The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The critic has a royal office; he should exercise it like a king. All the greats fall to him. He judges the poets and thinkers, the kings and warriors; he is to justify the judgment of the world and posterity about them. To do this, he himself must be rich in manifold knowledge, firm, faithful and truthful, loving and broad-minded. He who is endowed with these qualities should judge royally what happens and what is created; no cannibal and no slave, neither slave to public opinion nor to the king, neither slave to the state nor to the church, nor to any clique, he should exercise his sacred office.

This is how a true critic should be. And how should he not be? - No one says this better than the classical critic Lessing in the 57th antiquarian letter: "As soon as the art judge reveals that he knows more about his author than his writings can tell him, as soon as he uses this closer knowledge to make the slightest - supposed or real - disadvantageous move against him: his censure immediately becomes a personal insult. He ceases to be a judge of art, and becomes - the most contemptible thing that a rational creature can become - a complainer, a denigrator, a pasquillant! "

Anyone who has observed Maximilian Harden's activities for around eight years will be reminded in some respects of Lessing's statement above.

In Harden's opinion, a well-pointed phrase is more important to him than a dedicated approach to a subject. It often seems that his critical wisdom consists of one sentence: everything that comes into being is worthy of being reviled! - In this way, the skillful feuilletonist becomes an insulting attacker. Mr. Harden is a pamphleteer. Almost all of Harden's earlier essays in his weekly magazine "Zukunft" offer overwhelming material against him. Recall his essay on the assassination of Justice Levy, and his essay on the Zola trial will be read either with indignation or with a pitying smile. One must perhaps feel pity when one sees how a man behaves who, despite all reason, wants to say something different from all other people. The embarrassment, which is witty, gives a peculiar nuance of comedy.

Now we have experienced Sudermann's "Johannes".

How does Mr. Harden proceed? Twelve and a half pages of the fifteen-page essay are a kind of epilogue to Sudermann's work. - This means that Mr. Harden sat in his box on 15 January and witnessed the first performance in Berlin's Deutsches Theater. The powerful impressions that assailed him there resonate in the former actor and provide him with material and thoughts for an extremely subtle reflection of Sudermann's world of thought in "Johannes". Mr. Harden perhaps persuades himself that what he writes on pages 218 to 230 is his very own work. It is taken step by step from Sudermann's circle of ideas in "Johannes", apart from a few modifications; expressed with stylistic mastery in Harden's manner and form, but - what irony: a brilliant, in part ravishing acknowledgement of Sudermann!

But Harden, the spirit that always denies, does not want to admit this to himself. After all, the work he is so fond of is neither by Ibsen nor by Yvette Guilbert, but by Hermann Sudermann. Mr. Harden has been fighting him bitterly for years.

So it doesn't help: a scurrilous conclusion is quickly added on two pages, and we are once again presented with the familiar grimace of Harden's criticism.

Let's take a closer look at it.

"We see," writes Harden, "in Sudermann a poor devil of a Baptist - that is an amusing image that makes for merciless mockery; the drama to which an error gives the content is more correctly called a comedy." But this "poor devil", Mr. Pamphletist, dominates a whole mass of people, defeats the raging Pharisee at the well, who is no ordinary opponent (Act I, scenes 9 and 10), closes the way to glory and honour for himself through his manliness of character; he goes through life as a hero and goes to his death as a hero. To stand opposite Salome and not budge an inch from this predator even in the face of her ignominious end, to hurl her shame in the face of Herodias and disarm this beast in her own palace, to stand up to Herod as a prisoner in the dungeon court and assert the proud height of the lonely man on the mountain top, who assigns the cheap glory of the market to the little weakling in purple - would to God, Mr. Harden, that you were such a "poor devil"! Then your life would not be a "comedy", as it is becoming more and more now, but a heart-rending, spirit-liberating spectacle.

But so - "it is an empty, pathetic play"; for - Mr. Harden is a pamphleteer! It is unforgivable, he teaches us, how Sudermann treats the Baptist: not only has he used Flaubert's story (Flaubert and Sudermann both lay the same lion's skin on a chaise longue in the palace salon. Q.e.d.), but the Baptist's nature has remained alien to the poet, even though the reviewer has just presented it to him with his own thoughts, namely the poet's own thoughts. Sudermann's "weak inventive power" (!) has made a "confused being, driven astray by bad or badly read books (-?-)" out of Johannes; what does a Harden (perhaps also: a Harden should understand more -) understand of the conflict that rages through and tears apart this heroic soul, but through which it finally wrestles its way victoriously to the clear light of inner harmony, as Sudermann shows us? Law and goodness: the former dominates the old covenant, the latter the new; the latter represents the Baptist, the latter his Messiah. They form an irreconcilable contrast! The harsh demand for justice is the Baptist's shibboleth! This is not, as Harden blathers, "the spell of rabbinical dullness", to which John knows himself to be in sharp contradiction, but the genuine, pure air of Mosaic and prophetic tradition, as every Israelite breathed it from childhood. "As if he had never heard anything new", announces Harden, "John listens up when the word love strikes his ear for the first time" - did this not correspond completely to his situation, both internal and external? The prophetic sayings that Harden seems to be thinking of here are, even in their most far-reaching form, dealt with in the Summa: "Do not be deprived of your flesh", i.e.: The Jew helps the Jew - no one else! - But from Galilee comes the message that the new Master calls for love of the enemy! So no longer, as God's commandment stated: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"? How do God's holy law and the forgiving goodness towards the sinner unite? - Did this collision not cause the Baptist the most difficult struggle of his soul, doubly tragic, because it was not just any rabbi who represented the unheard-of new teaching, but his Messiah, whose forerunner and pioneer he knew himself to be, who carried salvation for Israel in his hand, who eternally determined everyone's fate? John expresses this movingly to Herod (Act IV, Scene 5): "Thou hast put no chains on me, neither canst thou loosen them for me: another cast thee in my way, and there I broke thee." The poet has masterfully posed this inner, religious problem to the hero within the framework of the external events with their colorful alternation up to the brutal outcome, something that the vast majority of critics have not yet understood. From act to act - the attentive will also note the highly instructive act endings - the solution is approached: the law-abiding preacher of repentance, who harshly rejects the children of Jehoshaphat together with Jael and the tender Miriam, only learns to love his disciples in the difficult struggle that breaks up his outer life and also shows him the limits of his prophetic work (end of Act IV), after he has already actually been able to love them. Act IV), after he has actually, albeit still half reluctantly, handed over the judgment of the desecrator of the temple to God (end of Act III), and finally, at the inner climax of the drama (Act V, Scene 8), learns to love the two so exclusive greats: Law and Goodness, to find the unifying formula: "Only from the mouth of the lover may the name guilt sound!" Mercy administers the judgment.

This settles two more of Harden's inanities: firstly, that Sudermann has Jesus preach a "liberal love", while he was "also" a scorching flame that consumed that which was doomed.

The lover administers judgment, says Sudermann deeply and gloriously, while Harden juxtaposes two Johannesses, the second of whom happens to be called Jesus. John wants to and should judge, Jesus has come to save people's souls. The orientation of the two men is fundamentally different. Then: Sudermann has the Baptist "search for Jesus as if he were a business traveler roaming the country with valuable samples". That is Harden's brashness! Consider: both men were working in the same country, at times only a few miles apart; it must be obvious to any normal mind that this cannot be a matter of "purely spiritual searching and finding", but at that time of messengers being sent out with a message and an answer.

