CHAPTER VII
THE COMPASS OF POETRY
The word is the world of the legitimate stage. It rings out clear from the actor’s lips, forces its way through the spacious auditorium, and reaches the ear of the most remote spectator. The gesture is drowned out in this same space; it is the handmaid of the spoken word, to which it lends corroboration and the expression of will power.
The word is an enigmatic symbol of thought. What our ear receives is a fleeting fugitive sound, almost an indifferent sequence of sounds. What our mind receives is the meaning liberated from the sound. “Death!” The meaning is clear. Remove the meaning, the sense that lies hidden in this word, and there remains nothing but a null and void sound picture: D-e-a-t-h. Make a single, insignificant change in the sound, substitute “br” for “d,” and the meaning, the sense of it, is completely changed. The word is the instrument of the mind.
As Heinrich Laube has well said, we termed the stage, while it was still in its “first, naïve period,” a Schauspiel. The word means a “play that is seen.” But the stage is neither a Schauspiel nor a Hörspiel (“a play that is heard”), as in the case of music. It is a Gedankenspiel, or “thought play.”
Those values of the stage action which we perceive through the aid of our various senses are merely symbols and forms of expression for the intellectual or spiritual values. The word itself, as a matter of fact, loses its significance as a sensual sequence of sounds, as an acoustic phenomenon completely except for a slight fragment of beauty that lies in the word as such. The distinctive earmark of the stage action is the spiritual style. And since every art fashions the soul, stage art is the spiritual soul; it depicts feelings through thoughts.
Unintellectual, obtuse, dull people do not thrill us on the stage. Dramas whose characters are peasants and the lower classes of workmen have to be embellished and doctored-up with a goodly measure of strong theatrical devices in order to be really effective. We have but to think of the efforts that have been made to arouse interest in such plays as Schönherr’s Faith and Fireside and Hauptmann’s Teamster Henschel and The Weavers.
Consequently, it is never the dark, flat levels of purely impulsive life that are sought after by the great dramatists—whoever they may be and in whatever age they may live. The great “stage people” are characterized by an abundance of spiritual wealth. Heinrich Laube was right when he said, “Mind and thought are the drama’s weapons of attack.” They are also the weapons of attack of the grand characters that stalk across the stage. Wallenstein, Faust, Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet—these are the characters that are sought after by the actor, for they all enjoy the very highest of spiritual wealth.
The stage, the most perfect counterpart or reflection of mankind, embraces the three realms of life—Sensuality, Soul, Intellect. All those glorious figures are choked and convulsed by sensuality. Their paths lead away from sensuality and back, if possible, to pure intellectuality. That course goes so far that one of the very wildest of them remarks at the close of his career:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage