The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

"What you say," answered Lothair, "reminds me of a most extraordinary fellow whom I met with in a theatrical troupe in a small town in the south of Germany, who was the exact image of that 'pedant' (to speak technically) in Wilhelm Meister. Insupportable as he now was on the stage in his little minor parts, praying them out in the most direful monotony, it was said that formerly, in his younger days, he had been a capital actor, and used to play, for instance, those sly, scampish inn-keepers which, in older times, used to occur in almost every comedy, and over whose total disappearance from the stage the host in Tieck's 'Verkehrter Welt' complains. When I knew this man he seemed to have completely accepted his fate, which truely had been a pretty hard one, and, in complete apathy, to place no value on anything in the world, least of all on himself. Nothing penetrated the crust which the heaping up of the most complete wretchedness had formed over the surface of his better self, and he was perfectly satisfied with himself under it; and yet there often beamed out of his deep-set, clever eyes the gleam of a higher intelligence, and there would rapidly jerk over his face the expression of a bitter irony, so that the exaggerated submissiveness with which he bore himself towards every one--and more particularly towards his manager (a silly young man, full of vanity)--took, in him, the form of an ironical contempt. On Sundays he used to take his seat at the lower end of the table d'hôte of the best hotel in the place, dressed in a good well-brushed suit of clothes, whose cut and extraordinary pattern indicated the actor of a long by-gone period; and there he enjoyed a hearty meal, never saying a word to a soul, although he was exceptionally temperate, particularly as regarded the wine, for he scarcely half-emptied the bottle which was placed before him. At each filling of his glass he made a courteous bow to the landlord, who gave him his Sunday dinner in return for his teaching his children reading and writing. It happened that I was dining one Sunday at this table d'hôte, and found only one vacant seat, which was at this old fellow's side. I hastened to occupy this place, hoping that I might have the good fortune to bring to the surface that better spirit which must be shut up within the man. It was difficult, almost impossible, to get hold of that spirit. Just when one thought one had him, he suddenly dived down, and slunk away in utter humility of submissiveness. At length, after I had with difficulty induced him to swallow a glass or two of good wine, he seemed to begin to thaw a little, and spake with visible emotion of the fine old theatrical times, now past and gone, apparently never to return. The tables were being cleared; one or two of my friends joined themselves to me; the player wanted to take his leave. I held him fast, though he made the most touching protests. A poor superannuated actor, he said, was no fit company for gentlemen such as we; it would be better that he should not stay, it was not his place, and so forth. It was not so much to my powers of persuasion as to the irresistible attractions of a cup of coffee, and a pipe of the best Knaster, which I had in my pocket, that I could attribute his remaining. He spoke with vividness and esprit of the old theatrical days. He had seen Eckhoff, and acted with Schroeder. It came out that the untuned state in which he was now so marred proceeded from the circumstance that those by-gone days had been, for him, the world wherein he had breathed freely, and moved unconstrainedly, and that, now that he was thrown forth out of that period, he had no firm standing-point that he could get hold of. But how marvellously did this man astonish us when, having become thoroughly at his ease, and free from constraint with us, he spoke the speech of the Ghost in Hamlet, as given in Schroeder's version (Schlegel's translation he knew nothing about), with a power of expression which touched our hearts; and we were all moved to admiration at the manner in which he delivered several passages from the part of Oldenhelm (for he would have nothing to say to the name 'Polonius'), rendering them in such a way that we distinctly saw before our eyes the courtier, in his second childhood now, but who had clearly not lacked worldly wisdom in former times, and still showed distinct traces of it. This he brought before us in a manner very seldom seen on the boards. All this, however, was but the prelude to a scene which I never saw the parallel of, and which I can never forget. It is here that I really, for the first time, come to what, during this conversation of ours, brought to my remembrance the old actor in question, and my worthy Serapion Brethren must pardon me if I have made my introduction to this somewhat too long. This man was compelled to undertake those wretched subordinate parts which we were talking of, and thus it chanced that, some days after the occasion I have been speaking of, he had to play the part of the 'Manager' in the piece 'The Rehearsal,' which the Impresario had altered to suit himself, thinking he particularly excelled in it. Whether it was that the conversation with us has stirred up his inner, better self, or that, perhaps (as it was rumoured afterwards), on that day he had reinforced his natural power with wine--contrary as that was to his usual custom--he had no sooner come upon the stage than he appeared to be a totally different man from what he had been at other times. His eyes sparkled, and the hollow wavering voice of the worn-out hypochondriac was transformed into a clear, resonant bass, such as is employed by jovial characters of the old style; for instance, the rich uncles who, in the exercise of poetical justice, punish folly and reward virtue. The beginning of the piece gave no indication of what was to come; but how amazed was the audience when, after the first changes of dress had been made, the strange creature turned upon the manager with sarcastic smiles, and addressed him somewhat as follows: 'Would not the respected audience have recognised our good So-and-so' (he mentioned the manager's name here), 'just as readily as I did myself at the first glance? Is it possible to base the power of deception on a coat cut in a particular fashion, or on a more or less frizzled wig? and in this way to stuff out a meagre talent, unsupported by any vigour of intelligence, like a child deserted by its nurse? The young man who is trying to pass himself off upon me, in this unskilled manner, as a many-sided artist, a chameleontic genius, need not gesticulate so immoderately with his hands, nor fold himself up like a pocketknife after each of his speeches, nor roll his r's so fearfully; and if he had not done so, I believe that a highly-prized audience (any more than I myself) would not have recognised our little manager in one instant, as has been the case now, to such an extent that it is pitiable. But, inasmuch as the piece has got to go on for another half-hour, I shall conduct myself, this once more, as if I didn't see it; although the affair is terribly tedious and uncongenial to me.' Be it enough to say that upon each fresh entrance of the manager, the old fellow ridiculed his acting in the most delicious manner; and it may be fancied that this was accompanied by the most ringing laughter of the audience; whilst the best part of it all was that the manager, completely absorbed in his numerous changes of costume, was absolutely unconscious of what was going forward till the very last scene. Perhaps the old fellow may have made a wicked compact with the theatre tailor; but it is a fact that the wretched manager's wardrobe had got into the most complete confusion, so that the intermediate scenes which the old man had to fill out lasted much longer than usual, giving him time enough to let the fulness of his bitter mockery of the poor manager stream forth in all its glory, and even to imitate his manner of speaking, saying many things with a wicked verity which sent the audience out of itself. The whole piece was turned topsy-turvy, so that the stop-gap intermediate scenes became the principal and important part of the business. It was delightful, too, how the old fellow sometimes told the audience beforehand how the manager was going to appear, mimicking his gestures and attitudes; and that he attributed the ringing laughter, which really belonged to the old fellow's admirable imitation of him, to his own success in making up. At last, however, the manager could not possibly help finding out what the old fellow was doing, and you may suppose he flew at him like a raging wild boar, so that it was all that he could do to escape mishandling. He did not dare to appear on the stage again; but the audience and the public had got so fond of the old actor, and took his side with so much zeal, that the manager (burdened, moreover, since that celebrated evening, with the curse of ludicrosity), found himself compelled to close his theatre, and betake himself elsewhere. Several respectable townsmen, with the innkeeper at their head, met, and collected a considerable sum of money for the old actor, enough to enable him to have done for ever with the worries of the stage, and end his days in comfort in the place. But marvellous, nay, unfathomable, is the mind of an actor! Before a year was over he suddenly disappeared, nobody knew whither, and presently he was discovered travelling with a strolling company, quite in the same subordinate position from which he had so recently shaken himself clear."

