Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany

by Georg Brandes

[XI]

ROMANTIC DUPLICATION AND PSYCHOLOGY

Those among my readers who have stood in a room lined with mirrors, and seen themselves and everything else reflected ad infinitum, above, below, on every side, have some idea of the vertigo which the study of Romantic art at times produces.

Every one who has read Holberg's Ulysses von Ithacia remembers how droll the effect is when the characters, as they are perpetually doing, make fun of themselves and what they represent—when, for example, Ulysses exhibits the long beard which has grown during the ten years' campaign, or when we read upon a screen, "This is Troy," or when, at the close, the Jews rush in and tear off the actor's back the clothes which he had borrowed to play Ulysses in. Histrionic art, as every one knows, depends for its effect upon illusion. And illusion is an aim common to many of the arts. A statue and a painting deceive quite as much as a play, the illusion being contingent upon our momentarily taking the stone for a human being, and the painted flat surface for receding reality, in exactly the same way as we forget the actor in his rôle. This illusion, however, is only complete for a moment. It is, indeed, possible for the perfectly uneducated man to be entirely deceived. An Indian soldier in Calcutta shot an actor who was playing the part of Othello, exclaiming: "It shall never be said that a negro murdered a white woman in my presence!" But in the case of the educated man, the illusion comes and goes; it comes at the moment when the tragedy brings tears into his eyes, and goes at the moment when he draws out his pocket-handkerchief and looks at his neighbour. The effect of the work of art is, as it were, focussed in this illusion. The illusion is the reflection of the work of art in the spectator's mind—the appearance, the play, by means of which the unreal becomes reality to the spectator.

In the simple, straightforward work of art no special attention is devoted to illusion; it is not aimed at; nothing is done to strengthen it or to give it piquancy; but still less is anything done to destroy it.

It is not difficult, however, to understand how a certain piquant quality may be communicated to the illusion produced by any art. When, for instance, a Hermes, or any idol, is represented on a bas-relief, when a picture represents a studio or a room with pictures hanging on the walls, a strong indication is hereby conveyed that the bas-relief itself is not intended to affect us as statuary, nor the pictures as painting. And the same sort of effect is produced when one or other of the characters in a comedy cries: "Do you take me for a stage-uncle?"

The theatrical illusion is still further heightened, or, to be quite correct, is still more entirely forgotten, when some of the characters in a play themselves perform a play, as in Hamlet or A Midsummer Night's Dream. It seems extraordinary or impossible that the spectators of this second play should also be acting. The illusion here is artificially strengthened, and yet at the same time weakened, by attention being drawn to it. It is plain that this play with illusions had an immense attraction for Tieck; it was inevitable that it should have. Since it is illusion which makes art serious reality to the spectator, it is by the destroying of the illusion that he is made to feel strongly that art is free, fanciful play.

So Tieck mocks ironically at things which are usually ignored in order not to disturb the illusion. In Puss in Boots the King says to Prince Nathaniel: "But do tell me; how is it that you who live so far away can speak our language so fluently?" Nathaniel: "Hush!" The King: "What?" Nathaniel: "Hush, hush! For any sake be quiet, or the audience too will be finding out how unnatural it is." And, sure enough, one of the spectators presently remarks: "Why in the world can't the prince talk a foreign language and have it translated by his interpreter? What utter nonsense it all is!" This last speech is of course sarcasm, aimed at that demand for realism in art of which Iffland and Kotzebue were advocates. We have one expression of the demand in question in the French misconception of the Aristotelian doctrine of the unity of time and place. Writing on this subject, Schlegel, following Lessing's example, remarked that, after one had taken the great plunge and agreed to regard the stage as the world, it was surely easy to take the lesser one and sometimes permit the said stage to represent different localities. And the Romanticists were never weary of extolling the old Shakespearian theatre (where the place represented was simply intimated by a label attached to the scenes) as a higher development of art than that of their own day. The champions of realism in art were at that time advocating the substitution of solid walls for scenes; Schlegel maintained that those who insisted on having three walls on the stage were logically obliged to go a step farther and have a fourth wall, on the side towards the audience.

It is out of pure defiance of the philistine conception of art that Tieck amuses himself by seating an audience upon the stage and having the play within the play performed to the accompaniment of their critical remarks. They censure, they praise, now condemning a scene as superfluous, now approving the author for his courage in introducing horses upon the stage. While the learned man and the fool are disputing in the palace before the king upon his throne, the former says: "The gist of my argument is, that the new play Puss in Boots is a good play." "That is exactly what I deny," says the fool; whereupon one of the audience cries in amazement: "What! the play itself is mentioned in the play!"

A still more extraordinary state of matters prevails in Die Verkehrte Welt ("The Topsy-turvy World"). As Scaramouch is riding through the forest on his donkey, a thunderstorm suddenly comes on. One naturally expects him to take shelter. Not at all. "Where the deuce does this storm come from?" he cries; "there's not a word about it in my part. What absurd nonsense! My donkey and I are getting soaked. Machinist! machinist! hi! in the devil's name stop it!" The machinist enters and excuses himself, explains that the audience had expressed a desire for stage-thunder, and that he had consequently met their wishes. Scaramouch entreats the audience to change its mind, but to no purpose; thunder they will have. "What! in a sedate historical play?" It thunders again. "It's a very simple matter," says the machinist; "I blow a little pounded colophony through aflame; that makes the lightning; and at the same moment an iron ball is rolled overhead, and there you have the thunder." Play with illusion cannot be carried further than this except by introducing in the play which the performing audience is witnessing, another play acted before yet another audience. "How extraordinary it is!" says Scävola, the blockhead; "we are an audience, and yonder sit people who are an audience too." The plays are fitted into one another like puzzle-boxes.