^oet ILort 3$layS 
 
 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 
 
 Richard G. Badger, Publishery Bosion
 
 LIB.^ARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 VOLUME XVIII ' AUTUMN I907 NUMBER III 
 
 AND PIPPA DANCES* 
 
 {A mystical tale of the glass-works, in four acts) 
 
 By Gerhart Hauptmann 
 Translated from the German by Mary Harned 
 
 CHARACTERS 
 
 Tagliazoni, skilled Italian glass-worker 
 
 PiPPA, his daughter 
 
 The Manager of the glass-works 
 
 Old Huhn, a former glass-blower 
 
 Michael Hellriegel, a travelling journeyman 
 
 Wann, a mythical personality 
 
 Wende, landlord of the tavern at Redwater Glen 
 
 The Bar-maid, in the same tavern 
 
 Schaedler, ) 1 • 
 
 . > master eiass-pamters 
 
 Anton, j ^ ^ 
 
 First, second, third, fourth woodmen 
 
 Jonathan, deaf and dumb servant to Wann 
 
 Glass-blowers and glass-painters, guests at the tavern 
 
 A goitrous player on the ocarina 
 
 The scene is laid in the Silesian mountains, in midwinter 
 
 ACT I 
 
 The bar-room in old Wende' s tavern at Redwater Glen. To the right 
 and in the background, doors, the latter leading into the entrance hall. In 
 the corner, right, the stove of glazed tiles; left, the bar. Very small windows 
 benches against the walls, ceiling of dark timbers. Three tables to the left, 
 all occupied. The nearest to the bar is occupied by woodmen. They are 
 drinking schnaps and beer and smoking pipes. At the second table a little 
 further forward, are seated better dressed people: the master glass-painters, 
 
 *Pippa tanzt. Ein Glashiitten-marchen in 4 akten von Gerhart Hauptmann. 
 Copyrif^ht 1906 by S. Fischer Verlag. 
 Copyright 1907 by the Poet Lore Company.
 
 290 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 SchaedUr and Anton, a fnv others and an Italian about fifty years of age, 
 named Tagliazoni\ an msolenf-looking tnan. They are playing cards. 
 At the table nearest the front of the stage, the Manager of the glass-works 
 has seated himself; he is a tall, slender, keen-looking man with a small 
 head, and is about forty years of age. He wears ri ding-boots, trousers, and 
 jacket. A half bottle of champagne stands in front of him, and a fine, pointed 
 wine glass filled with the champagne. On the table near them lies a riding- 
 whip. It is after midnight. Outside, the iveather is bitter cold. A few 
 lamps spread a meager light. Moonlight penetrates through the windows 
 into the smoky room. The old landlord fVende and a country bar-maid 
 senr the guests. 
 
 ff'ende {gray haired, with an impassive, serious face, says to the Man- 
 ager). Another half bottle, sir ? 
 
 The Manager. — What else, Wende ? — A whole one! — Has my mare 
 been well rubbed down ? 
 
 Wende. — I saw to it myself. An animal like that deserves good 
 care; it looked like a white horse it was so covered with foam. 
 
 The Manager. — Hard riding! 
 
 Wende. — Government horse. 
 
 The Manager. — She has good blood in her! Several times she stuck 
 in the snow up to her belly. Pushed through, every time! 
 
 Wende {mildly ironical). — A faithful old customer, our manager. 
 
 The Manager {drums on the table, laughs noisily). — It is queer, isn't it .? 
 A r\vo hour ride through the woods, in January, old fellow — ludicrous 
 devotion! Are my trout nearly ready .f* 
 
 Wende. — A good thing is worth waiting for! 
 
 The Manager. — True, true, true! But don't be disagreeable! — Is 
 it my fault that you are here in this half Bohemian, half German thieves' 
 den, Wende ? 
 
 Wende. — Of course not, sir! At the most it could only be your fault 
 if I have to get out of here. 
 
 The Manager. — You old grumbler, stop talking! 
 
 Wende. — Just look out the window there! 
 
 The Manager. — I know it all without looking, our old rival factory 
 all in ruins. One of these days it will be sold for the material in it, just 
 so that they won't be forever starting up the furnaces again. — What have 
 you to complain of? Business is very good here! The men come here 
 anyhow, if it does take them two or three hours, and leave their money 
 here, heaps of it. 
 
 Wende. — How long is the trouble going to last ^ When the glass-works
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 291 
 
 near here were running their two furnaces, we were sure of eating our 
 bread in peace — now we are reduced to living like hogs. 
 
 The Manager. — Oh, you old sore-head! Go see to it that I get my 
 wine! 
 
 {Wende goes away shrugging his shoulders. At the table where the 
 players are an altercation has arisen.) 
 
 Tagliazoni {violently). — Non, signore! non, signore! impossible! I 
 did put down a gold piece. Non, signore! You are mistaken! Non, 
 signore — 
 
 Master Schaedler. — Hold on there! That's a damned lie! 
 
 Tagliazoni. — Non, signore! by Bacco! Thieves! Thieves! Murderers! 
 I'll kill you! 
 
 Master Anton {to Schaedler). — There lies your money! 
 
 Master Schaedler {discovers the missing gold piece). — That was lucky 
 for you, you damned, lousy hedgehog! 
 
 The Manager {calling across to the players). — See here, you scoundrels, 
 when are you going to stop this ? 
 
 Master Anton. — When our manager rides home. 
 
 The Manager. — By that time very Hkely you'll run behind my nag 
 naked, for you'll have gambled the shirts off your backs. 
 
 Master Anton. — We'll see about that, sir! 
 
 The Manager. — This all comes from the count's allowing you to make 
 such a sinful amount of money. I shall have to cut your wages on piece 
 work. The more you have, the more you squander! 
 
 Master Anton. — The count earns money, the Manager earns money, 
 and the master-painters have no wish to starve either. 
 
 Tagliazoni [has shuffled the cards and now begins a new game. Near 
 each player lie actual piles of gold). — Enough! Let us begin now. 
 
 The Manager. — Where is your daughter today .'' 
 
 Tagliazoni. — Asleep, signore! Time for her to be, it seems to me. 
 
 The Manager. — Of course! Quite right! Yes, yes! 
 
 {He IS silent, apparently slightly embarrassed. In the meantime, 
 fVende himself places the trout before him and directs the bar-maid who brings 
 in the potatoes and the bottle of champagne at the same time.) 
 
 The Manager {with a sigh). — It's abominably dull here at your place 
 today, Wende. I spend such a lot of money and get nothing for it. 
 
 fVende {stops short m his zealous efforts for his guest and says churl- 
 ishly). — Well, in future you better go elsewhere. 
 
 The Manager {turns round and looks through the little window behind 
 him). — Who's this coming jingling over the snow? — It sounds as if he 
 were stamping over broken glass.
 
 292 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 fVenJt- — Well, there's plenty of broken glass around the old tumble- 
 down glass-house. 
 
 The Manager. — A gigantic shadow! Who can it possibly be ? 
 
 Wende {breathes on the window). — Most likely it's Huhn, the old 
 glass-blower. Another of the ghosts from the old glass-works that can 
 neither live nor die. — You, with your Sophienau works, have ruined 
 business here sure enough; why don't you carry this on as a branch estab- 
 lishment .'' 
 
 The Manager. — Because there's no profit in it, and it costs a devilish 
 lot of money. {Continuing to look out of the window.) Thermometer 
 at zero! Clear! Bright as broad day-light! The heavens so full of 
 stars they drive you mad! Blue, everything blue! {He turns and bends 
 over his plate.) Even the trout — Lord, how the little wretches stretch 
 their mouths! 
 
 {A gigantic ?nan enters. He has long, red hair, red, bushy eyebrows 
 and red beard, and is coveied from top to toe with rags. He puts off his 
 heavy icooden clogs, stares around with red-rimmed, watery eyes, at the same 
 time muttering to himself and opening and closing moist, puffy lips.) 
 
 The Manager {eating the trout evidently without appetite). — Old 
 Huhn! He is muttering something to himself. Get old Huhn a good stiff 
 grog, Wende! — W^ell, w^hy do you keep your eyes fastened on me .'' 
 
 {Still muttering to himself and staring at the Manager, old Huhn has 
 pushed himself behind an empty table standing against the right wall between 
 the stove and the door.) 
 
 First Woodman. — He won't believe it, that there's no more work 
 here in Redwater Glen. 
 
 Second Woodman. — They say he often comes round and haunts the 
 old place over there at all hours of the night alone. 
 
 First Woodman. — He makes himself a fire there, in a chilled furnace, 
 and stands in front of his old furnace door and blows great big glass balls. 
 
 Second Woodman. — His lungs are like a pair of bellows. No one else 
 could ever come up to him at that, I know! 
 
 Third Woodman. — What's old Jacob doing, Huhn? That's his way; 
 he never talks to a human being but he has a jackdaw at home and he talks 
 to him the whole day long. 
 
 The Manager. — Why is the fellow idle, why doesn't he come to us ? 
 He could have work at the Sophienau furnaces. 
 
 First Woodman. — That's too far out in the great world for him. 
 
 The Manager. — When you look at the old man and think of Paris, 
 you don't believe in Paris.
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 293 
 
 Wende {seats himself modestly at the Manager s table). — Have you been 
 
 to Paris again ? 
 
 The Manager. — I came back just three days ago. Got some big 
 
 orders! 
 
 Wende. — Well, that was worth while. 
 
 The Manager. — Worth while! — You spend money and get some: 
 only more! — Ever}'thing seems crazy when you get to Paris, Wende: 
 restaurants all Hghted up! duchesses in gold and silk and Brussels lace! 
 the ladies of the Palais-Royal! on the tables our glasses, the finest crystal; 
 things which perhaps a hairy giant like that one made! — Thunderation, 
 what a sight it is! To see a real slender, deHcate hand Hft one of these 
 glass flowers, one of these precious ice flowers over the bare bosom to the 
 hot, painted hps, with passionate glances: — you wonder that the glasses 
 don't melt away under such a sinful glance.— Your health! {He drinks.) 
 Your health, Wende! The things that come from our works are not 
 recognizable there. 
 
 The Bar-maid {setting the grog down in front of old Huhn). — Don t 
 
 touch it! Hot! 
 
 {Old Huhn picks up the glass and gulps down the grog without further 
 
 ado.) 
 
 The Manager {noticing this). — Good Lord, preserve us! 
 
 {The woodmen burst out laughing.) 
 
 First Woodman. — Just pay for another half quart and you can see 
 him swallow glowing coals. 
 
 Second Woodman. — He hits a oeer mug — breaks it to pieces, nibbles 
 at the broken bits as if they were sugar and swallows them. 
 
 Third Woodman. — But you should just see him dance with the litttle 
 Italian girl when blind Francis plays the ocarina. 
 
 The Manager. — Come, Francis, bring out your ocarina! {Calls to 
 Tagliazoni). Ten lire, if Pippa dances. 
 
 Tagliazoni {playing). — It won't go. Impossible, signore padrone. 
 
 The Manager. — Twenty lire! — Thirty — } — 
 
 Tagliazoni. — No! 
 
 Wende. — She is having such a good sleep, sir. 
 
 The Manager {without waverings suddenly vehement). — Forty.? — 
 Do let a little of hell loose for awhile! It's so dull here! What do I come 
 here for? Not even a lousy Gypsy girl! I'll not set foot again in this 
 smugglers' nest! {Offering more.) Fifty lire! 
 
 Tagliazoni {continues playing, says obstinately over his shoulder).— 
 No! no! no! no! no! no!
 
 294 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 The Manager. — A huiulrod lire! 
 
 Tagliazotii {curtly). — A hundred, yes! 
 
 [He twists himself around, and skillfully catches a blue banknote which 
 the Manager tosses to him). 
 
 The Manager {losing something of his equanimity). — Has my lioness 
 had an\thing to eat? 
 
 The Bar-maid. — Certainly, sir, the dog has eaten. 
 
 The Manager {roughly). — Be quiet. 
 
 The Bar-maid. — When you ask a question, I certainly have to 
 answer. 
 
 The Manager {curtly, tvith suppressed anger). — Be still, hold your 
 dirty tongue! — Don't smoke such asafoetida, you pack! — How is the 
 child to breathe here. 
 
 Tagliazoni {has risen and gone to the hall door from which he calls 
 harshly to the upper part of the house).— Fippzl Pippa! Come down here 
 right-away! Pippa! Come here! — Come along! 
 
 The Manager (rises itidignantly). — Hold your tongue, let her sleep, 
 you Dago scoundrel! 
 
 Tagliazoni. — Pippa! 
 
 The Manager. — Keep your money, fellow, and let her sleep! Keep 
 your money, fellow, I don't want her! 
 
 Tagliazoni. — As you wish. Thank you, signore! — 
 
 {fVith a fatalistic shrug of the shoulders he takes his place again uncon- 
 cernedly at the card-table.) 
 
 The Manager. — Saddle my horse, Wende! Get the nag out of the 
 stable! 
 
 {Pippa appears in the doorway; she leans sleepily and timidly against 
 the door-post.) 
 
 The Manager {notices her and says with some embarrassment). — Here 
 she is, now! — Pshaw, Pippa, go and have your nap out! — Or haven't 
 you been asleep ? — Come, wet your lips, moisten your lips, here's some- 
 thing for you. 
 
 {Pippa comes obediently to the table and sips from the glass of cham' 
 pagne.) 
 
 The Manager {holding toward her the richly ornamented glass, from 
 which he drinks). — Slender convolvulus! Slender convolvulus! It, too, 
 is a Venetian! — Does it taste good to you, Httle one ? — 
 
 Pippa. — Thank you, it is sweet! 
 
 The Manager. — Do you want to sleep again, now ? 
 
 Pippa. — No.
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 295 
 
 The Manager. — Are you very cold ? 
 
 Pippa. — I am cold here, most of the time. 
 
 The Manager. — Make a roaring fire, there! — It does not surprise 
 me in the least that you are so cold, you delicate, graceful tendril, you! 
 Come, sit down, put my cloak around you! You must have sprung from 
 the glass furnaces; at least, I dreamed you had, yesterday. 
 
 Pippa. — Brr! I like to sit close to the glass furnaces. 
 
 The Manager. — In my dream, you liked best to sit right in them. 
 You see, I am a foolish fellow! An old ass of a manager, who, instead 
 of casting up accounts, dreams. When the white-hot glow breaks from 
 the furnace doors, I often see you before me, quivering salamanderlike 
 in the glowing. air. Only as the furnace light grows dim, do you slowly 
 vanish. 
 
 Old Huhn. — I too, have had beautiful dre^s before the furnace 
 doors. 
 
 The Manager. — What is that monster mutterlig, now "t 
 
 {Pippa turns her little head persistently and looks at the old man, and 
 at the same time, pushes her heavy, fair, unbound hair over her shoulder 
 with her right hand.) 
 
 Old Huhn. — Shall we dance again, little spirit ^. 
 
 The Manager {roughly). — What are you talking about! I no longer 
 care for the dancing! {Aside, to Pippa.) I am satisfied just to have 
 you here, charming child! 
 
 The Bar-maid {behind the bar, to the inn-keeper). — Now the Manager 
 is in a good humor again. 
 
 Wende. — Well, if he is, what business is it of yours 1 
 
 The Manager. — Tired! Go sleep, poor thing! You belong in courts 
 with the fountains! — And you have to stay in this gin shop. Shall I take 
 you, just as you are, lift you on my black horse and ride away with you ? 
 
 {Pippa shakes her head slowly no.) 
 
 The Manager. — So you like it better here .? Well, at any rate, you 
 are shaking your little head no again. — How long have you been living 
 in this house .'' 
 
 Pippa (reflects, stares at him blankly). — I don't know. 
 
 The Manager. — And before you came here, where did you live ? 
 
 Pippa (reflects, laughs at her ignorance). — It was — Why, haven't 
 I always been here .'' 
 
 The Manager. — You? in the midst of dumb and talking tree trunks! 
 
 Pippa.— What .? 
 
 The Manager. — In this frozen, snow-bound land of barbarians ? —
 
 296 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 {Calling across to TogUazoni.) Where did you say her mother came 
 from ? 
 
 Tagliazoni {over his shoiilJrr). — Yes, signore! Pieve di Cadore. 
 
 The Manager. — Pieve di Cadore, is that so ? That is on the other 
 side of the great water-shed. 
 
 Tagliazoni {laughing). — We are relatives of the great Tiziano, signore. 
 
 The Manager. — Well, little one, then, perhaps we too, are kindred, 
 for he looks like my uncle, the Commissioner of Woods and Forests. So 
 you really belong half and half here too; but the wind blows your gold 
 hair elsewhere! 
 
 {A goitrous, tattered little man comes in, playing the ocarina, and plants 
 himself in the middle of the room. He is greeted with a halloo by the wood- 
 men who are sitting round one of the tables smoking and drinking schnaps.) 
 
 First Woodman. — Huhn must dance! 
 
 Second Woodman. — The little one must dance! 
 
 Third Woodman. — ^^ If she'll dance, I'll give a nickel toward it. 
 
 Fourth Woodman. — Just look what faces Huhn is making! 
 
 The Manager. — There's not going to be any dancing, you clod- 
 hoppers! Do you understand me? 
 
 First Woodman. — You wanted it yourself, sir! 
 
 The Manager. — The devil take me! Well, now I don't want it! 
 
 {Huhn rises to his full height and starts to come out from behind the 
 table, but never takes his eyes from Pip pa, staring at her feverishly all the 
 time.) 
 
 The Manager. — Sit down, Huhn! 
 
 Wende {comes forward resolutely and determinedly and seizes Huhns 
 arm). — Sit down! Not a twitch! — You'll stamp through my floor next 
 thing. {To the ocarina player). Stop your silly tootling. {Huhn remains 
 standing, staring stupidly as before. The ocarina is silent.) 
 
 {The card players have finished another game. Tagliazoni pockets 
 a little pile of gold. Master-painter Anton jumps up suddenly and thumps 
 the table with his fist, so that the gold pieces roll all round the room.) 
 
 Master-painter Anton. — There's someone among us who's cheating! 
 
 Tagliazoni.— Who .? I .? I ? Tell us! Who .? 
 
 Master-painter Anton. — I don't say who it is! I only say someone 
 is! There's some trickery here. 
 
 First Woodman. — Well, any one who plays with these Italians may 
 expect a little of the black art thrown in. 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler. — My money has disappeared, the last 
 piece of my money is missing.
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 297 
 
 First Woodman.— Just look out, the lamp's going out in a minute! 
 He'll probably put up some nice little game on you. 
 
 The Manager.— Well, don't let rascals hold the bank! 
 
 Tagliazom {scooping in the money unconcernedly, turning half round 
 to the manager).— Ahro\ The others are rascals, not I. Enough! Let's 
 go to bed! Pippa, go on! Come along! 
 
 Master-painter Anton.— \\hd.t^ Now he wants to go to bed, now, 
 when he has gotten our money away from us ? You'll stay here! There's 
 going to be some more playing now! 
 
 Tagliazoni.— Oh, very weW. Why not ? Til play with you! As you 
 
 wish! As you wish, signori! 
 
 {The bar-maid, the inn-keeper, the ocarina player, one of the glass 
 painters and one of the woodmen pick up the gold pieces from the floor.) _ 
 
 Second Woodman {at the table).— I won't help look for money m this 
 place, because later, they're sure to say some of it is missmg. 
 t -5 {Michael Hellriegel, a travelling journeyman, about twenty-three years 
 old, enters from the hall; he carries a thin visor cap, and a small knapsack 
 with a brush buckled on it; his coat as well as his vest and trousers are still 
 fairly respectable, his shoes, on the contrary, are worn out. The effects of 
 a long and fatiguing walking tour are plainly shown in the wan and exhausted 
 looks and movements of the youth. His features are delicate, not common- 
 place, indeed almost distinguished. On his upper lip there is the soft down 
 of a first mustache. There is a suggestion of the visionary and also a sug- 
 gestion of sickliness in the slender figure.) 
 
 The Bar-maid.— Oh, Lord, here's a journeyman yet, at this time 
 
 of night! Ill 
 
 Hellriegel {stands in the circle of light cast by the lamps, blinded by 
 the biting smoke, winking and looking out feverishly from under his long 
 lashes; he twists his cap with his hands and makes an effort to conceal how 
 much his hands and feet ache with the frost).— Is there a night's lodgmg here 
 for a travelling journeyman ? ... 
 
 The Manager.— A queer fellow, Pippa, isn't he? {Humming ironi- 
 cally.) To those whom God wishes to show great favor, he sends — and 
 so on. This fellow sings, too, when he has his wits about him. I bethmi 
 thirteen bottles of champagne, he even has poems of his own in his knapsack! 
 
 Pippa {rises mechanically, and with a certain embarrassment, looks 
 now at the lad, now helplessly at the rest of the men around her; suddenly 
 she runs up to the Manager).— Vndronal Padrone! the stranger is weeping! 
 
 The Manager. — Weak and Hne 
 
 Is not in my line!
 
 298 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 Mastfr-paititer SchacJlcr {comes over from the cord table and stands 
 in a military position before tJie^lauager). — I am a man of honor, sir! 
 
 The Manager. — Well, what then ? Why do you say that to me now, 
 after niidnieht, in this Iser mountain tavern ? 
 
 Master-pai titer Schaedler {luipes the cold sweat from his forehead). — 
 I am an irreproachable master-workman. 
 
 The Manager. — W^ell, what of it ? 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler. — I would like to have some money advanced 
 me. 
 
 The Manager. — Do you think I drag the office safe around with me 
 in mv riding-coat ? 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler. — On your own account! — 
 
 The Manager. — On my own account I'll not think of it! I should 
 only help to ruin you completely. 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler. — That dog has fleeced everyone of us. 
 
 The Manager. — Why do you play with him .? Have nothing more to 
 do with the scoundrel. 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler.— We'll have something to do with him 
 later, all right! 
 
 The Manager. — You have a wife and children at home — 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler. — We all have them, sir, but when the 
 devil gets loose here — 
 
 The Manager. — No! I'll not back you up in any such madness. 
 
 {Schaedler shrugs his shoulders and betakes himself to Wende, who is 
 behind the bar. It is seen that he urges him to advance htm the money, 
 that Wende refuses for a long time, but finally yields. The purneyman, 
 in the meanwhile, drinks greedily the hot grog which the bar-maid has put 
 on the bench in front of him. Now she brings him food, and he eats.) 
 
 The Manager (raises his glass and says to the lad). — Well, you belated 
 swallow! Your health! 
 
 {Hellriegel rises, in courteous acknowledgment, his glass in his hand, 
 drinks and sits down again.) 
 : The Manager. — Your castle in the air is still pretty far away. 
 
 Hellriegel {who is about to sit down, jumps up again). — But I have 
 the wish to do and perseverance! 
 
 The Manager. — And you spit blood! 
 
 Hellriegel. — A little doesn't matter! 
 
 The Manager. — No. If you only knew what you wished to do. Why 
 do you constantly start up so strangely, just as if you had felt an electric 
 shock ?
 
 GERHART HAUPTMAN >^ 299 
 
 Hellriegel. — Often I seem to be actually hurled on with impatience. 
 
 The Manager. — Like a child in a dark room, eh ? When dear mamma 
 on the other side of the door is lighting the first candles on the Christmas 
 tree? Right now, right now! But Rome wasn't built in a day! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Everything must be changed. — The whole world! 
 
 The Manager. — And first of all, your highness! {To Pippa.) This is 
 a stupid fellow, child, one of the very clever kind that we used to see only 
 in preserving glasses! {To Hellriegel.) "And shouldst thou take the 
 wings of the dawn — " briefly, your journey has its difficulties. {To 
 Pippa). Gallop, gallop, over stick and stone {he tries to draw her 
 down on his knees, she resists and looks at Hellriegel. Hellriegel starts up 
 and grows red in the face). 
 
 Hellriegel. — I would like to be permitted a direct remark! 
 
 The Manager. — Has something new come into your head ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Not just at this minute. 
 
 The Manager. — Well, perhaps confusion will. 
 
 {Michael looks at the Manager vacantly and forgets to sit down.) 
 
 Wende. — Why not ? for money and fair words. {As the lad looks 
 round and finds no vacant seat.) Sit on the schnaps keg here, and count 
 out your money on the stove-bench. If there's anything else you want — 
 there's room enough there. 
 
 First Woodman. — Where are you going so late, journeyman ? 
 
 The Manager. — Into the land where milk and honey flow! 
 
 Hellriegel {bowing humbly, first to the woodman, then to the Manager). — 
 I was anxious to get over the mountains into Bohemia. 
 
 The Manager. — What is your trade? 
 
 Hellriegel. — The art of glass-making. 
 
 Second Woodman. — He doesn't seem to be quite right in his head. 
 To climb over the mountains in such bitter cold weather, and here, where 
 there is no road and no foot-path ? Does he want to be a snowman over 
 there, and die miserably trying to be one ? 
 
 Wende. — That's his afi^air, it doesn't concern us! 
 
 Third Woodman. — You certainly don't come from the mountains, 
 Johnny ? You can't know anything of the winters here ? 
 
 {Hellriegel has listened with modest courtesy; now he hangs up his 
 cap decorously, takes off his little knapsack and puts it and his stick to one 
 side. He then takes his seat on the keg, as directed, shudders, bites his teeth 
 together and runs his fingers, spread apart, through his hair.) 
 
 The Manager. — If your papers are all right, why do you want to 
 go over into Bohemia ? Wc make glass here in Silesia, too.
 
 300 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 HeUriegel {jumps up). — I would like to learn something unusual! 
 
 The Motwgcr. — Pshaw, you don't say so! And what might that be? 
 To make clear water into balls with just your hands, perhaps ? 
 
 {Hfllriegfl shrugs his shoulders.) 
 
 The Mouager. — Well, we can do that here, too, with snow! 
 
 HeUriegel. — Snow is not water. I want to see the world. 
 
 The Manager. — Aren't you in the world here with us ? 
 
 HeUriegel. — I am looking for something. 
 
 The Manager. — Have you lost anything .f" 
 
 HeUriegel. — No! I think, that I can attain to something. {Half 
 standing and propping himself up tuearily, he looks around with wide-open^ 
 astonished eyes.) I really don't know just where I am , 
 
 The Manager. — Yes, yes, that's the way! In the morning brimful of 
 joy, in the evening not a sound bone in your body. 
 
 HeUriegel. — Am I — am I in Bohemia now, good landlord } 
 
 First Woodman {laughing). — Are you } Does it seem a bit Bohemian 
 to you here } 
 
 {HeUriegel has sunk hack on the little keg, his arms are spread out on 
 the stove-hench, his hands under his forehead^ he conceals his face and groans 
 su rrepti ti ously. ) 
 
 Third Woodman. — He hasn't been away from his mother more than 
 three days! 
 
 {Pippa, who has been standing at the Manager s table, has watched 
 the newcomer continually. She now goes over to him, and sits, apparently 
 absorbed in thought, on the bench, not far from the place where his head rests, 
 her hands in her lap, thoughtfully swinging her legs back and forth, and 
 looking down on him out of the corners of her eyes.) 
 
 iPippa picks up a little leather strap and strikes the Manager sharply 
 across his hand.) 
 
 The Manager. — Ow! 
 
 {Pippa laughs and looks at HeUriegel, who, his eyes fastened on her, 
 has forgotten everything around him. His lips move, though no sound 
 comes from them.) 
 
 The Manager {holding out his hand). — Do it again, Pippa! {Pippa 
 strikes him.) Ow, but that was hard! All good things go by threes; now 
 the third time! {She strikes with all her might, laughing.) There! Now 
 I am instructed and punished. If at any time another little bird falls out 
 of the nest, at least I know what I have to do. 
 
 {In the meantime old Huhn, who had sat down again, lies bent over 
 he table, his arms stretched way out, and beckons Pippa to him with his
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 301 
 
 thick, hairy finger. As she does not come or pay any attention to him, after 
 he has watched the play between her, the Manager and Hellriegel long enough y 
 he rises and dragging his feet along, goes up to the journeyman, stares at him, 
 lifts his long gorilla-like arms which have been hanging limply at his side, 
 and puts his outspread hands on the lad's breast, pushing htm slowly back 
 onto his keg; then he turns round, beckons slyly to Pippa and lifts his elbows 
 in a peculiar fashion, reminding one of an eagle balancing on the perch of 
 a cage; at the same time he steps out inviting her to dance with him.) 
 
 The Manager. — What has gotten into your head, you old dromedary ? 
 
 The Woodmen {all shout at the same time). — Dance, litttle one! Dance, 
 
 Httle one! 
 
 The Bar-maid {takes a small tambourine from the shelves where the 
 brandy-bottles stand, and throws it to Pippa, who catches it). — There, Httle 
 chit, don't have to be coaxed, don't put on airs; you're no candy princess! 
 
 {Pippa looks first at the Manager, then at Hellriegel, and finally, with 
 a spiteful look she measures the giant from head to foot. Suddenly beginning, 
 she at once makes the little drum jingle and glides dancing up to Huhn, 
 at the same time intending to elude him and dance past him. The ocarina 
 starts up and the old man, too, begins to dance. The dance consists in some- 
 thing huge and awkward trying to catch something agile and beautiful; as 
 if a bear were to try to catch a butterfly which flitted around him like a bit of 
 opalescence. Whenever the little one eludes him, she laughs a bell-like laugh. 
 She saves herself several times, whirling round and round, and in so doing 
 her red-gold hair becomes wrapped around her. When pursued, the noises 
 she makes in her throat are just childish squeals, which sound like ai. The 
 old man hops about grotesquely and ridiculously like a captive bird of prey. 
 He lies in wait for her, misses her, and begins to pant, growing more and 
 more excited and muttering louder and louder. Pippa dances more and more 
 ecstatically. The woodmen have risen. The card-players have discontinued 
 their game and watch the dance intently. Tagliazoni, whom the proceedings 
 do not interest, takes advantage of the opportunity to scoop in money and to 
 manipulate his cards. Without his noticing it, he is carefully watched by 
 Master-painter Schaedler. Now it seems as if Pippa could no longer escape 
 the monster; she screams, and at the same moment Schaedler seizes Tagliazoni 
 by the left wrist with both his fists.) 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler {above all the other noise). — Stop! 
 
 Tagliazoni. — What is the matter, signore ? 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler. — Matter here, matter there: there's cheating 
 being done! Now we have the scoundrel in the trap! 
 
 Tagliazoni. — He is mad! Diavolo! I am a son of Murano. Does 
 he know la casa di coltelli ?
 
 302 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 Alastcr-pamter Schacdh'r. — Cold hell or hot hell, neither of them can 
 help you here! Anton, hold him fast over there, now he'll be paid back all 
 right! {Master-painter Anton holds Tagliazoni^s other hand firmly.) He 
 has smuggled in extra cards and on these two here has put his mark. 
 
 {Every one present^ except Hellriegel and Pippa, who stand in the 
 corner pale and breathing heavily, presses round the card table.) 
 
 The Manager. — Tagliazoni, didn't I tell you not to push things too far! 
 
 Tagil azoni. — Let me go, or I bites you in the face! 
 
 Master-painter ScJiaedler.— Spit and bite as much as you want, but 
 you'll have to hand out our money again, you scoundrel! 
 
 All of the players. — Yes sir, every penny, every scrap of the money! 
 
 Tagliazoni. — Curse it! I does nothings of the sort! Damned 
 German beasts, you crazy, bad, low-down beasts! What has I to do with 
 you, you Germans. 
 
 First Woodman. — Knock his skull in for him, the ass! 
 
 Second Woodman. — Hit him on the noddle with the wagon-shaft, so 
 that he sees blue sulphur before his eyes! You can't answer these Dagos 
 any other way in German. 
 
 Wende. — Be quiet, you men; I won't have this! 
 
 Master-painter Schaedler. — Pull the cards out of his fingers, Wende! 
 
 Tagliazoni. — I murders you all, every one of you! 
 
 Master-painter Anton {resolutely). — Good! 
 
 Second Woodman. — Look at all the rings the blackguard has on his 
 hands! 
 
 Tagliazoni. — Padrone, I calls you to witness! I am treacherously 
 attacked here; I makes no new contract! I works no more, not a bit more. 
 I lets the work standing as it is, right now! Carabinieri! Police! Beastly 
 foolishness! 
 
 First Woodman. — Roar away, you; there are no police here! 
 
 Second Woodman. — Far and wide there's nothing but snow and pine 
 trees. 
 
 Tagliazoni. — I call — call the poHce! Brigands! Signore Wende! 
 Pippa! run! 
 
 The Manager. — I advise you to give in to them, man! If you don't 
 I can't answer for the consequences. 
 
 Tagliazoni. — Ugly beasts! Enough of this! 
 
 {Unexpectedly, as quick as lightning, Tagliazoni frees himself, draws 
 out a dagger and takes refuge behind a table. For a moment his assailants 
 are stunned.) 
 
 Third Woodman. — A knife! Lay him out, the dog!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 303 
 
 All {speaking at once). — Now, he must be killed! Now it's all up with 
 him! 
 
 The Manager. — Don't you smash up Tagliazoni for me! I need him 
 too much in the glass-works! Don't do anything you'll be sorry for to- 
 morrow ! 
 
 {Tagliazoni now recognizes instinctively the frightful danger of the 
 moment and rushes past his assailants out of the door. The card-players 
 and woodmen plunge after him, calling: "Down, down, down with him\" 
 As they go out, the glitter of several knives is seen.) 
 
 The Manager. — I hope they won't kill the fellow off for me, yet awhile! 
 
 Wende. — If they do, they'll shut up my shop for me. 
 
 The Bar-maid {looking out of an open window). — They're running 
 like mad over into the wood; he's fallen! He's up again! They're still 
 after him! 
 
 The Manager.— I'll set the great Danes loose, and scatter the gang. 
 
 Wende. — I won't be responsible for anything! I won't answer for 
 anything. 
 
 The Manager. — What is that ? 
 
 The Bar-maid. — One of them is left behind, lying in the snow. The 
 others are keeping on into the woods. 
 
 {A fearful, marrow-penetrating scream is heard, deadened by distance.) 
 
 Wende. — Close the window, the lamp is going out! 
 
 {The lamp goes out in fact, the bar-maid slams the window to.) 
 
 The Manager. — That doesn't sound well. Come with me, Wende! 
 
 Wende. — I won't be responsible for anything! I won't answer for 
 anything. {He and the Manager, the latter preceding, go out.) 
 
 The Bar-maid {in her perplexity says roughly to Hellriegel). — Get up 
 there! Help! Help! Fall to and help! Everybody ought to help here! 
 The damned card playing! {She gathers up the cards from the table and 
 flings them into the fire.) You must go, they've murdered a man! He 
 brings bad luck and won't even help to make it good! 
 
 {Hellriegel jumps up, and half of his own accord, half pulled and half 
 pushed by the bar-maid, he stumbles through the hall door. He and the 
 bar-maid go out. 
 
 {Huhn still stands in almost the same position as he did when the dance 
 was so suddenly i ntcrrupted by the outbreak of the brawl. His eyes have folloived 
 the proceedings watchfully, uneasily. Now he tries to peer into the darkness, 
 turning slowly round and round. He does not, however, discover Pip pa, 
 who, cowering with horror, is sitting on the ground, squeezed into a corner. 
 He draws out some matches, strikes them and lights the lamp. He looks
 
 304 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 around again and discovers the child. Standing in the middle of the roorUy 
 he beckons to her with horrible friendliness. Pippa looks at him dumbly^ 
 like a bird that has fallen out of the nest and been taken captive. As he comes 
 toward her, she zrhimpers softly. The little window is pushed open from 
 outside and the Manager s voice calls in.) 
 
 The Manager s voice. — Pippa, Pippa! She cannot stay here. I will 
 take her with me. 
 
 {The Afanager has hardly left the window when Huhn plunges toward 
 the child, who has jumped up, catches her, and lifts her up in his arms; 
 whereupon Pippa gives a short, sighing little cry and faints, and Huhn 
 says at the same time.) 
 
 Huhn. — After all, he didn't get you! 
 
 {ff'ith this he hurries out of the door.) 
 
 The Manager s voice {again at the window). — Pippa, Pippa, are you 
 still in there .? Don't be afraid, no one shall touch a hair of your head! 
 
