ealing
a, is
Heu
Rikol
ch con
na; i
unger
the w
them
at m
edy b
ities
er,
ay the
of
dtend
atth
as co
mann
rse
met
Frend
and
he
ave ei
shades
rem,
80
of
ban
olie Church. In his recent autobiography
Bahr points out that once a Catholic always
a Catholic; in his youth he strayed from
the church, but an inexorable law has com¬
pelled him back to its gorgeous pomp and
ritual, above all, to its disciplined faith;
and it is this deep faith which has re¬
knitted him to the mild sweetness and
rounded beauty of his native land.
Im contemporary Austrian literature the
writer who sets himself to portray the
swistly flowing life of the city is fully
balanced by the so-called Heimatsdichter,
the singer and poet of the familiar soil. A
good many of the latter, to be sure, write
in prose; but the medium is of secondary
importance; intimacy with the cornlands
and vineyards and forests make of them
poets of the first order. Chief among these
I should put Carl Schönherr, who is known
inthe United States by his Children's
Tragedy, one of his earliest but certainly
not one of his best plays. A far better
piece in this homeland' genre is Erde.)
and only a littie less significant is Glaube
und Heimat.“ The latter is so deeplz
rooted in the mountain life of the Tyrol
that it is unthinkable any translator, how¬
ever gifted, could carry it over into intelli¬
gible English prose; the words might be
conveyed, but the spirit and atmosphere
Wotlid remain forever remote and foreign.
It is, as the reader has already guessed, a
play dealing with peasant life, and we have
nothing to correspond to the Austrian
peasant. Then, again, it portrays an aspect
of the anti-Reformation, as exemplified by
one family group in the Austrian Alps;
how, a cluster of stubborn peasants sullenly
clung to the homely creed of their fathers
against all the fierce onslarghts of invad¬
ing Protestantism.Glaube und Heimat'
is not, however, a religious problem play.
Far from it; the author has used the
Reformation merely as a starting point, but
what he is interested in, above everything
else, is the tenacity of human faith and
profound human illusions.
In Erde' Schönherr has plumbed to the
loamy bottom of the peasant’s soul; and his
vision and seizure are so telling, solbeauti¬
fully accurate and moving that the effect of
this play cannot be casily put into words.
It is truer to say that Erde' is closer to
a poem# than a play, an unwritten poem
perhaps by some Austrian Wordsworth or
Burns; this is not so paradoxical as it
sonnds, for Schönherr has contented him¬
self witha noble conception eked out by
penctrating dramatic moments, but the lyric
note is lacking. As drama, howéver, it
leaves very little to be desired. An old
peasant is supposed to be dying by his
son, who begins to think about his inherit¬
ance and is already preoccupied fashioning
his father’s coffin. But spring comes very
suddenly after a hard, dark winter of the
mountains, and old Grutz, the aged peasant,
feeling the sap of newborn things in his
veins and catching sight through his bed¬
room window of the young, fresh green,
rises in tune with the tidal wave of all be¬
ginning growth. He marches into the ad¬
joining living room and, with a mighty
stroke, smashes his own coffin to smither¬
cens.
An Austrian writer of the first rank, be¬
cause of the beauty of his themes and the
music of his style, is Emil Lucka, known
to us only by his erudite study entitled
Eros.“ All of Lucka’s books are the rich
fruit of a fine and sympathetic scholarship,
wedded to an exquisite sense of form. In
more than one way he may be compared
#to Maurice Hewiett and James Branch
Cabell. I doubt very much whether Lucka
has ever heard of Hewlett or Cabell, but
these three men arc blood-kin in the cradie
of ihe spirit. Lucka’s best known romance
is Isolde Weisshand“ (Fisher Nerlag), a
—
peurs ugs. 111 Oprinidt Pnd Sdriteie
in ceremonials, customs, and daily habits
Gieges and His Ring.' Bronnen belongs
a few days ago by Hermann Suder
of thought and speech. The tentative
to that class of German writers, mostly
who observed, in the course of an
title of this work, which gives just enough
younger men, who have definitely broken
view, that for him Schnitzler was anf
of its theme and drift, is Der Ur-Gut der
with traditional form; they are trying to
Menscheit.“
is the most charactéristic painter of
discover a more direct, less rhetorical form
trian and Viennese life.
of expression. The most successful mem¬
Apropos of the far-flung pessimism
ber of this group is, of course, George
which prevails with regard to Luropean
civilization, Jacob Wassermann, who has
Kaiser, who is now in Vienna in connec¬
Jean Rostand’s new novel, Demz
just published a new book of stories, enti¬
tion with the rehearsals of his new play,
goisses,“ recently issued from the pi
Nebeneinander.“
tled Der Geist des Pilgers“ (the scene of
Fasquelle in Paris, has met with
one of them is laid in Mexico!), writes in
Anew play by Raoul Auernheimer, entitled
divergent comment from French eritte
the Neue Breie-Presse-that- Europe has, in
Casanova in Wien,“ has just been pre
cilmnemt a nian as Feriland Vandren
his opinion, become jaded and overcultured.
duced with Moissi in the title röle and will
pronounced it onc of the most
He relates how, after an address which
shortly be published by Rikola. Casanova
studies of jealousyrthat have ever app
he had delivered at a Swedish University
is made out to be far more idealistic than
Never, anywhere“(shades of
on the subject of humanity, a student came
speare!), says M. Vanderem, has an
he was in the living flesh. He is set off in
written so profoundly, so various
contrast with his brother, the painter.
and asked wistrully: Do you really believe
movingly, or so bitingly of jealousy.
