Now all this is comedy, of course, but Wedekind is not to be deprived of his predelection for the minor key. He introduces the tragic tone in this instance right in the final scene, when von Keith is confronted by the dead body of his common-law wife, Molly Griefinger. In some respects this episode resembles a travesty upon the final act of Sudermann's “Sodoms Ende;” but it is characteristic of Wedekind that he makes Molly kill herself because she fears von Keith's success will estrange her from her husband, and that her suicide is followed directly by the failure of von Keith's well-laid plans, just as they seemed about to mature.
It is characteristic, also, that the crowd which denounces von Keith as the cause of Molly's death, and which threatens to do him bodily harm, is composed of tradesmen whose initial cause of discontent is to be found in the promoter's failure to pay his bills.
Wedekind's certainty of touch is as much in evidence in his handling of his minor characters as it is in the portrayal of von Keith. There is Molly, whose little bourgeois soul fears the great world, shrinks from her husband's acquaintances, and dreads to take its place among the wealthy classes; Simba, the artist's model, who is astonished at anybody pitying her as a victim of civilization when she can get drunk on champagne; Casimir, the wealthy merchant; and the Bohemian painter Saranieff, with his friend Zamrjaki, the composer. As an antithesis to von Keith we are introduced to Ernst Scholz, a weakling whose soul is torn by internal strife, until its owner is at peace neither with himself nor the world. Scholz wastes his time seeking a reason for his own existence and in longing to become a useful member of society; von Keith scorns to bother his brain with such trifles, boldly proclaiming the Nietzschean doctrine that the only way to be useful to others is to help one's self as much as possible, and asserting that he would rather gather cigar stumps in the café gutters than live in slothful peace in the country. There is no doubt about von Keith being a rogue, in the conventional acceptance of the term, but his enthusiasm appeals to us and we feel for him in his undoing at the end of the play.
In “Die Junge Welt” Wedekind shows us the laughable attempts of a party of young girls to live a life of celibacy in pursuance of a resolution taken in boarding school. It is an amusing comedy, and contains, among other interesting personages, a literary man, who nearly drives his wife to divorce by his habit of jotting down notes of her emotions, even when he is kissing her.
An opportunity to comment upon the German lese majesty is not neglected by Wedekind in the romantic drama, “So ist das Leben,” a dignified and carefully wrought work, partly in verse, which deals with the tribulations of a deposed monarch in his own country. This exiled king becomes tramp, tailor and strolling player, to end eventually as court jester of the very man who has taken his place on the throne.
“Der Kammersänger,” three scenes from the life of a popular tenor, is little more than a dramatic sketch. “Der Erdgeist” and “Die Büchse der Pandora,” two plays which constitute an integral whole, deal with a lady who embraces Mrs. Warren's profession. These, with “Der Leibestrank” and “Oaha,” two farces, with traces of real psychology, round out the total of Wedekind's dramatic works. In addition, he has indulged in verse-making and written a number of short stories somewhat in the manner of De Maupassant.
One may feel at times that Wedekind's art would gain by the exercise of more restraint, but there is no denying it is a great relief from “lyric lemonade.”
An attempt to explain symbolism is usually a dangerous matter. If a failure, it makes the one who essays the task ridiculous. If successful, it cheapens the value of the symbolism; symbolism being a kind of an overtone to verbal reasoning, to which it bears much the same relationship as music does to poetry. In spite of this double danger, the translator ventures to close this review with a guess at the personality of the Masked Man who plays such an important part in the final scene of “Frühlings Erwachen” and to whom the author has dedicated the play. To the translator, then, this mysterious personage is none other than Life, Life in its reality, not Life as seen through the fogged glasses of Melchior's pedagogues or the purblind eyes of the unfortunate mother who sends her daughter to an untimely grave.
FRANCIS J. ZIEGLER.