 {The bar-maid comes back.) 
 
 The Bar-maid. — Not a soul here ? Not a soul comes back, and out 
 there lies a man bleeding to death. 
 
 ACT II 
 
 The interior of a solitary hut in the mountains. The large, low room 
 is neglected to a degree not to be surpassed. The ceiling is black from smoke 
 and age. One beam is broken, the rest are bent, and where it has been absolutely 
 necessary they have been propped up with unhewn tree trunks. Little boards 
 have been pushed under these. The floor is of clay, worn into ridges and 
 hollows, only around the broken-down stove is it paved with bricks. A 
 blackened and charred bench runs along the wall under the three small quad- 
 rangular window openings, of which two are filled up with straw, mosSy 
 leaves and boards; the third contains a window with three dirty panes, and 
 instead of the fourth, boards and moss again. By the same wall, in the 
 corner near the stove, but farther forward, the mended table. In the back 
 wall, a door. Through the door can be seen the dark hallway with beams 
 propped up like those in the room, and a slanting, ladder-like stairway leading 
 to the garret. 
 
 A low board partition enclosing a space filled with birch, beech and oak 
 leaves on which he a few rags of clothing and bed-covers is old Huhns 
 resting place for the night, for the hut belongs to him. On the wall hang 
 an old firearm, a ragged slouch hat, pieces of clothing and several little pictures 
 cut from periodicals. A great many leaves are lying on the floor. In the 
 corner is a pile of potatoes; bunches of onions and dried mushrooms hang
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 305 
 
 from the ceiling. One single ray of bright light from the clear moonlit night 
 without penetrates through the window. 
 
 Suddenly it grows bright in the hallway. Loud sneezing and heavy 
 breathing are heard. Immediately after old Huhn is seen., still carrying 
 Pippa in his arms. He enters the room and lays Pippa down on the bed 
 of leaves, covering her with the rags that are lying there. Then he brings 
 forth from a corner an old stand for burning pine chips in, he puts the chips 
 in and lights them; he is very much excited and while doing this stares in 
 the direction of the child. The first blasts of an approaching storm are 
 heard. Snow zvhirls through the hallway. Huhn now takes a bottle from 
 a shelf and pours some brandy down Pippa* s throat. She breathes heavily^ 
 he covers her more carefully, hurries over to the stove and with the heaps 
 of brushwood lying around, he builds a fire. 
 
 Huhn {rises suddenly, listens at the door, and calls with insane haste 
 and secrecy). — Come down, come down, old Jacob! — Old Jacob, I have 
 brought something with me for you. {He listens for the answer and laughs 
 to himself.) 
 
 Pippa {moans, revived by the stimulant; suddenly she draws herself 
 up into a sitting posture, looks around her in horror, presses her hands in 
 front of her eyes, takes them away again, moans, jumps up and like a frightened 
 bird runs blindly against the wall of the room). — Mrs. Wende, Mrs. Wende, 
 where can I be ? {Clawing at the wall in her horror, she looks behind her, 
 sees Huhn, and in a new attack of despairing terror, she runs blindly, now 
 here, now there, against the walls). I am smothering! Help me! Don't 
 bury me! Father! Padrone! Oh dear, oh dear! Help! Mrs. Wende, I 
 am dreaming! 
 
 Huhn {trots up to her, and immediately she reaches out her hands to 
 ward him off in speechless horror). — Be still, be still! Old Huhn won't do 
 anything to you! — And as far as that is concerned, old Jacob is kindly 
 in his way, too. {As Pippa, who is completely paralyzed, does not change 
 her defensive position, he takes a few uncertain steps toward her, but suddenly 
 stands still again, deterred by her expression of unconscious horror). — O, 
 this won't do! — Well .^ — Say something! — Don't bruise yourself so against 
 the walls! — It is fine in here with me; outside death lurks! {He stares 
 at her for awhile searchingly and expectantly, suddenly a thought occurs to 
 htm.) Wait a minute! — Jacob, bring down the goat! — Jacob — I — 
 Goats' milk warms! Goats' milk will be good. {He imitates the loud and 
 low bleating of a sleepy flock of goats and sheep in the stables.) Ha, baa, 
 ba! — Listen, they are coming down the steps. Jacob, Jacob, bring them in I 
 
 {Pippa' s glance has fallen on the door and recognized it; she starts in
 
 3o6 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 end rushes toivarJ it instinctively, in order to slip away. Huhn steps 
 in her -zcay.) 
 
 Huhn. — I will not catch you! I will not touch you, little girl! Yet 
 with me you must — with me you must remain. 
 
 Pippa. — Mrs. Wende! Mrs. Wende! {She stands still and buries 
 her face m her hands.) 
 
 Huhn. — Don't be afraid! — Something has been — and something 
 will be! — Snares are frequently set in spring — and the yellow-hammers 
 are not caught until winter! {He takes a deep draught from the brandy 
 bottle.) 
 
 {At this moment, a goat sticks its head in at the door.) 
 
 Huhn. — Wait a minute, Jacob, let Liesla stand outside there! She 
 will give me a drop of milk, she will! {He picks up a little stool, trots into 
 the hallway and milks the goat, placing himself so that he blocks up the 
 doonvay at the same time. In the meantime, Pippa seems to have grown 
 a little more composed. In her crying and moaning there is a note of helpless 
 resignation; she feels the chill again and is drawn toward the bright spot 
 on the wall, the reflection of the fire in the stove; there she seems to thaw out 
 so as to be able to think, and kneeling on the ground, she stares into the crackling 
 blaze.) 
 
 Pippa. — O, santa Maria, madre di dio! O, madre Maria! O, santa 
 Anna! O, mia santa madre Maria! 
 
 {Old Huhn finishes his milking and enters the room again. Pippa's 
 distress and fear rise immediately, but he goes toward her, puts the little jug 
 of milk down at some distance from her and moves back again.) 
 
 Huhn. — Drink the goats milk, you little gold darling, you! 
 
 {Pippa looks at Huhn doubtfully and summons up sufficient courage 
 to drink %vith eager haste from the little jug that has been set before her.) 
 
 Huhn. — That's the way babies, too, suck in their milk! 
 
 Old Huhn {slapping his knees with both hands breaks out into a 
 hoarse, triumphant laughter). — Now she has drunk her fill, now her strength 
 will come back to her! {At this, he takes himself off, pulls forth a little 
 sack from behind the stove, shakes out some crusts of bread onto the table, 
 draws from the oven a part of a broken iron pot in which are potatoes, and 
 puts these with the crusts; drinks, puts the brandy bottle also on the table 
 and sits down himself to his meal on the bench behind the table. A fresh 
 blast of wind comes against the house with great force: with wild defiance, 
 Huhn answers it, as it were.) Oh, very well, you can come, keep right on 
 coming, for all I care; just try, try and see whether you can get her away 
 from here!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 307 
 
 Pippa. — Huhn, old Huhn, let me go away! I know you, I'm sure 
 it's you: you are father Huhn! What has happened? Why am I here 
 with you ? 
 
 Huhn. — Because that's the way things happen in this world, some- 
 times. 
 
 Pippa. — What happens this way ? What do you mean ? 
 
 Huhn. — What a man hasn't, he has to get for himself! 
 
 Pippa. — What do you mean ? I don't understand you! 
 
 Huhn. — Don't touch me, or my heart will beat itself out of my 
 body! {He grows pale, trembles, breathes hard and moves away because 
 Pippa touches his hand with her lips.) 
 
 Pippa {starts hack, runs away and throws herself against the closed 
 ^oor).— Help! Help! 
 
 Huhn. — Useless! No one can get through there! You are to stay 
 with me, and it's fine here, if you lived with the emperor — you wouldn't 
 find things any finer! And you must listen to me, you must be obedient. 
 
 Pippa. — Father Huhn, Father Huhn, you won't do anything to me, 
 will you .^ 
 
 Huhn {shaking his head decidedly). — And no one else shall touch 
 a hair of your head! No father and no manager. You are safe here and 
 you are mine. 
 
 Pippa. — Am I to be buried here, forever .? 
 
 Huhn. — A caterpillar, a chrysalis, a butterfly! Wait awhile: you 
 will soon open this grave for us. Listen, listen, the devil is coming! Stoop 
 down! The devil is coming down from the mountains! You hear how 
 the little children are crying out there, now. They are standing naked 
 on the cold stones in the hallway and wailing. They are dead! Because 
 they are dead, they are frightened. Stoop down, put your little hood on; 
 or he will seize you by the hair with his fist and (God have mercy on you) 
 out into the whirlwind you will have to go. Come here, I'll hide you! 
 I'll wrap you up! Just listen, how the wind howls and spits and miaus; 
 down it comes from the roof with the few wisps of straw there! For all 
 I care, keep on pulling until \{)u have everything off the roof. — Now, 
 he has gone by! That was a ghost, wasn't it ^ I am a ghost and you are 
 a ghost, all the world are ghosts and nothing but ghosts! But sometime, 
 perhaps, it will be different. 
 
 {A wild wave of storm has raged by. Again Pippa's face shows a 
 horror that almost robs her of consciousness. Huhn still stands m the middle 
 of the room even m the deep and uncanny silence that follows. And now 
 a voice IS heard outside, and a distinct knocking, at first on one of the nailed-up
 
 o8 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 u-i 
 
 nJou'S, later on one of the glass panes which is darkened by a shadow. 
 Huhn starts convulsively and stares at the new apparition.) 
 
 A voice {from without, muffled). — Halloo, ho there! Confound it, 
 that was an infernal morning breeze! wasn't it? Does anyone live here? 
 My ver)- best God bless you! Do me no harm, and I'll do you none! Just 
 give me some hot coffee and let me sit by your stove-door until daylight! 
 Yours most humbly, a frozen journeyman! 
 
 Huhn {rii^id with rage).— Who wants anything here ? Who's hanging 
 around old Huhn's little house? What man? What spirit? I'll help 
 \ou to get away from here. {He seizes a heavy club and plunges out of 
 
 the door.) . .... 
 
 {fp'ith a sigh Pip pa closes her eyes. Now it seems as if something 
 like a ringing current of air breathed through the dark room. Then, while 
 the musicy ever increasing in volume, ebbs and flows, Michael Hellriegel 
 appears in the doonvay. Nervously and cautiously he moves into the circle 
 of li^ht made by the burning chips, his eyes searching the darkness distrust- 
 
 ' Hellriegel. — This is certainly a rather harmonious murderers' den! 
 Hello, is anybody at home ? It must be a meal-worm that's playing the 
 harmonica ? Hello, is anyone at home ? {He sneezes.) That seems 
 to be musical hellebore. {Pippa sneezes too.) Was that I or was it some- 
 one else ? 
 
 Pip pa {half asleep).— Someone must be — playing the harmonica — 
 
 here ? . . 
 
 Hellriegel {listening, without seeing Pippa).— You are quite right, 
 it is a meal-worm in my opinion! "Go to sleep, dear little babe; what 
 is rustling in the straw ?" If a rat gnaws at night, you think it is a saw-mill, 
 and if a little draught blows through a crack in the door and rubs two 
 dried beech leaves together, you think at once that you hear a beautiful 
 maiden whispering softly or sighing for her deliverer! Michael Hellriegel, 
 you are very clever! You hear the grass growing even in winter! But, 
 I tell you, you better take care of the things in your head; your mother 
 is right: don't let your fancy run over like a milk pan! Don't believe 
 firmly and absolutely in everything that is not true, and don't run a hundred 
 miles and more after a flying cobweb! Good evening! My name is 
 Michael Lebrecht Hellriegel! {He listens awhile, there is no answer.) 
 I begin to be surprised that nobody answers me, because there is a first- 
 class fire in the stove — and because one is certainly led to expect some- 
 thing decidedly unusual here — the place has that look. If, for example, I 
 should see a parrot here, sitting on a pot on the stove, stirring sausage broth
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 309 
 
 with a cooking spoon, and he should scream at me: rascal, pickpocket, 
 horse-thief; that would really be the least that I should expect. I waive 
 any claim to a man-eater; or if I have one, then there must be an enchanted 
 princess too, whom an inhuman and accursed monster keeps in a cage: 
 the pretty little dancing girl, for instance, — Hold, something clever has 
 just occurred to me: I bought an ocarina! I bought the ocarina of the 
 scurvy old fellow at the tavern who played for the dancing, paid for it with 
 my last dollar — which was also very clever! Why do I want it — I 
 don't really know, myself! Perhaps because the name sounds so queer, 
 or I imagine that the little red-haired nixie is inside of it and wherever 
 possible, she slips out and dances when anyone plays on it ? I am going 
 to make the experiment, right now. 
 
 [Michael Hellriegel puts the ocarina to his mouth, looks round inquiringly 
 and plays. At the first notes, Pippa rises, her eyes closed, trips into the 
 center of the room and assumes a dancing pose.) 
 
 Pippa. — Yes, father, I am coming! Here I am! 
 
 {Michael Hellriegel takes the ocarina from his mouth, stares at her with 
 open mouth, dumbfounded with surprise.) 
 
 Hellriegel. — There, Michael, that's what you get out of this business! 
 Now you are stark mad! 
 
 Pippa (opens her eyes, as if awakening). — Is there someone here .? 
 
 Hellriegel. — No, that is nobody but me, if you will permit me. 
 
 Pippa. — Who is talking then .'' And where am I ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — In my tired brain, tired from a sleepless night! 
 
 Pippa (remembers having seen Hellriegel in the tavern in the woods, 
 and flies into his arms). — Help me! Help me! Save me! 
 
 (Hellriegel stares down at the magnificent Titian-red hair of the little 
 head that has hidden itself on his shoulder. He does not move his arms 
 as Pippa holds hers clasped tightly around him.) 
 
 Hellriegel. — If now, I — if, now, I — for instance: I suppose, if I 
 had my arms free, in spite of the fact that mother doesn't like to see 
 me do it, I should write a short memorandum in my little book; it is even 
 possible it might be in verse. But I can not get my hands free! My 
 imagination has bound me so tightly! It has bound me — woe betide me! — 
 so tightly and so confoundedly queerly that my heart thumps in my throat 
 and makes a bunch of red hair in front of me! 
 
 Pippa. — Help me! Help me! Rescue me! Save me from that old 
 monster, that awful creature! 
 
 Hellriegel. — What may your name be ? 
 
 Pippa.— Pippa!
 
 310 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 Htllrit'gt'l. — Right, of course! I heard the fellow with the riding- 
 boots call you that. Then the fellow went away; he made himself scarce. 
 \\ hen the\' massacred the Dago dog, he preferred to be somewhere else. 
 And \ou were gone, too, when I — that is to say, when we came back 
 with the dying Italian; at least, I didn't find you downstairs and I didn't 
 go up into his sleeping quarters with them. I would have liked to ask 
 him about vou, but he had forgotten his Italian! — 
 
 Pip pa. — Come away, come away from here! Oh, don't leave me! 
 
 Hcllriegel. — No! You may be quite at ease as to that, we two will 
 never leave each other again. He who once has a bird as I have, doesn't 
 readily let it fly away again. So, Pippa, sit down, compose yourself, and 
 we will consider the situation seriously for the moment, as if there were no 
 screws loose! 
 
 {He frees himself gently; with knightly grace and modesty he takes 
 Pippa's little finger hePiveen his first finger and thumb and leads her into 
 the circle of light cast by the stove to a little stool on which she seats herself.) 
 
 Hellriegel [standing before Pippa making fantastic gesticulations). — 
 So a dragon kidnapped you — I thought so, right away, up there in the 
 tavern — spirited you away from the Dago magician; and because I am 
 a travelling artist, I was at once sure that I was to rescue you; and forth- 
 with I too ran out into the open, wholly without end or aim. 
 
 Pippa. — Where did you come from ^. Who are you .'* 
 
 Hellriegel. — A son of the widow Hellriegel, the fruit-woman. 
 
 Pippa. — And where do you come from ^. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Out of our Lord's great sausage boiler! 
 
 Pippa {laughs heartily). — But you talk so strangely! 
 
 Hellriegel. — I have always distinguished myself in that way. 
 
 Pippa. — But see here, I am certainly made of flesh and blood! and that 
 crazy old Huhn is an old, discharged glass-blower, nothing more. His 
 goiter and his balloon cheeks probably come from the blowing; and there 
 are no fiery dragons any more. 
 
 Hellriegel. — You don't say so! Why not.'' 
 
 Pippa. — Hurry! Bring me back to Mother Wende! Come along 
 with me; I know the way to the Redwater tavern. I'll guide you! We 
 won't lose our way! {As Hellriegel shakes his head no.) Or, are you going 
 to leave me alone again } 
 
 Hellriegel {denying this vigorously). — I will not sell my ocarina! 
 
 Pippa {laughs, pouts, presses closely and anxiously up to him). — What 
 is this about the ocarina ^. Why won't you say anything sensible } You 
 talk nonsense all the time! Really, you are so stupid, Signore Hellriegel!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 311 
 
 {Kissing him fondly, half weeping.) I don't understand you at all, you 
 are so stupid! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Wait a minute! I begin to see more clearly, now! 
 {He takes her head in his hands, looks intently into her eyes, and with 
 calm decision, presses his lips long and passionately agmnst hers). — 
 Michael does not let himself be made a fool of! 
 
 {fVithout separating, they look at each other with embarrassment and 
 something of uncertainty.) 
 
 Hellriegel. — Something is happening inside of me, little Pippa, a 
 
 strange change! 
 
 Pippa. — Oh, good — 
 
 Hellriegel {finishing). — Michael. 
 
 Pippa. — Michael, what are you doing ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — I am quite perplexed, myself! Please excuse me from 
 the answer! Aren't you angry with me for doing it? 
 
 Pippa. — No. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Perhaps we could do it again then, right now ? 
 
 Pippa. — Why should we ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Because it is so simple! It is so simple and is so mad 
 and so — so altogether lovely, it is enough to drive one crazy. 
 
 Pippa. — I think, good Michael, you are that already. 
 
 Hellriegel {scratching himself behind the ear). — If I could just be sure 
 of that! I say there is nothing sure in this world! Do you know, another 
 idea has just occurred to me! Let us take plenty of time! We'll go to 
 the bottom of the matter, this time! Come, sit down here, here near me. 
 So, first of all, this is a hand here! Permit me, we will come at once to 
 the main thing: whether there is a main-spring in the clock-works. {He 
 puts his ear to her chest, like a physician.) You are certainly alive, you 
 certainly have a heart, Pippa! 
 
 Pippa. — But, Michael, did you doubt that .? — 
 
 Hellriegel. — No, Pippa! — But if you are alive — then I must get 
 my breath. {Actually struggling for breath, he steps back from her.) 
 
 Pippa. — Michael, indeed we haven't any time! Listen to that heavy 
 breathing outside, and how someone is stamping round and round the house! 
 He has passed the window three times, now. He will strike you down dead, 
 if he finds us here, Michael. Look, he is staring in here again! 
 
 Hellriegel. — O you poor little princess " I-am-afraid"! Ah, you 
 don't yet know my mother's son! Don't let that old gorilla bother you! 
 If you wish, a boot shall fly at his head! — 
 
 Pippa.— No, Michael, don't do that, Michael!
 
 312 AND IMPPA DANCES 
 
 Hfllrit'crfl. — Certainl)! — Or as far as I am concerned, we will begin 
 the new lite some other way. First of all, we will establisii ourselves calmly 
 and sensibly in the world. We will cleave to reality, Pippa, won't we ? 
 Y'ou to me and I to you! But no: I dare hardly say that aloud because 
 you are like a blossom on a pliant stem, so fragrant and so fragile! Enough 
 child, no day-dreaming! {Takes off his knapsack and iinbi4ckles it.) 
 Here in my knapsack is a box. Now, pay attention; Michael Hellriegel 
 broujiht with him into the world a real inheritance of mother wit, for use 
 in all cases. (//<■ lioUs out a very small box.) Practical! In here are 
 three practical things: first of all, this is an enchanted tooth-pick, you 
 see: fashioned like a sword; with it you can stab to death giants and 
 dragons! Here, in this little flask, I have an elixir, and with this, we'll 
 pay off the filthy fellow; it is a so-called sleeping potion and is indispen- 
 sable for use against giants and magicians! You don't recognize what 
 this little ball of yarn here is, but if you tie one end fast here, the little roll 
 will immediately tumble down in front of you, and skip along ahead of you, 
 like a little white mouse, and if you will only follow the yarn on and on, 
 you will come straight into the promised land. One more thing, here 
 is a little doll's table; but that isn't of much consequence, Pippa: it is just 
 a "Little table — set — thyself." Am I not a clever fellow? You have 
 confidence in me now, haven't you ? 
 
 Pippa Michael, I don't see any of those things! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Just wait, I shall have to open your eyes for you before 
 you can! 
 
 Pippa. — I believe it all! Hide yourself, the old man is coming! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Tell me, Pippa, w^here were you born ? 
 
 Pippa. — I believe, in a city by the water. 
 
 Hellriegel. — You see, I thought so right away! Was it as windy 
 there as here .? And were there generally clouds in the sky there too .? 
 
 Pippa. — I have never seen any there, Michael, and day after day, 
 the dear sun shone! 
 
 Hellriegel. — So ! That's the kind of person you are I Do you think my 
 mother would believe that .'' — Now, tell me, just once, do you believe in me ? 
 
 Pippa. — Ten thousand times, Michael, in all things. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Beautiful! Then we will cross the mountains — and 
 of course that's only a little thing to do! I know every highway and byway 
 here — and on the other side spring will have begun! 
 
 Pippa. — O, no, no, no! I can not go with you! My father is very 
 wicked, he will shut me up again for three days, and give me nothing but 
 water and bread to eat!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 313 
 
 Hellriegel. — Well, Pippa, your father is very kind now; his manner 
 is ven' quiet now; he is astonishingly meek! I marvelled that he was 
 so patient, quite cool-headed, not at all like an Italian. Soft! He will 
 never again hurt a fly! Do you understand just what it is I would say, 
 little Pippa! Your father has played and won so long, and now at last, 
 he has lost. After all, everybody loses in the end, Pippa! That is, so 
 to speak — your father is dead. 
 
 Pippa {more laughing than lueeping, flings her arms around Michael 
 Hellriegel' s neck). — Dear me! Then I have nobody left to me in the 
 world, nobody but you! 
 
 Hellriegel. — And that is quite enough, Pippa! I sell myself to you 
 skin and bones, from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, just 
 as I am! — And huzza! Huzza! Now we shall wander as we please. 
 Pippa. — You will take me with you, you will not leave me ? 
 Hellriegel. — I, leave you ? I, not take you with me ^ And now, 
 I will guide you; now, rely on me! You shall not hit your foot against 
 a stone! Hear, how the glass rings on the mountain pines! Do you hear ? 
 The long cones jingle. It is only a little while before daylight but bitter 
 cold. I will wrap you up, I will czrry you; we will warm each other, 
 won't we? And you'll be surprised at how fast we get away! Already 
 a litttle bit of light is creeping in here! Look at the tips of my fingers; 
 there is even now a bit of sunlight on them. A bit that can be eaten, it 
 must be licked off! You can't forego that and keep hot blood! Do you, 
 too, hear birds singing, Pippa ^ 
 Pippa. — Yes, Michael. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Peep, peep! That may be a mouse, a yellow hammer or 
 a door hinge — it doesn't make any difference which; all notice something! 
 The old house creaks through and through! Many times my spirit becomes 
 absolutely exalted to the skies when the tremendous event occurs and 
 the ocean of light pours forth from the hot, golden pitcher! — 
 Pippa. — Don't you hear voices calling, Michael ^ 
 Hellriegel. — No, I hear only one voice; that sounds like a steer 
 bellowing in the pasture! 
 
 Pippa.— It's old Huhn! It's terrible! 
 Hellriegel. — But what he's calling is very strange! 
 Pippa. — There he stands, Michael, don't you see him .? 
 Hellriegel (standing with Pippa at the window). — Yes, it seems to 
 be some frightful wood god — his beard and his eyelashes full of icicles, 
 his outspread hands extended upwards; he stands there and does not 
 move, his closed eyes turned toward the East!
 
 314 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 Pippa. — Now the first rays of the morning shine on him! 
 
 Hi'llriegcl. — And again he cries out! 
 
 Pippa. — Do you understand what he is calling ? 
 
 Hellricgel. — It sounded like — it sounds like — like — a proclamation. 
 
 \yA pccithar call in slow and pourrful crescendo becomes audible; it is 
 uttered hy old Hithn, and sounds like jumalai.) 
 
 Hellriegel. — It sounds to me like ju — jumalai. 
 
 Pippa. — jumalai ? What does that mean .'' 
 
 Hellriegel. — I don't know, little Pippa, just exactly what. But it 
 seems to me it means: Joy for all! 
 
 {The call, Jumalai, is repeated louder, while the room grows lighter.) 
 
 Pippa. — Are you weeping, Michael ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Come, little Pippa, you misunderstand! 
 
 {Closely intertivined, Pippa and Hellriegel move out of the door. The 
 curtain falls, and the music, which began with the light on HellriegeVs finger, 
 swells forth and depicts as it increases the mighty rising of the winter sun.) 
 
 ACT III 
 
 The interior of a snow-bound cabin on the crest of the mountains. A 
 large, low, comfortable room enclosed in timbered walls and with a timbered 
 ceiling is seen. There are three small, well protected double windows in 
 the left wall; under them runs a bench which is fastened to the wall. The 
 back wall is broken by a little door which leads into the hallway. Gayly 
 painted peasant cupboards form a comfortable-looking corner, left. Clean, 
 carefully arranged cooking utensils and bright-colored plates adorn the upper, 
 open half of one of the cupboards. To the right of the door is the usual large 
 stove of glazed tiles with its bench. The fire crackles cheerily in it. The 
 stove-bench meets the bench fastened to the right wall. In the corner thus 
 formed stands a large, massive, brown peasant^s table; over it hangs a lamp; 
 gayly painted wooden chairs surround it. The brass pendulum of a large. 
 Black-forest clock near the door swings slowly. Thus far the room shows 
 a character peculiar to the dwellings of the mountaineers of the better class. 
 Unusual, IS a table in the foreground, left, with a reading desk, on which 
 is an old book, open; the table is covered with all sorts of other books and 
 strange objects, such as a lamp between cobblers' magnifying globes, a glass- 
 blower s lamp with glass tubes, old medicine bottles, a stuffed king-fisher, 
 etc.; beside these, against the walls, are a number of objects that have been 
 unearthed: stone knives, hammers and spear-heads, belonging to the so- 
 called stone age; and a collection of common hammers for geological purposes. 
 More unusual still is a delicately made model of a Venetian gondola, which
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 315 
 
 rests on a stand in front of the reading desky as well as other models of ancient , 
 mediaeval and modern vessels for river and ocean navigation^ which hang 
 from the ceiling, — and a large telescope with its stand. On the deal floor 
 lie splendid oriental carpets. The little windows in the room glow in the 
 light of the setting sun, which light also makes all the objects in the room stand 
 out sharp and fantastically. There is a door in the right wall. 
 
 {Jonathan, an unkempt deaf mute of about thirty, is washing plates in 
 a small wooden tub which stands on two stools near the stove. Someone 
 knocks several times at the hall door. The deaf mute does not turn, and so 
 the door is opened and the Manager appears, masquerading as a mountaineer, 
 his gun hung over his shoulder, and snow shoes under his arm.) 
 
 The Manager. — Jonathan, is your master in the house? Jonathan! 
 You booby, answer me! The devil take you if he is not at home! What ? 
 Perhaps he has gone out to pick ice flowers, or to catch white moths with 
 butterfly nets? Brr, it's beastly cold out-of-doors! Jonathan! 
 
 {Much startled, Jonathan turns in alarm and delight, dries his hands 
 on his blue apron and kisses the Manager s right hand.) 
 
 The Manager. — Is the old man at home ? Jonathan, old Wann ? 
 (Jonathan utters some sounds and makes gestures.) You thick-headed 
 scoundrel, you; express yourself more plainly! (Jonathan takes greater 
 pains, points vehemently out of the window as a sign that his master has 
 gone out; then runs to the clock, which points to quarter of five; shows with 
 his finger that his master had intended to return at half past four; shrugs 
 his shoulders in surprise that he has not come back yet; hastens back to the 
 window, presses his nose against it, shades his eyes with his hand and looks- 
 out). Very good, I've taken that all in! He has gone out and will return 
 immediately, really ought to be back here now! {The mute goes wow, wow, 
 wow, imitating a dog.) Just so, he took his two St. Bernard dogs with him, 
 I understand. Beautiful! Wanted to give himself and the dogs some 
 exercise! Brush me ofl, knave, I am going to stay here! {Js he looks 
 just like a snowman, he steps back into the hall, stamps and beats the snow 
 off himself, the deaf mute helping zealously.) 
 
 {Meanwhile a dignified old man enters almost noiselessly by the door 
 to the right. He is tall and broad-shouldered, and long, flowing, white 
 hair covers his powerful head. His stern, beardless face is covered as it 
 were with runes. Bushy eyelashes overshadow his large, protruding eyes. 
 The man seems to be ninety years old or more, but in him old age is as it were 
 strength, beauty and youth raised to a higher power. His dress is a blouse 
 of coarse linen u'lth wide sleeves, which reaches below his knees. He ivears 
 rounded, red woolen, laced shoes, and a leather girdle around his loins. In
 
 3i6 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 this girdle, uheti /if f titers, rests his large, splendidly formed right hand. 
 
 It is fVann.^ 
 
 [fyanu directs an attentive and smiling glance into the hall, strides 
 quietly through the room, and seats himself behind the table at the reading 
 desk. He rests his elboics on the table, running his fingers thoughtfully 
 through his hair, ivhose white locks flow over the open folio on which he keeps 
 his exes fixed. Having peeled off his overcoat, the Manager enters again. 
 He does not notice fVann at first.) 
 
 The Manager.— O, you gazelles — sweet twins! So, now we will 
 make ourselves^as comfortable as possible here while we are waiting for 
 the old slv-boots! 
 
 fy^nn.— l think, too, we will; and whilst so doing we'll drink some 
 
 black Falernian. 
 
 'The Manager (jwr/)nW).— Damn it! Where did you come from so 
 
 suddenly ? 
 
 fVann {smiling). — Ah, the man who knew just exactly whence, my 
 dear sir! Welcome to this green land! Jonathan! 
 
 The Manager. — Quite true! Everything is green and blue before 
 vour eyes after you have slid down and clambered up for four hours! I had 
 on black glasses, but in spite of that, my organ of vision seems to me like 
 a pond, to whose bottom I have sunk and over which, above me, little 
 colored islands are constandy swimming. 
 
 ff^ann. — And you would like to get up on one of them ? Had I better 
 hunt up a fishing line ? 
 
 The Manager. — What for ? 
 
 ff^ann.— Oh, just something that shot through my head. At all events, 
 vou are a master hand at snow-shoeing and as daring as a stag, for instance, 
 is mainly, only in November; and the sparrow-hawk is, only when he is 
 engaged in the pursuit of a victim and the heat of the chase has made him 
 blind and deaf to all dangers; it struck me with amazement when I saw 
 you slide down Hke a bird from the top of the Skull-cap. And as you are 
 human, I hit upon a third human possibility: you might, perhaps, wish 
 to sweat out some sort of disease. 
 
 The Manager. — What doesn't the man think of who, summer and 
 winter, in all kinds of weather, has nothing more to do in all the world 
 than go walking on the milky way. 
 
 Wann {laughing). — I admit that I often ride my hobby-horse a little 
 high and that by so doing I have grown something far-sighted; but I also 
 see very well near by! For example, this lovely child of Murano here, 
 and the beautiful crystal decanter full of black wine that Jonathan is bringing 
 us for our comfort.
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 317 
 
 (Jonathan brings in on a large silver tray two magnificent, large, old 
 Venetian goblets and a cut-glass decanter full of wine and places them on the 
 table. Wann himself fills the glasses carefully. Each of the men takes one 
 of them and lifts it up solemnly toward the still faintly glimmering window.) 
 
 The Manager. — Montes chr)^socreos fecerunt nos dominos! {Gold- 
 bearing mountains have made us lords!) Do you know how you often 
 impress me, Wann, as one of those mythical, gold-hunting fellows, whom 
 the sauer-kraut-gobbling, piggishly-filthy, common rabble of our mountains 
 call foreigners ? 
 
 Wann. — Indeed ? And how might that be, my dear fellow ? 
 
 The Manager. — One who possesses an Arabian fairy palace of gold 
 and jasper in Venice, in the midst of the waters, who yet takes up his abode 
 here among us, and acts as if he couldn't count up to three and eats any 
 old moldy crust of bread. 
 
 Wann. — Your health! Let's drink on that, my dear fellow! {They 
 drink to each other and then laugh heartily.) 
 
 Wann.— So, that's what you think of me! Well, setting aside the 
 bread crusts, for mv conscience is quite clear of that hypocrisy, there is, 
 perhaps, a grain of truth in the surmise. If I am not exactly one of 
 those Venetian manikins with their magic power, who sometimes appear 
 to the woodmen and other dreamers, who possess gold caves, grottoes and 
 castles in the interior of the earth, still, I do not deny that these mountains 
 do in a certain sense actually contain gold for me! 
 
 The Manager. — Dear me, if one could but be as resigned as you are 
 to such quiet enjoyment of life in the midst of snow and ice. Master Wann! 
 No anxiety about your daily bread, no business, no wife — way above all 
 sorts of follies which still give people of our sort the headache; and so 
 absorbed in scholarly pursuits that you don't see the forest for the trees: 
 it is a really ideal state! 
 
 Wann. — I see, my portrait still varies at times in your managerial 
 soul. At times, I am to you a mythical personality who has a house in 
 Venice, then again, an old retired major who squanders his old age income 
 harmlessly. 
 
 The Manager. — Well, God knows it is not just exactly easy to form 
 the right conception of you! 
 
 ^fl««.— Jonathan, light the lamps! It is to be hoped that you can 
 see through me somewhat better in the light! 
 
 {J short pause occurs, in ivhich the Manager s uneasiness increases.) 
 
 The Manager.— What are you really waiting for up here, year in, 
 year out, Wann ?
 
 3i8 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 fVatiu. — For main things! 
 
 The Manager. — Tliev are, for example ? 
 
 ff'ann. — All tiiat the compass-card brings: clouds, perfumes, crystals 
 of ice; for the ntnseless double lightnings of the great Pan-fires; for the 
 little flames that leap up from the hearth; for the songs of the dead in the 
 water-fall; for mv own happy end; for the new beginning and the entrance 
 into a different, musical, cosmic brotherhood. 
 
 The Manager. — And, in the meantime, are you never bored up here, 
 all alone ? 
 
 ff'aiin. — Why should 1 be? If thou wilt be alone thou wilt be 
 wholh thine own. And boredom exists only where God is not! 
 
 The Manager. — That would not satisfy me, my master! I always 
 need external stimulation. 
 
 JVann. — Well, it seems to me that that which sustains in its roaring 
 the delight of a great veneration is also external. 
 
 The Manager. — Yes, yes, all very well! But for me, now that I am 
 so old, there must always be something youthful, gay, lively in the game. 
 
 Wann. — As, for example, these lady-bugs here. All winter long I 
 have them here on my table for company, in the midst of all sorts of play- 
 things, just observe a little beast like this for awhile. When I do I 
 actually hear the spheres thunder! If it strikes you, you are deaf. 
 
 The Manager. — This tack, I don't understand. 
 
 fVann. — It is quite simple: the little beast on my finger does not 
 divine me, does not divine you. And yet we are there, and the world 
 around us, which it, confined within its own sphere, is not able to conceive. 
 Our world lies outside of its consciousness. Think of what lies outside 
 of ours! For example, is your eye able to tell you how the brook murmurs 
 and the cloud rumbles .? That this is so, you would never learn, if you 
 had not the sense of hearing. And again, if you had the finest sense of 
 hearing, you would still know nothing to all eternity of the magnificent 
 outbursts of light in the firmament. 
 
 The Manager. — Thank you, for the private lecture! I would rather 
 have it some other time! I can't sit still today. I hinted at something 
 quite different — 
 
 tVann {lifts his glass). — To the lovely child of Murano, probably! 
 
