[GERHART HAUPTMANN]
[LONELY LIVES]
Gerhart Hauptmann is the dramatist of whom it may be justly said that he revolutionized the spirit of dramatic art in Germany: the last Mohican of a group of four—Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, and Hauptmann—who illumined the horizon of the nineteenth century. Of these Hauptmann, undoubtedly the most human, is also the most universal.
It is unnecessary to make comparisons between great artists: life is sufficiently complex to give each his place in the great scheme of things. If, then, I consider Hauptmann more human, it is because of his deep kinship with every stratum of life. While Ibsen deals exclusively with one attitude, Hauptmann embraces all, understands all, and portrays all, because nothing human is alien to him.
Whether it be the struggle of the transition stage in "Lonely Lives," or the conflict between the Ideal and the Real in "The Sunken Bell," or the brutal background of poverty in "The Weavers," Hauptmann is never aloof as the iconoclast Ibsen, never as bitter as the soul dissector Strindberg, nor yet as set as the crusader Tolstoy. And that because of his humanity, his boundless love, his oneness with the disinherited of the earth, and his sympathy with the struggles and the travail, the hope and the despair of every human soul. That accounts for the bitter opposition which met Gerhart Hauptmann when he made his first appearance as a dramatist; but it also accounts for the love and devotion of those to whom he was a battle cry, a clarion call against all iniquity, injustice and wrong.
In "Lonely Lives" we see the wonderful sympathy, the tenderness of Hauptmann permeating every figure of the drama.
Dr. Vockerat is not a fighter, not a propagandist or a soapbox orator; he is a dreamer, a poet, and above all a searcher for truth; a scientist, a man who lives in the realm of thought and ideas, and is out of touch with reality and his immediate surroundings.
His parents are simple folk, religious and devoted. To them the world is a book with seven seals. Having lived all their life on a farm, everything with them is regulated and classified into simple ideas—good or bad, great or small, strong or weak. How can they know the infinite shades between strong and weak, how could they grasp the endless variations between the good and the bad? To them life is a daily routine of work and prayer. God has arranged everything, and God manages everything. Why bother your head? Why spend sleepless nights? "Leave it all to God." What pathos in this childish simplicity!
They love their son John, they worship him, and they consecrate their lives to their only boy; and because of their love for him, also to his wife and the newly born baby. They have but one sorrow: their son has turned away from religion. Still greater their grief that John is an admirer of Darwin, Spencer and Haeckel and other such men,—sinners, heathens all, who will burn in purgatory and hell. To protect their beloved son from the punishment of God, the old folks continuously pray, and give still more devotion and love to their erring child.