Gerhart Hauptmann

“ What wonderful grasp of the deepest and most hidden tones of the human soul! What significance in the bitter truth that those who struggle for an ideal, those who attempt to cut themselves loose from the old, from the thousand fetters that hold them down, are doomed to lonely lives!
Gerhart Hauptmann has dedicated this play " to those who have lived this life." And there are many, oh, so many who must live this life, torn out root and all from the soil of their birth, of their surroundings and past. The ideal they see only in the distance-sometimes quite near, again in the far-off distance. ”

“ This "straightforward description" illustrates Katai's determination to depart from the traditional prose forms of his predecessors and to adopt European authors' techniques in order to westernize Japanese literature and reflect the true feelings of the author. Katai executed this literary theory in Futon, or The Quilt, as mentioned in his essay "My Anna Mahr;" he conceived the idea after reading Gerhart Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen, or Lonely Lives. ”

“ He was the dancing master of two worlds and"—the impresario laughed significantly—"many other interesting things besides. But to stick to the matter in hand—if you want, your contract with Webster and Forster is null and void." He paused for an instant and began again, this time addressing himself more to Frederick. "I do not deny that I am a business man—always within the limits of gentlemanliness—and I should like to ask you a question, Doctor von Kammacher. Is it your intention to let Miss Hahlström dance at all again, or have you and she decided that she is to retire to private life?" ”

“ II of Gendai Bungakuron Taikei, op. cit., pp. 12–15. ↑ Gerhart Hauptmann's third drama, Einsame Menschen, spread his fame beyond the boundaries of his own country. In Japan the name of Einsame Menschen was mentioned in a December issue of a literary magazine Mesamashisō by Mori Ōgai in 1899. (See, Ōgai Zenshū: Chosaku Hen. Vol. XX. pp. 323–26.) ↑ Nakamura is referring to Katai's statement that Futon was directly patterned after Sabishiki Hitobito [Einsame Menschen] by modeling Katai's principal character after Hauptmann's Johannes and his heroine after Anna Mahr. ”

“ He seemed to have been drinking whisky, as he had dropped his natural shell of reticence. He spoke of hydrotherapy and gymnastic exercises, and called himself a quack. It was the gymnastics, he said, that had given his daughter the idea of taking up dancing. As if to challenge the others, he elaborated bold philosophic theories, dealing out one wild statement after the other, each of which would have been a trump sufficient to end the game for ten German Philistines. To believe his own word, he was a terroristic Anarchist, a white-slave trafficker, an adventurer always. ”

“ He began to banter Hahlström and Achleitner, sometimes in rather caustic fashion, while exchanging glances with Frederick, as if he thought vastly more of him than of the other two men, who soon withdrew from his attacks to go on deck.
"My name is Stoss."
"Mine, Von Kammacher."
"It's very good of you to keep me company. That Hahlström and his henchman are disgusting. Though I have been an actor for twenty years, I can't stand the sight of such weedy weaklings, who don't do anything themselves and exploit their daughters. They have the effect of an emetic on me. ”

“ But, thank the Lord, by the time he had finally fought his way to Ingigerd's cabin on deck, it had not yet reached that point. It was to Ingigerd Hahlström that an impulse had been driving him. Beside the children, for whom in a motherly way she was trying constantly to devise a new occupation, he found her father and Doctor Wilhelm.
"People's cowardice is something fearful," said Doctor Wilhelm.
"Easily said; but what's the matter?" asked Frederick.
"One of the bearings got too hot. It takes time for it to cool off."
The passengers crowded on the companionway kept calling for the captain. ”

“ I want to tell you, Doctor von Kammacher, Rosa and I are engaged to be married."
"You are certainly to be congratulated, Mr. Bulke. I am delighted to hear it."
"As soon as I can get away from Mr. Stoss and Rosa can get away from Mrs. Liebling, we are going back to Europe. Before I entered the navy, I was a skilled butcher. My brother in Bremen wrote to me that there was a little meat and sausage and steamer supply business to be had there. We both have some money saved up. So why shouldn't we try it? You can't go on working for strangers forever."
"I quite agree with you," said Frederick. ”

“ Their winnings were immediately transmuted into Pommery. Notwithstanding the fearful weather, the band was playing. There seemed to be something frivolous, almost challenging, in the playing of music when, at short intervals, the Roland would come to a quivering standstill, as if it had run upon a reef. Once the illusion was so strong that a panic arose in the steerage. Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, brought this explanation of the horrified shrieks that had penetrated the dining-room above the noise of the raging waters, the rattling of the plates and the blare of the band. ”

“ He meant Achleitner.
Ingigerd gave a short laugh. "Do you take me for Joan of Arc?"
"Not exactly that," rejoined Frederick, "but if you would allow me, I should like to regard you as still a girl, a distinguished little lady, whose reputation cannot be too carefully guarded against the faintest blemish."
"Reputation!" sneered the girl. "You are very much mistaken if you think I ever cared for anything of the sort. I'd rather be disreputable ten times over and live as I please, than have a good reputation and die of boredom. I must enjoy my life, Doctor von Kammacher." ”

“ That's the thanks a person gets! Why, it's like a pack o' hungry wolves aroun' me. You c'n kill me! But you can't touch my baby!
JOHN I comes home, Mr. Hassenreuter, only this mornin'. I comes home with all my tools on the train, jolly as c'n be. I broke off all my connections in Hamburg. Even if you don' earn so much, says I to myself, you'd rather be with your family, an' take up your child in your arms a little, or maybe take it on your knee a little! That was about the way I was thinkin'! ”

“ In Germany, a city of thirty thousand inhabitants is dead. This American city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants raced and rushed, rang bells, rattled and clattered and raved like mad. Nobody had a moment's time. Everybody hurried past everybody else. No question of joy in life here. If a man lived in Meriden, he lived there to work. If a man worked in Meriden, he worked for the sake of the dollars that had the power finally to free him from that environment and introduce him to a period of enjoyment. ”

“ The poem is romantic and amorphous and gives but the faintest promise of the masterly handling of verse to be found in The Sunken Bell and Henry of Aue. Its interest resides solely in its confirmation of the facts of Hauptmann's development. For the hero of Promethidenlos vacillates between poetry and sculpture, but is able to give himself freely to neither art because of his overwhelming sense of social injustice and human suffering. And this, in brief, was the state of Hauptmann's mind when, in the autumn of 1885, he settled with his young wife in the Berlin suburb of Erkner. ”

“ We have already gone to press, and millions of newspapers have spun us out, in the greatest detail. The next four or five days there won't be a man or woman in New York who can vie in celebrity with the survivors of the Roland."
Amid similar talk, the Hamburt reached its pier, and leave-taking began in earnest. It was truly remarkable to see what emotion suddenly seized these people, who at bottom were strangers to one another. Mrs. Liebling wept, and Frederick and Doctor Wilhelm had to submit to her overflowing kisses of gratitude. Rosa kissed Bulke ”

“ The next day at about noon Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick helped Mrs. Liebling on deck. Her appearance there made a gruesome impression upon those who had not seen her since she had been dragged, a lifeless corpse, from the boat to the Hamburt. The sailors, though most solicitous to read Ingigerd Hahlström's wishes from her eyes, even before they were conceived, kept at a distance from Mrs. Liebling and cast shy glances at her, as if still in doubt whether she was a real human being. If the sea gives up its dead, why should not little Siegfried emerge from his death chamber? ”

“ Naturalistic art goes for its subject matter to the forgotten and disinherited of the earth, and it was with these that Hauptmann was primarily concerned. He read Darwin and Karl Marx, Saint-Simon and Zola. He was absorbed not by any problem of art but by the being and fate of humanity itself.
Under these influences and governed by such thoughts, he began his career as a man of letters anew. But his progress was slow and uncertain. In 1887 he published in Conrad's Gesellschaft an episodic story, Bahnwärter Thiel, weak in narrative technique and obviously inspired by Zola. ”

“ JOHN In Hamburg everythin' is settled, too. To-day at noon I'm goin' to meet Karl an' then he'll tell me when I c'n start workin' for the new boss!—Look here: I brought somethin' with me, too.
[He takes a small child's rattle from his breeches pocket and shakes it.
MRS. JOHN What's that?
JOHN That's somethin' to bring a bit o' life into the place, 'cause it's pretty quiet inside in Berlin here! Listen how the kid's crowin'. [The child is heard making happy little noises.] I tell you, mother, when a little kid goes on that way—there ain't nothin' I'd take for it! ”