 The Manager. — Well, if I did ! How did you know it ? 
 
 fVann. — Of what use is an observatory three thousand feet above 
 the sea in central Germany "^ Of what use is a telescope with a lens made 
 by yourself, if you can't look down sometimes on this old sublunary world 
 and keep a strict eye on its children .'' And finally, the man whose shoe 
 doesn't pinch — doesn't go to the cobbler!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 319 
 
 The Manager. — Good! If you really are such a confounded physicist, 
 putting your cobbHng aside for the time, I admit that the shoe pinches 
 me in several places — then please tell me, what happened last night in 
 old Wende's tavern ? 
 
 Wann. — An Italian was stabbed! 
 The Manager. — Then why do you consult the book ? 
 Wann. — A registrar is certainly needed in the end! 
 The Manager. — And are the details noted in the book, too ? 
 Wann. — For the time being, no. 
 
 The Manager. — Well then, your telescope and your proud folios 
 amount to nothing! — I can't forgive myself for this business! Why 
 didn't I watch more closely! I wanted to buy her from the dog, ten times — 
 ! — That's what happens, when one is really tender-hearted once in awhile. 
 {lie jumps up and walks around the room very much agitated; finally 
 he stops behind the telescope, turns it around on its stand and directs it toward 
 the different night-darkened windows one after the other.) 
 (The wind whistles.) 
 
 The Manager. — Senseless, how I always feel up here, as if I were 
 in a ship's cabin in a storm on the great ocean! 
 
 Wann. — Doesn't that also express most accurately the situation into 
 which we are born ^. 
 
 The Manager. — That may be! But with phrases of this kind nothing 
 will ever be gotten at. This doesn't pull me out of my particular dilemma! 
 It would be different if one could see anything through your telescope; — 
 but alas, I notice that that, too, it gives but a misrepresentation of facts! 
 Wann. — But it is pitch dark night, dear sir! 
 The Manager. — By daylight, I don't need a thing like that! 
 {He leaves the telescope, walks back and forth again and finally stops 
 in front of Wann.) 
 
 Wann. — Well, out with it! Whom are you seeking? 
 The Manager. — Her! 
 
 Wann. — You lost sight of her after the affair ? 
 
 The Manager. — I hunt for her but do not find her! I have had 
 enough of this nonsense, Master Wann! If you are one of these crazy 
 quack-salvers, pull the thorn out for me! I can not live and I can not 
 die. 1 ake a scalpel in your hand and search for the poisoned arrow-head 
 which is sticking somewhere in my cadaver and forcing itself further 
 in with every minute. I am tired of the distress and irritation, of the 
 sleeplessness and poor appetite. I should be willing to become a papal singer, 
 just to be rid for one moment f)f this accursed longing which torments me.
 
 J 
 
 20 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 [He sinks down oil a chair ^ breathing heavily^ and wipes the sweat from 
 his forehead. fVann rises with some cerenioniousness.) 
 
 Jf'ann. — And voii are in earnest about the cure ? You will really 
 give yourself into my hands ? 
 
 The Manager. — Of course I will! What else did I come here for? 
 
 Wann. — And vou will hold still even if it is necessary to pull from 
 vour soul witli a jerk the whole ot the evil growth with all the roots that 
 branch out into the very tips of your toes ? 
 
 The Manager. — And if it be horse physic! 
 
 Wann. — Well, then be so kind as to pay attention, my dear fellows. 
 Now I clap my hands the first time! {He does it.) If the graybeard 
 could not do more than the man, what were the meaning of old age ? 
 (He draiL's forth a long, silken cloth.) Now I clap my hands the second 
 time. {He does it.) Afterward I bind this cloth over my mouth, as the 
 Parsee does when he prays — 
 
 The Manager {impatiently). — And then I shall go my way, for I see 
 you are mocking me. Master Wann! 
 
 JVann. and then: incipit vita nova {the new life begins), dear sir! 
 
 {He slips the bandage over his mouth and claps his hands vigorously.) 
 
 {Immediately, as if called there by magic, Pippa, half frozen and strug- 
 gling for breath, rushes in; a cloud of fog penetrates the room after her 
 entrance.) 
 
 Pippa {rushes forward, crying out hoarsely). — Save him! Save him! 
 Help, you men! Thirty steps from here, Michael is dying in the snow! 
 He is lying there, suffocating! He cannot stand up! Bring light! He 
 is freezing to death; he can go no further! The night is fearful! Come 
 with me, come with me! 
 
 The Manager {stares in boundless amazement, now at Pippa, now at 
 his host). — Are you the devil himself, Wann : 
 
 fVann. — The cure is beginning. Don't plead any weariness! A rope! 
 Tie that end fast here, Jonathan! 
 
 [Pippa seizes Wann by the hand and drags him out. The Manager 
 follows as if stupefied. The room is empty and the storm roars through the 
 hall, sweeping clouds of snow through with it. All at once the head of old 
 Huhn is visible in the hall door. After the old man has assured himself 
 that there is no one in the room, he steals in. He stares at the objects in the 
 room, and when the voice of the returning Wann is heard, he hides himself 
 behind the stove.) 
 
 Wann [still in the hallway, drawing the others after him along the rope). — 
 Bolt the doors securely, Jonathan! —
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 321 
 
 {Now the half-frozen Michael Hellriegel, supported by Wann and the 
 Manager, is seen. He is brought into the room and laid on the bench by the 
 stove; Pippa draws his shoes off and the Manager rubs his chest.) 
 
 Wann {to Jonathan). — A cup full of hot black coffee mixed with cognac! 
 
 The Manager. — Thunder and hail! It's cold enough to freeze your 
 mouth shut! The air outside there stings like needles and butcher knives! 
 
 Wann. — Yes, it is a night! You know, at least, when you gasp for 
 breath in these black Hades-flames that you are a fighter and still a long 
 distance away from the paradises of light. Only one little spark from 
 there has found the way! Bravely, little one, hast thou fought thy way 
 through! 
 
 Pippa. — Michael, signore, Michael, not I. 
 
 Wann. — How do you feel, sir ? 
 
 The Manager. — What kind of a man you are, I know not! But in 
 other respects, I am as amused as if I w^ere at a hanging! After all, it is 
 just as wonderful that a fly should soil my shirt collar, as that you or anyone 
 else should bring about such an occurrence. 
 
 Wann. — Instead of one there has grown to be two of them! 
 
 The Manager. — Thank you! Even my brain can still grasp that! 
 To be sure, my suspicions rested on Huhn, and then ? instead of him it 
 is a simpleton! Jonathan, my snow-shoes, quick! 
 
 Wann. — Going already ? 
 
 The Manager. — Two are enough! The third, too many! True it is 
 in a way new to me to carry out generosity to its highest power, but it is 
 not the right vocation for me permanently! Don't you think so, too, little 
 Pippa ? 
 
 Pippa {weeping softly, is drying and rubbing Michael's feet with her 
 hair). — What is it, signore ? 
 
 The Manager. — You know me, don't you ? {Pippa shakes her head 
 no). Haven't you seen me somewhere before? {Pippa again shakes her 
 head in dental.) Didn't some good uncle bring you for three or four years 
 sugar-plums, pretty corals and silk ribbons ? {Pippa shakes her head 
 confidently, in denial of this.) Bravo! I thought so! Didn't you have 
 a father, who is dead ? {Pippa shakes her head.) 
 
 Wann.— Do you notice anything, sir ? 
 
 The Manager. — Do I notice anything! 
 
 Wann. — What a powerful old magician has taken a part in this? 
 
 The Manager." Of course, that's understood! Jolly Chinese puzzle, 
 that's the world! {Tapping on Michael's forehead with his third finger.) 
 You, in here, when you waken, knock again at heaven's gate, perhaps the
 
 322 
 
 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 good God will sav: come in! Good-by! Rub Michael back to life! {In 
 the' hdll.) I wish \ou may all sup well! I have been helped! I am cured! 
 Hurrah! Mav the devil himself unbar hell! 
 
 {The opening of the housc-Joor is heard and then the Manager s hurrah^ 
 repeated several times out-of-doors.) 
 
 HiUriegel [opens his eyes, jumps up and at the same time ealls out). — 
 Hurrah! Hurrah, there we have it, little Pippa! 
 
 Wann [steps back, astonished and amused). — Eh! What is it that we 
 have, if I may ask ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Oh, so we are not alone, little Pippa! Tell me, where 
 did the old man come from so suddenly ? 
 
 Pippa {timidly, aside). — Oh, I didn't know what else to do! 
 
 Hellriegel. — But, wasn't it splendid! Isn't it a delight to you, to 
 climb up like that through storm and winter ? To go merrily forward hand 
 in hand ? 
 
 Wann. — Where are you journeying, if one may ask ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Ah, old man! Who is going to be so curious ? Do I ask 
 you why you muffle yourself up, up here, keep yourself w^arm and eat baked 
 apples ? 
 
 Wann. — This is certainly a devil of a fellow that you have here, dear 
 
 child! 
 
 Hellriegel. — To wander always and never to think of the goal! It is 
 deemed too near or it is deemed too far. Besides I surely feel my bones 
 tingling. 
 
 Pippa {timidly). — Michael, couldn't we perhaps be a little grateful 
 to the friendly old man, or do you think not ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Why should we be ^ 
 
 Pippa. — Why he saved us from freezing! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Freezing ? Michael wall take good care not to do that 
 yet awhile! If we had just missed this place of refuge, well, we would now 
 be ten good miles further on our way. Think, Pippa, ten miles nearer the 
 goal! When a man possesses the magic ball of twine and has received 
 unequivocal signs from above, in great numbers, that he is called to some- 
 thing — called to discover at the very least kneadable glass! 
 
 Wann. — You laugh, my little one: do you believe that he is .^ {Pippa 
 looks up at Wann with belief in her eyes and nods her head emphatically in 
 the affirmative.) Indeed .'' Well, he certainly speaks in a way that awakens 
 belief. Now, have a good talk together, I won't disturb you! {He takes 
 his seat behind his book-table, but watches the two surreptitiously; at the 
 same time turning over the leaves of the large volume.)
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 323 
 
 Pippa {confidentially). — Look around, Michael, see where we are! 
 
 Hellriegel. — In just the right place, it this moment occurs to me. The 
 yarn has led us just right. Didn't you notice how it drew us ever forward 
 and out of the storm ? 
 
 Pippa. — But that was the old man's rope, Michael! 
 
 Hellriegel — Eh, it is not as you imagine it, little one! In the first 
 place, we had to come here in any case. To begin with, I saw the light 
 all the time we were climbing. But even if I had not seen the light, an 
 irresistible power within me dragged and tugged me onward toward this 
 protecting roof! 
 
 Pippa. — I am so glad that we are safe, and yet, I am still a little bit 
 afraid! 
 
 Hellriegel. — What are you afraid of.? 
 
 Pippa. — I don't know what! I wonder whether the doors are shut 
 tight .? 
 
 tVann {who has heard this). — They are locked tight! 
 
 Pippa {says to Wann simply and innocently). — Oh sir, you are good, 
 I see it in your face! But for all that — we must go on — mustn't we, 
 Michael .? 
 
 fVann. — Why must you ? Who is on your trail .? 
 
 Hellriegel. — No one! At least no one who causes us any concern! 
 But if you want to go away from here, then come, little Pippa! 
 
 fVann. — Do you really think I shall let you go away ^. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Certainly! How would you keep us here.? 
 
 Wann. — I am not wanting in means! I do not ask you whither you 
 are going; whither you are bound with this frightened little moth that has 
 flown against my lamp; but through this night, you shall remain here. 
 
 Hellriegel {planting himself in the rniddle of the room, his legs spread 
 apart). — Hello! Hello! Here is still another! 
 
 fVann. — Who knows what sort of a bird you are! Perhaps one who 
 undressed to learn shivering: have patience, you will learn it soon enough! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Don't get angry, dear uncle, the house is still standing, 
 as my little mother says. But whether we go or stay is our affair! 
 
 fVann. — You must have very big notions of yourself in your knapsack! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Indeed .? Do 1 look as though I had something of that 
 sort in my pack! It is (juite possible! Think of it! Well, enough of 
 that! My knapsack answers pretty well, though there are other things in 
 it than a few paltry notions. So if my cap sets that way, we will go; and 
 you can keep us here as little as you could two swans who journey under 
 a mackerel sky like two points travelling toward the South.
 
 3i+ AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 JFann. — I grant you that, young cloud-dweller! But sometimes I 
 succeed in enticing those birds to my little trough, and that, for example, 
 is what I have done to you. 
 
 (Jonathan sets out the table near the stove with southern fruits, steaming 
 wine and cakes.) 
 
 Ht'llriegel. — The little trough! We are not hungry, we will not eat! 
 Michael is not dependent on anything like that! 
 
 Wann. — Since when isn't he ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Since — since he found river-gold in mud! 
 
 fVann {to Pip pa).— And you ? 
 
 Pippa. — I am not hungry either! 
 
 fVann.— No ? 
 
 Pippa {aside to Michael). — You have your table set thyself, of course! 
 
 Wann. — So you won't do me the honor ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — I notice that you, too, are one of those who have not the 
 slightest suspicion of who Michael Hellriegel is. What do I care; and what 
 good would it do to discuss it with you ? You must know that the archangel 
 Michael is a hero and conqueror of dragons; you do not doubt that. Now, 
 however, I simply need to go on and for all I care swear ten oaths, I have 
 witnessed miracle upon miracle since yesterday and have come oft' victorious 
 from an adventure just as astonishing, and you will say: why not, here is 
 a man who plays the ocarina. I need only to tell about my knapsack — 
 
 fVann. — O, Michael, you delightful child of God! Had I suspected 
 that it was you, I have been following with my telescope since daybreak, 
 todav, and enticing to my little bowl filled with hot blood for souls' food; 
 I had decorated my hut festively and received you — that you might see 
 that I, too, am something of a musician — received you with quintets and 
 roses! Be peaceful, Michael, be friendly! And I advise you to eat a little 
 something! Well filled though you may be with heaven's blue, only the soul 
 can be satisfied with that; never the body of a big, tall fellow like you! 
 
 Hellriegel (goes up to the table, takes a plate from it, eats eagerly and 
 says in an aside to Pippa). — The food goes against me, I don't want it! 
 I just eat it to get away politely — 
 
 Wann. — Eat, Michael, eat, don't argue about it! It doesn't do any 
 good to dispute with the Lord God because you have to breathe and eat 
 and swallow! Afterward you float and flutter so much the more beautifully! 
 
 Pippa {steals over to Wann, while Michael is absorbed in eating, and 
 whispers to him with great delight). — I am so glad Michael is eating. 
 
 Wann. — He is eating in his sleep, so don't waken him! or he will let 
 his knife and fork fall, will plunge three thousand feet high in the air and 
 probably break his neck and legs.
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 325 
 
 {He takes from the table carefully, tn both hands, a^ model of a Venetian 
 gondola.) 
 
 Wann. — Can you tell me what this represents ? 
 
 Pip pa. — No. 
 
 Wann. — Think! Has there never glided through your^.dreams a black 
 vessel like this ? 
 
 Pippa {quickly). — Yes, sometime, a long time ago, I remember! 
 
 fVann. — Do you know, too, what a powerful tool it is ? 
 
 Pippa {meditatively). — I know only, that once I used to glide between 
 houses, at night, in a barque like that. 
 
 Wann. — That's it! {To Michael). Now, for all I care, you can prick 
 up your ears, too, so that little by little, you may arrive at the knowledge 
 that there is someone here beside yourself who understands something of 
 aeronautics and many other things. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Well, out with what you have to say! 
 
 fVann. — Well then, this little craft created the mystical city between 
 two skies, that is the city at the heart of the earth, wherein you too, good 
 child, were born. For you come out of a mystery and will return into it 
 again. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Hop! There comes something flying! Hop! Again, 
 another picture! a rat! a salt-herring, a girl! a miracle! Gather them all 
 together: an ocarina! Always hop, hop, hop! When I went away from 
 my mother, on a tramp, well as I was prepared for all sorts of hocus-pocus 
 and though I went to meet it skipping with joy, still even now the cold 
 sweat often comes out on my forehead. {With his knife and fork in his 
 fists, he stares thoughtfully straight in front of him.) So he knows the city 
 where we wish to go! 
 
 Wann. — Of course I know it, and — if you had confidence in me — 
 I could do something for you and with advice and suggestion point out to 
 you the way thither. In the end, who knows, perhaps something more than 
 that! For, to tell you the truth, when I observe you very carefully, doubts 
 do come to me whether you really do float in the sky so high, so secure and 
 so certain of your goal! You have something in you, how shall I say it, 
 something of birds who have been beaten out of their course, and are driven 
 helplessly in the direction of the North Pole. At the mercy of every wind, 
 so to speak! Don't start, Michael, don't become excited! You won't 
 own up to it that you are horribly played out and tired, nor will you own 
 up to the undefined fear, the dread that still takes possession of you at 
 times, although you have in a measure escaped the terrors of a winter-night 
 flight. 
 
 {At the mention of flight and fear, Hellriegel springs up and Pippa and
 
 320 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 he look at each other anxiously. Now, he moves uneasily toward the door 
 of the room and listens into the hall.) 
 
 Hellriegel. — Just be calm, Michael! That's the main thing! I take 
 it that the doors are properly locked and bolted ? — Then at any rate we 
 have nothing to fear! {He eomes back.) For all I know — it may be that 
 perhaps you are something unusual! In any case, you may be sure we are 
 going to eat oranges tomorrow afternoon in the beautiful water- and glass- 
 makers' city, where the water bursts forth into glass blossoms; in the city 
 of whose ever}- little bridge, flight of steps and narrow street, I have dreamed 
 accurately all my life long — in any case, you may be sure — but for all 
 I care: how far have we still to go? 
 
 Wann. — That depends, Michael, on how you travel. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Let us say in practical fashion. 
 
 Wann {smiling). — Then you will probably never get there. But if 
 you travel in this little vessel in which the first pile-drivers rode out into 
 the lagunes and out of which, as out of a floating incense bowl, fantastic 
 smoke, Venice, the artist's dream, arose, in which the show)s stone city 
 was precipitated as a crystal is in lye, — Yes, if you travel in this little vessel 
 and by means of the miracle that you have experienced, then you can at 
 once see everything your longing soul aspires to see. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Hold! I must first engage in a silent communion with 
 my own thoughts. But give me the thing in my hand! {He takes the little 
 boat and holds it in his hands.) So I am to travel in this nut-shell ? Oh 
 yes! How wise our old host is after all, and what an ass is Michael! But 
 just how do you accomplish the getting into this ? O please, I am no 
 spoil-sport! Now I see through the matter: I am only afraid I shall lose 
 my way in the little boat! If I am really to go this way, then I would 
 prefer to take with me my two sisters, my six older brothers, my uncles 
 and the rest of my relatives, who, thank God, are all tailors. 
 
 Wann. — Courage, Michael! When you are once out of the harbor, 
 there is no going back: you must go on, out into the high billows. And 
 you {to Pippa) must give him the magic wind for his sails! 
 
 Hellriegel. — That pleases me, that will be a queer voyage! 
 
 Wann {guiding Pip pa's little finger around the edge of a Venetian 
 glass). — Sail away, sail away, little gondoletta! Repeat it after me. 
 
 Pippa. — Sail away, sail away, little gondoletta! 
 
 Wann. — 
 
 From night of winter, from ice and snow, 
 Away from storm-shaken cabins go!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 327 
 
 Pip pa (laughing). — 
 
 From night of winter, from ice and snow, 
 Away from storm-shaken cabins go! 
 
 Warm. — 
 
 Sail away, sail away, little gondoletta! 
 
 {From the glass whose edge Pippa is rubbing there comes a low tone 
 which grows louder and louder until other tones join with it and the harmony 
 then formed swells and grows into a short but powerful musical storm, which 
 suddenly recoils and becomes silent. Michael Hellriegel falls into a hypnotic 
 sleep, tuith his eyes open.) 
 
 fVann. — 
 
 Now Michael solitary sails above the clouds, 
 Silent the journeying, for at that lofty height 
 Sound dieth, since it findeth no resistance there. 
 Where art thou ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — 
 
 Proudly I sail through the dawn's red glow! 
 
 Wann. — 
 
 And on what wonders new and strange dost thou now gaze ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — 
 
 On more than soul of man can ever grasp, I gaze. 
 And over hyacinthine seas I wing my flight! 
 
 Wann. — 
 
 Only thy ship is sinking downward now! — or no ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — 
 
 I know not. All the mountains of the earth, it seems, 
 Mount up to me. Gigantic towers up the world. 
 
 Wann.— 
 
 And now .'' 
 
 Hellriegel. — 
 
 Now I am sinking downward noiselessly, 
 
 And now my skiff 'mid gardens rushes silently. 
 
 Wann. — 
 
 Thou call'st these gardens that thou see'st .'' 
 Hellriegel. — 
 
 Yes! but of stone. 
 
 The marble blossoms all are mirrored in blue plains. 
 
 And the white columns tremble in the emerald ground.
 
 328 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 Jf'aun. — 
 
 Halt there, good ferr)man. And tell us where thou art! 
 Hellrit'gel— 
 
 On stair^va^'s now I set my foot, on tapestries, 
 And in a hall of coral now I tread my way! 
 And now, at golden portals do I knock three times! 
 Wann.— 
 
 And tell me, on the knocker what words readest thou ? 
 Hellriegel. — 
 
 Montes chrysocreos fecerunt nos dominos! 
 {Gold-hearing mountains have made us lords!) 
 Wann. — 
 
 What happens when the echoes of thy knocking cease ? 
 {Michael Hellriegel does not answer^ instead he begins to groan as if he 
 had nightmare.) 
 Pippa. — 
 
 Oh, waken him, please waken him, dear, wise, old man! 
 Wann {as he takes the little boat out of Michael's hands). — 
 Enough! To this secluded cabin come once more. 
 Return again to us, snowbound and exiled here. 
 And quake and shake the golden spoils of voyages 
 Into our laps, while we sit here repining. 
 {Michael Hellriegel wakens, looks around perplexedly, and tries to 
 remember.) 
 
 Hellriegel. — Hello! Why does that confounded old grunting-ox, 
 Huhn, stand at the gate, threaten me and refuse to let me enter '^. Just slip 
 the golden key out to me through the grating, Pippa! I will steal in through 
 a little side door! Where? Pippa! Confound it! No! Where am I .? Par- 
 don me, old man, it is better not to swear when anything of this kind — when 
 after all, you have been hoaxed! Into what sort of an infernal box have 
 I slid t Hang it all, what is going on here .'' Where is Pippa t Have you 
 still theigolden key } Here! give it here! We will open the door quickly! 
 Pippa. — Wake up, Michael! You are just dreaming! Try to think! 
 Hellriegel. — But I would rather be a dreamer than wake up in such 
 a mean w^ay, fourteen miles deep down in the puddle. I can't see my hand 
 before my eyes here! What does it mean? Who is pressing his thumbs 
 into my throat ? Who is crushing the happiness out of my breast with 
 a mountain-load of fear ? 
 
 fVann. — Have no fear! no fear at all, good Michael! Everything in 
 this house is in my power, and there is nothing in it that can harm you.
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 329 
 
 Hellriegel. — But why, oh why, Master, did you call me back so soon 
 into this grave-hole ? Why didn't that ragged, old wild beast let me into 
 my magic, water-castle ? It was the very one I have always wished for, the 
 very same one! I recognized it perfectly as the one I dreamed of when I 
 was a little boy and sat in front of the stove, — and Pippa looked out of the 
 window, — and the water played delightfully, like roulades on the flute, 
 around the walls below her! Let us make the journey once again! Make 
 us a present of your charming little gondola, and without hesitating — I 
 offer you for it my whole knapsack with all its precious contents! 
 
 Wann. — No, Michael, not yet! Have patience! For the present, 
 you are much too hotblooded to suit me! And I beg you both to still your 
 beating hearts and not to be afraid. Believe me there will be another 
 day tomorrow. There are many guest chambers in my house, I beg you, 
 tarry until morning with me! Grant me the pleasure of harboring for one 
 night perfect, young hope! Tomorrow, you shall journey on, and God be 
 with you! Jonathan show the stranger upstairs! 
 
 Hellriegel. — We belong together, we will not be separated! 
 fVann. — Arrange it as you wish to or will, good Michael, sleep will 
 always take her out of your hands and you will have to leave her to her fate 
 and God! 
 
 {Hellriegel takes Pippa in his arms. He looks at her and sees that she 
 has almost lost consciousness from her great fatigue: so, as she has fallen 
 asleep, he lays her down on the bench by the wall.) 
 Hellriegel. — And you stand security for her } 
 fVann. — Solemnly! 
 
 Hellriegel {kisses Pippa on the forehead). — Until morning, then! 
 Wann. — Sleep well! Good night! And far away on the Adriatic 
 dreams a house that waits for new and youthful guests. 
 
 {Jonathan stands in the door with a light. Hellriegel tears himself away 
 and disappears with him in the hallway. Wann looks at Pippa for awhile 
 gravely and thoughtfully; then he says): 
 Wann. — 
 
 Into my winter cabin, magic forced his way. 
 My wisdom's wall of ice, he broke through robber-like. 
 By gold enticed. A shelter safe I furnished him 
 From out my soul paternal, with old malice full. 
 Who is the fop that he should wish to make his own 
 This child divine who makes my vessels sail tor me — 
 They creak and crack and swing so gently to and fro. 
 The old dry hulls archaeologically hung! —
 
 330 AND PirPA DANCES 
 
 Why then do I put liini, this Michael, in m\ ship, 
 Instead of saihng forth myself, triuniphantlv, 
 Forth in my galleon, commanding my whole fleet, 
 To subjugate abandoned heayens once again. 
 O, ice on my old forehead, ice in my old blood! 
 You tha\y before a sudden breath of happiness. 
 Thou holy breath, O, kindle not in my old breast 
 Consuming Hres of greed, of avarice and wild lusts, 
 Till I must swallow mine own children, Saturn-like. 
 Sleep! Oyer your sleep I watch, for you I guard 
 What fleets away. As pictured forms ye float by me, 
 So long as my own soul remains a picture still, 
 Not Being, — not clear, viewless element alone. 
 Moulder, ye hulls! for journeys new I have no thirst. 
 (Hf has raised the sleeping girl, supported her and led her slowly and 
 with fatherly solicitude into the chatnber to the right. After he and Pippa 
 have disappeared, Huhn conies out from behind the stove and stands in the 
 middle of the room, his gaze fixed on the chamber door. JVann comes out of 
 the chamber backward, pulls the door shut after him, and speaks without 
 noticing Huhn. He turns toward the models of the ships and in so doing 
 sees Huhn. At first, doubting the reality of the vision, he holds his hands 
 above his eyes to investigate; when he lets it drop, his every muscle tightens 
 and both men measure each other with eyes filled with hatred.) 
 
 fVann {slowly, quivering with rage). — No — road — passes — through 
 — here! — 
 
 Huhn {in the same manner). — No — word — passes — muster — 
 here! — 
 
 Wann. — Come on! 
 
 {Huhn pushes forward and they stand opposite each other in wrestlers* 
 positions.) 
 
 Huhn. — This is all mine! — all mine, all mine, all mine! 
 Wann. — 
 
 You black, bloodthirsty bundle! Night-born lump of greed, 
 You yet gasp forth some sounds that seem like words! 
 {Old Huhn attacks him and they wrestle; suddenly old Huhn utters 
 a frightful shriek and immediately afterward hangs defenceless in fVanns 
 arms. Wann lets the gasping old man sink gently to the floor.) 
 Wann. — 
 
 Thus must it come to pass, giant uncouth! O thou 
 Sick, wild, strong animal! — Break open stables then!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 331 
 
 Here is no provender for prowling beasts of prey — 
 Here in this snowbound house of God! 
 
 ACT IV 
 
 (This act immediately follows the third act, in the same room. Old 
 Huhn lies on the bench by the stove, the sound of the death-rattle in his throat 
 is loud and horrible. His chest is bare, his long rust-red hair falls to the 
 ground. Old fVann stands by him, upright, his left hand laid on Huhns 
 breast. 
 
 Pippa, shy and trembling, an expression of great fear on her face, comes 
 out of the door to the right.) 
 
 Wann. — Come in, you little trembling flame, you, come right in! 
 There is now no further danger for you, if you are a little cautious! 
 
 Pippa. — I knew it! O, I knew and felt it, signore! Hold him down! 
 Bind him fast! 
 
 Wann. — So far as he can be bound, I can bind him. 
 
 Pippa. — Is it old Huhn, or isn't it ? 
 
 Wann. — The torture disfigures his face. But if you look at him more 
 closely — 
 
 Pippa. — Then he looks almost like yourself! 
 
 Wann. — I am a human being and he wants to be: how did you happen 
 to notice it ? 
 
 Pippa. — I do not know, signore! 
 
 (Hellriegel appears in the hall door, frightened.) 
 
 Hellriegel. — Where is Pippa ? I had a foreboding that the lousy 
 idiot would be at our heels! Pippa! God be thanked that you are again 
 under my protection! 
 
 Wann. — Nobody touched a hair of her head even when you were not 
 here! 
 
 Hellriegel. — It is better, however, for me to be here! 
 
 Wann. — May it please Heaven! Fetch me in a bucket full of snow! 
 Bring snow! We will lay snow on his heart, so that the poor, captive beast, 
 beating its wings in his breast, may be calmed! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Is he hurt ? 
 
 Wann. — It may well be! 
 
 Hellriegel. — What do we gain by it if he recovers his strength ? He 
 will strike around him with his fists and beat us all three into mincemeat! 
 
 Wann. — Not me! and not anyone else, if you are sensible! 
 
 Pippa. — It is he, I am sure of it! It is the old glass-blower, Huhn!
 
 332 
 
 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 ff'arin. — Do you recognize him, now: the guest who came so late, to 
 await here a higher than he ? Come close to him, little one, don't be afraid, 
 \our pursuer is now himself the pursued! {HcUnegel brings in a bucket 
 full of snow.) What did you see out there, Michael ? You are as white 
 as a sheet! 
 
 H flirt egd. — I did not know what it was! {IVhile the ice is being laid 
 on Huhns breast.) It isn't the old mountain with the forest of hair that 
 danced and jumped around with you in the tavern and from whom fortu- 
 nately I carried you off; it isn't he at all. 
 
 Pippa. — Look at him more closely, I am sure it is he! 
 
 JVann. — But he has become our brother! 
 
 Pippa. — Was it the matter with you, Michael ? How you do look! 
 
 JVann. — What did you see outside there that made you as white as 
 a sheet ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Well, for all I care: I saw pretty little things! It was, 
 so to speak, like a wall of snapping, fishmouthed women's visages, pretty 
 terrifying, pretty dreadful! I wouldn't like to have them here in the room. 
 That's the way, when you go from a bright light into the dark! — 
 
 fVann. — You will yet learn shivering! 
 
 Hellriegel. — At all events, it is no pleasure to be outside there. Ap- 
 parently the ladies have sore throats — you see it in their swollen, twitching, 
 violet-black throats! And for what other reason were their necks wound 
 round with a thick neckerchief of long, slavering worms! 
 
 fVann. — Pshaw, Michael, you are looking around for protection! 
 
 Hellriegel. — If only those tricksy little angels don't squeeze through 
 the wall! 
 
 JVann. — Michael, couldn't you go out of doors once more, and call 
 into the dark in a loud voice, that he is to come .? 
 
 Hellriegel. — No! That's going too far for me, I won't do that! 
 
 JVann. — You are afraid of the lightning that is to save ? Then prepare 
 yourself to hear God's praise howled in a manner to freeze the marrow in 
 your bones, since not otherwise is the invasion of the pack to be prevented! 
 
 (Such a shriek of pain comes from old Huhn that Pippa and Hellriegel 
 break into a sympathetic weeping and, carried away by their sympathy, they 
 impulsively hasten to him to bring him help.) 
 
 JVann. — No hurry! It is useless! Here is no pity! Here the poi- 
 sonous tooth and the white-hot wind rage, so long as he rages! Here 
 typhonic powers press out the piercing scream of torture, the torture of 
 frantic recognition of God. Blind, without compassion, they stamp it 
 out of the soul howling, yet speechless with horror.
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 333 
 
 Hellnegel. — Can't you relieve him, then, old man ? 
 
 Wann. — Not without him whom you do not choose to call. 
 
 Pip pa {trembling). — Why is he so stretched on the rack? I have 
 feared him, and have hated him, but why is he pursued with such wrath 
 and merciless hatred ? — I do not ask it! 
 
 Huhn. — What do you want? Let go! Let go! Don't strike your 
 fangs into my neck! Let go! Let go! Don't tear the bones from out my 
 loins! Don't tear my body open! Don't rend me, don't rend my soul in 
 pieces! 
 
 Hellnegel. — Great heavens! What if this should be a trial of strength; 
 if the great fish-blooded one thinks to impress anyone with this — at all 
 events, he doesn't impress me! or at most only with his force! Has he no 
 more respect for his creation, or can't he help striking something low and 
 small every moment ? And in such a peculiar way, which it is to be hoped 
 is not the only fun there is for him in the matter. 
 
 Wann. — The principal thing now is really, Michael, that one of us 
 should go and find out where he, whom we await so longingly, is staying. 
 Your talking, you know, brings us no further. 
 
 Hellriegel. — You go out! I shall stay here. 
 
 Wann. — Good! {To Pippa.) But don't dance with him! 
 
 Hellriegel. — O Heavens! When anyone can make jests in such a 
 critical situation, what is one to say to such a disaster ? 
 
 Wann. — Take care whom you trust! At all events, give heed to the 
 child! {Wann goes out through the hall.) 
 
 Pippa. — Oh, if we were only away from here, Michael! 
 
 Hellriegel. — I have wished that too! God be thanked, that at all 
 events we are now at the top! Tomorrow, at daybreak, we can rush down 
 the southern slope — for all I care, we can go on sleds, that would be fine! 
 Then we shall be out of this region of foreigners and assassins and grunting 
 baboons, forever! 
 
 Pippa. — Oh, if he only wouldn't scream again! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Let him scream! V.ven if he does, it is still better inside 
 here: the silence outside screams more horribly. 
 
 Huhn {with heavy tongue). — Murder! Murder! 
 
 Pippa. — He has spoken again! 1 believe the old toy-dealer has injured 
 him in some way! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Cling to me! Press close to my heart. 
 
 Pippa. - O Michael, you pretend to be so calm, and your heart beats 
 so fiirioiislv! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Like your own!
 
 334 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 Pippa. — And his! I hear his beating, too! How hard it labors! 
 It seems strained to the utmost! 
 
 Hfllncgel. — Is it that ? Is it really a heart that pounds like that ? 
 
 Pippa. — What else can it be ? Just listen, what else can be pounding 
 like that ? I don't know why, but I feel it all through me, so painfully — 
 it hurts me clear down to the tips of my toes — at every stroke, it seems as 
 it I must help it. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Look, a chest like a cannibal's! Doesn't it look like 
 a bellows all covered with matted red hair ? And as if it ought always to be 
 blowing something like a small forge fire. 
 
 Pippa. — O, how the poor little captive bird keeps jumping against 
 his ribs in its fright! Shall I lay my hand on him for a minute, Michael .? 
 
 Hellriegel. — You have my permission! There can be nothing in all 
 the world which would be so miraculously effectual 1 
 
 Pippa (laying her hand on Huhns heart). — I hadn't the least idea 
 that under all his rags, old Huhn was as white as a young girl! — 
 
 Hellriegel. — There you see it does work! He is quieter already! 
 And now we will give him a little wine besides, so that he may meet death 
 sleeping peacefully. 
 
 (^He goes to the table to pour out some wine. Pippa allows her hand to 
 remain on Huhn's breast.) 
 
