Then booms down in the valley, where lies the lake, the sound of a bell; an unearthly tone it has, as if struck by no mortal hand; it is touched by the hand of his dead wife who killed herself to escape her misery. Remorse sets in. He is no longer Balder the god of Spring, but a wretched man, and, driving away with revilings the poor Rautendelein, he descends to the valley, but is driven away, and finally dies in front of the witch's hut; but not before Rautendelein finds him. His last words are an ecstatic appeal to the sun—the sun which is the symbol of his striving.
The charm, the witchery, the magical bitter-sweetness of this dramatic poem are formidable at the close. Heinrich dies of poison, self-administered, while through his filmy eyes there presses the vision of the beloved one. It is, indeed, Rautendelein, but her very shadow. Deserted, dreary, neither maid nor mortal nor nymph, she accepts the love of the hideous, frog-like Nickelman, and goes down to his slimy couch in the well. She emerges only to see her lover dying, and pathetically denies to him that she is Rautendelein. As the curtain falls on his corpse, we catch a glimpse of the girl sadly returning to the well and to her horrible mate in the mud.
Sorma gave a delicious, naïve, and plastic version of the nymph at the Irving Place Theatre in 1897. She possesses an exquisite sensibility. She painted with a light hand the caprice, elfish cunning, and wiles of Rautendelein, and at the close the tragic note was delicately sounded. It was a great, a notable achievement.
Sorma has been called the German Duse. She is really a Silesian by birth, and she is not a Duse. But she has unusual adroitness in the expression of the conventional dramatic symbolism, and an agility in technic and a variety of vocal and facial expression that enable her to assume a wide range of character. A certain briskness and imperious piquancy make her work unlike that of the German stage. She is more Gallic, in reality more Slavic than Gallic. Her person is finely fashioned, her features good, her eyes particularly expressive, and her mask mobile and expressive easily of a mob of elusive emotions. She reaches her climax by a rational crescendo, and never fails to thrill. Altogether a creature of real fire and with an air of distinction. Of the occasional sentimentality of the German stage she is never guilty.
Mr. Meltzer in the preface of his admirable translation tells us "to view the play from the standpoint of the reformer, and you may interpret it as the tale of a dreamer, who, hampered by inevitable conditions, strives to remodel human society. For my part I incline to regard Heinrich the bell-founder as a symbol of Humanity struggling painfully toward the realization of its dream of the ideal truth and joy and light and justice. Rautendelein in this reading stands for Nature, or rather for the freedom and sincerity of Nature, missing a reunion with which Humanity can never hope to reach the supreme truth, and the supreme bliss of which the Sun is the emblem."
The artist sans moral obligations is bound to be a failure, no matter the height or depth of his genius. This has Tennyson sung; and Goethe, in his imperial manner, has set it forth. Symbolic and allegoric The Sunken Bell may signify the conflict of Pagan and Christian, Jew and Greek, Heinrich standing midway between the opposing forces as did Walter Pater's Denys in the mad days at Auxerrois. Miraculously has the poet fixed his wild people of wood and waves. They with their coarse, elemental gestures and foolery might have stepped out of a canvas by Arnold Böcklin. The blank verse is admirable, and while the Faust metre is largely used there are no such lyrics as we find strewn through Goethe's immortal pages. And yet—yet is not Hauptmann Germany's most distinguished dramatist since that master? The admirers of Robert Hamerling and Von Wildenbruch will not have it so—possibly because of the pessimism and the socialistic views of the new man. Nevertheless, Hauptmann has the ear of all Germany to-day.
In Rose Bernd, Hauptmann returns to his beloved Silesians of The Weavers, of Fuhrmann Henschel, of Before Sunrise. His new five-act piece is a drama of the open fields and rough peasant life. It is atmospheric throughout. Its moral fibre is incontestably strong, though the method of presentation may seem unpleasant. The dialect is difficult for the student, the play itself squalid and painful to a degree. Nor has it the inevitable quality of Die Weber or Wagoner Henschel. Rose recalls, though vaguely, something of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, of Hetty Sorrel, and of Gretchen. She is a worker in the harvest fields, and previous to the action of the play has been deceived by Christoph Flamm, the mayor of the district and a jolly landowner who has a paralyzed wife. He is a vital figure; his exuberance, unrepentance, selfishness, and genuine passion for Rose are all minutely indicated. His wife has been a second mother to Rose, who resides with her father, a poor old peasant, a strict pietist. Frau Flamm has lost her only child and lives on her memories. She is wheeled about her house in an invalid's chair. She, too, is alive, and her not unkindly probing of the unfortunate girl's secret brings about some stirring scenes.
Rose is engaged to a young man, a book-binder, who is pious, whose dream was to become a missionary. He is unassuming, ugly, and adores Rose. She might have surmounted her troubles if the disturbing element in the person of Streckmann, the dissipated engineer of the village threshing machine, had not crossed her fate. He has witnessed the interviews of Rose and Flamm, and he scares her by threatening to tell the story to her father and her betrothed. He attempts to capture her for himself, and at last succeeds, as the wretched girl relates in accusing him: "I came to you in terror and anguish. I got on my knees before you. You swore that you would keep my secret. You fell upon me like a bird of prey. I tried to escape ... you committed a crime."
Streckmann later, in drunken fury, tells the peasants of Rose's sins. Her father believes in her, but insists upon an explanation. The miserable creature confesses in a delirious accent that she has just strangled her new-born babe. Her father has her arrested, and her patient lover August, who has forgiven her, lifts the swooning girl and exclaims, "Hat das mädel gelitten!" (What the girl must have suffered!) The play was forbidden the boards in Austria by the Emperor—it was at once too moral and too truthful.
The interpretation at the Lessing Theatre, Berlin, which I witnessed, October 2, 1904, was one the memory of which I shall long treasure. The distribution of the rôles was almost faultless; the individual execution of a high order. Rose was enacted by that great artist, Else Lehmann, who portrayed the trying soul states and mental agony of the unfortunate peasant girl with supreme skill. All the more difficult is the character because Hauptmann has resolutely avoided showing us what Rose really thinks. She is reacted upon by her friends and enemies, yet seldom speaks, except in mono-syllables. The illumination of her nature was a peculiar triumph of Lehmann's simple, sincere art.