GUTZKOW’S “URIEL ACOSTA”
Twice within my recollection there were hopes of the production of Uriel Acosta on the English stage. Soon after Sir Hall Caine published the Scapegoat—that noblest of recent tales with a “Jewish” plot—Sir Herbert Tree was present with the novelist at a Maccabean banquet. On that occasion Sir Herbert, adopting a suggestion of my own, announced that he had proposed to Mr. Zangwill the office of preparing Uriel Acosta for His Majesty’s Theatre. Nothing has come of it. Some years before, that competent actor, Mr. A. Bandmann, was lessee of the Lyceum for a time. He had often played the part of Uriel in Germany with success, and he had an English version made. It was not performed, but the plan was so far fruitful that Mr. H. Spicer’s adaptation was published.
It is a workmanlike but undistinguished rendering. It introduces mistakes for which Gutzkow is guiltless (such as the barbarism Sanhedrim), and it omits points which make up Gutzkow’s merit. Curious, for instance, is it that the English version should obscure the line which so lingers in the mind of the reader of the original, the line in fact most often quoted of everything that Gutzkow wrote. I refer, of course, to the old Rabbi’s constant comment on Uriel’s heresies. These, urged the Rabbi, are as old as old; it has all happened before (“Alles ist schon einmal dagewesen”). It is a striking variant on Solomon’s epigram, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes I. 9), and it drones through the recantation scene with fine dramatic effect. Far superior to this English version is the Hebrew rendering published by Salomo Rubin in 1856.
The actual facts about Uriel Acosta are soon told. His was an arresting personality, but his importance has been much overrated. Acosta would have been deservedly forgotten but for the similarity between his career and that of another Amsterdam Jew of the same period—Baruch Spinoza. Both came into conflict with the synagogue, both were excommunicated. But there the resemblance ends. In Gutzkow’s play, Uriel proclaims himself sufficient unto himself (“Mir selber bin ich eine ganze Welt”). This is just what Spinoza was, just what Uriel was not. Gutzkow represents Uriel as a youth at the time of his suicide. But he was certainly over fifty, and more probably was nearer sixty. He shot himself in 1647; and as it appears that he was born in Oporto in 1590, he must have been fifty-seven at the moment of his tragic end. Uriel (or Gabriel as he was then named) was the scion of a Marano family, and in 1617 contrived to escape to Holland, where he resumed Judaism. But he was no more contented with his ancestral religion than he had been with the creed to which he had compulsorily conformed. He advocated a purely deistic philosophy, was excommunicated by the synagogue, recanted, again defied the authorities, was again excommunicated, and finally underwent the degradation of a public penance, after which he put an end to his troubled life. Uriel’s misfortune was that, though, like Spinoza, he was unable to go with the mass in its beliefs, yet unlike Spinoza, he was unable to stand alone.
Gutzkow was attracted to the subject by his own devotion to freedom. In the stormy movements which culminated in the outbreaks of 1848, Gutzkow was directly implicated. He was born in 1811, and, when barely twenty, suffered imprisonment as a leader of the “Young Germany” party. Besides, Gutzkow had many close Jewish friends, among them Berthold Auerbach, who, perhaps, introduced Uriel Acosta to his notice. When Gutzkow wrote his play on the subject, Europe was on the eve of revolution. It is significant, in face of the anti-Semitism which really originated on the failure of the Liberals, that Gutzkow selected, in 1847, a Jewish mis-en-scène, in order to depict the struggle between the old order and the new. And it is impossible to refuse admiration to the insight and skill which enable the author, while obviously sympathizing with the new, to treat the old with justice and even with tenderness. The characters are all types. Menasseh, father of Judith, is the fair-dealing merchant, accepting the current religion of his people without enthusiasm for or against its demands. Judith, the heroine, more or less betrothed to Jochai, the villain of the piece, is vaguely susceptible to the newer ideas of her tutor and lover Uriel. Jochai is a rather conventionally drawn rascal. But the strength of the play is the contrast, on the one hand, between Uriel and the Rabbis, and, on the other, between the various schools of Rabbis among themselves. Da Silva has the tolerance of uncertainty as to his own position, Akiba has the broad generosity which comes from confidence in his old-world loyalty. The scenes between Uriel and Silva, and between the former and Akiba would make a success on any stage. “May you never repent of this repentance,” cries Da Silva to Akiba when there is talk of Uriel’s recantation. There is strong emotional interest in this recantation. Shall Uriel recant for Judith’s sake? Hardly. But he cannot resist the appeal of his blind mother. “I tremble before thy sightless eyes; shut thine eyes, mother! Yea, I will do it.”
The close is tragic. Both Judith and Uriel perish at their own hands. But the tragedy did not end there. Mention has been made of Da Silva. If Uriel is the counterpart of the talmudic arch-heretic, Elisha ben Abuyah, then is Da Silva the reincarnation of Elisha’s contemporary Meir. Who has not wept over the heart friendship but mind estrangement of these two men? Da Silva stands in the same relation to Uriel. He hates the heresy, but loves the heretic. Uriel himself uses words which sum up the situation. “Love or Truth? What if the heart be wiser than the mind?” Spinoza (who was really fifteen years of age when Uriel died) flits across the scene as a little boy, strewing flowers and wondering why people wonder at his childish thoughts. Uriel bids him “Keep thy soul’s secret and so find peace.” This is perhaps the most tragic incident in the play, though the dramatist contrives to relieve the tension by the simple beauty of the Spinoza interlude.
Still, however, the whole of the tragedy has not yet been told. For Hermann Jellinek has not yet been named. Indeed, three remarkable Jellinek brothers now come on the scene. In 1847 two little works appeared on Gutzkow’s Uriel. The one (Elischa ben Abuya) was written by Adolf Jellinek, then the youthful preacher of Leipzig, afterwards the famous pulpit orator of Vienna. The other was Uriel Acosta’s Leben und Lehre, and its author was Hermann Jellinek (younger than Adolf by a couple of years). The booklet was inscribed to a third brother, Moritz. Now Hermann Jellinek was roused to a heated indignation by Gutzkow’s “fictions” about Uriel. Uriel was no lovelorn boy, but a middle-aged philosopher; he died not for loss of Judith, but as a martyr to truth. Hermann Jellinek in so many words sees his own prototype in Acosta; less than a year later he at all events shared his hero’s tragic end; but under more dignified circumstances. What the historical Uriel Acosta lacked, Hermann Jellinek possessed in over measure—the quality of determination. Hermann was a revolutionary, and took part in the Viennese rising of 1848, being twenty-six at the time. He does not seem to have actually resisted the troops, but he was court-martialled, and sentenced to death. His friends made every effort to save him, but he was relentless. Nothing could move him to present a conciliatory front to the authorities. In this at least he could be no Uriel! Recant? No! “Shoot me,” he cried, “but ideas cannot be shot.” They shot him, and his ideas may be found in two or three volumes, of which dusty copies occur in a few libraries. I have some of them on my table as I write. It is not easy to say which is the greater tragedy, Acosta’s or Jellinek’s; but for the moment at least let Jellinek have his way. For an hour we have resurrected, if not his ideas, at all events his name.