But it gets even worse! Sudermann "does not live in his work; he has dragged building blocks from all regions, borrowed decorative objects from all art chambers, so that he can no longer find his way around his own building" - that is a schoolboy's achievement that fully deserves a striking proof a posteriori! - Sudermann, so we must continue to hear, has "committed a crime when he entangled Johannes in a ludicrous wooer's intrigue (the poet had looked for the models in the "Protzenburgen> and the "pimped truffle paradise of Tiergartenstraße -), the thin web of which the rough one would have torn apart with one grip": is this not what Johannes actually does through his heroic impeccable behavior? Why does Harden deny this? Doesn't that mean falsifying the clear truth and criticizing without conscience? -! "John was a man among men, and Herodias and Salome had no decisive influence on his growth and downfall" -: does that exclude the possibility that these two terrible women contributed to his downfall? Has the truth of "cherchez la femme" not been a sinister force throughout the course of world history? Is it necessary to illustrate this to a Harden? Political considerations and domestic intrigues combined to grind the axe for the Anabaptist.

The coloring of Sudermann's drama is unparalleled; the spiritual and political state of the people and the entire "milieu" are so exquisitely captured - even very disapproving critics have declared this aloud - that even a penetrating scholarly examination can only pay tribute with admiration. Mr. Harden, of course, knows better: "all contours blur and the viewer stares distractedly at a confused foggy picture". Were you so distracted - or even "foggy" - that everything "blurred" for you? As a result, you probably only have dim memories of the premiere evening, Mr. Harden? - That's why we advise you: Visit the performance again with confidence; but only if you are able to "stare" in a collected way instead of "distractedly"! - The "cheeky tragedian", you cheeky reviewer, does not "confuse" "Pharisees and Sadducees" either, which would of course be easier to excuse in your case. Just kindly read the passage in Act I (Scene 3) where the two Sadducean priests offer their blessing to Eliakim and the palace maid, the latter followers of the Pharisee sect; when they abruptly refuse (both parties hated each other mortally), the one priest angrily remarks: "They are also from the school of the Pharisees." Do you admit, Mr. Harden, that you were asleep? Or were you "staring" "absentmindedly" again?

One more thing: the sources on the political situation in Palestine at the time of the Baptist flow sparsely and murkily, to the chagrin of every Orientalist. One cannot go beyond more or less probable conjectures. Sudermann has done well to stick to the biblical account of the evangelists as a whole - preferring the synoptics to the fourth gospel, of course - without missing the notes in Josephus. Not only Maximilian Harden, but hopefully every schoolchild knows that it was not Herod Antipas but Pontius Pilate who ruled Jerusalem at the time. But Sudermann has Herod Antipas visit Jerusalem for the Passover as the "tetrarch of Galilee". Do you have any objections to that? But the entry of Jesus - not in Jerusalem, but in or near Machaerus (in the drama's so effective final image) is such an understandable poetic liberty that we can only speak of a "disdainful theatrical trick" in the scolding jargon of Mr. Harden.

Summa: Hermann Sudermann is neither "intellectually poor" nor a "dazzling theatrical force" who has "tragicomically overestimated himself in his delusions of grandeur", but rather: the great poet has gifted us with a highly significant work of strict dramatic structure, splendid organization and design and delightful language, for the tragedy "Johannes" is an enduringly valuable masterpiece of German poetry. Mr. Harden, however, deserves the words of his and our friend Friedrich Nietzsche, which are intended to tell the famous editor of the "Zukunft" what he means more and more to our people:

"The obstacle of all the strong and creative, the labyrinth of all the doubting and lost, the quagmire of all the weary, the shackle of all those running after high goals, the poisonous fog of all fresh sprouts, the parching sandy desert of the searching German spirit yearning for new life! "

The modernity of Henrik Ibsen's spirit can be observed in his dramatic technique no less than in the problems he deals with. One need only compare the dramatic structure of Hamlet or Wallenstein with that of Ghosts to see what modern drama is. Edgar Steiger has described this spirit of the new drama in his book "Das Werden des neuen Dramas" (Berlin, 1898. F. Fontane & Co.) in a way that will find little favor with scholars, which is by no means flawless, but nevertheless appealing and full of light.

He rightly points out that Ibsen's technique is in some respects similar to that of the old Greek tragedians. Just think of "Oedipus the King". All the events here take place before the poet begins his drama. Only the immense torments of the soul and the sublimely gruesome moods that develop from these events come before our eyes. It has therefore been said that the Greeks did not produce complete dramas, but only fifth acts. And is it not the same with the "Ghosts", for example? Isn't everything decisive and objective here also before the beginning of the drama?

Steiger aptly points out the differences in the sources from which such similarities in technique between the ancients and Ibsen emerge. For the Greeks, drama developed from musical-religious cults, from the worship of Dionysus. They were not interested in the depiction of external events, but in the expression of the devotion which the counsels of the gods, who brought about those events, instilled in them. They wanted to express their devotion, their religious mood in their poetry; not to embody what they had observed.

And Steiger explains just as clearly how, under the influence of a different world view, Shakespeare had to develop a different dramatic technique. "Shakespearean tragedy has no such distinguished past as ancient Greek tragedy. The medieval mysteries and carnival plays, in which we have to see the ancestors of the newer theater, both paid homage to the brave principles of Goethe's theater director in "Faust": above all, they wanted to entertain the people. The mysteries were intended to compensate the devout for the boredom of the sermon, and in the carnival plays the worthy fellow citizens were allowed to laugh at the stupidity and meanness of their dear neighbors." The aim of the play was not the solemn elevation to the gods, but the amusement of worldly things. "The main thing, then, was to give the people plenty to look at; for if only the eye had its constant occupation, the poets and players need not fear for success. The more sad and funny adventures, sublime speeches and mean jokes alternated with each other, the better! ... Shakespeare thus found a real play, from which the audience demanded that the great deeds of history, the adventures of the heroes and the follies of their dear neighbors be presented to them in the flesh. Thus, unlike the Greek poets, he did not have to sensualize musical sentiments and lyrical thoughts, but to internalize external events and adventures, murderous deeds and pranks."

The way Shakespeare went about it shows that he was a child of his time. He lived in an era in which attention was focused on the great, on the external. It was the great main and state actions, the actions visible from afar, that people's eyes were focused on at the time. "Kings and heroes walk across the stage on a gigantic scale, and the fools become like kings. Everything grows immense. Only the times and the historical distances shrink according to an arbitrary perspective. We clearly sense that we are living in the age of the telescope."

Natural science was also inspired by this spirit at the time. What was visible to the naked eye was studied. Nothing was known of the microscopic small things from which modern science seeks to investigate the laws of the great. If Shakespeare had wanted to show from the stage the subtle vibrations of the soul into which people were transported by the outside world, no one would have understood him. No one would have visualized the external causes, the actions themselves, from the effect on people's inner selves. That has changed today. The modern poet has adopted the microscopic view of the modern naturalist. "We see too much: that's why we have to narrow our field of vision. To exhaust a single human soul with our gaze seems to us a Danaid's labor. That's why we don't need kings and heroes in poetry; the poorest devil of a worker can be more interesting to us under certain circumstances. After all, we don't want to paint crowns and purple cloaks, but only souls, living human souls - and who knows whether we would find one under the purple - at least the kind we need, a soul in which the great, torn century is reflected? "

Henrik Ibsen therefore cuts out a microscopic specimen of human life and lets us guess everything else from it. This is the basis of his dramatic technique. He gradually works his way towards this technique. In the "Bund der Jugend", in the "Stützen der Gesellschaft", in the "Volksfeind" he still seeks to present a macroscopic picture, as complete a plot painting as possible; later he only describes the interior of the souls who have experienced this painting, and opens up the retrospective view of the painting to us. How little happens in the "Ghosts"! In the morning, a pastor visits a widow; on the following day, he is to dedicate an asylum to the memory of her deceased husband. The asylum burns down; the pastor leaves without having achieved anything; and after his departure, the widow's son goes mad. - But what is going on in the souls of those involved during this meagre plot? A look back into a rich past, into a rich drama opens up before us.

