Essays on Modern Novelists

by William Lyon Phelps

Like Mr. J. M. Barrie, Signor D'Annunzio, and other contemporaries, Sudermann has achieved high distinction both as a novelist and as a dramatist. Indeed, one of the signs of the times is the recruiting of playwrights from the ranks of trained experts in prose fiction. It may perhaps be regarded as one more evidence of the approaching supremacy of the Drama, which many literary prophets have foretold. After he had published a small collection of "Zwanglose Geschichten," called Im Zwielicht, Sudermann issued his first real novel, Dame Care (Frau Sorge). This was followed by two tales bound together under the heading Geschwister, one of them being the morbidly powerful story, The Wish (Der Wunsch). Soon after came Der Katzensteg, translated into English with the title, Regina. Then, after a surprisingly short interval, came his first play, Die Ehre (1889), which appeared in the same year as his rival Hauptmann's first drama, Vor Sonnenaufgang. Die Ehre created a tremendous sensation, and Sudermann was excitedly read and discussed far beyond the limits of his native land. He reached a wild climax of popularity a few years later with his play Heimat (English version Magda), which has been presented by the greatest actresses in the world, and is familiar to everybody. With the exception of the long novel, Es War (English translation, The Undying Past), which appeared in 1894, Sudermann devoted himself exclusively to the stage for almost twenty years, and most of us believed he had definitely abandoned novel-writing. From 1889 to 1909, he produced nineteen plays, nearly every one of them successful. Then last year he astonished everybody by publishing a novel of over six hundred closely printed pages, called Das hohe Lied, translated into English as The Song of Songs. This has had an enormous success, and for 1908-1909, is the best selling work of fiction in the large cities of Germany.

The immense vogue of his early plays had much to do with the wide circulation of his previously published novels. Despite the now universally acknowledged excellence of Frau Sorge, it attracted, at the time of its appearance, very little attention. It is going beyond the facts to say with one German critic that "it dropped stillborn from the press"; but it did not give the author anything like the fame he deserved. After the first night of Die Ehre, the public became inquisitive. A search was made for everything the new author had written, and the two novels Frau Sorge, and the very recent Katzensteg, were fairly pounced upon. The small stock on hand was immediately exhausted, and the presses poured forth edition after edition. At first Der Katzensteg received the louder tribute of praise; it was hailed by many otherwise sane critics as the greatest work of fiction that Germany had ever produced. But after the tumult and the shouting died, the people recognised the superiority of the former novel. To-day Der Katzensteg is, comparatively speaking, little read, and one seldom hears it mentioned. Frau Sorge, on the other hand, has not only attained more editions than any other work, either play or novel, by its author, but it bears the signs that mark a classic. It is one of the very few truly great German novels, and it is possible that this early written story will survive everything that Sudermann has since produced, which is saying a good deal. It looks like a fixed star.

Sudermann's four novels, Frau Sorge, Der Katzensteg, Es War, and Das hohe Lied, show a steady progression in Space as well as in Time. The first is the shortest; the second is larger; the third is a long book; the fourth is a leviathan. If novelists were heard for their much speaking, the order of merit in this output would need no comment. But the first of these is almost as superior in quality as it is inferior in size. When the author prepared it for the press, he was an absolutely unknown man. Possibly he put more work on it than went into the other books, for it apparently bears the marks of careful revision. It is a great exception to the ordinary run of German novels in its complete freedom from superfluous and clogging detail. Turgenev used to write his stories originally at great length, and then reduce them to a small fraction of their original bulk, before offering them to the public. We thus receive the quintessence of his thought and of his art. Now Frau Sorge has apparently been subjected to some such process. Much of the huge and varied cargo of ideas, reflections, comments, and speculations carried by the regulation German freight-novel of heavy draught, has here been jettisoned. Then the craft itself has been completely remodelled, and the final result is a thing of grace and beauty.

Frau Sorge is an admirable story in its absolute unity, in its harmonious development, and in its natural conclusion. I do not know of any other German novel that has a more attractive outline. It ought to serve as an example to its author's countrymen.