Auernheimer is concerned with the eternal
that people can be changed for the better?“
the other hand, René Crevel holde
conflict between the acquisitive, material¬
This question, Wassermann records, not
M. Rostand has produced a wean
istic man and the-creative spirit; Casanova,
only stunned him, but cut deeply into his
book, one in which his instincts
of course, is the materialist, while his
soul.
essayist have got the better of h
brother is the idealist. Let no one quarrel
*
mantic sense, and produced a wo
with this free rewriting of the immortal
In my last letter I mentioned, in pass¬
which maxims, thoughts, and counse
memoirs. All history and the whole field
ing, Franz Werfel's Spiegelmensch, one
blended into a nondescript banality.
of fiction are fair game for the dramatist
of the greatest dramatic pocms in contem¬
Lif-he can suggestively rework his original mediocre novel. concludes M. Cren
porary German literäture. When I first“material; and this, let it be added, Auern- better than this fricassée.
read Spiegelmensch,“ in 102o, I was not a
little puzzled by its dense symbolism. Parts
I could just make out; others, quite frank¬
ly, were the sheerest kind of abracadabra#
The comment which has appeared since in
the literary reviews has been, I am afraid,
not very helpful or enlightening. But the
difficult symbolism of“ Spiegelmensch’ was
recently clarified for me by the author him¬
self. He was good enough to give me a
copy of his Dramaturgie“ (Kurt Wolff),
of which no copies were sold and only ten
were printed for private use. The“ Drama¬
turgie' makes the symbolism of Spiegel¬
mensch“ perfectly clear; the language is
terse and to the point. I have Caly space
here to point out that the three worlds
limned in the magic trilogy correspond to
the three phases of man’s mind. The clois¬
ter, says the author, represents the world
of Logos (philosophy); the monk stands
for inexorable consequence. (I do not take
this to signify Fate in the Greck sense, but
the moral Nemesis which pursues all our
thoughts and acts in everyday life.) The
second part of the trilogy symbolizes the
Living World: father, friend, wife, child,
priest, and people—in other words, the
world of Eros, which is the plane ou which
ne
a, is
Heu
Rikol
ch con
na; i
unger
the w
them
at m
edy b
ities
er,
ay the
of
dtend
atth
as co
mann
rse
met
Frend
and
he
ave ei
shades
rem,
80
of
ban
olie Church. In his recent autobiography
Bahr points out that once a Catholic always
a Catholic; in his youth he strayed from
the church, but an inexorable law has com¬
pelled him back to its gorgeous pomp and
ritual, above all, to its disciplined faith;
and it is this deep faith which has re¬
knitted him to the mild sweetness and
rounded beauty of his native land.
Im contemporary Austrian literature the
writer who sets himself to portray the
swistly flowing life of the city is fully
balanced by the so-called Heimatsdichter,
the singer and poet of the familiar soil. A
good many of the latter, to be sure, write
in prose; but the medium is of secondary
importance; intimacy with the cornlands
and vineyards and forests make of them
poets of the first order. Chief among these
I should put Carl Schönherr, who is known
inthe United States by his Children's
Tragedy, one of his earliest but certainly
not one of his best plays. A far better
piece in this homeland' genre is Erde.)
and only a littie less significant is Glaube
und Heimat.“ The latter is so deeplz
rooted in the mountain life of the Tyrol
that it is unthinkable any translator, how¬
ever gifted, could carry it over into intelli¬
gible English prose; the words might be
conveyed, but the spirit and atmosphere
Wotlid remain forever remote and foreign.
It is, as the reader has already guessed, a
play dealing with peasant life, and we have
nothing to correspond to the Austrian
peasant. Then, again, it portrays an aspect
of the anti-Reformation, as exemplified by
one family group in the Austrian Alps;
how, a cluster of stubborn peasants sullenly
clung to the homely creed of their fathers
against all the fierce onslarghts of invad¬
ing Protestantism.Glaube und Heimat'
is not, however, a religious problem play.
Far from it; the author has used the
Reformation merely as a starting point, but
what he is interested in, above everything
else, is the tenacity of human faith and
profound human illusions.
In Erde' Schönherr has plumbed to the
loamy bottom of the peasant’s soul; and his
vision and seizure are so telling, solbeauti¬
fully accurate and moving that the effect of
this play cannot be casily put into words.