Now Ibsen has a special secret of dramatic technique. In the limited slice of reality that he presents to us, he suggests everything we need in order to draw our attention to the entire plot that is under consideration but not depicted.

Steiger draws attention to individual such suggestive features. "For the time being, through the inner tension of the dramatic process and the vivid power of the skilfully stylized sounds of nature, he brings the trembling soul of his people so close to us that we feel their memory images as if they were real." But once this has happened, he needs a second means. He lets us experience an external event on stage, which we only need to move backstage so that dramatic reality is transformed into fantasy, "and we have actually experienced both past and present in the same way. The objectification of the image of memory and the internalization of stage reality thus work into each other's hands in order to achieve sensual effects just as strong as the appearance of the earlier theater. We find a classic example of this in the first act of "Ghosts. In Mrs. Alving's animated narrative, the entire past of the house comes before our eyes as vividly as if we were seeing and hearing the deceased chamberlain himself bantering with his maid in the flower room. Suddenly we really do hear the whispering voices of Oswald and Regina from the flower room and see Mrs. Alving, pale as death, slowly rising from her chair and, as if petrified, pointing to the door, slurring the half-stitched words: "Ghosts! The couple in the flower room is dead!" Here we have a past dramatically embodied before us in an immediately present action.

The art of directing must take up this peculiarity of Ibsen's technique when presenting his works. From this point of view, the question of dramatic technique becomes a dramaturgical one. What one is entitled to call Ibsen style on stage must begin at this point. For the art of acting has the task of embodying. It must present with external stage means, visible to the senses, what the poet has in mind in his imagination. The parallel processes - one of reality, the other as an image of memory - must be worked out by dramatic art. How this is to be done in each individual case must be left to the stage practitioner. The only certainty is that we will only experience satisfying performances of Ibsen's dramas when the stage style is developed in this direction. As long as this is not the case, these stage works will always seem like dramatized novellas to the audience. We must realize that even in these dramas it is not the what that matters, but the how. To express the what, Ibsen could also choose any other form of poetry. He needs the stage because he uses artistic means that go beyond mere narration, which must be embodied if they are to be effective in all their power.

Steiger again aptly remarks: "The dramatic double images, the second of which brings the first to mind in a flash, are not an invention of Ibsen's, but this poet must make excellent use of them in his modern technique. Perhaps all it takes is a gentle nudge and one or other of our directors will become a treasure digger, dragging hidden glories from the depths of Shakespeare's poetry onto the stage. In Ibsen's work, no one passes by these double images carelessly. Because here they must immediately catch the eye of anyone who is not blind."

In his stimulating book "Neue Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik der Epik und Dramatik" (Leipzig. 1898), Friedrich Spielhagen discusses, among other things, the dominance that drama exercises in the present. Anyone interested in aesthetic questions will always enjoy reading a theoretical work by Spielhagen. An artist of rich experience, fine thinking and refined taste speaks to us from such a book. A mature, clarified judgment, gained through many years of personal artistic practice, must also be listened to with rapt attention by those who have a different view from the person making the judgment. In general, Friedrich Spielhagen does not speak well of modern dramatic production; in individual cases, he will always be the first to show understanding and appreciation for real talent.

Much of what he says should find unreserved approval even among the most obedient adherents of newer trends. For it is true that today's literary supremacy is based on manifold errors: on errors on the part of the poets, on errors on the part of the public.

One basic error is that one believes one can say everything one wants to say with the means of drama. A deeper aesthetic education, however, will always lead to the recognition of the truth that certain material can only tolerate a novelistic and not a dramatic treatment. Drama cannot tolerate material that is only suitable for novellistic treatment. That is why some modern dramas are only dramatized novellas. Such shortcomings in the material, or in the treatment of a material, result in dramatic structures that leave us unsatisfied because important things are missing that are necessary if we are to fully understand what happens in the course of the dramatic action. And when the playwright endeavors to bring such things, we see on the stage what we cannot tolerate on it. Spielhagen rightly remarks: "The confusion of dramatic with epic art ... occurs ... sometimes comes to light in the most delightful way. Thus in the pettiness of the stage directions in usum of the directors and actors. No small piece of furniture, no coffee cup saucer is given to us. The position of the sun, the atmospheric mood, the scent of flowers wafting through the room - these are all things of immense importance. Each person is given a meticulous description: whether they are long or short, fat or thin; whether their skull is broad or oval, what expression their physiognomy shows when they are at rest or in motion, and that they have this or that habit when walking, standing, speaking or smiling. One would always like to shout to the gentlemen: if these things are so dear to you, why don't you just write novels and novellas where you can indulge in such epic details!"

But for all its addiction to indulging in detail, drama cannot offer the development of characters and actions that epic representation rightly claims for itself. The drama must depict prominent, characteristic moments that coalesce into an artistic whole with a beginning, middle and end. All talk about the unnaturalness of such a whole cannot be convincing. Spielhagen replies to such talk: "I am always reminded of the anecdote of the Jewish butcher who thought he had sharpened his knife without a blade, as required by the ritual, and to whom the wise rabbi showed it under a magnifying glass, where the blade without a blade then appeared like a saw. Engaging in a race with nature is always unfortunate - it has too much staying power. And the matter becomes absurd when the competition is as futile as it is futile. The purposes of nature and art do not coincide now and nowhere. Nature has always done very well without art; and when art is absorbed in imitation of nature, it is nothing more than second-hand and dead-hand nature, of which every panopticon provides gruesome evidence."

There are thus two errors on which much of modern drama is based: the misjudgment of the boundaries between epic and dramatic art and the superstition that nature can really be imitated. These errors are present on the part of the authors.

The public's attitude towards the theater shows no less significant damage. People no longer want to follow the in-depth epic portrayal that lays bare all the links in the development of an event. They want to deal with a problem in a few hours, to be superficially excited by it. One does not seek all-round artistic enjoyment, but a fleeting reference. The tendency towards intensive immersion is decreasing more and more. And the circles that have such an inclination are almost completely excluded from attending the theater by the high theater prices. The fate of a dramatic work of art today depends on factors that cannot decide whether it is of artistic value or not. The following sentences by Spielhagen are only too true: "That intimate relationship that once existed between the audience and the producer (poets and actors), that penetrating understanding that results from constant, heartfelt participation - they are no longer possible, at least in the big cities of today. How could they be, in a constantly changing audience made up of a small number of real lovers and an overwhelmingly large contingent of cool to the core, meditating idlers, coquettish idlers and passing strangers! The most alarming thing is that it is precisely this audience's more than suspicious vote that is decisive for the entire dramatic market. What it approves will make the rounds through all provincial towns, what it rejects will not have a full course anywhere. There are exceptions - I know it well, but it's the rule."

The professional criticism does not have a clarifying and ameliorating effect on these conditions. Today, individual critics are too much under the spell of some aesthetic direction. Only a few are capable of an unbiased dedication to artistic qualities. Most ask whether a work fits in with the ideas they have formed about art. Once again, Spielhagen's characteristic is apt: "For entire critical circles, a state arises like when the table is moved, where the manipulators believe the table to be pushed by a higher power, while they themselves are the pushers under the influence of a quiet pressure that they do not actually perceive, which emanates from the neighbor to the right (or left), who is again influenced by his neighbor to the right (or left) and so on all the way around."