 Huhn. — Who lays her little hand on my breast .'' I sat within my 
 house — in the darkness — we sat in the darkness! The world was cold! 
 Daylight came no more, the morning never came! We sat there round 
 a cold glass furnace! And the people came there, yoop, yoop — They 
 came there from far away, creeping across the snow! They came from far 
 awav because they were hungry: they wanted to have a little bit of light 
 on their tongues, they wanted to absorb a little bit of warmth into their 
 benumbed bones! It is true! And they lay around the glass-works all 
 night! I heard them groan; I heard them moan. And then I rose and 
 poked around in the ash pits — all at once there arose a single little spark — 
 a tiny spark arose out of the ashes! O Jesus, what shall I do with the 
 little spark that has all at once risen again out of the ashes .'' Shall I make 
 you a servant, little spark, shall I capture you ^ Shall I strike at you, 
 little spark t Shall I dance with you, tiny little spark } 
 
 Hellriegel. — Say yes, say yes, don't oppose him! But tell us, you, 
 the rest of your story! Here, first take a swallow, old Mr. What's-your- 
 name! Today, you — tomorrow, me! We will hold together, because in 
 my inmost heart, I too am something of a snowbound, ghostly glass-maker. 
 
 Huhn {after he has drunken). — Blood! Black blood tastes good!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 335 
 
 But, what the^wise man^'makes, I make too! I too make glass! Oh dear, 
 yes, what is there that I haven't brought out of the glass furnaces! Beads! 
 Precious stones! Magnificent goblets! Ever in with the blowpipe and 
 one blast into it! Enough of that! I will dance with you, little spark! 
 Wait a moment: I'll start up my furnace again! How the white heat 
 breaks from the doors! No one ever comes up to old Huhn! Did you see 
 her dancing round in the air over the fire ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Whom do you mean ? 
 
 Huhn. — Whom ? W^ho would it be ? He doesn't know, he doesn't, 
 that the girl springs from the glass furnaces! 
 
 Hellriegel {chuckling). — Just listen, Pippa, you spring from the glass 
 furnaces ! 
 
 Pippa. — Oh, Michael, I feel like weeping. 
 
 Huhn. — Dance, dance! that it may grow a little lighter! Go here, 
 go there, that the people may get light! Kindle the fire, kindle the fire! 
 We will go to work! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Just listen! When such an opportunity offers, I would 
 really like to join vou! The devil take me, if I wouldn't, and not with 
 just a journeyman's piece of work — 
 
 Huhn. — We stood around our glass furnaces and around about us out 
 of the starless night crept fear! {He gasps harder.) Mice, dogs, beasts 
 and birds crept into the fire. It grew smaller and smaller and was going 
 out! We said to each other and said constantly — O Jesus, the terror 
 of it — into the little fire! Then it fell apart! Then we screamed! A 
 little blue light came again! Then we screamed again! And then it was 
 out! I sat in mv house, over my cold fire! I saw nothing! I poked around 
 in the ashes! All at once a little spark flew up, a single little spark flew 
 up in front of me. Shall we dance again, little spark ? 
 
 Pippa {fleeing to Michael). — Michael, are you still there? 
 
 Hellriegel. — Yes, of course! Do you think that Michael is inclined 
 to be a shirker .'* This old man, however, is something more than a dis- 
 charged glass-blower, God knows! Just see, what a bloody, agonizing 
 spasm is shown in his face! 
 
 Pippa. — And how his heart wrestles, and how it pounds! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Like an eternal forge-dance with the forge-hammer. 
 
 Pippa. — And at every stroke, I feel my own breast t(nn and burned! 
 
 Hellriegel. — I do too! I feel it tremendously through all my bones, 
 and it tugs at me until it seems I must work and pound with it! 
 
 Pippa. — Listen, Michael, it seems exactly as if the same stroke struck 
 deep down and knocked on the earth.
 
 336 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 HtUriegel. — You are right, the same terrihle blow of the forge-hammer 
 strikes deep down! 
 
 Huhn. — Sliall I dance with you, httle spirit ? 
 
 {UndcrgroumL thunderous rutnblings.) 
 
 Pippa. — Michael, did you hear that rumbling underground ? 
 
 Htllrifgcl. — No! Come! ^ ou had better take your hand away from 
 his heart. If everything is going to rock, and the earth is going to tremble 
 and we are going to shoot out like an involuntary meteor, who knows 
 whither into space, then it is certainly better for us to clamp ourselves 
 together, shortly, into an indissoluble knot. I am only joking! 
 
 Pippa. — Oh, Michael, don't joke now! 
 
 HeUricgel. — Tomorrow, we will both joke about this! 
 
 Pippa. — Do you know, I feel almost as if I were only a single spark 
 and as if I hovered around, lost and quite alone, in endless space! 
 
 Hellriegel. — A dancing star in the heavens, Pippa! and why not .f* 
 
 Pippa (whispering). — Michael, Michael, dance with me! Hold me 
 fast, Michael, I don't want to dance! Michael, Michael, dance with me! 
 
 Hellriegel. — I will do it, so help me God, as soon as we are out of this 
 scrape! Think of something beautiful! As soon as this night is over, 
 I have promised mvself: that from then on, you shall walk only on roses 
 and tapestries. And we shall laugh, as soon as we are down there, in the 
 little water-palace — we shall go there, I assure you— and then I shall lay 
 you in your little silken bed ■ — and then I shall bring you sweetmeats all 
 the time — and then I shall cover you up and tell you creepy stories — 
 and then you will burst out laughing, so sweetly, that the delicious sound 
 will be pain to me. And then you will sleep, and I shall play all night long, 
 softly, softly, on a glass harp. 
 
 P//)/)fl.— Michael! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Yes, Pippa! 
 
 Pippa. — Where are you r 
 
 Hellriegel. — Here beside you! I hold you tightly clasped! 
 
 Huhn. — Shall we dance again, little spirit .? 
 
 Pippa. — Hold me, Michael — don't let me go! He drags me to 
 him! — I am being dragged! If you let me go I must dance! I must 
 dance! — or else I shall die! Let me go! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Really .? Well, I think it will be well, in the midst of all 
 these, in a way really nightmarish things, to bethink myself of my brave 
 old Swabian blood! If all your limbs twitch to do it, why shouldn't you 
 dance this last dance with a poor wretch who attaches so much value to 
 your doing it ! In my opinion there can't be anything so bad in that. Not
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 337 
 
 for nothing, have there been jolly fellows who have conjured away Satan's 
 hell-fire from under his tail and lighted their pipes with it. Why shouldn't 
 one strike up a tune for him to dance ? {He takes out his ocarina.) Rum- 
 pum-pum, rum-pum-pum! How does the time go? Very well, for all I 
 care, get ready to dance, sweet Pippa. If it must be — we dare not be 
 particular about the place and the hour in this world! {Trills and runs 
 on the ocarina.) Dance away, and dance till you are tired! It is far 
 from being the worst thing you can do : to be joyous with one who is mortally 
 afflicted. 
 
 [To the tones of the ocarina, which Michael plays, Pippa makes some 
 slow, painful dance movements, that have something convulsive about them. 
 Little by little the dance grows wilder and more bacchanalian. A rhythmic 
 trembli ng stirs the body of old Huhn. In addition to this, he drums frantically 
 with his fists, keeping time with Pippa's dance rhythm. At the same time 
 he seems to be shaken by a terrible chill, like some one coming out of a cutting 
 wind into the warmth. From the depths of the earth muffled sounds force 
 their way up: rumblings of thunder, triangles, cymbals and kettle-drums. 
 Finally Wann enters through the hall door.) 
 
 Huhn. — I am making a little glass! I am making it. {Fastening 
 a look of hate on fVann.) I shall make it and knock it to pieces again! 
 Come — with — we — into — the dark — little spark. {He crushes the 
 drinking glass which he still holds in his hand, and the pieces clatter to the 
 floor.) 
 
 {Pippa shivers and then grows suddenly rigid.) 
 
 Pippa. — Michael! 
 
 {She reels and Wann catches her in his arms. She is dead.) 
 
 Wann. — Have you achieved your purpose in spite of me, old corybant .? 
 
 Hellriegel (stops playing on his ocarina for a few seconds). — Good! 
 Stop a moment to get your breath, Pippa! 
 
 Huhn {with an effort, looks Wann full in the eyes, triumphantly. Then 
 there comes from his lips with difficulty, but powerfully, the call) — Jumalai ! ! ! 
 {Immediately after it he sinks back and dies.) 
 
 Hellriegel {is about to begin playing on his ocarina again). — What 
 was that.? I have it! I heard that cry, yesterday morning! What do 
 you say to that, old wizard ? But anyhow, it is well that you have come, 
 for otherwise we would have galloped away, over knives and pieces of 
 broken glass into the unknown, on and on, who knows where! Have you 
 found him at last .? 
 
 Wann. — Most certainly! 
 
 Hellriegel {after a trill). — Well, where did you find him .?
 
 ^^S AND ril'PA DANCES 
 
 Wann. — I found him behind a snovv-driFt. He was tired. He said 
 his load of work was too enormous. I had to persuade him a long while. 
 (Looking down oti Pippa.) And now it seems that he misunderstood me. 
 
 Ht'llriegel [after a trill). — But at least he is coming now.'' 
 
 If'ann. — Didn't vou see him ? He came in just before me! 
 
 Ht'llriegel. — I didn't see anything, to be sure, but I felt something 
 when the old man yelled out his silly foreign word, something that still 
 hums in my bones. 
 
 fVann. — Do you hear the echo still making a hubbub outside .'' 
 
 Hellriegel {goes up close to Huhn, curiously). — Truly! The old cloven 
 hoof will stamp no more. I must say, a weight has fallen from my soul! 
 I hope that at last the old hippopotamus is in a safe place. Tell me, you 
 probably injured his backbone for him, didn't you ? But perhaps that 
 wasn't really necessary, although it is possible that it may have saved us. 
 
 fVann. — Yes, Michael, if you are saved, it would certainly have been 
 difficult to accomplish it in any other way. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Yes, thank God, I feel that we are over the worst of it. 
 For that reason I won't mope any longer because the old man — he is 
 really past the time for boyish tricks! — because the old man has died 
 of his love affair, and can not have what I possess. Every man for himself 
 and God for us all! In what way does the affair concern me after all! 
 Pippa! ! How does it happen that you have two lights to the right and left 
 of you, one on each shoulder } 
 
 fVann {with Pippa in his arms). — Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens 
 dominabitur mihi! [Behold a god stronger than /, who when he comes 
 will have dominion over me!) 
 
 Hellriegel. — I don't understand that! {With his head bent forward 
 he gazes searchingly for a few seconds at Pippa as she lies in Wanns arms.) 
 Oh, now something tugs so as my breast again, now I am again shaken 
 with impatience, so painfully sweet that it seems as if I must be at the 
 same time here on this spot and millions of years away. Everything is 
 rosy-red round about me! {He plays, then interrupts himself and says) 
 Dance, child! Rejoice! Rejoice, for with the help of the never-ceasing 
 light in my breast, we have found the way through the gloomy labyrinth, 
 and when you have tired of leaping and feel calm in the certainty of happi- 
 ness, then we will immediately {to fVann) with your permission, glide 
 down over the clear snow, at if we went by post, into spring's ravine, down 
 there. 
 
 Wann. — Yes, if you see spring's ravine down there, good Michael, 
 certainly!
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 339 
 
 Hellrtegel {with the motions of a blind man who sees only what is within 
 himself; standing at the pitch-dark luindow). — Ho, I see it well, spring's 
 ravine! I am not blind! A child can see it! From your cabin, you ancient 
 inn-keeper, you can overlook the whole land — for a distance of fifty miles. 
 I absolutely will not sit here any longer, like the spirit in the glass bottle, 
 lying corked at the bottom of the sea. Once upon a time — just give us 
 the golden key and let us go away! 
 
 PFann. — When the sun shines forth suddenly in winter, it is apt to 
 make people blind! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Or give them the all-seeing eye! I could almost believe 
 myself in a dream: so mysteriously am I charmed by the mountains, white 
 in the light of the morning's flaming splendor, and by the enchanting haze 
 over the peninsulas, inlets and gardens of the ravine, and really, it seems 
 as if I were on another star! 
 
 fVann. — That's the way it always is when the mountains are bathed 
 in the light of the great Pan's games with the fires of St. Elmo. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Pippa! 
 
 fVann. — She is even now, again, far from us on her own pilgrimage! 
 And he, the restless barbarous old giant is again pursuing her. {He lays 
 Pippa down on the bench. Afterward he calls.) Jonathan! Again the 
 invisible hand that reaches through walls and roofs has frustrated my 
 schemes and made them his booty. Jonathan! He is even now cold! 
 The glowing crater is extinguished. What does the hunter hunt .? It is 
 not the animal that he slays! What does the hunter hunt .? Who can answer 
 me } 
 
 Hellriegel (at the black window). — Pippa, just look down there, the 
 tongues of land are covered with golden cupolas — and do you see: there 
 is our water-palace — and the golden steps that lead up to it! 
 
 fVann. — Then rejoice! Rejoice over what you see, Michael, and over 
 what is hidden from you! 
 
 Hellriegel. — The sea! Oh, there is another, upper sea forming: this 
 other sea gives back to the lower sea millions of twinkling stars! O Pippa — 
 and look, still a third sea forms! There is an infinite mirroring and immer- 
 sion of light in light! We swim through it all, between ocean and ocean, 
 on our rustling gold galley! 
 
 JVann. — Then, of course, you will no longer need my little vessel! 
 Throw back the shutters, Jonathan! 
 
 (Jonathan, ivho has looked in, opens the house door and the first faint 
 gleam of morning comes m through the hall ) 
 
 Hellriegel. — Pippa!
 
 340 AND PIPPA DANCES 
 
 fFann. — Here she is, take each other's hands! {He goes up to Michaely 
 iL'ho is standing with the expression of a blind seer on his face, and makes 
 motions as if Pippa stood near him and as if he laid Michael' s hand in hers.) 
 There! I marr\' you! I marry you to this shadow! He who is married 
 to shadows marries you to this one! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Not bad, Pippa, you are a shadow! 
 
 Wann. — Go forth, go out with her into the wide world — to your 
 water-palace, I meant to say! And here you have the key to it! That 
 monster can no longer prevent your entering! And outside a sleigh with 
 two curved horns stands ready — 
 
 Hellriegel [ivith great tears on his cheeks). — And there I shall make 
 water into balls! 
 
 Wann. — You are doing it now with your eyes! Now go! Don't 
 forget your ocarina! 
 
 Hellriegel. — O no! I shall not forget my sweet, beloved little wife! 
 
 fVann. — For it may yet be possible, that sometime you will have to 
 plav and sing here and there before people's doors. But don't lose your 
 courage because of that. For in the first place, you have the little key to 
 the palace, and when it grows dark, you have this torch which Pippa may 
 carry on before you; and then you \\'\\\ surely and certainly come to the 
 place where joy and peace await you. Only sing and play bravely and do 
 not despair. 
 
 Hellriegel. — Hurrah! I sing the song of the blind! 
 
 JVann. — What do you mean by that ? 
 
 Hellriegel. — I sing the song of the blind people who do not see the 
 ereat o-olden stairs! 
 
 fVann. — So much the higher will you mount the scala d'oro, the scala 
 dei Giganti! 
 
 Hellriegel. — And I sing the song of the deaf! 
 
 JVann. — Those who do not hear the stream of the universe flowing! 
 
 Hellriegel. — Yes ! 
 
 Wann. — Be sure you do it! But, Michael, when they are not touched 
 and when they threaten you with hard words or with stone-throwing, which 
 is pretty sure to happen, then tell them how rich you are — a prince on 
 a journey with his princess! Talk to them of your water-palace and beg 
 them for God's sake to direct you to the next milestone on your road! 
 
 Hellriegel {chuckling). — And Pippa shall dance! 
 
 Wann. — And Pippa dances! 
 
 (It has now become broad daylight. Wann puts a cane into the hand 
 of the blind and helpless Michael^ puts his hat on and leads him to the outside
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 341 
 
 door, feeling his way, hut chuckling softly and happily. Now Michael puts 
 the ocarina to his mouth and plays a heart-hreakingly sad melody. In the 
 hall, Jonathan takes charge of the blind man and fVann comes back. He 
 listens to the ocarina, as the melody dies away farther and farther into the 
 distance, takes the little gondola from the table, looks at it and says with 
 pained renunciation in his tones). — 
 
 Sail away, sail away, little gondoletta!
 
 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 By Isabel Moore 
 
 I 
 
 SINCE the time of Robert Southey almost no attention has been 
 paid to the hterature of Portugal. Yet Portugal, the 'medulla 
 Hispanica' (marrow of Spain, as it has been called) has not 
 only a vast but an exceedingly beautiful literature, entirely 
 distinctive from the Spanish of which it is so often and erro- 
 neously considered a part. Like the country itself, the liter- 
 ature has been peculiarly insecure and yet peculiarly lasting. 
 
 Long, long ago — when the Spanish Peninsular was in the making — 
 a certain Alfonso, ruler of Leon, conquered his brothers, Garcia of Galicia 
 and Coimbra, and Sancho of Castile, and was himself crowned king of 
 Castile, Leon, Galicia and Coimbra. His father was Don Fernando who 
 conferred the honor of knighthood, in the great Mosque of Coimbra, upon 
 Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, the redoutable Cid, Champion of Christendom 
 and hero of Spanish Mediaeval history. And Alfonso — after he had 
 adjusted his domestic supremacy to his liking — had proceeded to the 
 conflict against his religious and territorial foes, the Moors, who, since the 
 defeat of Roderick the Goth in the Battle of the Guadelette, had ravaged 
 the Peninsular. He was successful to the extent of winning Santarem and 
 Lisbon from the Lusitanian Moors, but was finally in such straits and met 
 with such crushing reverses that he called upon other Christian princes to 
 help him. Among those to respond, was Count Henry of Burgundy, to 
 whom Alfonso gave the countries of Oporto and Coimbra in 1095 as a reward 
 for his services and assistance. And with this grant of lands began the 
 Kingdom of Portugal. 
 
 Alfonso Henriques, the first King of Portugal, was the son of this 
 French Prince; and the establishment of a Burgundian dynasty introduced 
 French words into the Coimbrian dialect, such as never found their way 
 into the Galician: — although, in the main, the dialects remained for a long 
 time practically the same. It was only in Coimbra, however, after it became 
 an integral part of Portugal, that there was a Court; and, therefore, it was 
 in Coimbra that the common dialect acquired a separate and distinctive 
 literature: taking precedence and wielding together the different elements 
 that went to the forming of the Portuguese national language. 
 
 342
 
 ISABEL MOORE 343 
 
 Though, until the existence of Portugal as a nation, we cannot consider 
 her Hterature as separated from the CastiUan, there is every probability 
 that songs were sung in the Portuguese dialect long before they were in the 
 Castilian. The oldest Portuguese poetry of which we have authentic 
 record, however, are three curious fragments given by Manuel de Faria, 
 by Sousa in his Europe Portuguesa, written by Gonzalo Hermiguez and 
 Egaz Moniz Coelho; two poets who are said to have lived during the reign 
 of Alfonso Henriques, although some authorities maintain they came a little 
 later. Ticknor, however, is confident that their verse can not be placed 
 later than 1200, and says: 'Both show that the Galician in Portugal, under 
 less favorable circumstances than those which accompanied the Castilian 
 in Spain, rose at the same period to be a wTitten language and possessed, 
 perhaps quite as early, the materials for forming an independent literature.' 
 Alfonso Henriques, himself, was a poet as well as an able ruler, though 
 none of his verse has survived for our estimation; and Spain and Portugal 
 have in common the still extant fragment of a poem said to have been found 
 in 1 187, in a condition so injured by time that little more than thirty lines 
 were legible, ascribed to Roderick the Last of the Goths: — coeval, then, 
 with the Arab conquest of the Peninsular in the beginning of the eighth 
 century. 
 
 It is a cause for wonder that Arabian poetry left no more trace than it 
 seems to have done on Spanish versification, and no trace at all — that is 
 descernible in our day, at least — on the Portuguese. Probably it enriched 
 the Peninsular dialects somewhat but, apparently, not much. It has been 
 claimed that the Spanish ballads are imitations of the Arabian; and, of 
 course, as it was inevitable that there should be, there were many Spanish 
 border ballads concerned with Moorish-Spanish international episodes and 
 incidents. But this was more particularly the case after the Fall of Grenada, 
 when cause for rejoicing over a vanquished foe most naturally found 
 expression. That there was little interchange of imitation is readily proved 
 by the internal simplicity of each. The Spanish ballads, particularly, are 
 so simple in form and so direct in feeling that they could hardly be anything 
 but the almost personal result of a popular need. Furthermore, it is easy 
 to believe that a chivalrous and energetic people would naturally evolve 
 their own ballad expression as they would their own architectural or political 
 expression; and the evidence to corroborate this natural belief is the fact 
 that not one single Arabic original has been found in the great mass of 
 Spanish ballads. Although Arabian poetry is almost entirely lyrical — 
 and the lyrical appeal was peculiarly poignant to the early Spanish, and 
 is to the Portuguese of all time — each nation held to a most ardent appre-
 
 344 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 elation of the beauty of its own speech. This was, doubtless, a most 
 desirable state of affairs, ccMitnbutmii to the consolidation of what may be 
 called national individualism in the poetry of Spain and Portugal; yet we 
 cannot but regret to a degree that such a delightful possession of the Arabs, 
 for example, as the 'trembling meter' — iambics, rhyming in the same 
 syllable throughout: a measure which, according to the Arabs, resembles 
 the trot of a camel — found no place in either Spanish or Portuguese verse. 
 'The beautiful poetry with which Allah has adorned the Muslim' is a thing 
 apart; requiring independent appreciation and consideration. 
 
 The twelfth century has been likened unto a dusky dawn in which 
 could be heard a few twittering birds that have awakened before their mates. 
 There had come into existence what has been called 'a state of European 
 consciousness.' All civilized Europe awoke, and every creature proceeded 
 to produce after his kind. The Troubadour movement was the first 
 symmetrical expression in Art of Chivalry — that adventurous service of God 
 and woman — as the Crusades were its first expression in action. Love of 
 external nature, elemental emotion, simple sentiment, were the well-springs 
 of their lyric utterance; bubbling up into being from long-hidden, tranquil 
 depths of feeling. And, as the Romance languages — composed of the 
 Latin and the Teutonic tongues — in the first place all sprang from popular 
 and not from classic Latin, so, likewise, in turn, the Troubadours found 
 their expression in the homely speech of the common people after the bar- 
 baric invasions had led to the complete destruction of the Latin culture. 
 ' They rank, ' writes one modern critic, ' in the scale between music and usual 
 verse.' And, again: 'Their words are like musical notes, not so much signs 
 of thought as symbols of feeling, which almost defy an arbitrary interpre- 
 tation and must be rendered in part by the temperament of the performer.' 
 
 That was it: — the Troubadours were the temperamental element of 
 their age, whether of noble birth or of humble origin. St. Francis of Assisi 
 himself, the typical saint of the Middle Ages, was at heart a bit of a tempera- 
 mental tramp as he went from village to village with a number of friars, 
 singing the Canticle of the Sun. Most truly did William of Poitiers — the 
 reputed father of Provencal song — express the impulse of the day in his 
 verse beginning: 
 
 'Desire of song hath taken me!' 
 
 'Desire of song,' — yea, verily. And the 'desire' would not, could 
 not, be denied. It found its voice, first of all and for the longest period, 
 in fair Provence, that 'home of song,' where from 1 194-1209 the Court of 
 Raimon VI of Toulouse was thronged with poets. It flourished in France 
 from 1080 on. Alfonso II of Arragon, who died in Portugal while trying
 
 ISABEL MOORE 345 
 
 to arrange a general league against the Moors, was the Troubadour-King 
 in whose reign Troubadour poetry reached its finest outburst in Arragon. 
 Alfonso X of Castile was a devoted patron of the Gaya Sciencia. His 
 Cantigas in honor of the Madonna — strange minglings with regard to the 
 All-Mother of the original Pagan and overlaid Christianity — we still have 
 to the number of four hundred and one. They are in the Galician dialect, 
 bearing somewhat the impress of the Provencal, and are the oldest extant 
 specimens of Galician verse as distinct from the Portuguese with, possibly, 
 the exception of the ballad called 'The Fight of the Figwood.' 
 
 It has been said that Portugal did not, strictly speaking, belong to the 
 Troubadour world, and it is true that the name and poem of only one 
 undoubtedly Portuguese Troubadour of the earliest period has survived — 
 Joao de Penda ( 1 145-1204). But, although the individual record is meager, 
 Portugal in reality became even more Provencal that Castile, lor in Castile 
 there soon sprang up a strong French influence. The Troubadours — 
 most of them — spent their lives visiting different Courts, and the Court of 
 Portugal was so pleasant and welcoming that they frequently lingered there 
 for a long time. Of these wandering minstrels who reached Portugal, 
 the French Marcabrun is the most famous of this early period. He visited 
 Portugal in 1147, while Alfonso Henriques was in the prime of his glory, 
 and is said to have been the first of the French Troubadours to cross the 
 Pyrenees. The similarity in the literary languages of Castile and Portugal 
 undoubtedly led to considerable intercourse between the two countries, and 
 it is on record that the later Portuguese Troubadours, Pero Gomez Barroso, 
 Payo Gomez Charrinho and Concalo Fames do Vidal, were received with 
 honors at the Castilian Court. Among the Galician poets who frequented 
 the Court of Portugal during the reign of Sancho I (1185-1211) were Alfonso 
 Gomez, Fernam Con^alves de Senabria and Joao Scares de Paiva; whose 
 famous Proven9al rivals were Peire Valeria, Gavandan o Velho and Peire 
 Vidal, — the Peire Vidal of whom it was said that 'he was the best singer 
 in^^the world and a good finder; and that he was the most foolish man in the 
 world because he thought everything tiresome except verse.' And it is 
 interesting evidence of the community of feeling in the Troubadour world 
 to remember that Bonifaci Calvo, a Troubadour of Genoa, lived at the 
 Castilian Court for a long period, and that two of his seventeen extant poems 
 are in the Portuguese language; and that another Italian, Sordel — Brown- 
 ing's Sordello - visited the Courts of the Peninsluar in 1260, meeting 
 everywhere with courteous welcome. In Portugal he gained an honor 
 accorded no other foreign troubadour: — a place in their song books. 
 * As much — no more — one lives as one enjoys,' he sang.
 
 346 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 It is quite possible that the Portuguese preceded the CastiHans in epic 
 or heroic poetry as well as in lyric verse. An earlier Castilian Alfonso than 
 he of the Cantigas — Alfonso III — had fostered the Franco-Provencal 
 school in his kmgdom b^• bringing with hiin from France, Trouveres as well 
 as Troubadours. Among these was Alfonso Lopez de Bayan, who wrote 
 the first grsta in the Portuguese language, a gesta de Maldizer. But, although 
 such names as Rodriguez Lobo, Eloi de Sa Sotonayor and Pires de Rebello — 
 of a little later day — made this form of verse illustrious, the heroic romance 
 never became thoroughly naturalized in Portugal and chiefly found its way 
 through Spain. Narrative romance never seems to have been so esteemed 
 by the Portuguese as by their Castilian neighbors. 
 
 In 1208 came the Albigensian Crusade in which Folquet de Marseilla, 
 himself once a Troubadour but since become Abbott of La Thoronet, 
 assisted Simon de Montfort against Toulouse in the siege that resulted in 
 the decisive battle of 1213 in which the Midi were conquered. 'The stream 
 must fall into the sea,' as Mistral sang of this event. Tides of fugitives fled 
 beyond the Pyrenees. Echoes of the Troubadour world reverberated the 
 length of Castile and Galicia and Portugal. Spain — used in a generic 
 sense — was their refuge and their dream. The Court of Dom Sancho II 
 of Portugal, particularly, was filled with gay and young knights and trou- 
 badours who had been under the most direct Provencal influence. 
 
 But the times were rapidly changing: the old order giving place to 
 the new. Men's ideas were expanding and becoming big with other plans 
 that found expression in other forms. Dante, when he came, was a typical 
 troubadour spiritualized. /// Paradiso is the culmination of the troubadour 
 feeling, as in Boccacio culminated the art of the Trouveres. Yet, though 
 the troubadour spirit has now become itself a fugitive, there are even unto 
 this day survivals and even revivals, and will ever be, so long as lyric poetry 
 lives in human hearts: lyric poetry being the very quintessence of human 
 sympathy and love and hope and the joy of life and the worship of nature. 
 No matter that it only lingers in the secret places: that the form is changed: 
 that it is overshadowed by the big worldly things of men. It is with the 
 troubadour spirit, as found among the folk-tales and folk-songs of a people, 
 as it was with the little maid in the old Portuguese folk-tale, who sings: 
 
 * Prince of love, 
 
 I have come many leagues 
 
 To see thee, O my Lord! 
 
 My shoes are torn; 
 
 My staff is travel-worn; 
 
 Yet here I am come back to thee!'
 
 ISABEL MOORE 347 
 
 II 
 
 The Kingdom of Portugal was, however, rather to one side of the track 
 of change and the old spirit Hngered there for some time after the reign of 
 Sancho II, although with the passing of the thirteenth century the poHtical 
 conditions changed entirely from a period of war and territorial expansion 
 to one of consolidation, preluding the Idade d'Ouro of heroic exploration 
 and Asiatic conquest. It was a certain poised period: a stopping to take 
 breath before a new and vigorous burst of enterprise: a lying fallow unto 
 the end of renewed life and activity. 
 
 During the fourteenth century there were hardly any writers of verse 
 in Portugal except members of the royal family; and of these, by far the 
 most illustrious was the earliest, Dom Dinez (1279-1325) 'Brave Dinez'as 
 Camoens called him. He was a lover of letters and a true poet, promoting 
 the literature of his country in much the same fashion as did his contempo- 
 rar)', Alfonso X, that of Castile. Not only did he found the great University 
 that afterwards moved from Lisbon to Coimbra, but he and his poetic 
 courtiers developed the Portuguese dialect into a beautiful and flexible 
 literary^ language. His own verse shows the influence of the Troubadours 
 rather than that of the Trouveres who had come into evidence at his father's 
 Court: but, as time went on, he more and more threw off^ the trammels of 
 the Provencal forms and, perceiving the beauty of his people's lyrics, wrote 
 some quaint and graceful ' Pastorellas' in which — as in almost all pastoral 
 poetr>' — the buccolic touch is easily conformable to the primitive religious 
 feeling of the people. The poems of Dom Dinez are to be found only in old 
 manuscripts. They are collected into Cancioneiros, two in number, the 
 first containing his Cantigas to the Virgin — another touch in common with 
 his Castilian contemporary — and the second his temporal works. 
 
 Besides Dom Dinez, of the royal poets, his son, Alfonzo IV, wrote verse 
 that has never been printed, and the sonnet in praise of Vasco de Lobeira 
 is said to have been written by him, although some authorities attribute it 
 to Pedro, the son of John the Great. This Lobeira deserves particular 
 mention because there is little doubt that he gave to the literary world the 
 first version of Amadis of Gaul, though the earliest version we now have is 
 the Spanish of Garci-Ordonez de Montalvo which was written about 1495. 
 There is proof that the story of Amadis existed as early as 1325 and, until 
 the end of the sixteenth centur)-, a manuscript copy of Lobeira's work was 
 in the possession of the Dukes of Aveiro at Lisbon. It was probably in 
 verse, bur this is nor known wirh cerrainry and it has been lost sight ot since 
 the middle of the eighteenth century. Rather curiously, the last of the line
 
 348 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 of the A modi s romances, as well as the first, is attrihuted to a Portuguese and 
 was entitled ' Penalava.' It is supposed to have dealt with the last exploits 
 and death of Lisuarte, King of Greece; but, if it ever really existed, no copy 
 of it seems ever to have been seen. 
 
 The second series of great Spanish romances — that of the Pal- 
 merins — was for a long time supposed to have had a Portuguese origin. 
 This was an error, however, arising from a misunderstanding of a state- 
 ment on the part of its translator from the Spanish. But the Seventh, 
 Eighth and Ninth (the Ninth being the last) of the Palmerin sequence were 
 written by Portuguese; the Eighth and Ninth by Balth; Gon^alvez Lobato, 
 and the Seventh (which has never been translated into any other language) 
 by Diogo Fernandez. 
 
 It was King Alfonzo IV (1325-1357), son and successor of Dom Dinez, 
 whose forces, united with those of Alfonzo of Castile, won the great victory 
 over the Moors in the battle of the Salado that was the inspiration of the 
 first Portuguese epic by Alfonzo Giraldes, the forerunner of Camoens. The 
 year 1348 of his reign was marked by the Black Death; and the next to the 
 last of his reign by the tragedy of Inez de Castro, which has been the subject 
 of manv poems in many tongues. 
 
 The whole stor)- of Inez de Castro is one of fierce passions of love and 
 hate, of cruelty and of tenderness, and of a wild disloyalty that was superbly 
 loyal. She was a Castilian in the suite of Beatrice of Castile, wife of Alfonzo 
 IV, with whom their son, Dom Pedro, fell deeply in love. Inez became 
 the mistress of Pedro, living in a house of Coimbra, of which a few ruined 
 walls are all that now remain. Tradition says that Pedro visited her through 
 a conduit that ran from the Fonte dos Amores (Fountain of Love) that was 
 in the Oumta das Lagrimas (Garden of Tears). Constancia, the wife of 
 Pedro, died of grief; and, the affair coming to the knowledge of the King 
 Inez de Castro was murdered by his order. 
 
 Such is the briefest possible outline of the epiosde; and, it must be 
 admitted, that in outline it is in no way distinctive from the usual amours 
 of princes. But the sequel is what raises it above their level and places it, 
 humanly, among the great love tragedies of the world. No passing fancy 
 had it been on the part of Dom Pedro. His first act on ascending the throne, 
 two years later, was to punish the murderers of Inez. Alvero Gonsalves 
 and Pedro Coelho were slowly tortured to death before the eyes of Dom 
 Pedro in front of the royal palace of Coimbra; but the third, Pacheco, 
 succeeded in escaping to England. The marriage with Inez was then 
 pronounced vahd. Her body was disinterred; taken from the royal 
 monastery of Alcoba^a; and placed on a magnificent throne, elevated on
 
 ISABEL MOORE 349 
 
 many steps, in front of the great altar of the Cathedral of Coimbra. Her 
 robes were regal; a veil concealed her visage; a crown was on her head; 
 her hands were gloved, one grasping a scepter. Pedro stood on the right 
 side of the throne, in complete armour and bare-headed. The heralds 
 proclaimed the titles of Inez and called upon all true subjects to do honor 
 to their Queen. The two young princes, her sons, advanced and, it is said, 
 at first shrank back; but sustained and encouraged by the monks knelt on the 
 steps and kissed the dead hand that was raised and extended to them by the 
 officiating Bishops. The clergy, Ministers of State, officers of the Palace, 
 ladies of the Court, hereditary' nobles of the land, followed. Not a word was 
 spoken, not a sound heard, until the trumpets proclaimed that the royal ordi- 
 nance was accomplished and the Queen Consort of Portugal acknowledged by 
 her subjects. Then, attended by ever^- symbol of sovereignty, the dead body 
 of Inez de Castro was conducted from Coimbra back to the Alcobaca 
 Monastery — fifty-two miles — the road all the way being lined with people 
 on both sides, who bore lighted torches. The funeral procession was led 
 by Dom Pedro and his sons; attended by all the great of the kingdom, the 
 gentlemen dressed in long mourning robes, the ladies in white mourning 
 veils. 
 
 Once again was Inez de Castro taken from her grave. The second 
 time was by the French soldiers, during the Peninsular War, who dragged 
 her body and Pedro's forth in the mercenary hope of discovering concealed 
 treasure. Pedro was a mere skeleton in royal robes; but Inez had been 
 so skillfully embalmed that, it has been recorded, 'her beautiful face was 
 entirely unchanged, and her magnificent hair of a light lustrous auburn, 
 which had been the marvel of the whole nation during her life, so enriched 
 in length and volume that it covered her whole figure even to her feet and 
 excited the wonder and admiration of the very spoilers who tore away the 
 rich jewels by which her death garments were clasped.' 
 
 This story has been an inspiration to many literatures; and 
 the best literary version — with the exception of Camoens' episode and, 
 possibly, the dramas of the Spaniard, Bermudez — is the Portuguese tradegy 
 'Castro' by Dr. Antonio Ferreira, which is also the first Portuguese version. 
 In it is a Hymn to Love that is most lyrically beautiful and that, perhaps, 
 belongs here as illustrative of the subject that was its inspiration, although 
 Ferreira belongs to a later period and to a distinct school. It closes the 
 First Act of the drama, and Bouterwek gives the following two stanzas: 
 'Quando Amor naceo, 
 Claros rayos ao Sol, luz as estrellas. 
 O Ceo resplandecco,
 
 350 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 EJde sua luz vencida 
 
 A escuridao mostrow ascousas bellas. 
 
