Translated Wedekind would lose his native wood-note wild, and doubtless much of his dynamic force—for on the English stage he would be emasculated. And I wonder who would have the courage to produce his works.
Musik, for example, if played in its entirety might create a profound impression. It is pathetically moving and the part of the unhappy girl, who is half crazy because of her passion for her singing-master, is a rôle for an accomplished actress. If the public can endure Brieux's Damaged Goods, why not Musik? The latter is a typical case and is excellent drama; the French play is neither. For me all the man is summed up in the cry of one of his characters in Erdgeist: "Who gives me back my faith in mankind, will give me back my life." An idealist, surely.
The last time I saw him was at the Richard Strauss festival in Stuttgart, October, 1912. He had changed but little and still reminded me of both David Belasco and an Irish Catholic priest. In his eyes there lurked the "dancing-madness" of which Robert Louis Stevenson writes. A latter-day pagan, with touches of the perverse, the grotesque, and the poetic; thus seems to me Frank Wedekind.
VII
THE MAGIC VERMEER
I
Who owns the thirty-fifth canvas by Jan Vermeer of Delft? And are there more than thirty-five works by this master of cool, clear daylight? I have seen nearly all the pictures attributed to the too little known Dutchman, and as far as was in my power I have read all the critical writings by such experts as Havard, Obreen, Bredius, Hofstede de Groot (Jan Vermeer van Delft en Carel Fabritius, 1907), Doctor Bode, Wauters, Arsène Alexandre, G. Geoffroy, Bürger, Taine, John Smith, Gustave Vanzype, and several others.
Doctor A. Bredius has printed an article entitled: A Pseudo-Vermeer in the Berlin gallery, which I have not been able to procure, but then the same worthy authority has contested the authenticity of the portrait of a young man in the Brussels Museum. It is not signed, this beautiful head, and at one time it was in the English collections of Humphry Ward and Peter Norton, and later in the Collection Otlet at Brussels. Smith catalogued it as a Rembrandt; indeed, it had the false signature of the great master. Much later it was accredited to Jan Victoors, a Rembrandt pupil, and to Nicolas Maes, and under this name was sold in Paris in 1900. A. J. Wauters finally declared it a Vermeer, though neither Bredius nor Hofstede de Groot are of his opinion. And now we hear the question: Who owns the thirty-fifth Vermeer, Vermeer of the magical blue and yellow?