Read Ebook: The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 by Francke Kuno Editor Howard William Guild Editor

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HELENE B?HLAU

CLARA VIEBIG

Burning Love. Translated by William Guild Howard 77

EDUARD VON KEYSERLING

Gay Hearts. Translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 101

THOMAS MANN

Tonio Kr?ger. Translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 184

LUDWIG THOMA

Matt the Holy. Translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 251

RUDOLF HANS BARTSCH

The Styrian Wine-Carter. Translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 268

EMIL STRAUSS

Mara. Translated by William Guild Howard 285

HERMANN HESSE

ERNST ZAHN

Stephen the Smith. Translated by Katharine Royce 373

JAKOB SCHAFFNER

The Iron Idol. Translated by Mrs. Amelia von Ende 456

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Helene B?hlau 2

Clara Viebig 78

Thomas Mann 186

Ludwig Thoma 252

Rudolf Hans Bartsch 270

Hermann Hesse 326

Ernst Zahn 374

THE CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORY

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD

Who can foretell whether the heroism of a mighty time, whose dawn we see, is to give new inspiration to patriotic poetry for centuries to come, and beget a new generation of bards worthy to sing of arms and men? The spirit of self-sacrificing devotion which waged the Seven Years' War and the Wars of Liberation has returned to animate the Germany of today. Who knows, however, but that many a precious life will be sacrificed from which we hoped for great things even in our literature, and which now sheds its blood in a struggle for the warrior's laurel wreath? For German poets have also heard the call to arms; and those who have not, like Ganghofer, despite his sixty years, and Dehmel with his fifty-one, joined the ranks of the volunteers, tune their lyres to Tyrtaean measures and enlist their pens in the service of their native land. Thus Gerhart Hauptmann, who only a year ago concluded his dramatic celebration of the centennial of German liberation with an apotheosis of peace, now comes forward with stirring war songs.

It has been hardly more than a hundred years that the Germans could be said to possess a national literature. Even the literature of the eighteenth century was ill-starred by the partisan strife between the Saxons and the Swiss, a strife which had its origin more particularly in irreconcilable differences of language. Permanent peace was concluded at Weimar without any feeling that the supremacy of this spiritual centre was tyranny. Even in his old age Goethe showed the keenest interest in all local and dialectical literature, and romanticism reinforced the sense for every ancient trait of national individuality. United Germany has no need of an academy to fix the canons of usage; on the contrary, it recognizes in the variety of local and dialectical peculiarities a source of wealth which would be impaired by any normalization, and the drying up of which would threaten literature with sterility. Cultivated Germany is not an anarchy, but a federation of many small states, with a much more democratic constitution than such a unified state as France, of which state Paris is the monarch. The influence of Prussia, mostly misunderstood abroad, is confined to military and civil administration; in questions of art and culture, but above all in literature, every attempt to enforce uniformity meets with the most stubborn resistance.

Along the banks of the Rhine, on the other hand, there dwells in the same latitude a more vivacious people, whose mischievous cheerfulness and easy-going philosophy of life are manifestations of their Frankish blood. It is striking that hardly one of the most prominent Rhenish writers of the present has failed to try his hand at the drama. In Middle Germany emotions are more deep-seated and more responsive; people are more sentimental, more soft-hearted, more talkative, more visionary, have a finer sense of form, but a more conventional manner of speech. In this charming region of forests and mountains, to which the population is warmly attached and in which it finds protection, there is abundant occupation for a tender heart and a lively imagination. Middle Germany is the home of mysticism and romanticism, and this fact is apparent in the authors of the present day: the Silesians , the Misnians , the Thuringians , the Hessians , the Franconians , and the inhabitants of the Palatinate .

Fondness for music is especially prominent in the stocks in which there has been an infusion of Slavic elements. In Upper Germany, accordingly, a sharp line is to be drawn between the Bavaro-Austrian and the Alemannic group. In Austria the capacity for sensuous enjoyment and a certain indolence are combined with a tendency toward sanguine but short-lived enthusiasms. A soft, southern air blows about the heights of Styria as well as over Vienna and its environs, and in the works of the writers of these regions everything is resolved into a lyrical mood and a melody of words. Similarly in the case of writers of southern Tirol , whereas on the northern slope of the Alps a race of men made of sterner stuff is reared . In Bavaria, finally, people are even more rough and ready and lyrical sentimentality yields to a pugnacious propensity to ridicule, which gives satirical seasoning to the works of the genuinely Bavarian writers Ludwig Thoma and Joseph Ruederer.

The sluggish Alemannians, on the contrary, lack the vivacity of the Bavaro-Austrian stock. On the monotonous heights of the Swabian plateau are developed such brusque individualism, tenacious self-will, peculiar humor inclined to self-depreciation, soaring fantasy, and such a predilection for adventures abroad as we find in the Swabian narrators Emil Strauss, Hermann Hesse, Ludwig Finckh, and Heinrich Lilienfein. Didacticism, present in all Alemannic prose and poetry, finds more popular forms among the story-writers of the Black Forest of Baden , while in the local character of the Alsatians, the source of Hermann Stegemann's novels, good-natured practical joking is more at home. As the rough Alpine country demands the utmost of human industry, so in the realm of art it has developed a sympathy with practical, efficient life, which, disinclined to all speculation , is rather under the sway of pedagogical interests. In Switzerland literature is most indissolubly bound up with the life of the whole people, and a gay art for art's sake cannot thrive. Here are to be found true farmer-authors, such as Alfred Huggenberger, who still guides the plow across his fields, or poets who have risen from the ranks of handicraftsmen, such as Jakob Schaffner, or those who prosecute their literary avocation side by side with the business of a restaurateur, like Ernst Zahn. And no other of the compatriots of Pestalozzi disdains either, to be in the truest sense a popular poet and an educator of the people.

An account of German narrative writing of the present time is a kind of ethnography of the German stocks and regions. The names above-mentioned, selected without prejudice and also without arbitrariness, ought to be represented here each with a specimen. In part, these authors have been represented in the preceding volumes. The necessary limits of this volume permit consideration of only a dozen. The varieties of language and style which distinguish them one from another cannot fail to be somewhat obscured in a translation; nevertheless, the six pairs which we have arrayed according to racial affiliation and age are well adapted to give an impression of the manifoldness of German narrative prose at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In the first place we mention two women, Helene B?hlau and Clara Viebig. Both have passed through the naturalistic school--for the former, indeed, naturalism marked only a period of transition; for the latter it meant conversion to a creed to which she has remained faithful.

It is not this writer's business to preach new, revolutionary ideas and views. He narrates typical cases with the dignified reserve of the skeptical man of the world, who knows how to weave in everywhere the comments of a shrewd philosophy of life, who bridles passion with strict self-control, and in the representation of the most tempestuous crises maintains sure mastery over expression and form. The writer himself may share with his creations their longing for fresh elemental power; but he is endowed with far too much of the traditional culture of his caste ever to allow himself any obstreperous accents. The words of one of his dramatic figures characterize his own art: "We no longer know how to underscore. Underscoring is in bad taste. Those people out there live on underscoring."

Longing for abundant pulsating life, and autumnal renunciation on the part of a decaying family, are also among the principal motifs in the work of Thomas Mann. "Life, revealing itself in eternal contrariness to the spirit and to art--not as a vision of bloody greatness and untamed beauty, not as something uncommon does it present itself to us uncommon people. On the contrary, the normal, proper, and lovely is the realm of our longing, is life in its seductive banality! He is far from being an artist, whose last and deepest yearning is for the superrefined, the eccentric and satanical, who knows no longing for the innocent, the simple and living, for a little friendship, devotion, confidential familiarity, and human happiness--the furtive and consuming longing for the raptures of the common place!"

These sentiments of Mann's Tonio Kr?ger might animate one of Keyserling's characters, but Keyserling would never express them in such impulsive fashion. Mann is much more subjective than Keyserling. In all the experiences of his characters he is mirrored himself, and all of his writings make and repeat one and the same confession as the foundation of his art, the solitude of the artist.

The cleft which separates two worlds is recognizable in his very parentage. Thomas Mann was born in L?beck in 1875, the son of a merchant and senator of the ancient Hanseatic city; his mother is a Creole from South America. In his elder brother Heinrich Mann, perhaps a more ingenious, but a less finished writer, of the nervous, ardently passionate, impressionistic sort, the exotic heritage has tended to predominate; in Thomas Mann the correctness of the austere Hanseatic city and her old traditions seems to be the strongest element. Because he cannot escape the exasperating incompatibility between citizen and artist, between the instinct for conformity and the will to be different, he fights this battle again and again, and bitter meditation upon it has given him the themes of his principal works.

He never knew the leisure, never the careless unconcern of youth. When in his thirty-fifth year he fell ill in Vienna, a keen observer once remarked about him in company, "You see, Aschenbach has always lived like this"--and he clenched his left fist--"never this way"--and he let his open hand dangle from the arm of his chair. That was indeed the case; and the moral valor about Aschenbach was that his constitution was in no sense robust, and that though called to unremitting exertion, he was not really born to it.... With a strong will and tenacity comparable to that which had subdued his native province, he worked for years under the stress of one and the same task, and devoted to its proper accomplishment all of his strongest and best hours. He almost loved the enervating, daily-renewed combat between his tenacious, proud, and often tried willpower, and this ever-growing fatigue, which was his secret and which the product should in no wise betray by signs of exhaustion or indifference.

The German plain from the river Danube to the Alps is inhabited by the Baiovarii. I regard them as the original inhabitants of this land, self-raised, as they call themselves in their own tongue. It is difficult for immigrants to mingle with them. It is certain that foreigners could never be confounded with the autochthonous folk.

Since this Germanic stock has remained free from contamination through intermarriage with alien nations, it constitutes a separate, uniform race. Hence the same figure in all the representatives of this numerous nation, the same uncommonly developed hands and feet, the same hard, impenetrable formation of the head. Like their ancestors, they are fit for violent assault, and fond of it. They show great capacity for the endurance of fatigue and tribulation; the only thing they cannot endure is thirst.

This people is equipped with manifold weapons; but even in these they have more regard for usefulness than for beauty. Widespread is the short dagger which every mature man carries in the fold of his garment; but the use of it is not permitted--on the contrary, the powers that be seek to get possession of all such; whereupon the common man replaces the lost weapon by another. As missiles they have earthen mugs, with handles which make them likewise adaptable for delivering blows. At their gathering places every man, when strife arises, seeks to possess himself of as many of these as possible, and hurls them then uncommonly far. Most of the Baiovarii carry a sort of spear, or in their language, "chaser", made of the hazel of their forests, with blunt end, supple, and very handy. In the lack of these weapons, each man assumes any that chance may offer. Indeed, for this purpose even articles of household furniture, such as tables and chairs, are robbed of their supports. In high favor are also the constituent parts of garden inclosures. Before the beginning of the conflict the battle song resounds. It is not as though human throats, but rather as though the spirit of war were singing. They essay chiefly the formation of wild sounds, and close their eyes as though thereby to reinforce their utterance. They fight without a preconsidered plan of battle, each at the place that he occupies. Of shields they make no employment. The head is deemed a natural protection, which meets the shock of the attacking enemy and guards the rest of the body. Many even use the head for the purposes of attack, when other weapons fail.

The Alemannic races on the Upper German territories reveal a greater toughness of fibre and more power of resistance. They are blunt individualists, whose love of country utters itself with less enthusiasm and attains to perfect certainty perhaps only after a longing for adventures abroad has been stilled.

Hermann Hesse, who is often grouped with Strauss, is, in spite of his belonging to the same stock, a different nature; he is more of a lyricist, and his lyrical poems, though less well known, take perhaps a higher rank than his novels. Even in these the lyrical mood outweighs the human action; he ponders the riddles of nature more earnestly than the riddles of humanity. Among human beings, however, his favorite is the gentle St. Francis of Assisi, to whom he has devoted a splendid little book.

Show me in all the wide world the man who knows the clouds better and loves them more than I do! Or show me the thing in the world that is more splendid than the clouds! They are playthings and balm for the eyes, they are a blessing and divine gift, they are wrath and omnipotent death. They are frail, tender, and peaceful, like the souls of the newly born; they are beautiful, opulent, and lavish, like good angels; they are dark, unescapable, and pitiless, like the messengers of death. They hover in silvery thin expanse, they sail laughingly white with a golden rim, they stand at rest in yellow, red, and bluish tints; they creep up slowly and darkly threatening like murderers, they rush with a headlong roar like mad horsemen, they hang sad and pensive at equal heights like melancholy hermits. They have the forms of blessed isles and the forms of blessing angels; they are like threatening hands, fluttering sails, a flight of cranes. They float between God's heaven and the poor earth as fair symbols of all human longings, akin to both--dreams of the earth, in which her sullied soul flies to the embrace of the pure heaven. They are the eternal symbol of all wandering, all seeking, desiring, all homesickness. And as they hang timidly and yearningly and persistently between earth and heaven, so the souls of men hang timidly and yearningly and persistently between time and eternity.

Little room with the writing table, the tall book-cases, the few pictures on the wall, and the immovable, grand, curious mountain always peering in at thy window--little room with the great hubbub all about thee, of thee I am to speak, and of him who sits within thy coziness! It is not difficult to speak of thee: thou art a home, peaceful and lost to the world, although the life of the world surges around thee like the sea around an island. Behind thou hast the rumble of carts going hither and thither all summer long over three mountain passes, and before, the daily rattle and roar of the great railway trains of the Gotthard. And yet thou art peaceful and hast taught me that it is better to dwell in thee than in the bustling world, and hast taught me that I do not need many men to make me happy in thee.... From the writing table there is every few minutes a call to the dining rooms on the ground floor, where the author is metamorphosed into a victualler. Many persons shake their heads at this transformation. To me the profession of my father is an object of affection; I owe it an assured livelihood. Who knows but that the author in me also owes it much of the spontaneity and joy of working?

But a fertile source of the author's joy of working is situated in a little dwelling of which I mean to speak last in this account of my houses. It stands in the valley of G?schenen, at the edge of the village, in the midst of a meadow. Round about tower the mountains; the gleaming glacier of Damma throws its light in through the window panes. The valley is filled with a great stillness. In the house five children, my children, live their untroubled lives, and my wife guards them well, with her gentle and skilful hand to lead, and her affectionate patience to understand her husband. In this, my mountain home, my life has found its haven. I hope to dwell there until I must move into the last resting place of my career; I hope to work, and I hope to attain to high and beautiful things; for I hear the bells of poetry mightily reverberating from my mountains, marvelous, richly harmonious voices; and perhaps I shall one day succeed in catching these tones in their clearest purity. Perhaps! There is hope; and hope is life!

The strenuous effort alluded to in these words, the great all-conquering achievement, the master chime which peals from the heights, has indeed not yet attained fulfillment. One might say of the work of Zahn as of the bell of Gerhart Hauptmann's bell-founder, "In the valley it vibrates, not on the heights." We find neither great problems of humanity and civilization nor real men of the heights. On the contrary, these "heroes of every day" are dwellers in the valley, harsh and hard as the walls of granite which narrow their horizon; and if the author puts into these rude vessels something of his own delicacy of feeling, as he attributes to Stephen the Smith appreciation of the little Roman bronze figures which the trader has brought up from Italy, such ennobling ingredients can sometimes enter only at the expense of consistency of characterization.

For ten years I have lived in the neighborhood of Vienna. There are German critics who cannot forgive me this choice of a domicile. But I still ask them to approve it. On my part I promise them never to give in to the Capuan lassitude which, I might add, is nothing but a legend among the superficial. True, the productive man is here more isolated, the man resolved to reach a goal is here left more to his own resources, than elsewhere; but many stormy winds blow, and if the post which one has taken is rendered dangerous, one's vigilance is enhanced. I am thirty-eight years old and have a feeling that I am standing at the beginning of my career. But to reach the end one would need to be--immortal.

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