 Aquella, que subida 
 
 Esta na terceira esphera, 
 
 Do bravo nar nascida 
 
 Amor ao Mundo da, doce amor gera. 
 
 For Amor s'orna a terra 
 
 D'agoas e de verdura, 
 
 As arvores da folhas, cor as flores. 
 
 Em doce paz a guerra, 
 
 A dureza em brandura. 
 
 E mil odios converte em mil amores 
 
 Quanta vidas a dura: 
 
 Morte desfaz, renova: 
 
 A fermosa pintura 
 
 Do mundo, Amor a tem inteira, e nova.' 
 Dom Fedro himself wTote verse in both the Castilian and the Fortu- 
 guese. He used, almost entirely, the measure of the Italian canzone, indi- 
 cating that the Italian influence w^as felt at an early period in Portugal; 
 although, as a matter of fact, it was at that time but very slight. With 
 Dom Pedro passed the period of the royal poets. Royalty continued to 
 encourage literature with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but the rulers who 
 loved best the enterprises of discovery seem to have had little time for song or 
 inclination for song. 
 
 M. E. M. has made the following translations of three Cantigas by 
 Dom Pedro I: 
 
 I 
 
 'When shall my love be blest? 
 
 When shall my grief be o'er ^ 
 When shall my fears find rest, 
 Ne'er to awaken more ? 
 
 Doubt lets not grief depart; 
 
 Fear is still abiding; 
 Changeful Fate checks my heart 
 
 From its warm confiding. 
 
 Vainly doth Hope bestow 
 A sunny smile on me:
 
 ISABEL MOORE ^u 
 
 Ne'er doth my deep love know 
 Blessed Certainty.' 
 
 * Long-sighed for Peace! that all my pain 
 
 Cans't soothly end, 
 Hope would not smile on me in vain 
 Wert thou my friend. 
 
 Be but my friend! So wilt thou turn 
 
 My pain to pleasure; 
 And for the trials I have borne 
 
 Due guerdon measure. 
 
 Firm Faith can conquer Grief — e'en now 
 
 My griefs shall end; 
 And grim Despair will die, // thou 
 Wilt be mv friend.' 
 
 3 
 
 'First of Earth's Fair! how duly thine 
 
 Is the best homage of the heart; 
 I speak thy name as word divine. 
 To me the joy of life thou art. 
 
 Now by thy worth, thy charms, I give 
 
 Thee all my love; so full, so free, 
 That, self-unloving, now I live 
 
 Forgetting self, to think of thee. 
 
 Faith, in thine eyes, doth far outshine 
 All that Earth's brightest joys impart; 
 
 So, my life's wealth! like one divine 
 I'll shrine thee in my faithful heart.' 
 
 How accurate in feeling these translations are, the present writer does 
 not know, nor who M. E. M. was. The originals are very difficult of access 
 and there has been no opportunity to compare them with the translations. 
 There are certain indications that the spontaneity of feeling has been sacri-
 
 352 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 ficed to the necessities of English verse, but this may not be so. Only, all 
 translations should be approached with a chastened and careful spirit, to 
 invalidate, so far as possible, the Italian saving that 'A translation is a 
 betra\al!' 'Of all species of poetry,' savs Sismondi, 'perhaps the lyric and 
 bucolic are least susceptible of being rendered into another tongue. They 
 lose the very essence oi their beauty.' 
 
 There is a poetical lament in Spanish of Dom Pedro's that comes to 
 us out of the Past in a great cry of anguish, an almost literal translation 
 of which is: 
 
 * Blood of my heart, heart that belonged to me, heart that hath thus 
 been stricken, who could dare strike thee ? His heart I will tear out!' 
 
 There is a certain direct and personal wail of love and rage and revenge 
 in this — barbaric and passionate — that brings Dom Pedro the man, and 
 even Dom Pedro the poet, possibly Dom Pedro the King, — into a more 
 intimate sympathy with the universality of human suffering. The form 
 seems to have not been considered: there is none of the objectivity to which 
 verse, even direct and emotional verse, is usually bound: and, consequently, 
 on Carlvle's principle 'see deeply enough and you see musically' — the 
 spontaneous form is essentially and inevitably poetic. 
 
 Ill 
 
 'Sail toward the setting sun until you come to an island' was the 
 instruction given by Prince Henry of Portugal to one of the early explorers: 
 and that is what the Portuguese proceeded to do, only they went in the 
 direction of the rising sun also, and came to continents as well as islands. 
 Portugal's 'Idade d'Ouro' was her period of maritime greatness and coin- 
 cided, in essential points, with the similar period in Spain. Both nations 
 became too intent on affairs of action to be immediately creative in literature. 
 With the exception of the old ballads that continued to be sung in the hearts 
 of the common people, there was no verse to speak of written; and that of 
 the earlier times did not receive the attention that it merited. Both the 
 Castilian Court under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Portuguese Court 
 under John the Great were filled with the noteworthy men of the day: 
 warriors, statesmen, discoverers, inventors; and, so far as it existed, the 
 literary movement was also patronized by these sovereigns; but, in Portugal 
 certainlv, it was not until the succeeding reign of Dom Emmanuel that it 
 consisted of anything except such fugitive ballad literature as already existed 
 and historical chronicles. But, as Prince Henry the Navigator had prepared 
 the way for the illustrious discoveries of the reign of Dom John II, so, in
 
 ISABEL MOORE 353 
 
 turn, did Dom John II prepare the way for the Hterary glories of the reign 
 of Emmanuel. The ston/' of nations shows that a Golden Age of literature 
 is apt to follow ver\' closely a Golden Age of national glory and accomplish- 
 ment; and the growth ot Portuguese greatness as a whole was an unbroken 
 crescendo of achievement. Emmanuel himself (1495-1521) did little to 
 encourage the literar)' activity of his country; but the inevitable outburst 
 came to its fulfillment during his time. Rather curiously, perhaps, its two 
 forerunners were also echoes of the age just passed. 
 
 Christoval Falcao is the earlier, and most of his poems belong to the 
 class of the Castilian viUancicos and consist chiefly of Cantigas or glossed 
 mottoes called Esparcas. Like most poets — and, indeed, some ordinary 
 mortals — he had his vital love affair; becoming enamored of the young 
 and beautiful Maria Brandam, daughter of Diogo Brandam, the Royal 
 Treasurer, and likewise a graceful and pathetic poet. The lovers were 
 separated by her family, and the lady placed in a Convent from which she 
 eloped with Falcao and reached in safety the town of Elvas, not far from 
 Falcao's native Pontalegre, where they were privately married. He thus 
 incurred not only the enmity of her faimly, but of the Church, for eloping 
 with the inmate of a Convent; and for five years was imprisoned upon false 
 charges. During this imprisonment, he wrote various Cantigas and also, 
 to his Maria, a poetic epistle superscribed: *A Letter of Chrisfal, which, 
 while a prisoner, he addressed to a Lady whom he had privately married, 
 contrary to the will of her relatives.' His longest, principal, and probably 
 first, composition was, however, an eclogue of ninety stanzas interspersed 
 with cantigas. It is entitled 'Los Amores de Chrisfal' and is a history of 
 the love passages between himself and his beloved, whom he celebrated by 
 her own name. A pretty touch is at the end, when a nymph, who has heard 
 the complaints of Chrisfal, inscribes them on a poplar tree, in order that 
 they may grow with the tree to a height beyond the reach of vulgar ideas. 
 M. E. M. gives this translation: 
 
 'The Shepherd sang his sad farewell. 
 
 A wood-nymph, listening to his vow. 
 Caught up the fond words as ihey fell 
 
 And carved them on a poplar bough. 
 It was a }oung and growing tree; 
 
 And there she wrote the words of love 
 That rising with it, they might be 
 Placed high this sordid earth above: — 
 Where no low thought could e'er attain 
 To desecrate the poet's strain!'
 
 354 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 Notices of Falcao are few and his works rare. His simplicity has been 
 likened to that of a Grecian statue, 'equally unclad, but equally chaste and 
 pure.' One of his little versifications is an odd specimen of antithesis and 
 repetition: 
 
 'Then let the end begin its ending; 
 
 Since end, beginning works within: — 
 I know not how my fate is tending, 
 Whether to end or to begin!' 
 
 A greater than Falcao was Bernardim Ribeyro. Indeed, he is the most 
 celebrated of the Portuguese poets of the fifteenth century; and his Eclogues, 
 preceding those of Juan del Enzina of Castile, who lived about the same 
 time — have the original touch of representing pastoral life as the poetic 
 model of human life, and as the ideal point from which every passion and 
 sentiment ought to be viewed. He is said to have been in love with the 
 Infanta Dona Beatrice; and, under cover of little pastoral pictures, reveals 
 certain events and romantic situations of the Lisbon Court. Not only was 
 Ribeyro a married man at the time, but the King's daughter could never 
 become anything to him except his ideal, the inspiration of his verse; she 
 seems, however, to have served this purpose satisfactorily to one of the 
 most temperamental of poets. Several of Ribeyro's poems were the direct 
 result of his hopeless passion; the most beautiful being that beginning: 
 
 * My sorrows led me forth one day,' 
 and, possibly this was the day when he witnessed the departure of the Infanta 
 to be married to the Duke of Savoy; an occasion that the historian Resende 
 calls 'a very lustrous affair.' 
 
 But, aside from the merit of Ribeyro's Eclogues, and the interest 
 attached to them as being the oldest examples of the eclogue in either 
 Spanish or Portuguese verse, the graceful little prose fragment left by him 
 unfinished and published about 1500, is even more worthy of preservation 
 and recognition. It is entitled ' Menina e Mouca,' "small and young," 
 or — not quite so literally in form but more literally in meaning — 'A Young 
 and Innocent Maid.' It is a specimen of romantic prose that is both 
 pastoral and chivalric, and that can be most favorably compared with the 
 'Rosylinde' of Thomas Lodge, which served Shakespeare in his creation 
 of 'As You Like It.' There is what is called the new edition of 'Meninae 
 Mouca,' published by a descendant of the poet, in Lisbon, 1785. But the 
 old edition of 1559 is by far the more interesting and valuable because the 
 Appendix includes the Eclogue and Falcao's ' Chrisfal,' as well as a collection 
 of poems by other early Portuguese authors. For both Falcao and Ribeyro 
 had their followers and imitators. And this early group devoted itself to
 
 ISABEL MOORE 355 
 
 the lyric expression of its nativiry, only very slightly touched by the passion 
 for Latin versification that prevailed in the Spanish Peninsular as well as 
 in Italy toward the close of the fifteenth century. They were free from 
 any desire to model their verse after antique classic forms; and, though 
 they occasionally wrote Latin verse, the vernacular tongue and forms not 
 only were not despised nor neglected, but were actually all-sufficient. 
 
 Portugal is without doubt the native home of romantic pastoral poetry. 
 In Portugal it became truly national. The Portuguese are given to the 
 utterance of their emotions. 'They are a gesticulating people, and have 
 a heart: — and wear it on their sleeve,' has been justly said of them. The 
 step that leads directly on from national characteristics to national literature, 
 has been aptlv noted by Bouterwek, who says: 'They pastoralize their 
 emotions, whether of joy or sorrow.' 
 
 IV 
 
 The introduction of the Italian influence upon Portuguese literature 
 was unaccompanied by any remarkable struggle or sensation: but it is of 
 vast importance because of its influence on those poets who formed what 
 is called the Classic School of Portuguese literature, two of whom, and the 
 principal two, gave certain personal touches of style to Castilian literature 
 in return for the Italian influence which doubtless reached Portugal through 
 Castilian sources. Indeed, to George Montemayor (1520-1561) is attributed 
 the introduction into Spain of the prose pastoral: and both Montemayor 
 and Sa de Miranda belong to Castilian literature almost as much as they 
 do to Portuguese. At this time the Castihan was held in such Hterary 
 esteem in Portugal that many Portuguese poets, without undervaluing their 
 mother-tongue, frequently wrote in the Castilian, so as to be regarded as 
 masters of the poetic art. One sonnet of Montemayor's can be read as 
 either Spanish or Portuguese, so versatile did he become in writing the two 
 languages at once. Yet, though six out of his eight Eclogues are in the 
 Castilian, his pastorals are not all in the manner of Boscan and Garcilasse, 
 but sometimes favor the ancient short meter and have great simplicity of 
 
 style. 
 
 George Montemayor was born near Coimbra and became a common 
 soldier with a gift of music and having a fine voice as well as being a poet. 
 Marfida, a Castilian lady fi)r whom he seems really to have cared, was also 
 the divinity of his verse: but, after the manner of such divinities, she 
 married somebody else, and thus — as in the case of Ribcyro — his theme 
 came readilv to hand. 'Dis "Diana" (" Diana Enamorada"),' says Bonter-
 
 356 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 wek, 'is the soul of himself. He succeeds in conveying the joys and sorrows 
 of his own heart in forms of general interest.' In this unfinished pastoral 
 there is a series of Uric poems, parti}' in the Italian and partly in the Castilian 
 stvle, of one of which Sismondi gives the following translation: 
 * Never beloved, but still to love a slave, 
 
 Still shall I love, though hopeless is my suit; 
 
 I suffer torments, which I never gave, 
 
 And my unheeded sighs no ear salute: 
 
 Complaint is sweet though we no favor know, 
 
 I reaped but shame in shimmering love's pursuit: 
 
 Forsetfulness alone I suffer not — 
 
 Alas! unthought of, can we be forgot?' 
 His Diana really lived: a rich and beautiful woman of Valencia, and 
 is spoken of by Lope de Vega in his 'Dorotea.' 
 
 Sa de Miranda (1494-1558) wrote so much in the Castilian and had 
 so marked an influence on the Castilian School that he is often considered 
 as a Castilian poet: but, in reality, with the exception of the pastoral poems, 
 the greater part of his verse is in the Portuguese language. He wrote eight 
 Eclogues in Castilian and only two in Portuguese: of the first of which he 
 tells us that it is 'A Pastoral Dialogue in tercets concerning love and in- 
 difference, happiness and unhappiness.' He wrote sonnets in both Castilian 
 and Portuguese; the best of which in the latter language are considered 
 to be those to Diogo Bernades and to Dom Manuel of Portugal. He wrote 
 a beautiful Elegy on the death of his son. Under the general heading of 
 'Poesias Varias' he produced innumerable sonnets, elegies, redondiihas, 
 cantigas, sextinas, esparsas, that are all exceedingly simple and graceful; 
 and two comedies, 'Os Estrangeiros' and 'Os Vilhalpandos first printed, 
 in Lisbon (1595) by Manoel de Lyra. His popular songs are in the more 
 ancient forms of Portuguese versification. They repeat the idea of the 
 motto, differently turned and applied, but with its text not literally inter- 
 woven with the variations: and this is precisely the difference that dis- 
 tinguishes the older Portuguese cantigas from the Spanish villancicos. 
 Sa de Miranda spent most of his life on his estate of Tapada near Ponte de 
 Lima. He was particularly fond of country life and, best of all, country 
 life in his own country. Its romantic pastoral world was the native one for 
 his muse, and, whether he used the Castilian language of the Portuguese, 
 the scenes of his pastorals were always laid in Portugal. He wrote with 
 so little regard for the accepted rules of versification and with so individual 
 a style as to be the despair of critics. He tried all forms as well as dis- 
 regarded all forms. Sometimes his pastorals are like the Italian canzoni,
 
 ISABEL MOORE 357 
 
 and sometimes like the Latin ode. His style has been ridiculed as 'the 
 Luso-Hispano-Italiano blending.' Aside from the eminence attained by 
 this Classic School in itself, however, the influence of the Italian upon Portu- 
 guese versification can never be deplored even by the most patriotic, for 
 w^hat the Italian enabled Montemayor and Miranda and the others of the 
 group to do, was to perfect and refine the possibilities of the old Portuguese 
 style into more beautiful and completed forms. 
 
 It is sometimes said that with Sa de Miranda the literary history of 
 the Portuguese drama commenced. Certainly, in spite of the emotional 
 tendencies of the Portuguese, no special effort at dramatic writing is to be 
 found in Portugal, as there is not in Spain, until the latter half of the fifteenth 
 century: and Juan de la Enzina must be regarded as the founder of the 
 Portuguese as well as of the Castilian drama. But Gil Vicente is really the 
 Portuguese author most closely concerned with the establishment of the 
 national theater. He was born, probably, twenty years before the close of 
 the fifteenth century, during the reign of Emmanuel; but Emmanuel's son 
 and successor, Dom John III, was the acknowledged patron of Gil Vicente 
 and he was a contemporary of Torres Naharro in Spain, who did practically 
 the same for the Spanish drama as Vicente did for the Portuguese. Like 
 Montemayor and Miranda, he is to be numbered among the Spanish writers 
 as well as among those of his native land for, of all his plays, ten are in the 
 Castilian language and fifteen partly so, while seventeen are entirely Portu- 
 guese. In the judgment of Bouterwek, the farces of Gil Vicente are the 
 best of his productions; and he certainly is the representative of the Portu- 
 guese classic humor. 
 
 The reign of John HI saw the full flower of the Classic School. Dr. 
 Antonio Ferreira (1528-1564), another of the group, began his literary 
 eff'orts by avowing a great loyalty to his mother-tongue. He even once 
 declared that he would write in no other language. But he was hardly as 
 national as he intended to be. The influence of the Italian was irradicable; 
 and, although he did much to maintain the independent spirit of his coun- 
 try's literature, his predilection for classic forms was too strong for him to 
 withstand. His genius had dignity, but neither sublimity nor great origi- 
 nality. His taste was sound, but his fancv circumscribed. There was 
 *a tinge of pedantry, a sort of Latinized air, in his writings, which prevented 
 his being a popular poet or, indeed, what is much more vital, a great poet !' 
 Of his 113 sonnets, the best are those addressed to 'The Lady of His 
 Thoughts'; particularly the one beginning: 
 
 'Who hath seen burning snow, or fire, like mine.'' 
 
 Cold while it flames! what living man e'er stood 
 Within Death's gate, singing in joyous mood ?'
 
 358 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 His odes, not being lyric or truly dramatic, are not so fine as his sonnets; 
 yet he set an example to writers of odes in his own language in much the 
 same way as did his Spanish contemporary, Luis de Leon, to his country- 
 men. Ihe elegies of Ferreira are considered to be very beautiful; and, 
 up to the time of their appearance, were a new form in Portuguese com- 
 position, with the exception of one by Sa de Miranda. That on May is 
 as toUows: 
 
 \'em Mayo de mil hervas, de mil flores 
 As frontes coroado, e riso, e canto, 
 Com Venus, com Cupido, cos Amores. 
 Venca o prazer a dor, o riso ao pranto 
 Vase longe daqui cuidado duro, 
 Em quanto o ledo mez de Venus canto. 
 Eis mais alva a menham, mais claro, e puro 
 Do Sol o rayo: eis correm mais fermosas 
 Nuvens afugentando o ar grosso e escuro. 
 Sae a branda Diana entre as lumiosas 
 Estrellas tal, qual ja ao pastor fermoso 
 Veo pagar mil horas saudosas, 
 Mar brando, sereno ar, campo cheiroso, 
 Foge a Tristeza, o Prazer folto voa, 
 O dia mais dourado, e vagaroso. 
 Tecendo as Gracas vao nova coroa 
 
 De Mythro a May, ao filho mil Spiritos. 
 O fogo resplandece, a al jaba soa. 
 Mil versos, e mil vozes, e mil gritos 
 Todas de doo amor, e de brandura 
 Huns s'ouvem, huns nos troucos ficam escritos. 
 Ali soberba vem a Fermosura, 
 
 Apos ella a AfFeicao cega, e cativa, 
 Quanto huma mais chorosa, outra mais dura. 
 Ah manda Amor assi; assi quer ue viva 
 Contente a triste, do que sen Deos manda, 
 De seja inda mais dor, pena mais viva. 
 Mas quanto o mo^o encruece, a may abranda, 
 Ella a peconha, e o fogo Ihe tempera: 
 Assi senhora de mil almas anda. 
 Ali o Engano em seu mal cego espera 
 Hum' hora doce; ali o Encolhimento 
 Sem causa de si mesmo desespera. 
 Aos olhos vem atado a Pensamento.
 
 ISABEL MOORE 359 
 
 Nao voa a mail quali tem presente, 
 E em tanto mal, tudo he contentamento. 
 E riso, em festa corre a leda gente, 
 
 Tras o fermoso fogo em que sem pr'arde, 
 Cada hum, quanto mais arde, mais contente. 
 Manda Venus ao Sol menham e tarde. 
 
 Que sens crespos cabellos loure, e estenda, 
 Qu'em vir s' apresse, qu' em se tornar tarde. 
 Ao brando Norte, que assopre, e defenda 
 Do ardor da sesta a branda companhia, 
 Em quanto alcam de myrtho fresca tenda, 
 Corre por toda parte clara, e fria 
 
 Agoa; cae doce sombra do alto Louro, 
 Canta toda ave canto d'alegria; 
 Ella a neve descobre, e solta o ouro; 
 
 Banham-na as Gracas na mais clara fonte; 
 Aparece d' Amor rico thesouro, 
 Caem mil flores da dourada fronte, 
 
 Arde d'Amor o bosque, arda a altra serra, 
 Aos olhos reverdence o campo, e o monte. 
 Despende Amor sens tiros, nenhum erra, 
 Mil de baixo metal, algum do fino. 
 Fica de saus despojos chea a terra. 
 Vencida d'huma molher, e d'hum minino. 
 But the real fame of Dr. Antonio Ferreira rests on his tragedy of 
 'Castro,' for which he had no other model than the ancients and, possibly 
 Trissino's 'Sophonisba,' the first tragedy of modern times. It is difficult in 
 plot, but written in very beautiful language, with what may be called a 
 Greek Chorus of Coimbrian women: and, to fully appreciate the importance 
 of the epoch marked by its appearance, we must remember that at this 
 time neither France nor England knew anything of the drama beyond the 
 mysteries and moralities. 
 
 Yet others of the Classic School of Miranda were Diogo Bernardes, 
 the * Poet of Lima' and his brother Agostinho Bernardes who finally became 
 a hermit of the Arrabida. Southey considered Diogo Bernardes one of 
 the best of the Portuguese Poets. His life was a romance. He was a native 
 of Ponte de Lima and particularly loved the scenery of the river Lima, 
 his most characteristic work being, perhaps, the poem *0 Lyma, first 
 published in 1596. 
 
 'Lone by soft murmuring Lyma oft I stray,' 
 
 he sings.
 
 360 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 He went to Lisbon, and there, 
 
 'Where the Tatius loses tide and name 
 And freshness, Love robbed me of my Hfe's best days'; 
 he says in an epistle to his intimate, Ferreira. From his captivity to the 
 Moors in Africa, he writes: 
 
 Still lovely to my troubled thoughts shall seem 
 
 My own regretted Lyma, dear for ever; 
 E'en if Oblivion's spell be in its stream, 
 
 It hath no power on me, forgetting never, 
 Its soft low murmur could not lull to rest, 
 Remembrance, ever wakeful, in my breast!' 
 The river Lima is the Lethe of the ancient world, and there is an interest- 
 intr legend of it about Decimus Brutas and his superstitious soldiery. 
 
 In later years Bernardes wrote a good deal of devotional verse. That 
 addressed to the Virgin partakes curiously of the love song element. He 
 becomes for the time most romantically spiritual; and the Virgin is his 
 'Lady' in all human attributes as well as being his divinity. One of his 
 songs not addressed to the Virgin, but to his Soul, is written in the old 
 national Portuguese Endechas, a kind of plaintive verse: 
 
 'Soul, why self-deceiving. 
 
 Self-forgetting be ? 
 To mortal life thus giving 
 Triumphs over thee. 
 
 Life maltreats, betrays thee, 
 
 Yet thou lov'st it — why 
 E'en for that which slays thee 
 
 Dost thou gladly die ^. 
 
 All that Life, requiring. 
 
 Seeks, or can obtain. 
 Given to its desiring 
 
 Were but brief and vain. 
 
 Whence proceeds the erring 
 
 And perverted will; 
 To certain good preferring 
 
 But too certain ill ? 
 
 Joys, like flowers late blooming 
 (Born of quick decay)
 
 ISABEL MOORE 361 
 
 Pinions like assuming, 
 Pass like winds away.' 
 For a long time Diogo Bernardes was under a cloud among literary 
 people on account of having been accused of plagerism from Camoens. 
 There seems, however, to be no particular foundation for this, and late 
 students have exonerated him. What we do know with certainty — and 
 what may have given rise to the accusation — is, that, when Camoens' 
 first poems appeared, Bernardes was the only one of the classicists who 
 publicly avow^ed his high appreciation of them. 
 
 Jeronymo Cortreal and Pedro Andrade Caminha were two others of 
 the Classic School, though little more than imitators of Ferreira. Francisco 
 Manuel do Nascimento was another, who developed much more individuality 
 of style. And one interesting human thing to note about this group of 
 Portuguese writers is that there remains now no record to show that there 
 ever existed among them any literary jealousy. They seem to have been 
 all friends and co-workers. The last of the distinctive classicists was 
 Rodriguez Lobo, born in Leiria about the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 So great a scholar was he and so lasting an influence had he on romantic prose 
 that he has been ranked next to Camoens and Miranda. Little is known 
 of him personally except that he lived in retirement in Santarem and met 
 his death by drowning in the Tagus which he loved and so often had cele- 
 brated in verse. He wrote ten eclogues in Portuguese and about a hundred 
 romances in Spanish and founded that excessive accumulation of pastoral 
 poetry existing in Portugal, doing all in his power to fix the national taste 
 in that direction. His 'Court in the Country' was the first book of classic 
 prose to be produced in Portugal; and he also wrote three connected 
 pastoral romances that are pronounced by Bouterwek to be 'the most 
 luxuriant blossoms of this old branch of Portuguese poetry.' They are very 
 long; set in a framework of prose; and entitled 'Primavera' ('Spring') 
 'O Pastor Peregrine' ('The Wandering Shepherd'), and 'O Desengando' 
 ('The Disenchanted'). They contain several beautiful lyrics: the following 
 being from 'Primavera' (translated by M. E. M.). 
 'Now the wished-for sun is bringing 
 
 Life to day, and tints to earth; 
 Leads the shepherd, gaily singing, 
 
 To his flocks that wait him, forth. 
 Now chill night succeeds, and chases 
 
 Golden luster from the skies; 
 Bright-eyed dawn the night replaces 
 
 While its radiance glads our eyes.
 
 362 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 Learn we thus (and not in vain) 
 
 Suns hut set to rise again. 
 One day flies — the rest that follow 
 
 Rtnch us, but are mocking fleet; 
 Laugliing at my hopes so hollow, 
 
 And my visions false, yet sweet. 
 Still, howe'er, my fate may thwart me 
 
 Unconvinced, unchanged, I live; 
 From those dreams I cannot part me 
 
 That such dear delusions give; 
 Hoping vet in countless years 
 
 One bright day unstained with tears.' 
 There are other poets of this period who do not belong to the Classic School, 
 notably, Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Rodriguez de Castro, Gabriel 
 Pereira de Castro, and Lobe de Soropito. Vasconcellos wrote several 
 comedies and a romance of the Round Table, Rodriguez de Castro lived 
 in Italy a good deal and wrote sonnets, odes and eclogues; Gabriel de 
 Castro wrote the heroic poem 'Ulissea'; and Soropito's chief claim to dis- 
 tinction is that he published the miscellaneous poems of Camoens. 
 
 Such epics as 'Ulissea' and the 'Malacca Conquestada' of Francesco 
 de Sa de Menzes gave rise, to a certain extent, to the authentic histories 
 which came into evidence about this time. The 'Asia' of John de Barras 
 was the first great work containing genuine information relating to the 
 Portuguese possessions in Asia. Lopez de Castenheda and Antonio 
 Bocarro gave histories of the Portuguese conquests of India. Alfonso 
 Albuquerque wrote his Commentaries: Damio de Goez compiled his 
 account of the reign of Dom Emanuel: Bernardo de Brito wrote his *Mon- 
 archia Lusitana': Jerome Osorio wrote his history: and last but by no 
 means least, Manuel de Faria e Sousa wrote his 'Europa Portuguesa.* 
 Although he was the author of 'Divinas y Humanas Elores,' he was a finer 
 historian than poet; and also produced a valued commentary on the 
 miscellaneous poems of Camoens. With him pastoral poetry went into its 
 grotesque state, as will be seen was inevitable from his remark to the effect 
 that 'the only (observe the only) things required in poetry are invention, 
 imager)', pathos, and a display of ever}' kind of knowledge.' It is interesting 
 to compare this wich the opinion of the Marquis of Santillana who, in his 
 remarkable and well-known letter, speaks of poetry as 'an invention of useful 
 things which, being enveloped in a beautiful veil, are arranged, exposed 
 and concealed, according to a certain calculation, measurement and weight.' 
 To such straits had poetry come! Although the influence of the Classic
 
 ISABEL MOORE 363 
 
 School lingered long in Portuguese literature, it became extinct about the 
 close of the sixteenth century, and all Portuguese literature was about to 
 be stricken temporarily dumb. 
 
 The wave of national prosperity, material and intellectual, was receding. 
 Several events had transpired that were lost sight of at the immediate time, 
 but that had a most disastrous effect on the national life. In 1540 the Jesuits 
 had been introduced. During the reign of John III the Inquisition had 
 been established, with the Holy Office in Lisbon. The Jews were finally 
 expelled from the Peninsular. The growth of the absolute monarchial 
 principle; the evils of the slave trade; and the depopulation due to the 
 emigrations to the newly established colonies; had all sapped the vigor of 
 the kingdom. Then came the misplaced ambition of Dom Sebastian to 
 conquer Africa and his complete defeat in 1578: with the entailed Spanish 
 Captivity (1580-1640). It had long been a veritable 'castle in Spain' 
 with Philip II to subjugate Portugal and, Sebastian's death having left the 
 Portuguese throne open to various pretenders, he now availed himself of 
 his neighbor to accomplish his desires. 
 
 A few there were who foresaw the utter downfall of Portuguese greatness 
 and independence; who could stand aside and objectively view the unhappy 
 trend of coming events. Camoens was one of these; and, just before the 
 grip of Spain killed the material prosperity and lyric life of the Portuguese 
 people, he lifted up his voice — like the fabled song of the expiring swan — 
 and gave to all the world his great poem 'Os Lusiads.' 
 
 V 
 
 Camoens can no more be dealt with in short space than can Shakespeare. 
 He is the climactic arrival; the whole that contains the lesser parts; the 
 last of the adventurous spirits; the master of Portuguese literature. 
 
 Briefly, Luiz de Camoens came of a good Galician family and was 
 born in Lisbon, in the 'Mouraria' or Moorish part of the city, in 1524. 
 His university days were spent in Coimbra, where an uncle of his was the 
 principal Chancellor of the University. They were probably the happiest 
 years of his life. Then came his love affair. On a Good Friday, in the 
 Church of Christ's Wounds in Lisbon, on April nth, 1542, he first beheld 
 Dona Caterina de Ataide, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. Laws 
 at that time were 'very severe upon anyone who encouraged amours within 
 the palace' and because of some misdemeanor in connection with his love 
 affair, Camoens was banished from Court. This formed a pretext for the 
 family of the lady to terminate all intercourse between them; but, in the 
 hour of parting, Caterina confessed her love. It was natural that in his
 
 364 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 banishment he should seek the countn^ of the 'Rihatejo' or banks of the 
 Tamils above Lisbon, for his mother Dona Anna de Sae Macedo, was of the 
 noMe family of the Macedos of Santaren. From his retirement he sought 
 and obtained permission to accompany King John III agamst the African 
 Moors, in which expedition Camoens lost his right eye from splinters from 
 the deck of the ship on which he was stationed. His conduct was so brave, 
 that he was at last recalled to Court: — only to learn of the death — at the 
 age of twenty — of his Caterina. After this he became a voluntary wanderer 
 and exile. The so-called cave in which Camoens is said to have written 
 his crreat poem of the Lusiads is still shown in Macao, in Portuguese India, 
 in a'^garden just above the church of St. Antonio. From it there is a view 
 of the sea and the dim outhnes of fair islands. To the south and west lies 
 the Inner Harbor; to the north the Barrier and small walled town. In 
 1569 Camoens returned to his native land, to find the Plague raging in Lis- 
 bon. He survived his return eight years, 'living in the knowedge of many 
 and the society of few' and dying at the age of fifty-five. Of his country's 
 sad estate he had so clear a vision that he wrote to his friend. Dr. Francesco 
 de Almeida, a few days before his death: 'You will all see that I so loved 
 my mother country-, that I came back, not only to die in it, but with it.* 
 And only one year after his death, Philip II of Spain was proclaimed King 
 of Portugal. It is recorded that on his entrance into Lisbon, Philip asked 
 for Camoens and was grieved at hearing of his death. 
 
 The last days of Camoens, like those of many another gifted man, 
 were spent in neglect and poverty. Antonio, his Javanese servant, remained 
 with him to the end, actually begging in the streets for bread: and the 
 winding sheet in which he was wrapped was obtained in alms from the 
 house of D. Francesco de Portugal. On his gravestone in the Francescan 
 Convent Church of Sta. Anna is carved: 
 
 'Here lies Luiz Camoens: Prince of the Poets of his time. 
 He lived poor and miserable, and so he died.' 
 
 In the first edition of the Lusiads there was a note, written by one who 
 was present at his death-bed. The book was left by this person, F. Josepe 
 Judio, in the convent of the bare-footed Carmelites at Guadalaxara, and 
 is now in Lord Holland's collection. It reads: 
 
 'What can be more lamentable a thing than to see so great a genius 
 ill rewarded! I saw him die in a hospital at Lisbon, without a winding 
 sheet to cover him, after having triumphed in India and sailed 5500 leagues 
 by sea. What a great lesson for those who weary themselves day and night 
 in studying without profit, as a spider is weaving its web to catch flies.' 
 
 As a rule, the Portuguese do not seem to think so much of the minor
 
 ISABEL MOORE 365 
 
 poems of Camoens. They are apt to neglect his smaller compositions and 
 to undervalue their originality of sentiment and the beauty of their expres- 
 sion. But, as Viscount Strangford has truly pointed out, the real circum- 
 stances of Camoens' life are mostly to be found in his own minor com- 
 positions: and Robert Southey is of the opinion 'that to most imaginations, 
 Camoens will never appear so interesting as when he is bewailing his first 
 love. It is in these moments that he is most truly a poet.' Southey has 
 himself translated one of the sonnets of this emotion: 
 'Meet spirit, who so early didst depart. 
 Thou art at rest in Heaven: 1 linger here 
 And feed the lonely anguish of my heart; 
 Thinging of all that made existence dear. 
 All lost! If in that happy world above 
 Remembrance of this mortal world endure. 
 Thou wilt not then forget the perfect love 
 Which still thou seest in me, — O spirit pure! 
 And, if the irremediable grief, 
 The woe, which never hopes on earth relief. 
 May merit aught of thee; prefer thy prayer 
 To God, who took thee early to his rest, 
 That it may please him soon among the blest 
 To summon me, dear maid, to meet thee there.' 
 Another poem on the death of D. Caterina is as follows: 
 
 'Those charming eyes, within whose starry sphere 
 Love whilom sat and smiled the hours away. 
 Those braids of light that shamed the beams of day, 
 That hand benignant, and that heart sincere; 
 Those Virgin cheeks, which did so late appear 
 
 Like snow-banks, scattered with the blooms of May, 
 Turned to a little cold and worthless clay, 
 Are gone — forever gone — and perish here: 
 But not unbathed by Memory's warmest tear! 
 Are gone — forever gone — and perish here: 
 But not unbathed by Memory's warmest tear! 
 Death! thou hast torn, in one unpitying hour, 
 That fragrant plant, to which, while scarce a flower. 
 The mellower fruitage of its prime was given; 
 Love saw the deed — and, as he lingered near, 
 Sighed o'er the ruin, and returned to heaven!'
 