The fact is that all younger poets are pushing towards the stage. The fact that a theater performance is much more readily understood by today's audience than a multi-volume novel is a decisive factor in this push. But there is something else to consider. Art today, like many other branches of life, has taken on a social character. Our dramatists do not want to create merely for aesthetic enjoyment; they want to contribute to the reorganization of social relations. Art should be an element of social development. But since drama has a far stronger effect than the novel, the young choose it. They then see the effect, so to speak, grow up from today to tomorrow. And our time wants to be fast-moving. We want to see what we are contributing to. Hence the favoring of dramatic art by journalism, the state and society, of which Spielhagen speaks: "the favoring that theatrical art receives as a decorative art (just like the fine arts) from above, how many thousands are spent annually on its richer equipment, which then indirectly benefits dramatic production again. How the latter itself is again protected, also from above, as soon as it proves to be compliant with the tendencies popular there, which may not always be beneficial to its salvation, but at least increases its worldly reputation and attracts flocks of people who aspire to higher regions or are obedient to an impulse. How one tries to honor and cheer up production by periodically distributing prizes. How much space it is given in the feature pages of the daily papers. How considerable the number of revues and monthlies devoted entirely to its service. How much the higher classes of the grammar schools are already doing for its understanding by commenting on our classics, by presenting themes on dramatic matters and so on. What eloquent and enthusiastic eulogists and interpreters the dramatic art finds on the cathedrals of the universities."

All this support is given to dramatic art for the reason that it is an important link in social development.

Now things are suddenly supposed to be different. For a decade and a half, the preachers of "modernism" have never tired of telling us that we can no longer continue along the paths that Schiller and Goethe took. The classical forms, the monumental on stage, the stylization must stop. Pure, unadulterated nature must be given its due. But that was five years ago. Since then, these "modernists" have discovered that there are nerves. Then they said: Nerves, they are modern. Modern dramas must have an effect on the "nerves". We listened quietly to these modernists. Because they said: we want to discover the new art, we have to let off steam first. We might do stupid things for the time being, but good things will come. Yes, but it didn't come. Now all of a sudden these "moderns" are starting to tell us that Goethe was right after all. That's going too far. We won't allow ourselves to be treated like this. We have remained silent until now. We have gladly listened to people preach naturalism to us. After all, we have also put up with symbolism. But the fact that now the people who sang us the song with the chest tone of their conviction: Goethe's art is over, that these people are now coming to teach us what Goethe wanted, wrote and thought - we won't put up with that. We have always known what Goethean art is. We have also known that there can be something else that is different. And finally, we have even known that Goethe lived at the end of the last century, and that at the end of this century mankind has other needs than Goethe's contemporaries. But when our contemporaries come and want to teach us what real art is in Goethe's sense, and that we should convert to this art, then let us have a serious word.

Some of our younger writers discovered Goethe a few days ago. Several are now even copying Goethe's rules of art and having them printed in modern reviews. They are starting to write something really clever. And teach us what real art is in Goethe's sense. I want to let these gentlemen in on a secret. We don't really care what they tell us. It tells us only the most banal things. But these gentlemen are gifted. They will go even further in their understanding of Goethe. That's why we shouldn't judge them too harshly. Today they tell us things that we can do without, because we have them in our blood; they are trivialities for us. Tomorrow they will glean things from Goethe that are strange and new to us. One of these gifted people recently wrote a magazine article entitled "Back to Goethe". He said that it is good to remember Goethe's artistic maxims after all. He cited individual contemporaries who share his sentiments. He was wrong about some of them. For if today a truly artistic nature goes back to Goethe, it is for the truly easy-to-understand reason that Goethe wrote many a good thing after all. Points of view do not even come into consideration in relation to Goethe.

We have been watching for a long time. But we cannot tolerate someone taking the liberty of saying the same things we have always said.

I am writing all this without naming names. Because names are out of the question. Anyone who has followed the criticism of recent days knows that the champions of "modernism" suddenly want to teach us what Goethean, what classical art is. Perhaps now is precisely the time to tell these "modernists" that they have finally arrived at what we have long known. Up to now we have watched because we thought: now it's coming. But at last we no longer want to clench our fists in our pockets. At last we want to say openly that we believe in every new genius, but not in abstruse idioms. The theorists of "modernity" have already led enough talented people astray. This must not continue.

As little as the botanist influences the plant in its development, so little should the art theorist, who speaks of new directions, influence the creative people, who should follow themselves and not the theories.

I hope that is clearly spoken. I am not speaking as a conservative or reactionary. But I'm saying it because I'm finally getting tired of hearing people talk about things that are supposed to be new and yet are only new because their standard-bearers don't know the old.

If someone discovered the Pythagorean theorem today, they would be laughed at. If someone today discovers art forms and art values that are no less indicative of a certain venerable age, they are referred to as "modern views".

It is necessary to have learned something! And only those who know what its opposite is should speak of "modernity". Incidentally, I love everything contemporary.

Eight days ago, this journal published an article on "Scientific Criticism". It seems to me that the essay had its proper place in the "Dramaturgische Blätter", although it does not deal solely with matters relating to the theater. For nowhere in literary life is there more sin than in "theater criticism". That is why I think it is appropriate to follow up this article with a few supplementary remarks. I would like to agree in part with Grillparzer's statement, which the author of the above-mentioned article quotes. "Critical talent is an outflow of the creative. He who can do something himself can also judge what others have done." I absolutely subscribe to that. But I believe that not everyone will interpret these sentences correctly. Most people will understand them as follows: the lyricist should only be judged by the lyricist, the epicist by the epicist, the dramatist by the dramatist and so on. I think such an interpretation is wrong. For I believe that in order to practise a certain kind of art, it is necessary to have a one-sided talent that moves in a certain direction, which makes the personality particularly receptive to the peculiarity of its achievements and makes it less receptive to other directions within the same artistic genre. A lyricist with a pronounced individuality will have to be unfair to a lyricist with a different individuality.

Furthermore, I believe that he who cannot produce anything in any field is not fit to be a critic at all. For an unproductive head will never have anything to say about a productive one. He who does not know the pains of childbirth and the joys of parenthood that his own creatures cause, who does not know the experiences of spiritual pregnancy, should not sit in judgment on other people's spiritual children.

So if the lyricist should not judge the lyricist, the playwright should not judge the playwright: yes, who should actually judge?

My opinion is this. A creator should pass judgment on creations in a field other than his own. A poet should judge a work of painting, a painter should judge a philosophical book on my account, a philosopher should judge a work of painting or a work of poetry. I presuppose, of course, that my readers understand that the philosopher is an artist. Every philosophical thought is a work of art like an Iyrian poem; and he who wants to be a philosopher without productive talent is a mere scientist. He is like the teacher of composition to the composer.

When I read a review, I always ask about the author. If he has produced something himself, I start to take an interest in his critical work. He will then perhaps say some one-sided, stubborn things about other productions. But he will always say something that deserves to be said. The person who produces nothing himself will also only ever produce empty chatter about the achievements of others.

I like to hear a poet talk about a painter, I like to hear a philosopher talk about a playwright. I regard a critic who is nothing more than a critic as a superfluous personality.

Now people will say to me: there have been critics who have put forward important and correct ideas and who were nothing more than critics. I reply: that may happen once in a while. It just happens when a person has missed their calling. And because that is the case, Bismarck was right when he defined the journalist as a person who has failed in his profession. I can think of a music critic who has never achieved anything in any branch of human production. Let's say his name is Hanslick. I will speak quite frankly. I believe such a person has missed his calling. He should have been a musician. His musical talent did not develop. He then says as a critic what he is unable to say as an artist. If he had become an artist, he would have expressed a certain idiosyncrasy. One would have enjoyed it and would have a certain idea of the personality in question. But now, for some reason, this personality has not become an artist. Its character has not taken on a tangible form. It has remained in a kind of slumber. When such a personality criticizes, it judges in the sense of an idiosyncrasy that has never seen the light of day. This may be quite interesting in individual cases, but in general we don't know what to do with such a personality's judgments.