"With a very slight 'moral application,'" said Ottmar, "this tale of the old actor belongs to the moral codex of all stage-players, and of those who desire to become players."

During this, Cyprian had risen silently, and, after walking once or twice up and down the room, taken his position behind the window curtain. Just when Ottmar ceased speaking, a blast of wind came suddenly howling and raging in. The lights threatened to go out; Theodore's writing-table seemed to become alive; hundreds of papers flew up, and were wafted about the room; the strings of the old piano groaned aloud.

"Hey, hey!" cried Theodore, as he saw his literary notices, and who knows what other written matter, at the mercy of the raging autumn storm. "Hey, hey, Cyprianus, what are you about?" And they all set to work to keep the lights in, and shield themselves from the thick snowflakes which came swirling in.

"It is true," said Cyprian, shutting the window, "the weather won't let one look to see what it is."

"Tell me," said Sylvester, taking the wholly absentminded and deeply preoccupied Cyprian by both hands, and forcing him to sit down again in the seat he had left, "only tell me--that is all I ask--where have you been? In what distant region have you been wandering? for far, far away from us has that restless spirit of yours been bearing you again."

"Not so very far away from you as you may suppose," answered Cyprian. "And, at all events, it was your own conversation which opened the door for my departure. You had been saying so much about Comedy, and Vincenz was stating his conclusion (justly resulting from experience), that amongst us the fun which plays with itself is lost. It occurred to me that, on the other hand, many real talents have displayed themselves in tragedy, in more and most recent times, and along with this thought I was struck by the remembrance of a writer who began, with genuine, high-aspiring genius, but suddenly, as if carried away by some fatal eddy, went under, so that his name is scarcely ever heard of."

"There," said Ottmar, "you were going in exact opposition to Lothair's principle--that true genius never goes under."

"And Lothair is right," answered Cyprian, "if he holds that the fiercest storms of life cannot blow out the flame which blazes forth from the inner spirit,--that the bitterest adversities, the keenest misfortunes fight in vain against the inner heavenly might of the soul, which only bends the bow to deliver the arrow with the greater power. But how were it if in the first inner germ of the embryo there lurked the poisonous parasite larva, the worm, which, developing along with the beautiful blossom, gnaws at its life, so that it bears its death within itself? No storm is then needed for its destruction."

"In that case," said Lothair, "your genius would be wanting in the first condition indispensible to the tragic-poet who would enter upon life free, and in possession of his powers. I mean that such a poet's genius must be absolutely healthy--sound--free from the slightest ailment, such as psychic weakness, or, to use your language, anything such as congenital poison. Who could, and can, congratulate himself more on such a soundness of mental constitution than our grand Gœthe, mighty father of us all? It is with such an unweakened strength as his, with such an inward purity, that heroes are begotten, such as Goetz von Berlichingen and Egmont! And if we cannot, perhaps, admit such a heroic power (in quite the same degree) in our Schiller, there is, on the other hand, that pure sun-glance of the inner soul beaming round his heroes in which we, beneficently warmed, feel as powerful and strong as their creator. And we must not forget the Robber Moor, whom Ludwig Tieck, with perfect justice, calls the Titanic creation of a young and daring imagination. But we are getting far from the tragic poet whom you were speaking of, Cyprian, and I hope you will tell us at once to whom you allude, although I fancy I have a strong idea?"