 366 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 And yet a third has an unmistakably direct bearing on his ' affair of the heart. ' 
 'Sweeth' \vas heard the anthem's choral strain, 
 And myriads bow'd before the sainted shrine* 
 In solemn reverence to their Sire divine, 
 Who gave the Lamb for guilty mortals slain; 
 When, in the midst of God's eternal fane, 
 Ah, little weening of his fell design! 
 Love bore the heart (which since hath ne'er been mine) 
 To one who seemed of heaven's elected train: 
 For sanctity of place or time were vain, 
 
 'Gainst that blind archer's soul-consuming power- 
 Which scorns and soars all circumstance above, 
 O, lady! since I've worn thy gentle chain 
 
 How oft have I deplored each wasted hour 
 When I was free: — and had not learned to love!' 
 Two of what may be called his nature sonnets are peculiarly indicative of 
 Camoens' temperamental nature, the one beginning: 
 *Mondego, thou, whose waters cold and clear 
 Gird those green banks where fancy fain would stay,' 
 and the lyric cry that has been translated by Richard Garnett: 
 *0, for a solitude so absolute, 
 
 Rapt from the spite of Fate so far away, 
 That foot of man hath never entered, nay, 
 Untrodden by the foot of every brute: 
 Some wood of aspect lowering and mute, 
 Or lonely glen not anywhere made gay, 
 With plot of pleasant green, or water's play; 
 Such haunt, in fine, as doth my anguish suit! 
 Thus is the entrail of the mountain locked. 
 I, sepulchred in life, alive in death. 
 Freely might breathe my plaint: perceiving there 
 The grief whose magnitude nought measureth 
 Less by the brilliance of the bright day mocked, 
 Soothed by the dark day more than otherwise,' 
 There are many random lines throughout his writings that give insight 
 to Camoens the man as well as to Camoens the poet. Observe, as examples : 
 'In lonely cell bereaved of liberty, 
 
 Error's meet recompense, long time I spent: 
 Then o'er the world disconsolate I went. 
 Bearing the broken chain that left me free.' 
 
 Sonnet 5.
 
 ISABEL MOORE 367 
 
 'But my disastrous star whom now I read: — 
 Blindness of death, and doubtfulness of life, 
 Have made me tremble when I see a joy,' 
 
 Sonnet 5. 
 'All things from hand to hand incessant pass.' 
 
 Sonnet 195. 
 'And wind hath taken what to wind was given.' 
 
 Sonnet 173. 
 'Thought built me castles soaring from the ground, 
 That ever, when the cope-stone should be laid, 
 Crumbled and lay upon the earth as dust.' 
 
 Sonnet 177. 
 'Ocean I roamed and isle and continent, 
 Seeking some remedy for life unsweet. 
 But he whom fortune will not frankly meet. 
 Vainly by venture woos her to his bent.' 
 
 Sonnet 100. 
 'Summoning the number of the wasted days; 
 They pass like shadows on the silent ways, 
 
 Nor fruit of them doth their slow march reveal. 
 Save this — they are no more!' 
 
 Sonnet 355 (Composed in prison). 
 'But the free soul, how far soe'er it range, 
 Thought-winged, flies lightly over land and sea. 
 And in your current doth her plumage lave.' 
 
 Sonnet 133. 
 *Yet am I storing up in sunny hour 
 Sweet thought of thee against the cloudy day.' 
 
 Sonnet 136 (On revisiting Cintra, 
 after the death of Caterina). 
 'Confessing with a silent tear 
 That heaven and hell are wondrous near!' 
 
 Canzonet. 
 'It was a little smile that stole 
 The cherish'd sweets of rest.' 
 
 Canzonet. 
 Camocns wrote many of his minor poems in Spanish, and some in a blend 
 of the two languages when he walks — as he expresses it — 'with one foot 
 in Portugal and the other in Spain.' The sonnets have been translated 
 by many different scholars and poets. His lyrics fall into two main classes,
 
 368 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 accorclinn to Burton, those written in Italian meters and those in the trochaic 
 hnes and strophic forms of the Peninsular. The first class is contained 
 in the 'Parnasso,' which comprises 358 sonnets, 22 canzones, 27 elegies, 
 12 odes, 8 octaves, 15 idvls, — all of which tesify to the strong influence 
 of the Italian School and, especially, of Petrarch. The second class is 
 contained in the 'Cancioneiro,' or song book, and includes more than 150 
 compositions in the national peninsular manner. He never prepared an 
 edition of his ' Rimas' and the manuscript he is said to have arranged during 
 his sojourn in Mozambique from 1567 to 1569 is said to have been stolen. In 
 1595 Fernao Rodrigues Lobo Soropita collected from Portugal and India, 
 and published in Lisbon, a volume of 172 songs by Camoens, four of which 
 are not by Cameons and others of which are doubtful. 
 
 All Camoens' lyrics have been translated into German by Dr. Wilhelm 
 Storck of the University of Munster: and in English there are innumerable 
 versions. But, as w^e all know, ' translation for the most part is an expedient 
 equally fallacious and impotent.' And Lord Byron observed that 'it is to 
 be remarked that the things given to the public as poems of Camoens' 
 are no more to be found in the original Portuguese than in the Songs of 
 
 Solomon.' 
 
 This holds particularly good with regard to the versions given by Lord 
 Viscount Strangford, the British Plenipotentiary at Lisbon during the 
 War of the Spanish Succession. Burton says amusingly: 'There is, how- 
 ever, nothing objectionable in his excerpts from Camoens' except their 
 perfect inadequacy.' 
 
 Strangford, indeed, cannot be called a translator. He was an adapter. 
 Camoens suggested to him a motif for his own gallant and amorous experi- 
 ences. Says Strangford of the minor poetry of Camoens': 'The general 
 characteristic is ease: not the studied carelessness of modern refinement, 
 but the graceful and charming simplicity of a Grecian muse.' This ease — 
 the first kind — Strangford presumes upon and applies to his own renderings 
 of Cameons' meanings, the most flagrant example being, perhaps, 'The 
 Lady who Swore by Her Eyes.' It is a very pleasing little poem — as 
 Strangford's. It is also very pleasing in the Portuguese of Camoens'. 
 But they are very, ver)^ different from each other. 
 
 Camoens somewhat admits of this sort of juggling. In his minor verse 
 he has the simplicity of the Troubadours with the elegance of the Italian 
 School. He was fond of the Troubadour poetry; and, in the days of his 
 young manhood, there was a certain Peninsular revival of interest in the 
 Troubadour forms, brought about through the Counts of Barcelona be- 
 coming by marriage Counts of Provence.
 
 ISABEL MOORE 369 
 
 Strangford's little volume of translations was most severely criticised, 
 shortly after it appeared, in the Edinburgh Review (1803) and a literal 
 version given of one of the poems by Camoens with Strangford's paraphrase. 
 Camoens reads: 
 
 'When the sun, overcast, is showing to the world a tranquil and dubious 
 light, to go along a beautiful meadow, figuring to myself my enemy — here 
 have I seen her composing her tresses — here, with her face upon her hand, 
 so beautiful — here talking cheerfully — there thoughtful — now standing 
 still — now walking — here was she seated — there she beheld me, as she 
 raised those eyes, so indifferent — here somewhat she moved — there secure — 
 here she grew sorrowful — there she smiled. — And, in short, in these 
 wear}' thoughts I pass this vain life, which lasts forever.' 
 
 Camoens seems to have taken this from Petrarch; and Strangford 
 thinks that Petrarch may be indebted for the idea to Ovid. Strangford's 
 rendering is: 
 
 'When day has smiled a soft farewell, 
 
 And night-drops bathe each shutting bell, 
 The shadows sail along the green, 
 
 And birds are still, and woods serene, 
 I wander silently. 
 
 And while my lone step prints the dew. 
 
 Dear are the dreams that bless my view, 
 To memory's eye the maid appears, 
 
 For whom have sprung my sweetest tears, 
 So oft, so silently. 
 
 I see her as, with graceful care, 
 
 She binds her braids of sunny hair; 
 I feel her harp's melodious thrill 
 
 Strike to my heart; — and thence be still. 
 Re-echoed faithfully. 
 
 I meet her mild and quiet eye, 
 
 Drink the warm spirit of her sigh, 
 See young love beating in her breast 
 
 And wish to mine its pulses prcst. 
 
 God knows how fervently!
 
 370 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 Such are my hours of dear delight, 
 
 And noon hut makes me wish for night, 
 And think how swift the minutes flew 
 When, last among the dropping dew, 
 I wandered silently.' 
 Pleasing as such versification may be in itself, there can be no apology 
 adequate to excuse calling it a translation, and the only explanation of such 
 a proceeding is that in the early part of the nineteenth century, when the 
 attention o\' all Europe was fixed on the Spanish Peninsular because of the 
 Napoleonic wars, Portugal became the literary fashion in England, and, 
 because hitherto so unknown, English writers felt that almost any extrava- 
 gance might be perpetrated in her name. On a par with Strangford's so- 
 called translations, is Mrs. Browning's extravaganza of emotion which she 
 called 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' and which never had any origin in 
 Portuguese literature, save that the Portuguese have ever written sonnets 
 and are impassioned in their love. 
 
 A translation by Strangford that is much more accurate in both feeling 
 and expression than the foregoing, is this Canzonet: 
 'I whispered her my last adieu, 
 I gave a mournful kiss; 
 Cold showers of sorrow bathed her eyes, 
 And her poor heart was torn with sighs; 
 Yet strange to tell — 'twas then I knew 
 Most perfect bliss. 
 
 For love, at other times suppress'd. 
 Was all betrayed at this — 
 I saw him weeping in her eyes, 
 I saw him breathe amongst her sighs. 
 And every sob which shook her breast 
 Thrilled mine with bliss. 
 
 The sigh which keen affection clears, 
 How can it judge amiss ? 
 To me it pictured hope; and taught 
 My spirit this consoling thought, 
 That Love's sun, though it rise in tears, 
 May set in bliss!' 
 And a Rondeau, that seems to have been suggested by a hint from the 
 Troubadour Ausian March, is too charming to be omitted, even in
 
 ISABEL MOORE 371 
 
 Strangford's translation — indeed, how far because of Strangford's trans- 
 lation, is an open question. 
 
 'Just like Love is yonder rose, 
 
 Heavenly fragrance round it throws; 
 Yet tears its dewy leaves disclose. 
 And in the midst of briars it blows, 
 Just like Love. 
 
 Culled to bloom upon the breast, 
 
 Since rough thorns the stem invest 
 They must be gathered with the rest 
 
 And, with it, to the heart be press'd, 
 Just like Love. 
 
 And when rude hands with twin-buds sever, 
 They die — and they shall blossom never — 
 
 Yes, the thorns be sharp as ever, 
 Just like Love. 
 Strangford never translated the Lusiad, except a few stanzas. This great 
 poem deals with the adventures of Vasco de Gama and is, almost incidentally 
 an epitome of the achievements of the Portuguese nation. Camoens dedi- 
 cated it to Dom Sebastian. The three greatest episodes in it are the Legend 
 of the Floating Island, The Spirit of the Cape and Inez de Castro. La 
 Harpe, who figures as one of the French translators of the Lusiads, says 
 that, although it lacks 'action, character and interest' as a whole, he prefers 
 its well-known episode of Dona Inez de Castro to the whole of 'Paradise 
 Lost.' Voltaire has also criticised the machinery of the Lusiads. But 
 Voltaire has also made Cameons born a Spaniard and a comrade of Vasco 
 de Gama who, as a matter of fact, died before Camoens was born. Southey, 
 although a Spanish scholar, was better acquainted with Mickle's poor 
 English heroic couplets than with the Portuguese of the Lusiads. La Harpe 
 did not know Portuguese at all (so says Sir Richard Burton), his so-called 
 translation being nothing more than a new rendering of the literal version 
 by D'Hermilly: and Voltaire knew the Lusiads only through Mickle's 
 translation. Adamson says (in 1820) that there are one Hebrew translation 
 of the Lusiads, five Latin, six Spanish, four Italian, three French, four 
 German, and two English. The oldest English version is by Sir Richard 
 Fanshaw (1655) who was the English Embassador sent to Lisbon to arrange 
 for the marriage of Cliarlcs II of England with Catherine of Braganza. 
 By the time of the third Centennial Celebration in Portugal of the death
 
 372 THE LTTP:RATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 of Camocns (i 580-1880) there were seven complete English translations. 
 At this time, also, there was brought out in Lisbon the best complete edition 
 ot Camoens' works, tlie ' Bibliotheca Camoneana,' by Juromenha, in seven 
 volumes. It contains a list ot all works upon, and translations of, Camoens. 
 Of the various translations of Camoens Burton says 'all are meager in the 
 e.xtreme, thev follow like a flock of sheep, they reflect one another like 
 a band o( Chinamen.' 
 
 Sir Richard Burton's own translations of the Lusiads and the Lyrics 
 of Camoens deserve h\ far the most consideration, as being entirely scholarly. 
 It so happened that his own personal tra\els formed, as he says, 'a running 
 and realistic commentary upon the Lusiads.' And again, 'I have not only 
 visited almost every place named in the Epos of Commerce; in many I 
 spent months and even years.' Burton speaks of *my Master, Camoens' 
 and finds in him much of the Orient; its 'havock and its all splendor. 
 And — regarding his translation — he naively remarks that 'after all, to 
 speak without due modesty, my most cogent reason for printing this trans- 
 lation of my Master is, simply, because I prefer it to all that have appeared.' 
 
 ^'et with all our faith in Richard Burton, we feel the need — when 
 reading his Camoens — of his wife's strenuous assertions: not that they 
 convince us; indeed, their very insistance merely confirms our worst fears: 
 but we need something to explain at least why certain mannerisms were 
 allowed to interfere with usual lucidity of feeling and expression of the 
 original text. She says: 'This translation is not a literary tour de force 
 done against time or to earn a reputation: it is the result of a daily act of 
 devotion of twenty years.' So far, so good. The scholarly devotion of 
 Burton has never been questioned. But, 'Whenever my husband has 
 appeared to coin words, or to use impossible words, they are the exact 
 rendering of Camoens; in every singularity or seeming eccentricity the 
 Disciple has faithfully followed his Master: — his object having been not 
 simply to write good verse, but to give a literal word for word rendering 
 of his favorite hero. And he has done it to the letter, not only in the words, 
 but in the meaning and intention of Camoens.' And again, 'To the 
 unaesthetic, to non-poets, non-linguists, non-musicians, non-artists. Burton's 
 Lusiads will be an unknown land, an unknown tongue,' 
 
 Even in the face of such an impeachment, one cannot refrain from 
 questioning the 'literal word for word rendering,' and — what is of far 
 greater importance — the 'meaning and intention of Camoens' in certain 
 lines. Not to be too prolix on the subject it is but neressary to compare 
 the following lines from the sonnets:
 
 ISABEL MOORE 373 
 
 'Amor, com a esperanca ja perdida.' — Camoens. 
 (Amor, with Esperance now for aye forlore.) — Burton. 
 
 'Com grandes esperancas ja cantey.' — Camoens. 
 (While ere I sang my song with hope so high.) — Burton. 
 
 'Amor, que o gesto humano na Alma Enscreve.' — Camoens. 
 (Amor, who human geste on soul doth write.) — Burton. 
 
 'Tanto de meu estado mecho incerto.' — Camoens. 
 (I find so many doubts my state enfold.) — Burton. 
 
 'Transforma se o amador na cousa amada.' — Camoens. 
 
 (Becomes the Lover to the Loved transformed.) — Burton. 
 But enough about Burton's methods. One either likes Burton or one does 
 not. With regard to our consideration of Camoens himself, we must 
 always remember that the epic was in its infancy. Trissino had attempted 
 the liberation of Italy from the Goths, but with poor success. Ariosto and 
 his followers had thrown enchantment around the fictions of Chivalry. 
 Tasso's 'Jerusalem Delivered' had appeared only the year before 'Os 
 Lusiads.' Verily, Camoens was, as Gerald Massey said: 
 
 'the poet of weary wanderers 
 In perilous lands; and wide-sea voyagers.' 
 
 VI 
 
 By the end of the sixteenth century the most brilliant period of Portu- 
 guese poetry had passed away. The Spanish Captivity was like a death- 
 blow, yet Portuguese literature could not die. When Philip II of Spain 
 annexed Portugal, it had produced Vasco de Gama and Alfonso de Albur- 
 querque; and its language had been developed from a Romance dialect 
 into a literary language by Miranda and Camoens. There was too much 
 individual strength for Portugal to become lost in Spain. The period 
 (1580-1640) was one of deep national depression and humiliation: but it 
 did not become the permanent established order. When, at last, the revolt 
 against Spanish oppressic)n had been victorious and the Portuguese dynasty 
 resumed its sway with John V, the first of the House of Braganza, the treaty 
 of offense and defense between Portugal and her ol dally, I'^iigland, was 
 renewed; and the crushed national life of Portugal again lifted up its head. 
 
 In hterature, her people turned naturally to the period of their past 
 greatness, and followers of Camoens imitated his great works. A few 
 Chronicles were written. But the new life was sluggish. One of the forms
 
 374 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 it took was a sort of buffoonery in the sonnet writing: and, while most of 
 this composition is weak and ridiculous, the burlesquing of the old pastoral 
 poetrv bv Freire de Andrade is said to be often witty and just. This crazy 
 and bombastic writing was called by Matheus Ribeyro the ' Posia Incuravel.' 
 But Portugal produced no Cervantes. 
 
 Though much was written, not much was written that was fine. Poetry 
 gained little from the recrudescence. Lyric art in the old national syllabic 
 meters was entirely abandoned. Patriotic feeling again found its way into 
 Portuguese life and letters, but, in the verse of Ribeiro de Macedo and Correa 
 de la Cerda, it became verily ' flat, stale and unprofitable.' This also applies 
 to the verse of Violante de Ceo, a nun in the Convent da Rosa in Lisbon and 
 the first woman whose name occurs in the annals of Portuguese literature. 
 Alveres da Cunha and Jeronymo Bahia also wrote a corrupt form of versifi- 
 cation. 
 
 There are, however, a few exceptions to the general deplorable condition; 
 notably, Barbosa Barcellar (1610-1663) who produced some good sonnets 
 in the style of Camoens, his most remarkable writings being a kind of elegy 
 of romantic aspiration called Saudades. 
 
 But the Poetic Muse lay gasping for breath. She could not seem to 
 recover from her bondage. In addition to this enfeebled state, was the 
 fact that a strong tide of French influence set in among Portuguese men of 
 letters and the life of the Court. Poor Portugal! So many foreign in- 
 fluences had been brought to bear upon her at various times; and yet, while 
 recognizing and to a degree accepting each, she had, nevertheless, held her 
 own individuality aloof. Now, however, exhausted and almost desperate, 
 she succumbed just when she was on the eve of a new birthright. From 
 the Gothic and Romanic she had arisen; borne herself triumphantly in the 
 presence of the Arabian, the Italian, the Castilian; now to droop quickly 
 before the French. This French influence is the characteristic of this 
 period of Portuguese poetry. Toward the end of the seventeenth century 
 there was a total decay of even the half-hearted attempts of the sonneteers 
 and the satirists. 
 
 The first part of the eighteenth century saw a slightly improved state 
 of things. Although the divinely creative instinct had gone, apparently 
 never to return, an historical and, to a certain extent, literary revival did 
 take place. The so-called Age of Sonnets was succeeded by the Age of 
 Academies. But when did Academies ever produce poetry .? 
 
 In 1720 the Academy of History was founded in Lisbon by John V, 
 during the reign of whose son, Joseph Emmanuel (1750-1777), lived the 
 the Marquis of Pombal, who was a patron of literature and music. Pombal
 
 ISABEL MOORE 375 
 
 founded the Acadia de Lishoa in 1757, two years after the great earthquake 
 that demoHshed the greater part of Lisbon and which Voltaire describes 
 so graphically in 'Candide.' He it was, too, who expelled the Jesuits, 
 thereby removing — for a time at least — one incubus off the heaving 
 breast of his mother country. The Arcadia de Lisboa was followed by the 
 Academia Real des Sciences in 1779, which published many of the old 
 Portuguese Chronicles. In 17 14 an Academia Portugueza had been formed 
 on the model of the French Academy with a view to improve the taste for 
 poetry; and offered prizes to serve this end. Other Academies, on the 
 Italian plan, followed. There was undoubtedly a great spirit of advance- 
 ment abroad, but it worked for the most part through the Academicians. 
 
 Among the earlier were Antonio Diniz da Cruz e Silva, who took the 
 name of Elpino Monacrense, and whose best work is his translation of the 
 Pindaric Odes: Joao Xavier de Matos, who translated a play by M. I'Abbe 
 Genest and called it 'Penelope' and who wrote a play 'Viriacia': Sebastao 
 Francisco Mendo Trigozo, who translated Racine; Hippolyto, who trans- 
 lated Euripides: Domingos dos Reis Quinta, who wrote a three-act tragedy 
 on Inez de Castro and was well-known; Pedro Antonio Correa Garcao, 
 who wrote, odes, satires, epistles, sonnets and two dramas, and won the 
 distinciton of being the first of the moderns to appreciate the purity of his 
 native language: and Francesco Manoel de Nascimento who took the name 
 of Elysio on joining the Academicians and who, escaping the earthquake 
 and the Inquisition, was exiled to France. Among the historians who lived 
 at this time were Alessandro Herculano, whose history of Portugal is 
 regarded as the highest authority, the Visconde de Santarem, and Augusto 
 Rebello da Silva. Among the dramatists was Manoel Maria Barbosa du 
 Bocage, who wrote the tragedies of * Viriato,' * Alfonso Henriques ' and ' Vasco 
 da Gama.' Among the poets were Luis Augusto Palmeirim, Jose Soares de 
 Passos, Jose da Silva, Mendes Leal, Antonio Feliciano de Castildo, Fran- 
 cesco de Pina de Mello, Joaquim Fortunado de Valdares Gamboa, Nicolao 
 Tolentino de Almeida, Joao Baptista Gomes, Louren^o Caminha, and 
 Paulino Cabral de Vasconcellos. Two others — Joao Baptista de Almeida 
 Garrett and D. Francesco Xavier de Menzes, Conde of Ericeira — stood 
 head and shoulders above their compeers. The former wrote a ten-canto 
 poem on Camoens and intended to collect the popular romance poetry of 
 Portugal as Scott did the minstrelsy of the Border, but failed to do so, 
 although he left an interesting letter on the subject in his romance of 
 'Adozindo': and the latter was altogether the most voluminous writer and 
 most brilhant literary character of his time, succeeding more than his 
 contemporaries in keeping free from the French influence, holding aloof
 
 376 THE LITERATURE OF PORTUGAL 
 
 and following more the traditions of the sixteenth century of Portuguese 
 literature. 
 
 Durini:; the latter half of the eighteenth century conditions became even 
 better. Francisco Vasconcellos, a native of Madeira, belonged to this 
 period. Diogo de Monroy e Vasconcellos, 'Fhomas de Sousa, Luis Simoes 
 de A/.evado, Diogo Camacho, Jacinto Freire de Andrade, Simao Torezao 
 Coelho, Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, Fernam Correa de la Cerda, Antonio 
 Telles da Silva and Nunes da Silva, some of whose songs and sonnets are 
 reallv worthier of a better day, are all named of writers who have sought 
 accomplishment. 
 
 ^'et, in spite of their vast endeavor and past achievement, we cannot 
 but realize the truth of what one who knows and loves the Portuguese, 
 has written : 
 
 'Portuguese poetry is like a time-honored olive that in its prime was 
 rich in luxuriant leaves and fair fruit, but is now drooping to decay; its 
 foliage thinned, its fruit degenerated, and giving no sign of throwing up 
 vigorous sapplings from its roots. . . It is, however, sometimes pleasant to 
 let memory recall, in its declining age, the flourishing time of the good 
 old tree.'
 
 HILLIGENLEI 
 
 By Warren Washburn Florer 
 
 THE earlier writings of Gustav Frenssen, the pastor poet of 
 Germany, have influenced thousands of German homes, 
 because the German people understand them. Frenssen's 
 books sing of nature and human life, grand, strong, and 
 true; of confidence in man, in the eternal powers, in God. 
 Thev sing of a simple, original Christianity — the religion 
 of Christ, the Man of Galilee. In these writings, the 
 essential source of which is experience with men, with their sorrows, their 
 sufferings, their needs, and their hopes, Frenssen fearlessly attacked the 
 sins, the customs, and the laws of family, church, state, which lay as a heavy 
 weight upon humanity. 
 
 The language of these writings is simple, direct, and natural. The 
 characters are natural, consistent men and women, therefore psychologically 
 true. They show development of observation and personality, and there- 
 fore growth. They betray a search for the truth, sometimes uncertain in 
 its results, therefore at times obscurity is evident. This is especially 
 noticeable in the means employed to throw light on the characters, as is 
 seen in the stories taken too often from the fable world. But withal they 
 are powerful books and their very weaknesses give hopes of future develop- 
 ment. 
 
 After four years of additional observation, research and seeking after 
 the truth, Frenssen gives his 'larger parish' 'Hilligenlei,' the theme of which 
 is a search in the mires and struggles, hopes and aspirations of humanity, 
 for a Holy Land. (Hilligenlei means Holy Land.) One still hears the echo 
 of the critics, each one striking the note corresponding to his education and 
 character, therefore to his attitude to literature and the problems of humanity, 
 especially to religion which is the foundation of the book. Perhaps no book 
 in the history of German literature has evoked such a storm of criticism. 
 
 Frenssen unfolds in this epochmaking work many phases of life of the 
 entire German people. It contains so much that the reader is unable to 
 grasp the content, and often one loses the numerous threads of action which 
 permeate the book. In fact these threads are at times apparently broken, 
 or at least disconnected. One becomes lost in the network of the experiences 
 of Kai Jans and the other leading characters. However, there is evident 
 a mastery of character development in the powerful Pe Ontjes Lau, in the 
 
 377
 
 378 HILLIGENLEI 
 
 brilliant, but deceptive Tjark Dusenschon, in the proud and passionate 
 Anna Boje, and in the beautiful friend of Kai Jans — Heinke Boje. 
 
 The character of Kai jans is not intended to be 'fertig.' His entire 
 life is a restless search for the Holy. It is a manifold development. He 
 is uncertain, introspective and lacks confidence. He sees his lofty con- 
 ception of human nature marred at every turn by the actions of men and 
 the cruelty of man to man. In the portrayal of Kai Jans, Frenssen shows 
 strength and consistency, not literar}' weakness. 
 
 The reader who considers 'Schwung,' freely translated "well-rounded 
 sentences,' as an essential characteristic of good style will take exception 
 to the simple, direct language. He will criticize also the figures and meta- 
 phors employed to interpret ideas and characters. An undesirable feature, 
 indeed, is the copious use of adjectives in description. A lack of discrimi- 
 nation in the language used by the different characters is a decided weakness. 
 This causes a certain smoothness of style, but it is obtained at the cost 
 of individuality. 
 
 Men are unfortunately not interested in child life, which is but man's 
 life in miniature, and so the introductory chapters may seem monotonous. 
 Men are not interested in the accounts of the life of Christ in the New 
 Testament, so the 'manuscript' with all its beauties and power may prove 
 to be tedious. Again one may smile at the fictitious village Hilligenlei, 
 with its peculiar characters, classes, institutions and episodes, but it is true 
 to nature. One may observe similar incidents and conditions in one's 
 own town. 
 
 Those who do not know, as Goethe said in defense of his Clarchen, 
 that there is a class between a 'Gottin' and a 'Dime,' will find many a 
 choice morsel to roll under their tongues in this book which treats naive 
 human impulses of strength and purity. Many who have experienced 
 but little of the world will deem much which is so commonplace as impossible, 
 firmly convinced that only that is possible which they meet in their narrow 
 walks of life. The life which Frenssen unfolds to them will be but a Marchen. 
 
 It is true that Frenssen has treated Sinnengier, not because he 'delighted 
 to depict the errors and sin of youth and men, but out of pity, in order that 
 one might be able to see the healthy and the natural.' The poet reformer 
 unveils a picture of social conditions which is appalling, and, if true, will 
 eventually lead, unless improved, to a disintegration of German society and 
 government, for these conditions are gnawing at the very foundation of all 
 society and government — the home. 
 
 Frenssen's purpose is to uplift humanity. Strengthened by the con- 
 ception that art has a moral purpose, he continues to attack the conditions
 
 WARREN WASHBURN FLORER 379 
 
 which tend to dull the moral sense of the people and to retard a healthy 
 development of the individual. Frenssen's ideal is that men and women 
 should enjoy the good and strong impulses of nature given them by the 
 eternal powers; should live a natural, therefore a moral life; should always 
 endeavor to search for a Holy Land, even through the valley of the shadow 
 of death. The rod and staff of comfort are wanting, because the people 
 have no religion. Yea, even worse, the youth laugh at religion and have 
 no respect for Christ. 
 
 Hilligenlei will not appeal to the average novel reader of our country. 
 It offers too serious food for thought and reflection. As a work of art it 
 will not satisfy many aesthetic readers. As in Germany it will evoke the 
 same opposition from the orthodox pastors of the land. But to men 
 interested in the progress of man and in the evolution of social conditions 
 it will prove to be a book full of rich treasures, a book which, if heeded, 
 will be a boon to our country, inasmuch as it treats conditions which are 
 already influencing American life. 
 
 At the very first the poet treats the old problem of society and literature, 
 the preying upon the natural instincts of human nature, the result of which 
 is too often illegitimate offspring. This offspring robbed of its natural 
 rights is either bitter or unscrupulous. Likewise the poet condemns 'Sitte' 
 (conventional morality) as one of the enemies of home life and the primary 
 cause of the Jungweibernot throughout the land. 
 
 The dire influences of the saloon upon the inhabitants of Hilligenlei 
 and upon the workmen in Berlin are depicted. In Hilligenlei one finds 
 the saloon the moving factor in the affairs of the village. Here are as- 
 sembled both old and young men. One beholds the hundreds who pass 
 on the highways of Slesvig-Holstein, lazy and intoxicated. One witnesses 
 the untimely death of the teacher Boje, just because a man was drunk. 
 The sad faces of women and children relate the influences of drink, drink 
 which fills the asylums and prisons, and poisons the morals and health of 
 countless thousands. 
 
 The young men, corrupted by these conditions, have false conceptions 
 of happiness and success. They strive for mere honor and money. The 
 principle of Tjark Dusenschon, 'one must take money wherever one can 
 get it,' the principle of graft, is true for hundreds of young men of this 
 generation and is encouraged by business men and by society. However, 
 in this age of unsafe finance, one hears the wise words of the merchant who 
 never fi)rgot the highest standard of his profession. He cared that no goods 
 should perish and that the wares of the earth should be distributed over the 
 entire world for the welfare of all, that they should become useful to men, 
 ward off need and increase the joys of life.
 
 38o HILLIGENLKI 
 
 Frenssen treats the conflicts of the rich and the poor. He traces the 
 underlying causes of the existing hatred and distrust, for example, the 
 excessive riches on one side, and on the other abject poverty, as seen in the 
 tenements of large cities. He believes that men are the real cause of sins 
 and sufferings in that they deprive their fellowmen of land and force them 
 to live in the pitiless, narrow streets. At the same time he cannot under- 
 stand why the men do not desire to go out into the country, into Holy land, 
 where the fresh air is like unto the breath of God, where the sunny houses 
 are situated in the open fields and on forest edges, where men have strong, 
 clear eyes and loft}', peaceful thoughts. He knows what stands in the way 
 of the progress of the workingmen. They avoid and hector one another. 
 In no class is there so much jealousy as in the workingman's class. The 
 life they lead drives earnestness out of the daily work and reverence out of 
 life. There is no desire to progress. Looking for relief, they stare upon 
 the officials and academicians. They should know that active energy can 
 further their cause more than plodding learning. 
 
 Frenssen rightly discerns the importance of the economic revolution 
 of Germany. A revolution which is affecting all classes, yes, springing from 
 all classes. A revolution evident in every artery of German life. Along 
 with this great economic revolution comes the worst religious confusion 
 at the very time when scientific investigation has undermined the dogmas of 
 churches. Men are without religion, and therefore bitter and discontented. 
 He emphasizes the confusion in the entire domain of morals, in art, in edu- 
 cation and how, as in every century, there passes a spirit of unrest through 
 the people — a fever, but a fever which leads to health. He has caught 
 the longing of the people to rejuvenate the three powerful forces which 
 it begets — government, religion, morality. He has observed a will, a wish, 
 permeating the people to come to nature, to a simple religion, to social 
 justice, to a noble Germanic humanity. Frenssen holds, however, that 
 a regeneration is impossible as long as the foundation upon which it must 
 rest is false. For him this foundation is religion, the faith of Christ, the man. 
 
 In 'Jorn Uhl' Frenssen attacks the pastors in the pulpit because they 
 do not know life and the needs of the hearers. In 'Hilligenlei* he reveals 
 the attitude of the people toward religion. This attitude is a pitiful one 
 and has its natural causes. One may shudder, but it is true, not only for 
 Hilligenlei and Berlin, but for America. 
 
 The children make God the servant of their own will, and half of them 
 do not believe what is said in the confirmation class. The words of Anna 
 Boje, as a child, are touching and natural: 'I believe everything because 
 the pastor says it. But, do you know what makes me sad .? God is really
 
 WARREN WASHBURN FLORER 381 
 
 a triune God, not so ? Sometimes I am so afraid, because at night I am so 
 tired and do not keep the right order. I beHeve I pray least to the Holy 
 Ghost, and he certainly is angry with me.' 
 
 Even the common workingmen question the teachings about the Virgin 
 Mary, deeming them impossible. They do not respect the teachings of 
 Christ because the church does not represent the Savior as human, but as 
 a golden image. Again, the church seems to be on the side of the rich and 
 has not a v^^ord or deed for the poor. 
 
 All progressive elements among the people — the w^orkingmen, the 
 seamen, the merchants, the students, the scholars and the artists question 
 the dogmas of the church. The entire folk is falling away from the old 
 faith of the church. The foundation of life is false, because the people 
 have no faith. The minds of men go restlessly from one meaning to another. 
 The priests have a false control over men, and error reigns supreme. 
 
 Frenssen relates of one, who in the midst of these conditions, restless 
 and full of hope, is searching for the Holy. He thus advances another step. 
 In * J'"rn Uhl' he demonstrated that the trials our people undergo for us are 
 worth the trouble' and that simple, deep life is worth relating and struggling 
 for. Here amidst all these struggles is an additional one, a search for the 
 Holy from childhood on, the task of Kai Jans, the task of Gustav Frenssen. 
 
 Step by step Frenssen, with almost laborious painstaking, prepares 
 Kai Jans to write the life of Christ. Kai Jans experiences the need and 
 oppression of a long life and of the entire nation. The poet equips him 
 with those pictures of life which Christ must have witnessed from childhood 
 on, in the country, in the village, and in the city. He initiates him into 
 the advance guard of higher criticism. But with all his learning Kai Jans 
 retains his childlike faith and simple heart. He also experiences the secret 
 of the most beautiful of God's nature, the love of a pure girl. But, in order 
 to write the life of Christ, which is a drama, Kai Jans is not permitted to 
 be happy in this love. Otherwise his Frau Sorge would leave him, and 
 therewith his interest in humanity as a whole. Peculiar admixture — this 
 preparation for 'The Life of Christ, represented according to German 
 investigations — the foundation of German regeneration.' 
 
 The ' manuscript,' the twenty-sixth chapter, which is absolutely 
 necessary as an organic part of the novel, is the storm center of criticism. 
 It has been attacked by hardshcllcd orthodoxy, higher criticism and atheism. 
 It has been received with misgivings and exultant joy. Witlial it is a natural 
 product of the religious reformation which is abroad in (jirmany. Thou- 
 sands of Germans have read this life of Christ as Hcinke Boje did. 'Fheir 
 thoughts have run to him of whom they have read, to the pure, vigorous
 
 382 HILLIGENLEI 
 
 man, the most beaiititul ot the children of men. Their faith has dune as 
 a vine to his faith. Many good people have fallen away from the poet of 
 ' Jorn Uhl.' And some who stood in awe before the eternal Son of God 
 have lost this fear and have entered upon evil ways. This chapter has left 
 a deep impression upon the minds of Germany and upon the religious 
 revolution. 
 