Yet we will always know whether we are dealing with one of those natures who have missed their calling, or with a person who has received no calling at all from nature. For if one had the malice necessary to recognize the real situation, one would have to say of most critics: these are people who could not miss a profession because they never had one.

When a journalist, who has never produced anything independent to which I can attach an artistic value, writes about a play, it has no more value than when a witty lady gives her opinion of this work in a salon. But don't think I'm a pedant just because I say this. I am not of the opinion that only he is an artist who paints over the canvas with colors or who puts something printed into the world. I am one of those pure fools who believe in Raphael without hands. Perhaps the lady who gives me her opinion of the latest Hauptmann in the salon is a lyricist who only lacks the organ to put her feelings into the necessary form.

That may be true. But I'm not talking about the ladies in the salon who didn't become poets for lack of organ. I have no need for that. Because they don't write. I'm talking about the people who write. And in the present day, these are mostly not Raphaels without hands, but people who have hands and nothing but hands.

You can see today that artists generally speak about all criticism in the most negative, dismissive way. But that's only because they are mostly criticized by unproductive people, by people who have absolutely nothing to say to them.

I have never found my opinion of who should and should not judge an artist better confirmed than when I have heard actors judge actors and when I have heard unartistic natures judge actors. Actors have no judgment at all about other actors. And inartistic natures only talk great nonsense about acting performances. Every actor is absorbed in his own nature; and if he does certain things differently from himself, he considers him a bad artist. The inartistic nature believes that acting is an easy thing, and thinks every one a great mime who amuses it. Neither judgment is worth speaking of. A painter, a lyric poet, a musician, a dramatic writer, a philosopher can judge an actor, but an actor and a non-artist cannot. The actor can only tell us something that ultimately boils down to: he does it differently than I do, and what I do is the only right thing. The inartist babbles stupid things into the air.

Artists should only judge artists; but artists should never judge artists in the same branch of art. If this principle were applied to theater criticism, there would probably be a great demand for theater critics and only a small supply. But one has to reckon with the fact that in this day and age supply can significantly exceed demand.

Perhaps if this principle were followed, not all positions could be filled. But what harm would it do if, for example, not all the daily newspapers in Berlin were to publish their obligatory theater reviews during the winter? Most of these reviews are written by people who have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say about the things they write about. Why should every play that is brought to the stage give rise to a waste of ink and ink? I don't want to talk about the time the writers waste, because it's not really a pity. I do not believe that those who waste it would put it to better use in another occupation.

Criticism should basically be a sideline. What an artist has to say about art forms that are not his own, he should tell us as a critic. Criticism as a main occupation is nonsense. But big cities are teeming with critics who are nothing but critics. And how do the voices of such nothing-but-critics count? They don't really count for much with the artists themselves. But all the more so with the audience. That is sad. Because a critical judgement that is not recognized by an artistically sensitive person should have no validity anywhere.

One rarely hears unbiased talk about the gears of criticism. Unfortunately, the critical nature of unproductive people has become a power that most artists, not just the public, reckon with. In private circles, artists can be heard making jokes about the phrases of the critics in the most informal way; in public, however, they rarely say anything about this kind of criticism. I once wanted to express my completely unbiased opinion.

Ever and again I have to ask myself the question: what is the basis for the widespread impact of some of Shakespeare's plays? "Hamlet", "Othello", "The Merchant of Venice", "Romeo and Juliet" make an equally deep impression on the educated and the uneducated, the classical and the modern-minded, the idealist and the bon vivant. And we have the feeling that we present-day people are confronted with this poet of a relatively bygone era as if he were living among us today. One need only think of the effects of poems such as Goethe's "Iphigenia" and "Tasso" to realize the difference with perfect clarity. And as far as the changeability of the influence of dramatic works of art over time is concerned, I would like to draw attention to the decline in enthusiasm for Schiller's creations in the course of our century. Only Shakespeare's dramas seem to elicit the same appreciation from every degree and type of education, and no less from every age.

I believe that one must go into the basic causes of the effects of works of art if one wants to solve the question just touched upon.

In our time, this is not easy. For in the branch of human thought known today as aesthetics, there is an abundance of prejudices that virtually rule out an understanding among our contemporaries on certain fundamental questions of art.

In saying this, I am thinking above all of certain critics who regard anything that looks like a world view or philosophy within the view of art as a red rag to the bull. How the poet thinks about the things that provide the content for his works should be completely irrelevant. Indeed, these critics are even of the opinion that the artist is all the greater the less he thinks at all. They like to call a poet who they believe does not think at all "naïve", and are enthusiastic about his creations, whose fair "unconsciousness" is praised in every key. And one immediately becomes suspicious when one realizes that a poet has a world view which he helps to express in his works. One believes that the naivety, the unconsciousness of creation is thereby lost. Some art observers go so far as to say that the poet who does not live like a child in a dream state that obscures and hides the clarity of his thoughts is not a true poet at all. I have often heard and read that Goethe's greatness is based on the fact that he did not think about his artistic achievements, that he lived as if in dreams, and that Schiller, the more conscious one, first had to interpret his dreams for him.

I have often wondered why people turn the facts upside down for the sake of such a prejudice. For it is precisely in Goethe's case that it can be shown that the entire nature of his artistic work follows from a clear, sharply defined world view. Goethe was a man of knowledge. He could see nothing around him without forming a view of it that could be clearly formulated in concepts. When Duke Karl August summoned him to Weimar and induced him to engage in all kinds of practical activities, the things he had to deal with in practice became sources from which he constantly enriched his knowledge of the world and of people. His involvement with mining in Ilmenau led him to study the geological conditions of the earth's crust in detail and, on the basis of these studies, to form a comprehensive view of the formation of the earth. Nor could he indulge in the enjoyment of nature as a mere pleasure-seeker. The duke gave him a garden. He could not merely enjoy flowers and plants; he soon began to search for the basic laws of plant life. And this search led him to the epoch-making ideas that he set down in his morphological works. These studies, in conjunction with the observation of works of art in Italy, formed a world view in him that had sharp, conceptual contours and from which his artistic style necessarily flowed.

One must know this world view; one must have imbued his entire intellectual life with it if one wants to receive the right impression from Goethe's works of art. Goethe is, if one still wants to use the word badly abused by the present: a naturalist. He wanted to recognize nature in its purity and reproduce it in his works. Anything that resorted to things not to be found in nature itself to explain nature was contrary to his way of thinking. He rejected all forms of otherworldly, transcendent, divine powers. A God who only works from the outside, who does not move the world in its innermost being, was of no concern to him. Any kind of revelation and metaphysics was an abomination to him. Anyone who looks impartially at real, natural things must reveal their deepest secrets to them of their own accord. But he was not like our modern fanatics of facts, who can only see the surface of things and call "natural only that which can be seen with the eyes, grasped with the hands and weighed with the scales". For him, this superficial reality is only one side, the outside of nature. He wants to see deeper into the workings; he seeks the higher nature within nature. He is not satisfied with looking at the abundance of plants and putting them into a system; he wants to discover in them a primal form, the original plant, which underlies them all; which cannot be seen, but which must be grasped in the idea. He does this in all areas. He also looks at people and their mutual relationships in this way. He tries to reduce the confusion of human beings, their manifold characters, to a few typical basic forms. And it is these basic forms, these types, not the phenomena of everyday reality, that he seeks to embody in his poetry. His Iphigenia and his Tasso represent the higher human nature in nature. And the possibility of depicting higher natures came to him because he had arrived at a certain view, a clear world of ideas, through restless cognitive work. Only those who have his basic view can depict people and their coexistence in the way he did. And this view can only be understood by those who have made Goethe's world view their own. This fact shows the dependence of Goethe's poetic technique on his world view. A fanatic of facts works out his figures in such a way that they appear to us like phenomena of everyday life. To do this he must also use technical means that give the impression of low naturalness. Goethe must use other artistic means. He must draw in lines and colors that go beyond the superficiality of things, that are supra-real and yet affect us with the magic that the necessity of natural existence has.

