed in Karlsruhe in 1860 and her one-act play "Doctor Knight" in Vienna's Burgtheater in 1871. Neither made a significant impression, nor did the drama "Das Waldfräulein", performed at the Vienna Stadttheater in 1873, which one would have thought would have been captivating through its depiction of modern Viennese society. This artist lacked dramatic power; the quiet beauty of her portrayal could only be expressed in the narrative. When, from the mid-seventies onwards, she turned almost exclusively to this field, she was soon fully appreciated. The academic-literary circles were the most unreserved in their support of her. What the German science of beauty has presented as the ideal qualities of a work of art: Evenness and harmony, can be found realized to a high degree in Ebner-Eschenbach's novellas and novels. They are almost an illustration of many a university lecture on the demands of beauty and art. It is characteristic that the University of Vienna has just awarded the poet an honorary doctorate on the occasion of her seventieth birthday.

A fine observer speaks her mind in the two collections of "Dorf- und Schlossgeschichten" (1883 and 1886) and in the two-volume novel "Das Gemeindekind" (1887). However, all of the characters portrayed there lack something to make them completely comprehensible to us within the social class to which they belong. They are portrayed too little from their very own feelings and imaginations; they only present their outer side, not the intimate traits of their minds. But if one disregards all of this, one must still feel a captivating effect from the deep, intimate way in which the narrator tries to place herself in the souls of others. She is even able to portray the emotional life of animals with warmth, as in the story "Krambambuli", which can be found in the collection "Neue Dorf- und Schlossgeschichten" (1886).

The poet knows how to portray social evils and prejudices in a sympathetic and artistic way. The mildness and kindness of her disposition lends her descriptions, when she comes to such areas, a haunting, poignant language. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach reached her peak in this direction in "Gemeindekind". How a socially uprooted person becomes a burden to his surroundings, how an almost lost person is put back on the right path: this is described here with inner truth and at the same time with a warmth that has compassion and understanding for every human aberration. The love of a broad narrative art is particularly evident in this book. The poet likes to linger in places where it is possible to exhaust people's emotions in all directions, where one can really immerse oneself in the enjoyment of the people and fates portrayed. She is less successful in cutting a plot short and bringing it to a conclusion, which requires a fast pace and strong contrasts. This can be seen in the story "Unsühnbar" (1890), in which a woman who makes a mistake in her marriage seems completely unfounded in her passion. The plot demands rapid developments here, and Ebner-Eschenbach is only equal to the calm, measured steps of fate and the human heart. Perhaps the stories that speak most deeply from the poet's own soul are those that appeared three years ago under the title "Alte Schule". Here she has chosen material that made it necessary to avoid any strong tone. A quiet, contemplative wisdom prevails here, as the artist has always loved it, a devout calm that does not avoid the hardships of life, but wants to put them in a mild light. Because this trait is in her, in one of these stories she juxtaposes the man who has matured to inner harmony and quiet happiness with the young man who is whipped by the storm of his passions; and in the other, we see the contrast between the renunciate, self-satisfied spirit and the man who is floundering in ambition and tormented by his desires.

As a thorough connoisseur, the narrator describes the goings-on and fates of the aristocratic classes. Here she is completely in her element. She knows how to fathom the souls without rest. How the members of this social class suffer from the hollowness of their prejudices, how they long to escape from these prejudices and yet are bound by the strongest ties within them: this is what we see in all its truth when we read stories such as "Die Freiherrn von Gemperlein" or "Muschi". It can be said that the poet has created a style for such material that is characteristic in the highest sense. Nowhere else does the Austrian aristocratic German in which she writes flow so naturally from the material as when she portrays people who have been part of her environment for most of her life. She can also be sharply critical and satirical. There she also deals with people and living conditions that in reality show none of the harshness and unevenness that she loves so little in her art. When she depicts the "noble" circles, she also seems to find the best confirmation of her creed, which is probably that, despite all suffering and hardship, a balancing justice prevails in the world, a benevolent world order that is to be praised.

This creed also appears in numerous passages of her "Aphorisms", a collection of which was published in 1880 and whose serene wisdom was so well received that it went through several editions. These core sayings are as tasteful in form as they are meaningful in content. A striving for clarity in the big and small questions of existence is expressed here. A woman speaks to us who observes sharply and faithfully, who knows how to reflect on herself and who has known how to draw the most beautiful treasure of wisdom and morality from this introspection. And the unpretentious, modest form in which great truths are often presented has a particularly beneficial effect in this proverbial wisdom.

M. E. delle Grazie

I

Today, anyone who talks about modern trends in literature runs the risk of being ridiculed. How many immature, dilettante things are described as modern today! Critics, who often have no idea of what the human spirit has already produced in the course of its development, describe as modern many things which, to the discerning, are merely a modification of something that has long been there. I do not wish to be lumped together with these critics when I say that a radical change is taking place in our time, in artistic creation no less than in scientific conviction. This turnaround has not only recently become apparent. Goethe's youthful poetry was already characterized by it. His "Prometheus" is filled with the spirit that I would describe as modern. But Goethe, despite his depth, despite the universality of his spirit, was not energetic enough to carry out the building for which he had laid the foundation stone. His age does not correspond well with his youth. Nowhere do we find the fulfillment of what he promised us. Let us hold together the proud verses of Prometheus:

Here I sit, forming men
In my own image,
A race that is like me,
To suffer, to weep,
To enjoy and to rejoice,
And not to respect you,
Like me!

with the humble ones in the second part of "Faust":

He who always strives,
We can redeem him.
And if love has even
Participated from above,
The blessed multitude meets him
With a hearty welcome.