 It is a powerful chapter, full of the very life of Christ, full of Christ's 
 grand teachings. It leads us away from Slesvig-Holstein to the country 
 in which Christ lived, wandered and taught. We feel a faith, pure, strong 
 and good. We see the intense conflicts of that social revolution which has 
 left its impression on the development of humanity. We behold the simple 
 and grand life of Christ. We shudder at the strongly affecting death of 
 Christ. We are carried away in joy and compassion by this drama of life, 
 stripped of wonders and supernatural elements. It leads us to the footsteps 
 and back again to our own decade and to our own life. 
 
 The heart of the reader beats with the heart of the poet. But, we follow 
 the poet's own advice in ' Jorn Uhl,' read through Matthew and Mark to 
 see whether or not the poet has swallowed a goodly piece of the evangel and 
 misinterpreted another; to see whether the connecting links are not too 
 short. Involuntarily we are searching for the Holy. 
 
 When one looks upon the 'Life' as a whole, one naturally thinks of 
 Frenssen's criticism of the world's great philosophers and applies it to 
 himself: 'There is much "Dunkles und Kindlich-Wirres' in him.' When 
 one thinks of the poet's criticism of Paul, how under the inspiration of his 
 wonderful vision he made out of Christ a divine being, an eternal wonder- 
 man, one fears that Frenssen is likewise transported by his 'Marchen' of 
 nature and human life. 
 
 One wishes that Frenssen had rewritten his epitome of the history of 
 hundreds of thousands of years; that he had left to the reason of the reader 
 the firstly and secondly of the preacher and the eliminations of the debater; 
 that he had left to the future his exultant prophecy. If this faith is certain, 
 if this foundation is solid, school children, youih, artists, scholars, pastors, 
 state and Christianity will experience the joys prophesied. 
 
 Is the foundation which Frenssen gives certain and solid .? We fear 
 not. The writer himself was too uncertain. He was too 'grubelnd.' We 
 miss the inspiration of Paul, the certainty of the angry Luther, the insight 
 of the sceptical old philosopher of Weimar, the exactness of modern scholar- 
 ship, the fullness of life of a forceful man. But as we lay this novel aside, 
 so full of treasures for the future of the German people and literature, we 
 carry with us the encouraging assurance: 'Neues Korn spriesst auf. '
 
 PEER GYNT— AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 By Jane Dransfield Stone 
 
 AFTER writing 'Brand, Ibsen went into southern Italy, 
 and threw himself into the composition of 'Peer Gynt.' 
 ' It is wild and formless,' he writes of it ' and written without 
 regard to consequences.' Yet as with all his dramas, 
 it had lain a long time in embryo in the poet's mind. The 
 same mood of indignation against his countrymen, the 
 same criticism of the Norwegian character which had 
 resulted in 'Brand' gave birth also to 'Peer Gynt'; though Ibsen himself 
 scarcely realized this, and said in a letter to Hegel, that if 'the Norwegians 
 of the present day recognize themselves in the character of Peer Gynt, that 
 is the good people's own affair.'* The pure poetry of his creation appealed 
 to him more than its polemic, and he constantly pleaded for the book to 
 be enjoyed as a work of the imagination. He writes, 'I learn that the book 
 created much e.xcitement in Norway.' This does not trouble me in the 
 least; but both there and in Denmark they have discovered much more 
 satire in it than was intended by me. Why can they not read the book as 
 a poem ^ For as such I wrote it.'** The criticism of its art form he met 
 with a prophetic sense of its future justification. 'My book is poetry, and 
 if it is not, then it will be. The conception of poetry shall be made to con- 
 form to the book.'*** 
 
 Thus it is not strange that two works of such seemingly diverse char- 
 acter should have been produced at the same period of development, and 
 at so short an interval. 'Brand' was published in March, 1866: Peer 
 Gynt' in November, 1867. Yet though similar in ethical bearing, the 
 atmosphere of the two poems is totally different. 'Brand' is deep: 'Peer 
 Gynt' is wide. 'Brand' is cold, clear-cut, and defined. The ice winds of 
 the north blow down through it, chilling us to the soul. 'Peer Gynt' is 
 warm, glowing with color, the strange flowering of a rich imagination. 
 The greatness of the work grows upon one. Upon first reading it, one mav 
 be carried away with the bewildering conceits, the play of wit, the droll 
 situations, the abandonment to the spirit of pure fantasy; but it is only 
 after study that the deeper meanings come to light, and the work is lifted 
 
 • 24th February, 1868. •• Ibid. ••• To Bjornson, 0th December, 1867.
 
 384 PEER GYNT — AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 out of its provincial, or Scandinavian aspect to its position as the greatest 
 drama since 'Faust.' So Scandinavian in tone that Ibsen feared it would 
 not be understood out of Norway and Denwark, yet it has made its appeal to 
 all peoples through its deep searching into the human heart. 
 
 Who and what then is Peer Gynt ? The poem has its roots deep in 
 the folk-lore of the north. Ibsen describes his hero as 'one of those half- 
 mvthical, fanciful characters existing in the annals of the Norwegian 
 peasantry of mo J em times,' and again as a 'real person who lived in Gud- 
 brandsdal, probably at the end of the last, or the beginning of this century. 
 His name is still well-known among the peasants there: but of his exploits 
 not much more is known than is to be found in Asojornsen's 'Norwegian 
 Fairv-Tale Book,' in the section. 'Pictures from the mountains.' 'Thus 
 I have not had ver\' much to build upon, but so much the more liberty has 
 been left me.'* The man Peer Gynt, therefore, is so enshrouded in the 
 mists of oblivion that the character Peer Gynt is far more real and we feel 
 that in him Ibsen has added another to the great living fictitious personages 
 of all time. 
 
 Peer's character, as always in Ibsen, has marked inherited traits. 
 Descended from a formerly well-to-do family of the upper peasant class. 
 Peer and his mother live in a poverty lighted only by memories of former 
 magnificance. Ibsen says that there is much in the poem reminiscent of his 
 own youth, and consequently in the pictures of the feasts in the hall of the 
 rich old Jon Gynt the poet may be said to have harked back to the time 
 when his father was a wealthy merchant of Skein, and he lived in the midst 
 of a prodigal display. We have his own word, too, that his mother, with 
 necessary exaggerations, served as model for Ase. Perhaps this may account 
 for the kindly touch with which old 'Ase is drawn.' A foolish, fond, scold, 
 loving her son, but never disciplining him, abusing him roundly to his face, 
 but his staunchest ally in his absence, praying in the same breath that he 
 may be punished, and may be saved from punishment. She has impUcit 
 faith in his future and his own dreams of greatness. 
 
 'Thou art come of great things. Peer Gynt, 
 And great things shall come of thee.' 
 
 When we first see Peer, he is a strong young man of twenty, a roman- 
 cing, ragged braggadocio, with a lilt on his tongue, and a gleam in his eye, — 
 a good-for-nothing, who has never learned an honest trade, and cannot even 
 mend the broken window panes in his mother's house. He can tell you 
 a fine tale, however. Listen to that ride of his over Gendean Edge, and his 
 
 • To F. Hegel, 8th August, 1867.
 
 JANE DRANSFIELD STONE 385 
 
 wild leap on the buck's back from the mountain-top down into the black 
 tarn so far below. 
 
 'Buck from over, buck from under, 
 In a moment clashed together. 
 Scattering foam-flecks all around.' 
 
 So potent is the spell he cast upon his auditors that you do not wonder 
 his mother believes him until suddenly it dawns upon her that her son's 
 wonderful experience is only the rehearsal of a folk tale she had told him 
 herself, in those days when she crooned fairy tales to him to drown their 
 sense of wretchedness and care. 
 
 And why does he tell this story ? To save himself a scolding, since for 
 six weeks, in the busiest season of the year, he has been lurking in the 
 mountains on a fruitless hunting trip, returning without gun, without game, 
 and with clothes torn, having lost meantime his chance to win a rich girl, 
 Ingrid of Hegstad, for his bride, since even now the wedding is going on. 
 Even so early in his career, he tries to elude the unpleasant consequences 
 of his own acts, a trait he inherits. 'It's a terrible thing to look fate in the 
 eyes,' says Ase and to her son it becomes constantly harder. 
 
 Throughout the first act, the picture of Peer is that of a pure romancer, 
 indulging in day-dreams of his own future greatness, when he shall have 
 become emperor of the whole world, exploiting his wonderful adventures 
 before his incredulous companions, reckless, heedless, and daring, but as 
 yet undebased. When Solveig comes in, with her modest downcast 
 glances, and her psalm-book wrapped in a handkerchief, her purity attracts 
 him irresistibly, and could he have been content to have won her gently, 
 he might have found in her then his 'kaiserdom,' might in her have become 
 great. But Solveig rejects his too swift advances. His companions laugh 
 at his tales, and their laughter bites. Scorn and rejection wound his pride, 
 forcing him to do some daring deed. Some of old Ase's tales had been of 
 bride-rape. The least hint is enough, and the act closes with Peer stealing 
 Ingrid from the store-house, shouldering her bodily, and running off with 
 her up the hill, old Ase left scolding below. 
 
 In the second act a subtle change for the worse comes over Peer. The 
 descent, however, is gradual. He tires of Ingrid, and deserts her, but 
 still remembers Solveig. 
 
 'Devil take the tribe of women 
 All but one.' 
 
 When he plunges into the low amours with the three saeter girls, it is 
 'Heavy of heart, and wanton of mind. 
 The eyes full of laughter, the throat of tears.'
 
 386 PEER G^NT— AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 After his escapade with the Dovre king's daughter, however, the 
 Green Clad One, there is httle to hke in Peer except his very human nianoeu- 
 vering always to come out on the top. The Troll philosophy dominates 
 him, even though he repudiates the idea of complete subjection to troUdom. 
 
 It may be well to pause here, to consider the significance of the troll 
 element ot the play. The Dovre kingdom seems as funny a topsy-turvy 
 world as any creation of Lewis Carrol's, but with far more meaning. Trolls 
 are creatures of purely northern mythology, corresponding in their milder 
 aspects to the English brownies. But Ibsen uses them as the exponents 
 of absolute selfishness — that part of human nature which never rises above 
 itself, sees nothing but as it desires to see it, and has no will but self-will. 
 The Dovre king's motto, 'Troll to thyself be enough,' and the Boyg's 
 'roundabout' are the keynotes of their philosophy. 
 
 The Boyg is one of the most interesting and puzzling elements of the 
 play. Archer says that 'the idea of this vague, shapeless, ubiquitous, 
 inevitable, invulnerable thing was what chiefly fascinated the poet's imagi- 
 nation in the legend of Peer Gynt.' When it is killed it is still alive, un- 
 wounded when hurt, is both out and in, forward and back, conquers without 
 force. It is a lion and women in one, yet whatever it is, it is ever itself, 
 and is only vanquished, not by physical might, but troll-fashion, by the 
 power of the spirit, symbolized in the ringing of church bells, and the 
 prayers of women. 
 
 Recalling 'Brand,' Georg Brandes identifies this mysterious being 
 with the spirit of Compromise. Mr. Wicksteed, viewing it in the light of 
 Scene 12, Act IV, calls it the sphinx-riddle of life. One hesitates to cata- 
 gorize so vague a thing, and to each attentive reader the Boyg must make 
 a different appeal. To me it means St. Paul's carnal mind of man — 
 'mortal mind' — a Christian Scientist would say — that element in man 
 which is purely human, which baffles his best desires, which suggests that 
 he go 'roundabout' to escape his difficulties, rather than through them, 
 and which is only overcome through spirituality. It ever vaunts itself to be 
 a great /, a great myself, but is in reality nothing. 
 
 The third act shows further the deterioration in Peer's character, and 
 his inability to face the unpleasant. Banished to the woods as an outlaw 
 in consequence of the bride-rape, Peer has never been forgotten by Solveig, 
 who though rejecting his too swift advances has nevertheless established 
 in her soul an ideal of Peer, which she worships. Thinking it was the real 
 Peer she loves, she forsakes her dear father, mother, and sister, and comes 
 to him in the forest; Peer greets her with joy. 
 
 'Solveig! let me look at you — but not too near! 
 Only look at you! Oh, but you are bright and pure, —
 
 JANE DRANSFIELD STONE 387 
 
 Let me lift you, — Oh, but you are fine and light. 
 Let me carry you Solveig — and I'll never be tired.' 
 
 But in the midst of his rejoicing, along comes the Green Clad One 
 with an ugly little boy, and tells him that this is his child, 'lame in his leg, 
 as Peer was lame in his soul,' begotten only of lustful thoughts and desires, 
 the way of generation in the Dovre kingdom. She tells Peer he may marry 
 Solveig if he will, but that she is his wife, and must have her seat by his side, 
 though Solveig be there too. In this predicament, what is Peer's course ? 
 Repentance t The word comes to him from long-forgotten years, and has 
 now no meaning. Expiation ? Why, it would take whole years to fight 
 his way through. The Boyg said, 'roundabout,' and the Boyg philosophy 
 conquers. Without a word of explanation, bidding her only wait his return. 
 Peer takes to his heels, leaving the woman who loves him to bear alone the 
 long years of life. Probably it was better for Solveig that he did, never- 
 theless that does not exonerate Peer. 
 
 Solveig is the beautiful element of the play. Every scene in which she 
 appears is lifted at once into the realm of pure poetry. She is so pure and 
 so good. As Agnes might have been Brand's salvation, bringing peace 
 to his restless soul, could he but have accepted her vision of life, so she, 
 who made it a holy day when one looked at her might have uplifted Peer 
 had he been capable of being true to her. 
 
 This third act contains another great scene — the death scene of Ase, 
 one of the strangest death scenes in all literature — fantastic, tender, weird, 
 yet infinitely pathetic and real. Poor ugly old Ase! Because her son has 
 been declared an outlaw, all her property, such as she had, has been taken 
 from her by the bailiff. Even the house is hers only until her death, and 
 now she lies on the little hard board bed Peer used as a child, moaning and 
 tossing, and longing to see Peer once more before she dies. Not a word of 
 reproach shall he have from her. It was not his fault. It was the drink 
 at the wedding feast that crazed his head. So Peer enters to look in upon 
 his mother for the last time, before embarking for some foreign land. He 
 sees his mother's condition, but death is horrible to him, as we see in Act V 
 in his interview with the Strange Passenger. He will listen to no word of 
 parting, ignores her request for the comfort of the prayer-book, will chat 
 only of 'this, and that,' and finally, seeing her great distress, mounts a chair, 
 and spirits her away on the 'fleet foot horses' to the world beyond. 
 
 'To the castle west of the moon and the castle east of the sun — 
 To Soria-lMoria Castle.' 
 where 
 
 'The King and the Prince give a feast.'
 
 388 PEER G\NT-AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Here, too. Peer is unable to face the unpleasant. Nevertheless, as he 
 bends over his mother, kissing her thanks for both 'beatings and lullabys,' 
 we rtnd him infinitely more human than Brand, cruelly deserting his mother 
 in her last hour, trom rigid devotion to principle. 
 
 Between acts three and four nearly thirty years elapse, and when next 
 we see Peer he is a handsome portly gentleman of fifty. AH the glamour 
 of the youthful Peer has vanished. He is still a romancer, but the touch 
 of poetry is gone. He still dreams of becoming 'kaiser' of the whole world, 
 but now on a basis of gold. He has become rich, selling slaves to America, 
 and idols to China. He has picked up learning, and a cosmopolitan dash 
 from every country of Europe. He has grown pious, too, keeping a sort 
 of debit and credit with God, so that for every export of idols to China in 
 the spring, he sent out missionaries in the fall. 
 
 'What could I do.'' To stop the trade 
 
 With China was impossible. 
 
 A plan I hit on — opened straightway 
 
 A new trade with the self-same land. 
 
 I shipped off idols every spring. 
 
 Each autumn sent forth missionaries. 
 
 Supplying them with all they needed, 
 
 As stockings. Bibles, rum, and rice.' 
 Mr. Cotton. — 
 
 'Yes, at a profit ? ' 
 Peer. — 
 
 'Why, of course. 
 
 It prospered. Dauntlessly they toiled. 
 
 For every idol that was sold 
 
 They got a coolie well baptized, 
 
 So that the effect was neutralized.' 
 Vam and ridiculous as Peer has become, we laugh at him not with 
 him, as in a series of brilliant kaleidoscopic scenes, we seen him storming 
 on the Moroccan coast, because his sycophant friends have run off with 
 his gold: — treed by monkeys in the desert: — plucked by Anitra, his Ara- 
 bian amour;. — and finally crowned as 'kaiser' in a mad house in Cairo. 
 The Gyntish Self stands complete. Imagining himself master of every 
 situation, he is in reality but the merest will-of-the-wisp, drifting hither 
 and thither on every wind of chance. Yet he considers himself a success, 
 for has he not always been himself.? 
 
 This 'being one's self is the keynote of the poem. What does Ibsen 
 mean : That to him it was the paramount issue of life, there is little doubt.
 
 JANE DRANSFIELD STONE 3^9 
 
 He writes to Bjornson — 'So to conduct one's life as to realize one's self — 
 this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. lus 
 the task of one and all of us. but most of us bungle it.'* And again,— * I 
 believe that there is nothing else and nothing better for us all to do than 
 in spirit and in truth to realize our selves.'** And, 'The great thing is 
 to become honest and truthful in deaHng with one's self— not to determme 
 to do this or determine to do that, but to do what one must do because one 
 
 is one's self.'*** 
 
 The character of Peer Gynt is the negative working out of this theme. 
 In Peer we see that 'being one's self is not. To Peer, to 'be himself 
 meant to carr)' out each momentary impulse: never to burn a bridge behind 
 him, but always to evade responsibility, to blame not himself for his failures, 
 but circumstances. 
 
 'To stand with choice-free foo'; 
 Amid the treacherous snares of Hfe, — 
 To know that ever in the rear 
 A bridge for our retreat stands open 
 This theory has borne me on. 
 And given my w^hole career its color.' 
 More or less we are all of us Peer Gynts. Our lives are not determined 
 by a willed fidelity to an ideal, but like Peer we are tossed here and there 
 by fleeting ambitions and momentary desires. Ibsen has no sympathy 
 with his trifling attitude toward life. In his early plays, especially the 
 historical series, he talks much of fulfilling one's calling, of one's divine 
 mission in life. Is everyone, then, destined to a great career ? The poem 
 has two direct answers to this question. First, in the episode of the poor 
 peasant who cut off his finger, thereby incapacitating himself for military 
 service for which he was drafted, because he knew he was needed at home. 
 'No patriot was he. Both for church and state 
 A fruitless tree. But there, on the upland ridge. 
 In the small circle where he saw his calling. 
 There he was great, because he was himself.' 
 This is Goethe's 'In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der Meister'— and 
 Matthew Arnold's — 'In their own tasks all their powers pouring.' 
 
 Solveig's faith is also an answer. After the scene in which Peer is 
 fleeced, then deserted by Anitra, for an instant we are transported again 
 to the north, and look upon Solveig, now a middle-aged woman, sitting 
 before the door of the hut Peer had built in the forest and singing as she spins. 
 
 •8th August, 1882. •• To Theodor Carjiari, 27th June, 1884. »*• To Laura 
 
 Keller, 11th June, 1870,
 
 390 PEER GYNT— AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 'Maybe hoth the winter and spring will pass by, 
 And the next summer too, and the whole of the year: — 
 But thou wilt come one day, that I know full well: 
 And I will await thee as I promised thee of old. 
 
 [Calls the goats, spins, and sings again.] 
 God strengthen thee, whereso thou goest in the world! 
 God sladden thee, if at his footstool thou stand! 
 Here will I await thee till thou comest agam: 
 And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend.' 
 In her beautiful fidelity to the ideal Peer within her heart, lies Solveig's 
 greatness, and finall) Peer's salvation. So that we see that Ibsen's idea 
 is neither selfish idealism, as Brand's, nor selfish realism, as Peer Gynt's, 
 but the unselfish working out of the best in us: — the attainment of spiritual 
 liberty, and wholeness of life. 
 
 The fourth act is clever satire, the fifth pure and great poetry. So 
 slender are the threads, however, that bind it to earth, that the reader is 
 inclined to regard its events as merely symbolic. Such was not Ibsen's 
 intention. Even Mr. Clemens Petersen's statement that the Strange 
 Passenger symbolized terror aroused Isben's anger. 'He (Clemens Peter- 
 sen) says that the Strange Passenger is symbolic of terror. Supposing that 
 I had been about to be executed and that such an explanation would have 
 saved my life, it would never have occurred to me. I never thought of such 
 a thing. I stuck in the scene as a mere caprice. And tell me now, is Peer 
 Gynt himself not a personality complete and individual ? I know that 
 he is.'* 
 
 Briefly, the fifth act may be outlined as follows: Peer, now a miserly 
 old man, is returning to Norway. Just off the coast he is shipwrecked, and 
 saves his life by knocking the ship's cook off the little boat to which they 
 were both clinging. Peer escapes, and returns to his old home, where he 
 finds himself but a tradition. He seeks the forest, the scene of his outlawry, 
 where he comes upon Solveig still waiting for him, but he flees from her. 
 The Button-Moulder comes along with his casting-ladle, looking for one 
 Peer Gynt, whom his master has ordered him to melt up along with other 
 spoilt goods into something new. Peer resents this 'Gynt-cessation' with 
 all his heart. Either one of two things he must prove to save himself, 
 either that he has always been himself, or that he is an exceptional sinner. 
 Peer. — 
 
 One question only: 
 What is it, at bottom, this "being one's self".'' 
 
 » To Bjornson, 9th December, 1867.
 
 JANE DRANSFIELD STONE 391 
 
 The Button-Moulder. — 
 
 *To be one self is : to slay oneself. 
 But on you that answer is doubtless lost: 
 And therefore we'll say: to stand forth everywhere 
 With Master's intention displayed like a signboard.' 
 Peer can not claim he has been himself according to this standard: 
 nor can he prove himself a great sinner. 
 The Button-Moulder. — 
 
 'You're not one thing nor the other then, only so-so. 
 A sinner of really grandiose style 
 Is nowadays not to be met on the highways. 
 It wants much more than merely to wallow in mire. 
 For both vigor and earnestness go to a sin.' 
 Is there no one in heaven or hell, then, to save him ? In his terror he remem- 
 bers the one against whom he has really sinned. Surely Solveig will have 
 a sin-list for him, but when he throws himself before her to hear his doom, 
 she has no word of blame for him. 
 Peer.— 
 
 'Cry out all my sins and my trespasses!' 
 Solveig. — 
 
 'In nought hast thou sinned, oh my own only boy!' 
 Peer.— 
 
 'Cry aloud my crime!' 
 Solveig. — 
 
 'Thou hast made all my life as a beautiful song. 
 Blessed be thou that at last thou hast come!' 
 The Button-Moulder disappears, and the poem ends with Peer lying in 
 Solveig's arms, a saved man. 
 
 In the fifth act, then, is the birth of the true Peer Gynt. His conception 
 occurs in the conversation with the Strange Passenger during the shipwreck, 
 when there is presented for the first time to his mind the idea of dread, or 
 as Mr. Archer has it in the footnote to his translation of this passage (the 
 translation I should like to state I have used throughout) 'the conviction 
 of sin.' It is the moral sense of the soul's obligation to goodness. Peer 
 does not express this at once, however, and it is found first definitely in his 
 famous comparison of himself to an onion, which like himself is but an 
 infinite number of swathings, with never a kernel. Solveig's fidelity to 
 him makes him realize, but too late, that in her heart had been his kaiser- 
 dom, and the ex(|uisite thread-ball scene in which the thoughts he should 
 have thought, and the deeds he should have done rise to reproach him,
 
 392 PEER G\'NT— AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 begins with liis own searching analysis of himself as a 'whited sepulchre' 
 with 'earnest shunned' and 'repentance dreaded.' At last he sees that his 
 life has been unworthy of perpetuation. 
 
 *So unspeakably poor, then, a soul can go 
 
 Back to nothingness, into the grey of the mist. 
 
 Thou beautiful earth, be not angry with me 
 
 That I trampled thy grasses to no avail. 
 
 Thou beautiful sun, thou hast squandered away 
 
 Thy glory of light in an empty hut.' 
 Mr. Brandes declares that the thread-ball, and this scene, are out of 
 harmony with the rest of Peer's character, and are consequently to be taken 
 as expressions of Ibsen's own regret. It is true that the old Peer Gynt could 
 not have spoken thus, but the new soul growing within him can, and does. 
 It has been claimed, too, that Peer's final salvation is too romantic an ending 
 to be in accord with Ibsen's usual teachings. The logical place for Peer 
 Gynt seems to be the casting-ladle, yet it must not be forgotten that even 
 Peer was not saved until there had come upon him the realization of his 
 own impotence and need.
 
 THE PASSING OF THE GREEN* 
 
 By Jeannette Marks 
 
 ERE in the sylvan ragged woods and fields is some natural 
 magic of the wind and of the world, some power incarnate 
 in sound; in the clapping of the little leaves upon the 
 treetop, the harsh noise of blown leaves, the broken song 
 of naked apple boughs, the little voice in the valley and 
 the tiny piping over bare pastures, the windage of the 
 uplands with the great rushing wind and the little rustling 
 wind, the big far-travelling wind and the distant battling wind with its 
 hollow sound of moving waters and its speech of destiny. Here, too, is 
 some natural magic in this transformation from the clear green of spring 
 to the old gold of autumn, in those fields and sunny avenues and endless 
 alleys of marching apple trees, in this glade of yellow ferns and tall white 
 birches crowned with yellow autumn leaves, and in these maple trees, 
 bare now, their spaces filled with the grays and azures of the varying skies. 
 Even the little stone that has rolled out of its socket of earth arrests the eye 
 with a sense of something beyond the immediate presence of that which is 
 seen. An ethereal touch has come and pleasure no longer waits, as in 
 spring, on the beauty of detail: the appearance of a starry flower, or some 
 faint change in color, or the coming of a new bird song. Flowers there 
 still are amidst the fluflF of blown thistles and purple asters, and in the 
 morning the meadow lark still sings its song. But every little incident 
 no longer binds the eyes by its beauty and its youth to earth; here is some 
 power invisible, and separable from our lives. The trees denuded of leaves, 
 of the exquisite incident of blooming life, the meadows stripped of their 
 wavering linked grass, the fields razed of their burden of grain, — the 
 imagination becomes supreme. 
 
 And when in the blue mist of twilight, red apples gleam, the mind 
 looks forward into the 'vague land.' It is as if life had been filled with 
 the loveliness of concrete objects, — earth enamelled with the bright beauty 
 of green fields and blue skies and golden sun, and now, with the light 
 glimmering through the trees on the hill-horizon far away, and the somber 
 arabesque of moss underfoot, changing swiftly to the monotones of dusk. 
 Wide flumes of shadow reach up the darkening hills, little shadows lie 
 motionless, the wind steps softly amongst the corn and its sentinel shadows, 
 and in the chill luster of moonshine stars hang on the bare branches. 
 
 •Copyright by Jeannette Mark«, 1907. 
 
 393
 
 394 THE PASSING OF THE GREEN 
 
 Life — with the subduing of the colors of autumn, the metamorphosis from 
 crimsons and glowing yellows to the little pale flames and dun colors of 
 the wide-spread meadows and woods, with the wind in the corn, and the 
 shaken cry of the owl at night — life grows suddenly tenuous, sufi^ering 
 a change into that which abides elsewhere. With the thought of the 
 repeated bloom and decay of nature, its unceasing revolutions of natural 
 existence, the mind dwells more and more on that which is shaped in the 
 spirit, and clouds and seas and mountains disappear, as with Michelangelo, 
 in that greater sea which is the soul of man, boundless and dim, crossed by 
 trade-winds 'from eternity.' One feels the vitality of nature apart from 
 its beauty. Even the very mist is haunted by a shadow of that which is 
 beyond. 
 
 The mind broods on something out of its perception, something that 
 dwells unseen in the far sound of the pines, in the wail of the wind, in the 
 surging of branches, in the twitching of little shadows in a twilit room — 
 something inscrutable and yet mirrored in the settling dusky light and felt 
 in the altering silences. Beyond the eye, invisible to the eye, a procession 
 passes, the mind alone beholding the land of its quiet light, its spectral forms 
 of unknown hills, and the rush of its eternal winds. And gray in the midst of 
 that procession there is one figure, vast, pervasive, followed by a multitude, 
 their thoughts obedient, their hearts sighing. And on the path behind is an 
 eddy as of whirling leaves and the sound of them is like the clatter of the 
 winter wind. Here with the force of great moments when one stands face 
 to face with the inexplicable, here is the unrelieved meaning to the end of 
 life. Sucked into that path of the wind, swept toward those unknown 
 hills the spirit seems suddenly captive and powerless. Then for the first 
 times come that pitiful severance between our hearts and the nature about 
 us; and we are touched with home sickness ever after, knowing that the 
 beat of the vine on the window pane has been no measure of a human pulse. 
 The division between our being and nature's is present with us; because 
 we came we must go. 
 
 This is a season of great natural drama; now one is aware of the direc- 
 tion of all the forces which have been growing, the working out of law. 
 But there lies something in that dreamy haze, that pensive level light which 
 finds no sensuous expression — an incommunicable idea, pellucid, misty, 
 like little treetops caught for an instant in crystal presence on a dusky hill. 
 Even the shadows have a kind of transparency pale and thin with a spiritual 
 effect of receding. And beyond the hills beneath the strips of level green 
 sky is the underlight of an unseen sea. There, in that somewhat of which 
 nothing is known, is one's certainty of hope — acknowledged ignorance 
 potent with faith.
 
 THREE DAYS 
 
 By Helen Sharpsteen 
 I 
 
 S lilies 'neath the feet of May 
 
 Sprang, marking where she trod, 
 So springs each year a flower-sweet day 
 Beneath the smile of God. 
 
 And it is ours to bend each year 
 And pluck the warm sweet rose. 
 
 Renewing memories fragrant, dear, 
 The day's heart doth enclose. 
 
 II 
 
 Dear hands I loved when long ago 
 You took my heart and me, 
 
 Dear eyes through which alone I know 
 The joys of things to be; — 
 
 Take once again, in symbolwise, 
 This day — which doth renew 
 
 The fragrance of those memories, — 
 All that belongs to you. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Three days that mark the sum of life, 
 
 Marking the sum of love, 
 A trinity with meanings rife 
 
 For us to take thereof. 
 
 One day that opened life with love. 
 One day love's own caress. 
 
 And one the sum of all to prove. 
 To crown, confirm, and bless. 
 
 395
 
 THE POETRY OF ROBERT LOUIS 
 
 STEVENSON 
 
 By Alexander Jessop 
 
 LOOKING at the features of Stevenson, one is tempted to 
 exclaim, in the language of the painter enraptured before 
 the respondent model, 'Character, character, is what he 
 has!' As it is true of the man himself, so may it be said 
 of his writings, 'Character, character is what they have!' 
 Plainly, Stevenson is a writer with a style — a writer for 
 the sake of a style, some have been heard to expostulate. 
 In truth, Stevenson is a writer with several styles, each one of which is best 
 adapted to set forth the message of its own particular subject. Yet, though 
 the glow and glitter of language are music to him, they make but tunes after 
 all; still more to him, one imagines, are the meanings that sing to them, 
 the life he depicts. 'I never cared a cent for anything but art, and never 
 shall,' says Stevenson's Loudon Dodd, in 'The Wrecker.' An impression 
 that one gets from reading Stevenson is that he cares as much for art and 
 as much for life, each, as Loudon Dodd cared, he says, for art alone. Stev- 
 enson's two animating passions are youth and courage, if indeed they are 
 two, and not rather (as Stevenson makes us think) one and indissoluble. t\^^| 
 All Stevenson's writings have certain characteristics in common. The 
 poetr}' of Stevenson displays the same animation of youth and courage, 
 the same felicity of word and phrase that his prose does. But it has in 
 addition other qualities that his prose writings do not share. Some of these 
 qualities are, doubtless, those which make the distinction between prose 
 and poetry, beyond the mere form of utterance. Similarly, his poetry may 
 be said to lack some of the enticing aspects of his prose writings. For 
 example, 'The Vagabond,' beginning: 
 
 Give to me the life I love, 
 
 Let the lave go by me, 
 Give the jolly heaven above 
 And the byway nigh me, 
 has almost exactly the qualities that are to be felt in his essays. Walking 
 Tours,' ' .^s Triplex,' and others. That poem might just as well have been 
 written in prose. Not that its qualities are not excellent, but that they are 
 different from those of pure poetry. But the best of Stevenson's poems 
 embody the poetry that cannot be or cannot be so well expressed in prose,
 
 ALEXANDER JESSOP 397 
 
 as well as his other qualities; the poem, 'The Unforgotten,' for example, 
 beginning: 
 
 She rested by the Broken Brook, 
 
 She drank of Weary Well, 
 She moved beyond my lingering look, 
 Ah, whither none can tell! 
 That poem has qualities that could be expressed not only not so well in 
 prose, but perhaps not at all. The first stanza (the one quoted), at least, 
 has a lyric spontaneity united with a grave simplicity that is fully equal 
 to Wordsworth's: 
 
 She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 
 
 Beside the springs of Dove, 
 A maid whom there were none to praise 
 And very few to love. 
 One advantage, of course, that even such a poem as 'The Vagabond' has 
 over prose utterance on the same theme is, that poetry is more quintessential. 
 Poetry is a more concise vehicle of expression than prose. That is one 
 reason why it is so much easier to discern Stevenson's particular char- 
 acteristics in his poems than in his other writings. 
 
 In common with those of Wordsworth and many other writers many of 
 Stevenson's poems are strongly impressionistic. The tendency to impres- 
 sionism is now increasingly apparent both in poetry and prose; and, on 
 the whole, literature gains by it. It is in the direction of emancipation — 
 a protest against academicism and conventionality. Conventionality never 
 yet did anything for literature, and never will. On the other hand, it may 
 be said that impressionism, if too freely followed, is itself in danger of 
 becoming a convention. But it is most effective when applied sparingly, 
 as in this poem by Stevenson which bears no title: 
 
 Bright is the ring of words 
 
 When the right man rings them, 
 Fair the fall of songs 
 
 When the singer sings them. 
 Still they are caroled and said — 
 
 On wings they are carried — 
 After the singer is dead 
 And the maker buried. 
 
 Low as the singer lies 
 
 In the field of heather, 
 Songs of his fashion bring 
 
 The swains together.
 
 39S THE POETRY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 And when the west is red 
 With the sunset enihers, 
 The lover Hngers and sings 
 And the maid rememhers. 
 The first two lines of the second stanza are, to my tiiinking, the most effective 
 ones in that poem, and all the more so from their position among lines not 
 so strongly stamped with the impressionistic hall-mark. Through every 
 true lover of poetry, reading that poem for the first time, a wave of compre- 
 hension and emotion surely passes as he comes to those lines. The effect 
 and purpose of such impressionism is, of course, to make one feel what is 
 described or hinted at. Thus it may be seen that it is bound up with the 
 ver}' essence of utter poetry, which does not appeal primarily to the intellect 
 (as academic traditions would have us think) but to something more subtle — 
 the emotions of the heart and of the soul. The reason why this impression- 
 istic writing, especially in poetry, is most effective when sparingly applied 
 doubtless is because, giving as it does of the very essence of poetry, the 
 note cannot be sustained for any length of time, even by the greatest poetic 
 geniuses. Sometimes it is so sustained, and then a perfect poem is the result. 
 But most poems have to depend for their effect on a charm that is to be felt 
 as the total result, rather than as sustained at every point. 
 
 Various academic writers have, at intervals during several thousand 
 years, endeavored to formulate definitions and theories of what constitutes 
 poetr}'. These specifications have been very useful, no doubt: but without 
 a doubt, too, they have been felt as a fetter to originality rather than as an 
 aid and inspiration. It is just what has been written outside of such rules, 
 without precedent, that has proved of greatest value in poetry. Yet differ- 
 ence is not always excellence; even originality may be trivial or grotesque. 
 The difference, in order to be worth while, must be excellent difference. 
 When a high degree of both difference and excellence is to be found in 
 the same piece of writing we may be sure that something has been written 
 that mankind will not willingly forget or value slightly. 
 