I would like to cite other examples that illustrate the dependence of artistic technique on worldview. Schiller is a supporter of the so-called moral world view. For him, world history is a world judgment. Anyone who suffers evil in the world must have a certain guilt; he must deserve his fate. Now I do not want to claim that Schiller saw the real world as if every guilt was followed by just punishment. But he took the view that this is how it should be, and that any other way of relating things leaves us morally unsatisfied. That is why he constructs his dramas in such a way that they reflect a world context that meets this moral requirement. He has his heroes end tragically because they have brought guilt upon themselves. That there is a harmonious connection between fate and guilt: this is the basic condition of his dramatic technique. Mary Stuart, the. Maid of Orleans, Wallenstein must become guilty in order for us to be satisfied by their tragic end.

Compare this with Henrik Ibsen's dramatic technique in his last period. He no longer speaks of guilt and atonement. For him, the fact that a person perishes has entirely different causes than moral ones. His Oswald in "Ghosts" is as innocent as a child and yet he perishes. A person with a moral view of the world can only be disgusted by this course of events. Ibsen, however, does not have a moral world view. He knows only an extra-moral natural context; a cold, unfeeling necessity. Just as the stone cannot help it if it shatters when it falls to the hard earth, an Ibsenian hero cannot help it if he meets an evil fate.

We can visualize the same fact in Maeterlinck. He believes in subtle, soul-like, mysterious connections in all phenomena. When two people speak to each other, he not only hears the common content of their speeches, but also perceives deeper relationships, unspoken relationships. And he tries to work this unspoken, mysterious quality into the things and people he portrays. Indeed, he regards everything external and visible as merely a means of hinting at the deeper, hidden soul. His technique is a result of this striving and thus of his world view. Anyone who is unable to sense the deeper essences implied in the things and people he brings to the stage cannot understand Maeterlinck. Every gesture, every movement, every word on stage is an expression of the underlying world view.

Whoever keeps these truths in mind will realize that Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, Maeterlinck can only have an effect on a certain circle of people, on those who can empathize with the world view of these poets, who can think and feel like them. This is why the impact of these artists must have limits.

Why is it different with Shakespeare? Does Shakespeare have no world view? And does he have such a general effect because the effect does not flow from one and is therefore not limited by it?

The latter cannot be admitted by anyone who considers the circumstances more thoroughly. Shakespeare, too, has a certain view of the world.

For Goethe, the world is the expression of typical basic beings; for Schiller, of a moral order; for Ibsen, of a purely natural order; for Maeterlinck, of a spiritual, mysterious connection between things. What is it for Shakespeare?

I think the most appropriate word to express Shakespeare's view of the world is to say that the world is a play to him. He looks at all things for a certain theatrical effect by virtue of their nature. He is indifferent to whether they reflect typical basic forms, whether they are morally connected, whether they express something mysterious. He asks: what is there in them that, when we look at them, satisfies our satisfaction in pure contemplation, in harmless observation? If he finds that the desire to look at a person is most satisfied when we look at what is typical about him, he directs his gaze to this typical. If he believes that harmless contemplation is most satisfied when it is offered the mysterious, he places this in the foreground. But the desire to look is the most widespread, the most general desire. Whoever meets it will have the largest audience. He who directs his gaze to one thing can only count on the approval of people whose basic feelings are likewise directed towards that one thing. Only very few people's souls are so focused on a single thing, even if these few are the best, those who are able to draw the deepest things from the world. In order to exhaust the depths of the world, one must think and feel intensely. But that means not getting attached to everything possible, but savoring one thing in every way. But Shakespeare is not aiming for depth.

An appeal to all directions of thought and feeling can be found in every human being. Even the most superficial person can feel what is typical, moral, mysterious, cruel and natural in the world. But none of this touches him intensely. He flits over it and soon wants to move on to another impression. And so he is interested in everything, but only a few things all the time. Such a person is the real onlooker. He wants to be touched by everything, but not completely absorbed by anything. Again, however, it may be said that there is something of this curiosity in everyone, even in those who generally - even fanatically - devote themselves entirely to one basic emotion. The wide impact of Shakespeare's drama is connected with this general disposition of people. Because it is not one-sided, it has an all-round effect.

I don't want these remarks of mine to be interpreted as if I were accusing Shakespeare of a certain superficiality. He penetrates all one-sidedness with an ingenious intuition; but he is not committed to any one-sidedness. He transforms himself from one character into another. He is an actor by nature. And that is why he is also the most effective playwright.

A person with a pronounced, sharp disposition, in whom all things he touches immediately take on a certain, individual color, cannot be a good playwright. A person who doesn't care about the individual characters, who transforms himself into each one with the same devotion because he loves them all equally and none in particular, is a born dramatist. A certain unkindness must be inherent in the playwright, a universal sense. And Shakespeare has this.

Artists don't like it when people talk about their art who are not themselves active in the field of this art. An important musician once said to me: only the musician should talk about music. I replied that in that case nobody but the plant should talk about the nature of the plant and that we would therefore never get to hear anything about the nature of plants, given their well-known inability to speak. The composer replied to me with the consistency of judgment that is always characteristic of important people: who can claim that we know anything at all about the nature of the plant? It is quite true that only the plant itself could enlighten us about its essence. But since it cannot speak, it is not possible to learn anything about this essence.

It is easy to refute such a view. What we humans call the essence of the plant could never be expressed by the plant itself. We call the "essence of the plant" what we feel and think when we allow the plant to have an effect on us. What the plant feels and thinks and recognizes as its essence in feelings and thoughts is of no use to us. We are only concerned with what we experience when the plant has an effect on us. And we express what we experience there and call it the essence of the plant. How we express what we feel through the impression of the plant depends on which means of expression we can use according to our talent. The lyricist sings of the plant; the philosopher forms the idea of the plant in his mind. Just as the lyricist cannot demand that the plant make a poem about itself, the philosopher will not demand that the plant express its own idea.

So it is with art. I don't believe that the artist should talk about his own art. But of course that is not necessarily true. Because the individual human abilities cannot be completely separated from one another. The plant will never have the ability to talk about itself. The lyricist may have the ability to talk about the lyricist. But the ability to talk about the lyricist is not at all linked to the ability to produce Iyric poems. And the ability to be a lyricist is not linked to the ability to talk about poetry. And so it is in all the arts. Artists can sometimes talk about their art, but often they should remain silent. When they demand of others who are not active in the field of their art that they should not talk about their art, they are speaking like plants, who demand of people that they should not talk about plants, because only plants are called upon to say something about themselves.

Today we have to resort to paradoxical statements if we want to communicate. I have done so in the lines above to show how ridiculous it is for artists to demand that people should not talk about an art in which they themselves are not active.

But now I would also like to reverse the paradox. The lyricist who sings about the plant, the philosopher who expresses the idea of the plant in words, should not be expected to produce a real plant.

There are certainly people who can write dramas of excellent value, even though they are capable of expressing excellent ideas about drama. They are always interesting personalities. They are also happy personalities. For they need not impose any constraints on themselves. Those who can express themselves about art in words and at the same time are able to cultivate an art that corresponds to their words are certainly happy. Those who cannot, however, have the noble virtue of resignation. He is content to talk about art as if it were a plant, and renounces producing a work of art as he renounces producing a plant.

