Withered Leaves: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)

by Rudolf von Gottschall

Giulia, after a silent malediction, assumed a friendly smile and greeted the lame critic, who limped into the room upon his crutch.

"Indisposed, beautiful prima donna?" said he, with the air of a protector, "our malicious climate is not created for nightingales."

"And yet I have heard that in Lithuania the nightingales are very numerous and sing wonderfully."

"It may be--in that case they must have been sent to a wrong address, for there is no public there capable of appreciating their melting warbles."

Spiegeler belonged to the would-be witty daily writers, who are not alarmed at any impertinence to the descendants of Saphir, whose star at that time was already on the wane; he wished to make himself talked about and feared, he cared not at what cost; in every artist he did but perceive a victim of his wit, and examined that victim until he had discovered the vulnerable heel of Achilles for his dart. He piqued himself upon his rudenesses, his existence depended upon them. In middle class life it often befell him that he was turned out of public-houses on account of his unseemly conduct; everywhere he was exposed to a by no means silent contempt; at the same time in literary and theatrical circles he was deemed a magnate, and there all strove to win his good-will. But the latter always remained uncertain, because for the sake of a happy idea he would even sacrifice his friends. He was so touchingly innocent that he was never even conscious of his own impudence; he considered wit to be his profession, and in that profession everything was allowable. Without blushing he stretched out the hand of friendship to those into whose heart he had on the previous day plunged a dagger with the skill of a literary bravo, and then wondered why his friendly greeting was not reciprocated. Such parasitical existences more than aught else have brought literature into disrepute in middle class German life, because the German cannot bring himself to admire that which in other respects he despises! Certainly in literature the portals are thrown widely open even to these sharks; under the banner of so-called talent even the most miserable characterless creatures are smuggled in, and when such a shameless pretender of wit composes an immature piece which only possesses dramatic joints in however slight a degree, and ill or well can move upon the boards, immediately many court theatres, which have long since learned to treat as rubbish all productions of true talent, hasten to bring out that drama or after-piece, so as to pay homage to a young genius, or much more, to render themselves secure against the ruthless lash of the literary clown.

Spiegeler certainly had not yet made any attempt upon the domain of original art; but in all other qualities he did not deny the type of the so-called wit, above all not in indifference towards every description of chastisement which did not extend so far as the laying on of hands. For him moral annihilation did not exist, and he was wont to return with great freedom from embarrassment whithersoever such acts of homage had been his portion.

Never did Giulia feel the degradation of her actress' calling more than in the presence of such German critics and their professional malice: a prima donna who had associated on friendly terms with the highest nobility of Italy was compelled to receive with all well-bred affability persons to whom the doors of a drawing-room would never have been thrown open. Often enough had she proudly scorned to wait upon the malicious "gentlemen of the press," while many of her colleagues in velvet trains rustled up the back-stairs to an attic in which some newspaper writer, dangerous to her existence, had his den; but even if her success did not suffer therefrom, at all events on all sides she was told of the witty sallies with which the intellectual reporter revenged himself for this neglect. Of what use to her was all proper indignation?

It troubled her to read in every countenance the knowledge of those spiteful bon mots, she was given up to public malice; the air in which she breathed was no longer the pure atmosphere of art, it wafted a poisoned pestilential blast towards her, and she preferred to submit to secret humiliation rather than bear the insults to which she was exposed before the whole world.

And Giulia was obliged to tell herself that such theatrical criticism only flourished upon German soil! In Italy, in England, in Spain every critic was a nobile, a gentleman, an hidalgo; even censure is offered with a polite bow, every merited acknowledgment is made to talent and beauty. Never is an artistic performance sacrificed to the unsparing spirit that delights in plucking it to pieces; never do newspapers venture to let an inquisitive ray of light fall into the interior of private life as through an open window shutter, and then to gossip about it with piquant allusions. Giulia thought little of the much-vaunted German piety, she saw that not alone the actors and actresses, but also the original poets themselves were often criticisingly ill-treated by most incapable heads, and that the public did not take part with the richly gifted and nobly struggling talents, but rather carried their homage with utmost complacency to the sparkling conceits of the much promising critic. She certainly did not know that a similar lot had fallen to our classical poets, that a criticism which had a fig-leaf ready for every bare mediocrity picked Schiller's tragedies to pieces as being schoolboy's work, even shortly before their author's death, and that amid the exultation of a numerous crowd a squib sought to destroy Goethe's laurels.

All the same, these thoughts, the recollections of many an experience in her intercourse with the representatives of German public opinion, caused her blood to boil more than usually to-day; either the sad mood that overcame her was its cause, or a dim feeling that even in daring defiance she would find a protector in the man who breathed the air of the same town with her.