“ Aside from little tiffs between Ingigerd and Frederick, the spirit on board the Hamburt was generally good-humoured, even jolly. The weather remained clear, and the place of terror already lay eight hundred miles behind in the ocean. Each minute carried the passengers of the Roland farther along in their newly acquired lives. The ladies were feasted from the cargo of tropical fruit in the hold of the vessel, which had a carrying capacity of some two thousand register tons. Often the men for Ingigerd's amusement would use the oranges for playing ball. ”

“ It was such that have led millions and millions of men to their destruction.
And Ingigerd Hahlström, who shortly before had been his painted Madonna of wood, now became Frederick's ecstatic figurehead. He saw her high above the waves on the prow of a phantom sailing ship, bent forward with open mouth and wide eyes, her yellow hair falling straight down from both sides of her head. ”

“ When the workman left the room to announce the visitors the model, whose upper body, nude to the hips, showed the brawny development of an athlete, began to speak to Frederick and Peter.
"What won't a man do to earn his bit of daily bread!" he said. "I am from Pirna"—he pronounced it "Berna," speaking in a round Saxon dialect—"and I tell you, it's no joke for fellows like me in this damned New York. At first I earned my living as a professional strong man. ”

“ JOHN Oh, that must be somethin' like a week now, Emil. D'you want anythin' of her? I guess she paid her rent an' on time all right. By the way, I might as well give you notice right now. We got it all fixed. We're goin' to move on the first of October. I got mother to the point at last that we c'n move outa this here shaky old barracks an' into a better neighbourhood.
QUAQUARO So you ain't goin' back to Hamburg no more?
JOHN Naw. It's a good sayin': Stay at home an' make an honest livin'! I'm not goin' outa town no more. ”

“ Stop, look, listen! Don't be too quick to trust him. When he's done assimilating, he'll have a still better appetite."
Up to the very end of the trip, though there was a corpse on board and the woman from the steerage was still very sick, the atmosphere on the Hamburt lost none of its festal character. The bridge was free territory. Ingigerd was usually to be seen there in the daytime playing chess with Wendler, or looking on while Frederick won one game after the other from the engineer. ”

“ Similarly Heinrich is himself, but also the creative worker of all time. Driven by his ideal from the warm hearthstones of men, he falters upon that frosty height: seeking to realise impersonal aims and rising to a hardy rapture, he is broken in strength at last by the "still, sad music of humanity."
Except for the half humorous and not wholly successful interlude of Schluck and Jau, Hauptmann neglected the poetic drama until 1902, when he presented on the boards of the famous Burgtheater at Vienna, Henry of Aue. ”

“ Undoubtedly man's brains and, at the same time, social industry have entered a new phase."
"Yes," said Wilhelm, "in a certain way the human intellect was already active in ancient times, but it fought too long with the man in the mirror."
"Then, let us hope," said Frederick in confirmation, "that the last hour of the men that fight images, the swindlers, the South Sea Island medicine-men and magicians, is not far off ”

“ After dinner the two physicians went to Doctor Wilhelm's cabin, where they sat together discussing the resultant of modern civilisation.
"I very much fear, very much, indeed," said Frederick, "that our world-wide means of communication, which mankind is supposed to own, really own mankind. At least so far, I see no signs that the tremendous working capacity of machines has lessened human labour. Nobody will deny that our modern machine slavery, on so tremendous a scale, is the most imposing slavery that has ever existed. ”

“ He noticed that Hahlström graciously permitted the stranger to entertain him and pay him court.
"Do you know that tall, fair-haired man, Doctor von Kammacher?" the physician asked. In his confusion Frederick failed to answer, looking helplessly at Doctor Wilhelm. "He is a Swede. His name is Hahlström," Doctor Wilhelm continued. "A peculiar fellow. Earlier in his life he made a mess of your and my profession. He is travelling with his daughter, not an uninteresting little miss. She's been dreadfully seasick, and hasn't left the horizontal in her berth since we set sail from Bremen. ”