It is truer to say that Erde' is closer to
a poem# than a play, an unwritten poem
perhaps by some Austrian Wordsworth or
Burns; this is not so paradoxical as it
sonnds, for Schönherr has contented him¬
self witha noble conception eked out by
penctrating dramatic moments, but the lyric
note is lacking. As drama, howéver, it
leaves very little to be desired. An old
peasant is supposed to be dying by his
son, who begins to think about his inherit¬
ance and is already preoccupied fashioning
his father’s coffin. But spring comes very
suddenly after a hard, dark winter of the
mountains, and old Grutz, the aged peasant,
feeling the sap of newborn things in his
veins and catching sight through his bed¬
room window of the young, fresh green,
rises in tune with the tidal wave of all be¬
ginning growth. He marches into the ad¬
joining living room and, with a mighty
stroke, smashes his own coffin to smither¬
cens.
An Austrian writer of the first rank, be¬
cause of the beauty of his themes and the
music of his style, is Emil Lucka, known
to us only by his erudite study entitled
Eros.“ All of Lucka’s books are the rich
fruit of a fine and sympathetic scholarship,
wedded to an exquisite sense of form. In
more than one way he may be compared
#to Maurice Hewiett and James Branch
Cabell. I doubt very much whether Lucka
has ever heard of Hewlett or Cabell, but
these three men arc blood-kin in the cradie
of ihe spirit. Lucka’s best known romance
is Isolde Weisshand“ (Fisher Nerlag), a
—
peurs ugs. 111 Oprinidt Pnd Sdriteie
in ceremonials, customs, and daily habits
Gieges and His Ring.' Bronnen belongs
a few days ago by Hermann Suder
of thought and speech. The tentative
to that class of German writers, mostly
who observed, in the course of an
title of this work, which gives just enough
younger men, who have definitely broken
view, that for him Schnitzler was anf
of its theme and drift, is Der Ur-Gut der
with traditional form; they are trying to
Menscheit.“
is the most charactéristic painter of
discover a more direct, less rhetorical form
trian and Viennese life.
of expression. The most successful mem¬
Apropos of the far-flung pessimism
ber of this group is, of course, George
which prevails with regard to Luropean
civilization, Jacob Wassermann, who has
Kaiser, who is now in Vienna in connec¬
Jean Rostand’s new novel, Demz
just published a new book of stories, enti¬
tion with the rehearsals of his new play,
goisses,“ recently issued from the pi
Nebeneinander.“
tled Der Geist des Pilgers“ (the scene of
Fasquelle in Paris, has met with
one of them is laid in Mexico!), writes in
Anew play by Raoul Auernheimer, entitled
divergent comment from French eritte
the Neue Breie-Presse-that- Europe has, in
Casanova in Wien,“ has just been pre
cilmnemt a nian as Feriland Vandren
his opinion, become jaded and overcultured.
duced with Moissi in the title röle and will
pronounced it onc of the most
He relates how, after an address which
shortly be published by Rikola. Casanova
studies of jealousyrthat have ever app
he had delivered at a Swedish University
is made out to be far more idealistic than
Never, anywhere“(shades of
on the subject of humanity, a student came
speare!), says M. Vanderem, has an
he was in the living flesh. He is set off in
written so profoundly, so various
contrast with his brother, the painter.
and asked wistrully: Do you really believe
movingly, or so bitingly of jealousy.
Auernheimer is concerned with the eternal
that people can be changed for the better?“
the other hand, René Crevel holde
conflict between the acquisitive, material¬
This question, Wassermann records, not
M. Rostand has produced a wean
istic man and the-creative spirit; Casanova,
only stunned him, but cut deeply into his
book, one in which his instincts
of course, is the materialist, while his
soul.
essayist have got the better of h
brother is the idealist. Let no one quarrel
*
mantic sense, and produced a wo
with this free rewriting of the immortal
In my last letter I mentioned, in pass¬
which maxims, thoughts, and counse
memoirs. All history and the whole field
ing, Franz Werfel's Spiegelmensch, one
blended into a nondescript banality.
of fiction are fair game for the dramatist
of the greatest dramatic pocms in contem¬
Lif-he can suggestively rework his original mediocre novel. concludes M. Cren
porary German literäture. When I first“material; and this, let it be added, Auern- better than this fricassée.
read Spiegelmensch,“ in 102o, I was not a
little puzzled by its dense symbolism. Parts
I could just make out; others, quite frank¬
ly, were the sheerest kind of abracadabra#
The comment which has appeared since in
the literary reviews has been, I am afraid,
not very helpful or enlightening. But the
difficult symbolism of“ Spiegelmensch’ was
recently clarified for me by the author him¬
self. He was good enough to give me a
copy of his Dramaturgie“ (Kurt Wolff),
of which no copies were sold and only ten
were printed for private use. The“ Drama¬
turgie' makes the symbolism of Spiegel¬
mensch“ perfectly clear; the language is
terse and to the point. I have Caly space
here to point out that the three worlds
limned in the magic trilogy correspond to
the three phases of man’s mind. The clois¬
ter, says the author, represents the world
of Logos (philosophy); the monk stands
for inexorable consequence. (I do not take
this to signify Fate in the Greck sense, but
the moral Nemesis which pursues all our
thoughts and acts in everyday life.) The
second part of the trilogy symbolizes the
Living World: father, friend, wife, child,
priest, and people—in other words, the
world of Eros, which is the plane ou which
ne