The "free spirit", which finds the support of life in itself, has become a spirit of devotion, which expects the salvation of existence from divine grace. This describes the two poles of Goethe's creative work. The transformation took place slowly and gradually. If Goethe had remained in the position of his youth, we would not have "Iphigenia" or "Tasso", but we would perhaps have poems that we can now only expect from the future. Perhaps Goethe's works would not have been as artistically perfect as "Iphigenia" and "Tasso" if he had developed in a straight line from "Prometheus". But they would have been the first great products of a new era. Fate willed otherwise. Goethe abandoned the tendencies of his youth. He did not become the messiah of a new age. But he did bring us the most beautiful, the most mature fulfillment of a now dead epoch. His later poems are mature, overripe, but they are the last products of a series of developments. It is just as well. The time was not yet ripe for problems that we, a hundred years later, can barely guess at in vague outlines. Anyone who has a full awareness of these problems that are about to be born in the bosom of the present, who knows that we live in an age of expectation and have no right to dwell on the past, is what I call a modern spirit. I have never found this characteristic of genuinely modern striving, which dawned in Byron, so succinctly, so clearly outlined in any contemporary as in the Austrian poet M. E. delle Grazie. I have not formed this opinion from her first writings: "Gedichte", "Die Zigeunerin", "Hermann", "Saul"¹, but from her poems which have recently appeared in various magazines. These poems are the strictly lawful reflection of the modern world view from a deep, strongly feeling, clear-sighted soul endowed with great artistic creative power. What a comfortable and proud nature has to suffer from this view is expressed by delle Grazie in her poems. What a noble spirit feels when it sees the collapse of the old, great ideals, when it has to perceive how the modern conception of nature lets these ideals evaporate into nothingness and emptiness as insubstantial bubbles and vaporous formations, that is what we hear from the creations of this poetess. We are confronted with a mood of the present and hopelessness for the future. Only those who close their minds to the spirit that pervades our time, or who are shallow enough to laugh in the face of the bleakness, can fail to recognize the deep meaning of delle Grazie's poetry. There is nothing petty in the painful tones we hear here. Delle Grazie's sufferings do not spring from fate, which reigns over the everyday; they are rooted in the disharmonies of the cosmos and the historical development of mankind. They stand out from a significant background. That is why we do not find despondency and pusillanimity anywhere in them, but proud, bold elevation above pain. The dirty, the lowly, the common are shown ruthlessly in their nothingness, but the artist always proudly raises her head in order to be free of the despised, which she strikes with her scourge. Delle Grazie has seen through the deep irony that lies in human existence. She thinks nothing of knowledge, of ideals. These are things to which humanity aspires, only to feel all the more thoroughly disappointed when they turn out to be worthless and insubstantial appearances. But a proud spirit lives in the poet. She is able to raise herself to the height where one can smile at the nothingness of existence because one has ceased to have any desire for it.

I am looking for the reason for the mood in delle Grazie's latest collection of poems: "Italian Vignettes". There is a point in Rome's development where human greatness clashed most closely with human nothingness. Caesaric power was paired with human weakness, artistic height with ethical rottenness. The mouth that commanded nations greedily craved the kiss of the most wretched woman; a master's mind became a slave's mind when the embraces of high-ranking prostitutes subdued it. These "vignettes" reveal how this is still petrified in the remnants of old times, but how it can be interpreted by the clairvoyant eye:²

Divine dignity and divine rights
You have boldly arrogated to yourselves,
Spirit and virtue became servants,
Where the arbitrariness splashed great.

sings delle Grazie of the Roman Caesars. The mood that took hold of her in the eternal city is reflected in the words:

With elegiac whispers
Looks from the barren Palatine
A single pine tree gloomily
Towards the silent forum.

In addition to these stanzas, which are filled with a truly historical spirit, there is also no lack of those that vividly conjure up Italy's present before our souls. Here, delle Grazie captures the tone of melancholy just as well as that of cheerful humor, when it is in the nature of things. A number of poems have sprung from the impressions that Tasso's traces left in the poet's mind:

At your tomb all vain imaginings die,
Here your glory sits enthroned in majestic peace,
But where man suffered, I found tears,
And I was allowed to sob and dream here like you!

Under the title "Images and Figures", delle Grazie shares with us her feelings at the sight of great Italian works of art, such as Guercino's Sant' Agnese, Maderna's St. Cecilia, Belvedere's Apollo, Otricoli's Zeus and Michelangelo's Moses. - I have to admire the depth of the impressions in these poems as well as the spirituality of their rendering. Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri are sung about in deeply felt poems of great beauty of form. I was particularly moved by the one entitled "Two Madmen" from the cycle "Sorrento". Tasso and Nietzsche, who both walked on this soil, are juxtaposed:

Two great men walked these paths
And often both stand suddenly before my mind:
Tasso, the prince of poets by the grace of God,
And Friedrich Nietzsche ... equal was their
profit, And folly was his name ...

Both spirits had one thing in common: a drive lived in their breasts that strove unbridled into the depths of existence; both forgot that man is bound to the earth and that he must stop breathing when he rises above a certain height. Like the body, the human spirit is also dependent on the medium into which its life is once born. Tasso and Nietzsche, however, wanted to take their standpoint outside this medium in order to look down from the heights of heaven to the earthly. But in doing so, they consumed themselves.

Delle Grazie has seen all the glory that can be seen in Italy:

Like all of them, you drew me to you,
Enchanted, enraptured and beguiled,
On ruins you lied to me of a happiness,
That you destroyed hard in the sun's glare -

But she only found her worldview confirmed in one great example:

But I am not resentful ..., I am going home again,
Even if with a crudely broken walking stick -
I bring back with him the old torments
And here as there I lay him on a grave!

• 1. all published by Leo & Co. (Karl Konegen) in Vienna
• 2. Leipzig 1892, Breitkopf & Härtel (VII, 132 $.) 3 M., geb. 4 M.