This renunciation expresses the nobility of the aesthete. If he does not renounce, but nevertheless undertakes to create something that belongs to the field he is talking about, he shows that he does not deserve to be taken seriously. An aesthetician who talks about drama and then creates a miserable dramatic work of art is like a poet who sings about the autumn crocus and then forms such a plant miserably out of papier-mâché. We then no longer believe in the sincerity of his feelings. We believe that he felt no more about the real autumn crocus than he did about the papier-mâché one.

What I have written here went through my mind when I came out of the "Neues Theater" (Berlin) on August 16, 1898. The director Siegmund Lautenburg, Austrian and Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph, had the patriotic festival play "Habsburg" performed to celebrate the anniversary of the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph the First. I refrain from saying anything against the director Lautenburg from the outset. He is an Austrian and it is nice of him to make sacrifices to his Austrian patriotism. Judging by the poor attendance, the performance, which was excellent, must have really cost Mr. Lautenburg something. But what can you do when you are Austrian, a Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph and also have a theater in Berlin at your disposal! The director also appeared in the interim files with all his medals - that was good again. I mean that quite seriously. Because an author with high decorations should also have appeared.

I don't know what medals Baron Alfred von Berger, the author of the play "Habsburg" I'm talking about, has. He appeared without a medal when he was summoned. But his play is a change to the highest Austrian medals there are - sorry, shouldn't medals be for higher than poetic merit?

I went to the performance on August 16 with curiosity.

When I was still in Vienna - ten years ago now - Alfred von Berger was a personality that people talked about. He was - as people said - the right candidate for the Burgtheater directorship. He cut off the discussion as to whether he should be appointed or not by marrying Stella Hohenfels, the incomparable actress of the Burgtheater. A house law of the Burgtheater forbids the director to be married to an artist of the institute. So the supporters of the "Berger Directorate" have it good. They say that he would of course be the best Burgtheater director. There is no doubt that he would have been appointed long ago, but he cannot be appointed because he is married to the irreplaceable Stella Hohenfels. Either Stella Hohenfels must leave or Baron Berger cannot become director. The former is impossible, so...

Another theater is now unavailable to Baron von Berger, which is why he is still without a position as theater director. During his incessant candidate period, he is now busy talking about the theater and about art. There are people who think something of his speeches about art. And he really has said some quite good things. In his "Dramaturgical Lectures" there are all kinds of splendid remarks about dramatic art.

After his speeches on art, you might have thought Alfred von Berger was a fine connoisseur of art. But I always believed that there wasn't much behind his speeches. And with his festival play "Habsburg", Mr. von Berger has taken away all my faith. Anyone who is capable of producing such a miserable work of art for patriotic purposes as this festival play is has no right to talk about art. This is a papier-mâché plant that is being passed off as a real plant, while the author is constantly trying to tell us about the nature of real plants in his speeches.

I was mystified when the most boring, banal patriotic phrases rained down on me from the stage on August 16.

I would not have said a word about the festival play, which makes a mockery of all stagecraft, if it had not been a symptom for me of the unfree, servile attitude that can exist even among those who are at the height of contemporary education. Berger, as an aesthetician, is at the height of contemporary education, and he is able to deny his knowledge, his education, everything, just to produce a miserable, bumbling festival play that would be worthy of having the next best scenery ripper as its author. Yes, when the best aesthetes who can talk beautifully write such plays, then the artists may say: stay away from us with your talk about art.

It was certainly a great task for anyone who wanted to undertake an exhaustive description of the power of the catchphrase. For there will be few things in the world that are as suggestive as the catchphrase, and whose effects are so mysterious. The main thing is that the catchword is on everyone's lips, that everyone pronounces it meaningfully without thinking anything about it, and that everyone listens to it just as meaningfully, again without thinking the slightest thing about it. Both the speaker and the listener must be convinced that something meaningful is meant. At the same time, anyone who attempts to inquire into the meaning of the catchword must be considered foolish. For such a person would destroy the effect of the catchword. He must destroy it. For the catchword naturally has a meaning. Simply because every word has a meaning in the mouth of the person who first uses it in a certain context. But the effect is not based on this meaning. It is based on something that has nothing to do with the meaning.

A sensible politician uses a word. It has its good sense and its full justification within the context of the version he gives. Now it happens that for a certain time we encounter this word in every political omission in the country to which the politician belongs. When the first sensible politician used it, it had the effect of a spark, because the meaning of the other statements illuminated it. But the countless others who use it do not think of this meaning at all. Bismarck makes a remarkable speech. A speech that is a political act. In this speech he says: “We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.” These words have a meaning within his speech. But they continue to have an effect as a catchphrase. You can now hear them in countless speeches. But you can also put a price on a reasonable interpretation of the words in these countless speeches. Nevertheless, most of these speeches will owe their effect to the fact that the speaker has used the words.

You can safely say that a word must first lose its meaning if it is to become a catchphrase. For the great multitude loves nothing so much as words; and for nothing is it so little to be had as for understanding the meaning of words. People's linguistic tools are animated by a tremendous urge to be active; the tools of thought are the most powerful organs an organism possesses. People want to say a lot and think very little. That is why there should be as many buzzwords and phrases as possible that have a rigid effect without having anything to think about.

If you know how to observe people's facial expressions, you will often see the following: Two people are talking. They try to communicate in a meaningful way. This goes on for a while. Suddenly, one of them becomes bored with communicating. He comes up with a catchphrase with which he can bring the conversation to an end. Both their faces express the satisfaction they feel at not having to talk about the matter any more. The catchphrase, which has no meaning, brings a long, perhaps not at all pointless conversation to an end.

A distant similarity to the tendency to use buzzwords is the addiction to using quotes to support assertions. In most cases, the quotes will lose all meaning in the context in which they are used because they are torn from their original context.

We come across quotes everywhere. On flags, on monuments, above entrance gates of houses, in genealogical books, in editorials, on pipe bowls, walking sticks and so on. Each time we see such a quotation, we are prompted to forget the meaning it originally had.

But I don't want to say anything against catchphrases and the use of quotations. For the wittiest turns of phrase in speeches are sometimes achieved by using a quotation in a way that contradicts its original meaning. However, a collection of observations on how catchwords work would be instructive. Writing this chapter of folk psychology would kill two birds with one stone. For one would also have written a good part of another chapter of the theory of the soul, which is called: "The thoughtlessness of the crowd". How the crowd tries to avoid thinking is best seen in the use of the catchphrase.

There are journalists who base their entire existence on this characteristic of the crowd. They write - let's say every week - an article containing some word that is suitable to be repeated for eight days. Then, for eight days, readers have a means of talking about something without occupying their thoughts. For a week, they bring up the latest quote from journalist X. at every opportunity. Some journalists can only achieve great success because they have the art of coining words which, in addition to their meaning, also have something through which they have a suggestive effect; through which they have an effect when they discard their meaning. The psychologist of the phrase will have to investigate what this "something" is that remains when the meaning has been distilled out of a word, and which then has the magic power to elevate the meaningless word to a power that rules over people.

An important contribution to herd psychology will be this psychology of the phrase.

The last issue of this journal contained some remarks on "tragic guilt". These will be followed here by a few others which seem suitable for shedding light on the psychological origins of this now obsolete term.