It is in a way an anatomy of melancholy. It is written throughout in the minor key, and the atmosphere of melancholy envelops it with as much natural charm as though it were a beautiful piece of music. The book is profoundly sad, without any false sentiment and without any revolting coarseness. It is as far removed from the silly sentimentality so common in Teutonic fiction, as it is from the filth of Zola or of Gorky. The deep melancholy of the story is as natural to it as a cloudy sky. The characters live and move and have their being in this grey medium, which fits them like a garment; just as in the early tales of Björnson we feel the strong sunshine and the sharp air. The early environment of the young author, the depressing landscape of his boyhood days, the daily fight with grim want in his father's house—all these elements are faithfully reflected here, and lend their colour to the narrative. And this surrounding melancholy, though it overshadows the whole book, is made to serve an artistic purpose. It contrasts favourably with Ibsen's harsh bitterness, with Gorky's maudlin dreariness, and with the hysterical outbursts of pessimism from the manikins who try to see life from the mighty shoulders of Schopenhauer. At the very heart of the work we find no sentiment of revolt against life, and no cry of despair, but true tenderness and broad sympathy. It is the clear expression of a rich, warm nature.

The story is realistic, with a veil of Romanticism. The various scenes of the tale seem almost photographically real. The daily life on the farm, the struggles with the agricultural machine, the peat-bogs, the childish experiences at school, the brutality of the boys, the graphic picture of the funeral,—these would not be out of place in a genuine experimental novel. But we see everything through an imaginative medium, like the impalpable silver-grey mist on the paintings of Andrea del Sarto. The way in which the difficult conception of Frau Sorge—part woman, part vague abstraction—is managed, reminds one in its shadowy nature of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This might have been done clumsily, as in a crude fairy-tale, but it exhibits the most subtle art. The first description of Frau Sorge by the mother, the boy's first glimpse of the supernatural woman, his father's overcoat, the Magdalene in church, the flutter of Frau Sorge's wings,—all this gives us a realistic story, and yet takes us into the borderland between the actual and the unknown. From one point of view we have a plain narrative of fact; from another an imaginative poem, and at the end we feel that both have been marvellously blended.

The simplicity of the style gives the novel a high rank in German prose. It has that naïve quality wherein the Germans so greatly excel writers in other languages. It is a surprising fact that this tongue, so full of difficulties for foreigners, and which seems often so confused and involved, can, in the hands of a master, be made to speak like a little child. The literary style of Frau Sorge is naïve without ever being trivial or absurd. It is pleasant to observe, by the way, that to some extent this book is filling the place in American educational programmes of German that L'Abbé Constantin has for so long a time occupied in early studies of French. Both novels are masterpieces of simplicity.

But what we remember the most vividly, years after we have finished this story, is not its scenic background, nor its unearthly charm, nor the grace of its style; it is the character and temperament of the boy-hero. It is the first, and possibly the best, of Sudermann's remarkable psychological studies. The whole interest is centred in young Paul. He is not exactly the normal type of growing boy,—compare him with Tom Sawyer!—but because he is not ordinary, it does not follow that he is unnatural. To many thoroughly respectable Philistine readers, he may appear not only abnormal, but impossible; but the book was not intended for Philistines. I believe that this boy is absolutely true to life, though I do not recall at this moment any other novel where this particular kind of youth occupies the centre of the stage.

For Frau Sorge is a careful study and analysis of bashfulness, a characteristic that causes more exquisite torture to many boys and girls than is commonly recognised. Many of us, when we laugh at a boy's bashfulness, are brutal, when we mean to be merely jocular. Paul is intensely self-conscious. He is not at all like a healthy, practical, objective child, brought up in a large family, and surrounded by the noisy progeny of neighbours. His life is perforcedly largely subjective. He would give anything could he associate with schoolmates with the ease that makes a popular boy sure of his welcome. His accursed timidity makes him invariably show his most awkward and unattractive side. He is not in the least a Weltkind. He has none of the coarseness and none of the clever shirking of work and study so characteristic of the perfectly normal small boy. He does his duty without any reservations, and without understanding why. The narrative of his mental life is deeply pathetic. It is impossible to read the book without a lump in the throat.

Paul is finally saved from himself by the redeeming power of love. The little heroine Elsbeth is shadowy,—a merely conventional picture of hair, complexion, and eyes,—but she is, after all, das Ewigweibliche, and draws Paul upward and onward. She rescues him from the Slough of Despond. There is no touch of cynicism here. Sudermann shows us the healing power of a good woman's heart.