The term has its origins in the basic moral feelings of human beings. The philosopher Herbart traced the basic moral feelings back to five original forms. He believes that such a feeling arises in our soul when we see one desire or will enter into a relationship with another. The first relationship that comes into consideration is that between the human being's volition and the judgment of this volition. If we perceive a correspondence between volition and judgment, we have the sensation of pleasure; if there is a contrast between the two, we have the sensation of displeasure. This gives rise to the moral idea of freedom. It can be expressed as follows: harmony between will and moral judgment pleases; disharmony displeases. Secondly, the relationship between two will-powers of different strength comes into question. The basic moral feeling resulting from this can be expressed thus: the stronger will pleases next to the weaker, the weaker displeases next to the stronger. Hence it is that a strong will will always have our sympathy next to an impotent one, even if we cannot agree with the content of the will. An evil-doer with great energy evokes a favor in us. The third relation arises when the intentions of two men enter into such a relationship that either one will is directed to the same thing as the other, the former thus promoting the latter, regarding the other's will as his own, so to speak - or that one will is opposed to the other. We are dealing with the moral idea of benevolence or ill-will. The fourth relationship arises when two wills are directed towards the same object and cannot both reach their goal because they contradict each other. This gives rise to the conflict of wills, which under all circumstances causes moral displeasure. This gives rise to the moral idea of right, which is intended to prevent conflict. The third relation differs from the fourth in that the former relates directly to the two wills, the latter only indirectly. Ill-will is the disharmony of two wills in such a way that one is directly directed towards something other than the other. The other sees that the other wants something specific, and that is enough to determine that he wants something else. In the fourth relationship, the back does not care about the will of the front. He may want whatever he wants. But the hunter wants to shoot a hare, and the hunter wants to shoot the same hare. The object of the will brings them into conflict. To arrange the relations in the world in such a way that no quarrel arises: that is what law is for. The fifth relationship arises from the fact that evil will progresses to evil action. And since a moral displeasure is attached to the latter, which persists as long as nothing is done to counteract the wrongdoing, thereby eliminating it from the world, punishment is necessary. It corresponds to the fifth moral idea, the idea of retribution or equity. This fifth moral idea must be the starting point if the concept of tragic guilt is to be understood. He who disturbs the harmony of the will-powers and thereby evokes in us the feeling that punishment must occur to compensate for the disturbed harmony is guilty.

Now, as we know, there is a definition of art which reads: art should evoke pleasure; its goal should be satisfaction. Whoever makes such a demand of art will have to demand of drama that it portray a context of actions that is morally satisfying. For in drama we are dealing with the will of man and the consequences of this will. Whoever demands of art that its works should please must therefore demand of the drama that it should satisfy moral ideas in such a way that a pleasure arises from the relations of the will-powers in question. The fifth ethical idea, however, says that an evil act can only be pleasing if it is followed by retribution. Or, conversely, since retribution is an evil deed, it presupposes that it was preceded by another evil deed, for the moral compensation of which it serves. Guilt is founded in this wrongdoing.

As long as one remains on the ground where people are merely among themselves and only that which they inflict on themselves happens, one could only think of dramas in which people avenge wrongdoing according to their views and institutions. On such a basis, philistine dramas would be created, but ones that correspond to the actual circumstances. In the first part of such a drama, we would see how a person offends against the existing institutions, and in the second, how those whose profession it is to do so come together and take appropriate retribution for his guilt.

The matter only becomes different when man does not remain with the representation of such actual retribution, which he himself brings about. Then his moral feelings are transformed into religious ones. He then says thus: I demand that a man who does wrong should also suffer wrong. But I also demand that a person who suffers injustice has also done injustice. For every suffering of injustice without a previous act of injustice displeases me. If one applies this to art, then he who says that the works of art must please will also say that every suffering depicted requires a previous injustice or guilt. I dislike a drama in which suffering is depicted without guilt, so it is not a work of art.

We need only pronounce such a judgment in order to be clear about how little it corresponds to our present feelings.

Herbart was still of the opinion that human nature is such that the perception of one of the five conditions must necessarily give rise to the corresponding basic moral feeling. This view is simply refuted by the fact that when we perceive suffering, we no longer look for guilt, but only ask: how did this suffering come about? We do not care whether it was caused by guilt. Our interest is not focused on this guilt. If a stone falls on our forehead, we suffer pain. A child will hit the stone because it believes that the pain must be atoned for by a punishment. Just as the child acts towards the stone, so do those who seek guilt for suffering. People with a modern consciousness no longer do this. For them it is not interesting whether suffering arises from guilt or not, for them only the causes of suffering are interesting. They do not ask what is the fault of the one who is unfortunate, but what are the causes of this suffering. And the most advanced say that it is an unhealthy idea to add to the concept of suffering that of punishment and guilt. Nietzsche accuses the Christian worldview, which has existed for thousands of years, of having deprived the necessary succession of events of their innocence. "Misfortune is soiled with the concept of sin." Modern consciousness can disregard the moral feelings that used to immediately arise in people when they perceived volitional relationships. And that is why modern man no longer applies the standard of moral pleasure or displeasure to people's actions.

This modern consciousness rejects propositions that until recently belonged to the undoubted aesthetic truths. Carriere's "Aesthetics" reads: "Guilt from passion, suffering from guilt, selfish arrogance and retributive justice, loyalty for one's better self in a reluctant world or courageous heroism for an ideal conviction, for the goods that make life worth living, a causal connection that the mind recognizes and the mind delights in, and the reign of the moral world order, as reason and conscience demand it, represented in significant characters, in attractive situations; a free play of manifold forces, and yet in all of them an organizing basic idea: this is the true tragedy: a simple story with great motives, clear in themselves and sympathetic to us, firm outlines of the plot, strict connection excluding the accidental, and the outcome a judgment of God. " This is precisely what the modern consciousness does not understand: the outcome is a judgment of God. The old consciousness says: here is suffering, therefore there must be guilt somewhere. That is necessary, and the necessary is pleasing. The modern consciousness says: if suffering follows guilt, it is a mere coincidence, and as such the coincidence is indifferent. So it basically bothers us when suffering follows guilt by chance. We can then no longer feel purely. The usual thing is that suffering has nothing to do with guilt. So a work of art will satisfy us all the more the less we are distracted from the natural sequence of events by concepts such as guilt, sin and so on. A tragic hero who is guilty will only disturb the modern consciousness. A tragic hero, on the other hand, who shows the innocence of suffering through a particular example, is satisfying today. So it is fair to say that we are in the process of transforming the concept of tragic guilt into that of tragic innocence.

Today, things in drama are connected like cause and effect, not like guilt and atonement. A sentence like this: "The history of the world is the judgment of the world" seems childish to us today. When the effect, which follows its cause with inexorable necessity, intervenes in the circles of people and causes suffering there, we call it tragic today. We know tragic effects, but we do not know tragic guilt.

From an editor's point of view, adding comments to individual essays in a journal seems almost like schoolmastery applied to another field. But I can't help it if, after reading the essay "The Value of the Monologue", something occurs to me that seems worth mentioning. For it seems to me that there was an artist who would have signed Rilke's words: "But there is something more powerful than deeds and words". "To create space and justice for this life seems to me to be the most excellent task of modern drama." - This artist is Richard Wagner. And he sought to solve the problem posed by Rilke in a very specific way. He believed that what cannot be expressed in words in this life must seek the language of music. The author of the above essay, on the other hand, leaves the question he raises unanswered. But I also believe that he underestimates the expressive power of the word. Basically, the word hints at more than it clearly expresses. And if one adheres to this deeper meaning of the word, which can be reached through intuition, then it can - in my opinion - point to the most hidden depths of the soul's life. One must not reproach the word for not being taken deeply enough by most people. It is not actually a coarse pincer itself, but a fine pincer that is usually wielded by coarse hands. Rilke seems to me to be one of those critics of the word who attribute to the word what actually escapes the ears of the listener.