 Stevenson's poetry is excellent, and it is largely different from the poetry 
 of any other poet. Like all good poetry, it has something in common with 
 the work of other poets, great or fine — it contains the universal prime 
 essence. But Stevenson's point of view is highly original. That it is which 
 constitutes his claim to remembrance in this highest department of literary 
 art. All single definitions must partly fail when the attempt is made to 
 foist one of them upon so wide and intangible a thing as poetry. Yet, if 
 I were to give a definition of poetry's quintessence in a single sentence, 
 from a single point of view, I should say, 'The spirit of poetry is loneliness,
 
 ALEXANDER JESSOP 399 
 
 a world-aloofness.' In the midst of commonness we feel the uncommon — 
 the stars are above the plain, and in the midst of sordidness we feel the ideal 
 beckoning on. The purpose of poetry, then, is to represent the ideal as it 
 is to be found in the ordinary — that is, in life. If we consider the highest 
 flights of poetry in this age, or in any age, we will find that they all more or 
 less uphold that definition. Other definitions, too, might be truthfully 
 applied; but, as I have already tried to indicate implicitly, suggestiveness 
 is the finest quality not only of poetry but of prose definitions about it. 
 
 For melody, for successful impressionism, for utter pathos, Stevenson's 
 'Wandering WiUie' is unsurpassed, not only among his own poems but in 
 all poetry: 
 
 Home no more home to me, whither must I wander ? 
 
 Hunger my driver, I go where I must. 
 Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather; 
 
 Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in dust. 
 Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree. 
 
 The true word of welcome was spoken in the door — 
 Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight. 
 Kind folks of old, you come again no more. 
 
 Home was home, then, my dear, full of kindly faces. 
 
 Home was home, then, my dear, happy for the child. 
 Fire and the window bright glittered on the moorland; ' 
 
 Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild. 
 Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland. 
 
 Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold. 
 Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed. 
 
 The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old. 
 
 Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moor-fowl, 
 
 Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers; 
 Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley, 
 
 Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours; 
 Fair the day shine as it shown on my childhood — 
 
 Fair shine the day on the house with open door; 
 Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney — 
 
 But I go forever and come again no more. 
 
 I do not incaii the word 'pathos' in its original Greek sense, of course, but 
 in its modern English application. Does this poem somewhat pale beside
 
 400 THE POETRY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 such supreme achievements treating of a similar suhject as Tennyson's 
 'A Farewell,' 'In the Vallev of Cauteretz,' 'Break, Break, Break,' 'Tears, 
 Idle Tears,' etc. ? The difference hetween those poems and Stevenson's 
 is a difference in kitiJ rather than in quality. The greatest poetry appeals 
 to the universal soul of man; somewhat below these highest peaks of song 
 comes that poetr>- that appeals primarily to the heart; the lower heights 
 are occupied by the dreary academicism whose appeal is mostly to the 
 intellect. What might be very effective in prose may be wholly out of place 
 
 as poetry. 
 
 The truth may as well be confessed. Wonderfully impressionistic as 
 is Stevenson's poetn' at its best, its appeal is rather to the emotions of the 
 heart than of the soul. His poetry, even at its best, is somewhat lacking 
 in austerity. This quality at times comes perilously near to academicism 
 and pretentiousness. But, at its truest and best, it is of the essence of the 
 greatest song. Stevenson, to be sure, writes a good deal about austerity. 
 But that does not make his art austere. But what the poems of Stevenson 
 lack in austerity they make up in their warmth of human appeal; they are 
 the intimate poetry of personal relations. That is what constitutes their 
 
 uniqueness. 
 
 If 'Wandering Willie' has a rival among Stevenson's poems, it is the 
 one entitled 'In Memoriam. F. A. S.': 
 
 Yet, oh, stricken heart, remember, oh, remember, 
 
 How of human days he lived the better part. 
 April came to bloom and never dim December 
 
 Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart. 
 Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being 
 
 Trod the flow^ery April blithely for a while. 
 Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing, 
 
 Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile. 
 
 Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished, 
 
 You alone have crossed the melancholy stream, 
 Yours the pang, but his — oh, his the undiminished, 
 
 Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream. 
 All that life contains of torture, toil, and treason, 
 
 Shame, dishonor, death, to him were but a name. 
 Here, a boy, he dw-elt through all the singing season 
 
 And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came. 
 
 I have not attempted to speak of 'A Child's Garden of Verses.' The 
 best of their kind, those 'poems' are not to be judged as poetry proper so
 
 SARA TEASDALE 401 
 
 much as delightful reminiscences of childhood, which happen to be written 
 m verse. The remarks in the present essay do not, therefore, apply to them. 
 Stevenson's poetry is not very reminiscent of the work of other poets. 
 But It is remmiscent of all the more tender and animated aspects of life — 
 the mtimate, vital emotions of the heart. And, as its best, the charm and 
 pathos of It are irresistible. As long as idealism and romance are unfailing 
 m their appeal it will not, it cannot, be forgotten. 
 
 SILENCE 
 
 By Sara Teasdale 
 To Ehonora Duse 
 
 E are anhungered after solitude, 
 
 Deep stillness pure of any speech or sound, 
 Soft quiet hovering over pools profound; 
 The silences that on the desert brood; 
 Above the windless hush of empty seas. 
 The broad unfurling banners of the dawn; 
 
 A faery forest where there sleeps a Faun; 
 
 Our souls are fain of sohtudes like these. 
 
 O woman who divined our weariness. 
 
 And set the crown of silence on your art, 
 
 From what undreamed of depths within your heart 
 
 Have you sent forth the hush that makes us free 
 
 To hear an instant, high above earth's stress, 
 
 The silent music of infinity .?
 
 HYMN TO THE WINGED NIKE 
 
 By Florence Kiper 
 
 I 
 
 N earth-hound priestess, hampered and secure, 
 I scarcely dare approach thee, sovereign form, 
 I scarcely dare essay the rapturous joy 
 Of movement and of hre that is thy heart. 
 
 Yet know 
 There burns in me the glow. 
 The restless glow that feedeth thy desire, -- 
 Pulsating, winged heart of joy and fire. 
 
 I too aspire 
 As thou, O goddess; I too feel the urge 
 Of passions and of utterances high 
 That break through to the Infinite and cry 
 Against the clouds their pulsing movements vast, 
 My soul has wings like thine. 
 And those full limbs that flaunt 
 The fluttering drapery 
 And that deep bosom free 
 
 Are mine, are mine! 
 
 II 
 
 What quickeneth the urge 
 
 Within thee ? — dost thou feel the sweep and surge 
 
 Of the vast flowing of illimitable life. 
 
 Life beyond life, and striving beyond strife ? 
 
 Ah, from what amplitude of powers emerge 
 
 That stern and glorious strength that thrills through thee, 
 
 Thou vivid, burning song of victory! 
 
 Large freedom's high imagination thou, 
 
 Sweeping the cleaved air with haughty stroke, 
 
 As if thy great life broke 
 
 Free from our prisoning cells that bruise and bow. 
 
 The poet thou, — 
 The poet's soul all vivid things above, — 
 
 4.02
 
 FLORENCE KIPER 403 
 
 More vivid and more vital in its love 
 Than love of woman who has waked to love. 
 Triumph of burning justice and its might! 
 Triumph of soul and its august decrees: 
 
 Triumph of right! 
 Ah, what vast things to be are in thy sight! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Art thou indeed the Godhead, molded strong 
 In the calm marble which must needs be white 
 Because it focuses all shades of light 
 The crimson passion and the yearning hue 
 
 Of the pale spiritual blue! 
 
 Dost all to thee belong ? — 
 Emotion and emotion, strong or weak ? — 
 
 All powers and shades of song ? 
 
 Ah, could'st thou speak: 
 Speak to me, bend above me, touch my lips, 
 Anoint me with thy presence, consecrate 
 
 My soul unto thy state, 
 And I shall burst into such power of words 
 As men have waited for with eager hearts 
 Since last the gods walked big among us. 
 
 It may not be! 
 I may not see thee naked-free and pure, — 
 An earth-bound priestess, hampered and secure. 
 
 'Tis but for me to see 
 The splendor keen that darts 
 From out thy garment folds; 
 Some touch upon my hand I know, same far 
 
 Faint rustle of thy gown, 
 
 And yet my quick heart holds 
 Its yearning, aching, passionate dream of thee.
 
 RECENT WORKS BY GERMAN 
 
 WRITERS 
 
 By Amelia von Enoe 
 
 NEW works by authors who have long passed the zenith of 
 their powers make one reaHze the rapid pace at which we 
 are moving along in the procession. It seems but yester- 
 dav that students of German were ravished by the poetic 
 sentiment and verbal beauty of 'Die braune Erika.' Yet 
 what a distance Wilhelm Jensen has covered since the 
 publication of that exquisite little story, and from what 
 a distance the readers look back to him, who was then thirty-one, now that 
 he has reached his threescore and ten and has one hundred and fifty volumes 
 to his credit. It must be admitted, also, that although the radiance of his 
 name may at intervals have been totally eclipsed by the newer and noisier 
 fame of novices, the sound of it still falls upon the ear with something of 
 a tender caress, for it recalls visions of beauty which at that time only his 
 pen was able to evoke. Jensen visualized upon the printed page atmosphere, 
 color, litrhts and shadows, as the painter does on canvas. He introduced 
 in fiction the element of nature study and limned with genial realism the 
 scientist type, which had previously been the butt of satire. The formid- 
 able quantity of his works is hardly more bewildering than the versatility of 
 his mind. The poet's temperament, the painter's vision, the philosopher's 
 perspective, the scholar's knowledge, the earthborn's experience — all 
 these enter into his work, which with crystalline transparency reflects his 
 serious reading of life. 
 
 The dominant quality of his verse, collected some time ago under 
 the title ' Vom Morgen zum Abend' and recently re-issued in a new edition 
 (B. Flischer, Leipzig) is sincerity. With remarkable fearlessness he gives 
 utterance to religious heresies, but even in his combative mood there is 
 never a touch of indelicacy. One of the most interesting poems in the 
 book is 'Lilith.' In her, the prototype of woman, the mother of life, the 
 poet sees the supreme spiritual power of mankind. But Adam could not 
 grasp her greatness; he begged the Creator to give him only a woman, not 
 a goddess, one who would willingly receive, not imperiously demand. 
 So Lilith was left alone with her great longing to love and to render happy 
 the man whose companionship she was to share. In her despair she tore 
 out of her heart this longing and implanted it in the hearts of the human 
 
 404
 
 AMELIA VON ENDE 405 
 
 race that was to be. In time this heirloom of Lilith became the great 
 dynamic force which spurs man forever to seek some far-off goal, and the 
 source of the greatest sorrows and the greatest joys of life. For originality 
 of conception and dignity of expression this poem is a rare achievement. 
 There are other poems in the volume full of the mature wisdom of noble 
 manhood. Many readers familiar with the 'Lieder aus Frankreich-von 
 einem deutschen Soldaten,' which were considered the best poetical monu- 
 ment of the war of 1870, will be surprised to learn that these peoms are not 
 included in the book. Jensen is one of the few German writers of the older 
 generation whom the material prosperity of the country has not made 
 insensible to its spiritual poverty. The new empire not having fulfilled 
 its ideal promises, his patriotism would not allow those songs to be re- 
 published. 
 
 While the appearance of Jensen's poems must be welcomed both as 
 a human document and an artistic achievement, one can but regret the 
 publication of the poems of two other seniors among the German writers. 
 Surely an author of such high standing as novelist and dramatist, as Adolf 
 Wilbrandt, should hesitate to give to the public a volume of verse so little 
 calculated to enhance his reputation, as ' Lieder und Bilder' (Cotta, Sutt- 
 gart). The book is mainly composed of occasional poems of which Ger- 
 many has already more than all the other countries combined. Birthday 
 greetings, even if they are addressed to Bismarck, lines sent with a bouquet 
 to be worn at a ball, verses written for festival monographs or special editions 
 of magazines, or for recitation at some solemn celebration, are not likely 
 to be inspired bv a spark of true fire. There is much of this inartistic 
 timeliness in the book of Rudolf von Gottschall: Spaete Lieder' (Gebr. 
 Paetel, Berlin). These prologues for Schiller days, for a navy festival, 
 for various occasions lend themselves to a display of resonant phrases which 
 may strike a responsive chord in masses keyed up to the mood of the occa- 
 sion, but when the spell of the moment is past, the hoUowness of their ring 
 becomes almost painful. Genial spirit and fluent form do not save either 
 of these books from bearing the stamp of mediocrity. 
 
 Of quite another character is the book of verse by Georg von Oertzen. 
 His 'Memorien des Znf nils' (¥. Bielefeld, Freiburg i. B.) reflect a somewhat 
 robust, but lovable personality. The poet is an octogenarian, but he has not 
 lost the sense of values. He offers impressions and confessions full of sane 
 acceptance of reality, a virile joy of life. A sage who sees the meaning of 
 the passing show, who bravely lashes the follies and sympathetically pictures 
 the sufferings of his fellow-beings, there is a strength and a spontaneity in 
 his book, which sharply contrasts with the weary senility of some of the
 
 4o6 RECENT WORKS BY GERMAN WRITERS 
 
 junior poets of his country. Prince Scheonaich-Carolath, too, shows no 
 signs of age in his 'Gedichte' (Goeschen, Leipzig). In his early formative 
 period he drank deep of the fountain of tolk-song and has derived from that 
 source an admirable simplicity. His is a religious nature; there are 
 moments when he speaks like one inspired with a mission to raise mankind 
 to a higher spiritual level. In his purely personal moods he often strikes 
 lyric notes of rare charm. Maurice Reinhold von Stern's new volume 
 ' Dortner iind Lerche' (Literarische Bulletin, Leipzig) proves him to be 
 a nature poet of distinction, whose spiritual searchings into the mysteries of 
 being have revealed to him the secret bonds between the universe and the 
 individual soul. He gives plastic utterance to his abstract imaginings, yet 
 always preserves a rare delicacy of outline and intimacy of feeling. 
 
 Ernst von Wolzogen has been so identified with the spirit of modern 
 Germany, even in its most absurd manifestation, the ill-starred Ueherbrettl, 
 that it is difficult to imagine him to have reached the age, when the human 
 mind is inclined to ramble over the road of the yesterdays. His new book, 
 ' Ferse zu meinem Leben' (Fontane, BerHn) maintains his reputation for 
 originality. It is a sort of diary with poetical annotations. Were it not 
 for the biographical material they contain, some of the verses might as well 
 have remained unwritten; but the preface of the author justifies their 
 publication. The portrait of the author, whose hearty humor and refreshing 
 Bohemianism have made him a favorite figure among contemporary 
 writers, smiles at one through the pages of his curious book. Otto Erich 
 Hartleben, too, was an amiable Bohemian, but his posthumous volume 
 ' Meine Verse' (S. Fischer, Berlin) reflects his Dionysian joy of living with 
 the measured cadence and the tempered tone of classical tradition. Unlike 
 his stories and his plays, which tackle social problems with sparkling humor 
 or with mordant satire, his verse expresses his reading of life but indirectly. 
 It is a book which deserves to be taken more seriously than that of the 
 confrere who survives him, but it lacks the intimate personal charm of the 
 other. 
 
 As a self-made artist Christian Wagner once bid fair to be ranked with 
 Conrad Deubler, the Austrian poet-philosopher, whose prose was read and 
 whose presence was sought by men of distinction in many walks of life. 
 But his poetic fund soon gave out and spoiled by his critics he became 
 artificial. Now he has made a selection from his poems under the title 
 ^ Ein Blumenstrauss' (Germann's Verlag, Schwaebisch-Hall), which ^is 
 remarkable both for philosophical content and poetic form. There are few 
 German writers today who have caught the undertones in the harmony of 
 nature with such a sympathetic ear. The book is radiant with a serene 
 acceptance of fate and a solemn faith in eternity.
 
 AMELIA VON ENDE 407 
 
 Among the newcomers are two poets of an originality as distinct as it 
 is divergent: Ernst Lissauer and Alfons Paquet. Lissauer takes up in 
 his book, Der Acker' (Hugo Heller, Vienna), one segment of life and makes 
 it the pivotal point for a panorama of symbols, clear, strong, vital and 
 tangible, moving with admirable consistency in the narrow compass of his 
 vision, yet opening vistas into the larger world. Paquet, whose book bears 
 a no less significant title, 'Auf Erden' (published by subscription and already 
 out of print), roves and loafs over the earth with the Wanderlust of a true 
 worldling, embracing, owning, sensing all and seeking its meaning. Lissauer 
 limits himself to the traditional meter and form; his lines and his stanzas 
 are short, his style is terse, and in some instances he arrives at that finality 
 of expression which is the artist's ultimate aim. Paquet Hstens with ear 
 intent to the song of hfe, as his wheel whirrs at midnight through the valleys 
 of his native land, as he stands on the railroad bridge, or gazes into the glare 
 of a foundry, or peers into the infinitude of the steppe, or hails the bewil- 
 dering vastness and activity of the new world. And as he hstens, the hues 
 he speaks echo it all, and the plaint of toil, the clarion of strife, the chant 
 of faith, the cancan of pleasure and the monody of death become a many- 
 voiced, endless canon, sung over an organ-point of multifarious rnachinery, 
 beating the time and holding the key in an awesome, mysterious hum. 
 Paquet recalls Whitman; his horizon is as large, his conception as demo- 
 cratic ; the rhythm of the ' Leaves of Grass ' vibrates in his lines and his style 
 often becomes diffuse. Both Lissauer and Paquet have been the first in 
 some years to strike a new note in the poetry of Germany; they are both 
 unusually virile individualities. Men who have encompassed experience, 
 they sing of vital things and their songs ring convincingly true. 
 
 The dramatic production of the past months has not been great, but 
 it has brought at least one surprise. When a writer belonging to an older 
 generation achieves a genuine dramatic success by means as old as they 
 are naive, before an audience as sophisticated as that of the Schauspielhaus 
 of Berlin, the world has cause to wonder. Ernst von Wildenbruch has long 
 stood for an interpreter of truths through the medium of historical images. 
 A certain fraction of German theatergoers never fails to respond to the 
 patriotic appeal which his works convey, be it ever so indirectly. But 'D/^ 
 Rabensteinerm,' which was given shortly before the close of the season, is 
 not a historical but a romantic drama, the plot whereof is childishly simple 
 and the treatment almost trite. Yet the secret of his success is not far to 
 seek. Wildenbruch is the last heir of the Schiller tradition; with him it 
 may die, unless a revival is close at hand. He is a poet who has remained 
 young at heart in the very hotbed of premature senility. He has kept the
 
 4o8 RECENT WORKS BY GERMAN WRITERS 
 
 hoK- lamp ever burning before the ideals of his younger days. In his 
 flamboyant enthusiasm there is no false note; he is thoroughly in earnest 
 and he is always sincere. The ring of this sincerity finds response in the 
 hearts of the people and wins the favor of his audiences. There is no other 
 man today who could risk the experiment of presenting in the Schauspielhaus 
 a play on the same lines; for no other man would be credited with having 
 a spark of the spirit, of which Schiller is the embodiment. 
 
 Nor is his success entirely due to this element in his work. Wildenbruch 
 is an admirable technician; he has an architect's eye for construction, an 
 almost infallible instinct for building up situations with a logical assurance 
 that makes them appear natural and even necessary, and for reaching 
 a final dramatic climax. His treatment of the masses is theatrical, but it is 
 effective, and under the spell of the dramatic moment the audience asks not 
 for psychology. One motive enters into the plot of 'Die Rabensteinerin' 
 which claims the attention of American readers. When the scion of the old 
 patrician Welser family has succeeded in winning for his bride the daughter 
 of the robber-barons, the father, hurt in his Welser pride, but impressed 
 by the racial traits of the young woman, decides that they should work out 
 their salvation in the new world. This final chord is a fine psychological 
 touch, emphasizing at once the gulf between two generations and pointing 
 the way out of the inevitable conflict. The play is published by Grote, 
 Berlin. 
 
 Eberhard Koenig's 'Stein' (Egon Fleischel & Co., Berlin) was written 
 for the Lutherfestspiel verein and perhaps not intended for anything but 
 a festival play. But the work deserves notice, not only for its good work- 
 manship but for its national meaning. The central figure is Stein, the 
 Prussian diplomat and patriot, so prominent during the momentous period 
 of 1806 13. Although the poet has by no means exhausted the dramatic 
 possibilities of the life of Stein, he has conveyed the idea of a nation's 
 regeneration through the ideals of a hero convincingly and eflPectively. 
 His language is dignified and powerful. The success at the initial per- 
 formance in Jena was due more to the poet who has profoundly touched 
 by his stirring scenes and gripping words the patriotic chord, than to the 
 dramatist who had previously proved, that he is able to do better work. 
 
 ' Thomas Mann's ' Fiorenza' has at last been performed in Frankfurt 
 and has proved not only a poetic drama of power, but a thoroughly playable 
 play. Eduard Stucken's 'Gawan' is another proof that even in Germany 
 the poetic drama often has to go begging before it finds a stage to undertake 
 its performance. 'Gawan' (S. Fischer, Berlin) has been performed in 
 Munich. The play is based upon the English poem of Sir Gawain, the
 
 AMELIA VON ENDE 409 
 
 main outline of which has been faithfully adhered to until the end, when 
 the 'green knight' becomes death. Obeying an order from the Lord and 
 assisted by the Virgin Mary, who lends her shape to the seductive chatelaine 
 of the poem, the hero is tempted. He promptly repents of his failure and 
 lays down the magic girdle before the statue; this rapidly changes into 
 the living Virgin, who wards off death from the penitent, unveils the Grail 
 and offers him the sacred draught. By this conclusion the sub-title of the 
 play — a mystery — is justified. The play could not fail to find favor 
 with various portions of the audience by its appeal to the taste for gruesome 
 decapitations, which have recently proved so effective, by its introduction 
 of Parsifal motives and by the exquisite stage management. 
 
 Franz Duelberg is a writer on art belonging to the younger Munich 
 school, whose dramatic attempts always excite some controversy. His 
 imagination is exotic, his language affected and his composition lacks the 
 simple lines of a great work of art. But he has an abundance of ideas and 
 he expresses them in myriads of images, and although it is difficult to find 
 one's way through the maze, he succeeds to impress with a semblance of 
 power. His ' Korallenkettlm' (Egon Fleischel & Co., Berlin) has a mediae- 
 val plot of great strength, the theatrical resources of which have been 
 thoroughly exploited and even exaggerated by the author. Yet the play 
 tends to confirm the hope that Duelberg will some time learn to discipline 
 his gifts and use them to better results than at the present time. 
 
 Whether he writes lyric verse or little stories, like the exquisite ' Ge- 
 schichten vom lieben Gott,' Rainer Maria Rilke is always a poet of noble dis- 
 tinction. But his first dramatic attempt has hardly conveyed the impression 
 that he is also a dramatist of power. He has written a series of well- 
 constructed, but detached scenes, in which the dialogue takes the place of 
 action. Although the psychology was convincing enough and the suggestion 
 of undercurrents of thought and feeling admirable, these dynamics of the 
 ^ drame intime' did not save the play from failure through the lack of a firm 
 groundwork. 
 
 In the fiction recently published there is one volume by Rudolf von 
 Gottschall which ranks high above the poems of the monogenarian author. 
 Yet it does give one a peculiar feeling to see the vast difference in manner 
 more than matter, which separates him, who was once the champion of 
 a young (jermany against the conventionalities of an older generation, 
 from the young writers of the day. In ' Neiie Erzaehlungcn' (Gebr. Paetel, 
 licrhn), he has retained much of the ardor and of the combativeness of his 
 younger days; but even in these stories he cannot ignore an opportunity 
 to vent his wrath upon the mutual booming society which the young gener-
 
 410 RECENT WORKS BY GERMAN WRITERS 
 
 ation of German literati seems to have organized. He calls them a race of 
 'blast' megalomaniacs, fed on false philosophisms and suffering from 
 congested mysticism.' Though there is some truth in his remarks, they 
 mar the tenor of stories otherwise harmless. Still he cannot be denied 
 a mastery of narrative style, a language full of color and mobility and great 
 constructive power. He was always a landscapist of no mean order, and 
 the setting of the stories lends itself to charming descriptions. The time 
 of the first two stories is the present, the scene of the last is Silesia shortly 
 before the peace of Tilsit. 
 
 It would be interesting to trace the connection between the new chapter 
 of psychology, which is called child-study, and the new chapter of literature 
 which has given us the child in drama and fiction. Among the writers who 
 have treated the child types in their works from the standpoint of superior 
 psychological knowledge, Franziska Mann is likely to be ranked first. Her 
 insight into the growth and the w'orkings of a child soul is admirable; she 
 watches over her little men and women as a mother over her brood, as 
 a sculptor over his shapes of clay. There is a tender solicitude in the way 
 she reveals to her readers some rare individuality, still in the making, but 
 already endowed with all the instincts and impulses of the adult human 
 being. The stories in her latest book, 'Kinder' (Axel Juncker, Berlin) are 
 sketchy, her portraits are not finished; but neither are her models and the 
 lives in which they will figure. The little book has a tantalizing charm of 
 suggestiveness. 
 
 Frau Viebig has in her latest novel returned to an older manner. 
 ' Absolvo te' (Egon Fleischel & Co., Berlin), the story of a young girl, 
 married by her mother to a wealthy old man, is told with the directness 
 which has once made the author rank with the greatest disciples of Zola 
 in Germany. The daughter of a schoolmaster, the heroine has a modest 
 education and can claim a refinement quite unusual in the country place, 
 whither she has come as wife of Herr Tiralla, a typical Gutsbesitzer of the 
 province of Posen, good-natured, ignorant and coarse. The mother did 
 not long witness the material prosperity and marital misery of her child. 
 The young wife had in her youth been inclined toward a semi-spiritual, 
 semi-sensuous devotion to the church, and never forgiven the mother for 
 marrying her to an old brute of bibulous habits. Even when a little girl 
 is born to them, the parents remain strangers. The child has inherited 
 the mother's religious nature and as she grows up, shows symptoms of 
 religious hysteria. While she has heavenly visions in her room, the father 
 in his apartment consumes greater and greater quantities of liquor. The 
 idea of getting rid of him becomes an idiosyncrasy with Frau Tiralla, long
 
 AMELIA VON ENDE 411 
 
 before her unspent woman love finds a worthy object in the friend of her 
 step-son. All this is told with a virile, but not repulsive realism. The 
 atmosphere of the story is hot with the breath of strife in the breast of Frau 
 Tiralla and Martin Becker. When death comes to the old man by his own 
 hands, and Martin leaves the house, Frau Tiralla reads in the ecstatic 
 eyes of her daughter that forgiveness, which even her confessor might deny 
 the unfortunate woman. ' Absolvo ^^' is a very powerful book. 
 
 Books on Schiller are still appearing on the market. An important 
 little volume was recently added to the series called 'Die Kultur' (Bard, 
 Marquardt & Co., Berlin). It is entitled 'Schiller's Weltanschauung und 
 unsere Zeit,' and the author is Alexander von Gleichen-Russwurm. Calling 
 poets the conscience of their nation, he is of the opinion that Germany has 
 failed to reach the goal which Schiller had cherished. His ideal reading 
 of life lacks the material character of the present time. It is constructive, 
 while the present is destructive. He was a builder who would have hedged 
 in with walls whatever he thought worthy of reverence. Our generation 
 on the contrary tears down the walls. The author defines Schiller's idea 
 of freedom, and emphasizes the fact, that the poet deemed only him capable 
 of becoming a liberator, who had the proper amount of reverence. In 
 Schiller's ideas about the aesthetical education of mankind the author sees 
 a valuable ethical factor. He would have the poet remain our leader in 
 the world of beauty. The references to Schiller's international influence 
 are interesting. Among other illustrations there is the reproduction of 
 a miniature of Schiller which had been in the possession of Charlotte 
 von Kalb.
 
 TWO SONNETS 
 
 By Harry T."^ Baker 
 
 The Elizabethans ' 
 
 'Attempt! attempt!' the inner Genius cried. 
 Then eager, vast, unconquerable youth 
 Opened the flood-gates, and the crimson tide 
 Came rushing, heart to hand. Tameless, in truth, 
 Their utterance, yet no man had seen of yore 
 The virile splendor that flashed o'er their page. 
 Bounds they admitted none, but more and more 
 Dared and accomplished till it seemed dull age 
 Could ne'er o'ertake them. To the verge o' the world 
 Quested their voyagers of soul and sea. 
 Barbarians, gods, with credulous lips uncurled, 
 They wrote, unwitting, for eternity. 
 
 Earth bloomed anew, and, while these voices rang, 
 The primal morning-stars together sang. 
 
 After Reading Shakespeare^ s Sonnets 
 
 Are these but trifles of his empty hours, 
 His cold convention after passionate flame 
 In Romeo and Antony } These but flowers 
 Of artifice, and love a dainty name \ 
 Rather, the poet's mighty heart beat on 
 In truest music, murmuring his woe 
 O'er passion Profitless and hope forgone, 
 Or sounding the deep joy that comrades know. 
 His unrecording century stands aloof. 
 Austere in silence. Cherish, then, the few 
 Inestimable strains what whisper proof 
 Not always did he shun our eager view: 
 
 Though Lear and Hamlet mirrored not his mind, 
 Here without mask he greeted all mankind. 
 
 412
 
 FIDELITY 
 
 By Catulle Mendes 
 Translated by R. T. House 
 
 A GOD was a rich shepherd of the plain. His wife left her 
 pitcher on the earth upon a day when the sun was like 
 fire. She laid her down in the shade of a tree, and there 
 came a dream to her: 
 She dreamed that she slept sweetly and awoke 
 hearing the voice of Agod speaking thus and commanding: 
 'Let us arise; for I sold to the dealers of Segor, a year and half a year 
 in the past, five score of sheep; they owe me yet more than a third part 
 of the purchase-money. I am old and my feet are heavy; the debtors are 
 far hence. Who will go for me and claim the debt from them ^ How may 
 I find a faithful messenger? Bring thou the twenty silver pieces; for thus 
 it is better.' 
 
 His docile helpmeet urged not the lonely desert, nor its hungry wild- 
 beasts, nor its cruel robbers. 'I am thy servant,' she said, 'speak thy will.' 
 With arm extended, 'Thither' said the shepherd; and then without loss of 
 time she took her mantle of wool and departed. Her feet were heavy in 
 the way; for the path was filled with sharp stones. Her foot-soles shed 
 blood and her eyes shed tears; but she went morning and evening and 
 paused never at all. The terrible night came, and everything was black and 
 silent; but she went and paused not. Then she heard a dreadful cry, 
 and a hand of iron covered her mouth, and one tore her mantle and thrust 
 a great knife into her breast with a sure thrust. 
 
 She awoke in great fear and all her body trembled. Then she saw her 
 husband at her side, and he said: 'I sold to the dealers of Segor, a year 
 and half a year in the past, five score of sheep; they owe me yet more 
 than a third part of the purchase-money. I am old and my feet are heavy; 
 the debtors are far hence. Who will go for me and claim the debt from 
 them .'' How may I find a faithful messenger .'' Bring thou the twenty 
 silver pieces; for thus it is better.' 
 
 The faithful helpmeet answered, 'My lord and master has spoken; I 
 am ready.' She called her sons. The older was a noble boy, and she 
 put her right hand about his neck. And she kissed the little brother, and 
 took her mantle of wool and departed without loss of time. 
 
 413
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 IT otten occurs to us that in this age when every one has something 
 to sav and wants to sav it to as many people as possible, and con- 
 versely nobody is especially anxious to hear what any one has to 
 say, that we are terribly in need of some cheaper way of repro- 
 ducing our thoughts than printing. With a maximum of orators 
 or sages or seers and a minimum of audience of laymen it is next to 
 impossible to sell enough copies of anything at twenty-five cents to pay the 
 printer's bills, let alone any pay for the kindly sages and seers. A type- 
 writing machine which when one played upon it would engrave plates, to be 
 run off by oneself on a hand press, would convert every man into his own 
 printer and he might then market his ideas at even a small profit. 
 
 * * * 
 
 These thoughts have been inspired by the appearance of a new infantile 
 magazine published at 66 Cornhill, and called ' The Inquisitor.' It conceals 
 its identity behind the terrors of anonymity like the inquisitors of old, and 
 frankly admits that the editors are not millionaires, and though not 'in- 
 quisitioning' for money they would be grateful for as many 'quarters' as 
 possible. We have no quarter for them, but we should like to be able to 
 present them with the sort of type-writing machine it is our dream that 
 somebody will some day invent, for we sincerely believe that all the people 
 who have things to say should be encouraged to say them, principally for 
 their own good, for after a while they will suddenly wake up to the fact 
 that millions of people have been saying similar things for thousands of 
 years and after that whatever they say will be said with becoming modesty, 
 or at least with some consciousness that their ideas are not entirely new and 
 startling. 
 
 'The Inquisitor' warns us not to decide positively whether we like it 
 or not on the first issue and we are not going to. We will only fill up its 
 last page with remarks as it invites us to do. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Its editorial platform is spiritual freedom. This is good! But it 
 contends that the world has well-nigh freed itself from physical slavery, 
 but is not yet spiritually free. Our own observations of society, on the 
 contrary, would lead us to the exactly opposite conclusion, namely that 
 there is a vast deal more of physical slavery in one form or another today, 
 than there is of spiritual slavery. Another article pleads for the living of 
 
 414
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 415 
 
 life instead of the realization of it at second hand through novels and plays. 
 It does not appear to us that any such plea is needed. We should rather 
 have thought that quite an alarming number of people were experimenting 
 in their own lives upon the ideas which modern plays and novels present 
 to them and with effects so disastrous that they ought to be learning by this 
 time that life is not intended to be experimented with, but to be fashioned 
 into as perfect a work of art as the raw material will permit. Be it said 
 that the experimenters, who think they are living life, dodge the palpable, 
 tragic consequences which an Ibsen or a Sudermann or a Hauptmann 
 always lay upon the altar of the eternally right; the tragedy with these 
 would-be livers-of-life is the gradual killing out of all desire for that which 
 is holy and true and beautiful in life, and the sinking into contentment with 
 the shams of emotional phenomena. But possibly the writer has in mind 
 only plays that tell of noble and great actions; perhaps he would like to be 
 a John the Baptist, rather than a Peer Gynt, or at least the highway-man 
 in the 'Girl from the Golden West' rather than the sheriff. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Still another writer doesn't agree with Burbank that a change of 
 environment may change the nature of a human being. The point he makes 
 is both subtle and interesting; he writes, 'While doing homage to the insight 
 manifested in Burbank's book, we would, nevertheless, submit for con- 
 sideration exactly the opposite view of the relation of environment and the 
 life force, to wit: that so-called environment has no reactionary causal effect 
 whatever on the life-force, but that an apparent effect is produced by the 
 manifestation of this life-force through a different environment, as flame 
 would appear in varied forms through iron gratings of different patterns. 
 Under this view, change of environment would in no way alter the nature 
 of the human being, but would merely supply it a different medium 
 for expression. The apparent practical effects might be the same, 
 but the point of view of the observer or experimenter would 
 be quite different.' It strikes us that the difference of opinion here 
 is more apparent than actual. Burbank would not claim, for example, that 
 a cactus could be changed into a rose, only that the cactus nature may be 
 so changed that it will become a much nicer cactus — all its fine pomts 
 emphasized, all its unpleasant ones suppressed. Similarly, given a child 
 that shows a tendency to cruelty and bravery, if trained one way it might 
 grow up into an abnormally daring and cruel man, trained another vyay, 
 the cruelty might be completely suppressed and the bravery emphasized 
 so that when it attained to the full exercise of its own will, it would 
 find itself possesed of the fine (juality of bravery to work unhampered by
 
 4i6 LIFE AND LE FERS 
 
 cruelty. That people do actually develop and do not, upon a change of 
 environment, revert to past modes of Action, but do truly gain control of 
 their bad environment, shows that environment is more that a mere medium 
 of expression to the full)' conscious being. Consequently, to the growing 
 consciousness, environment may be made a means of permanently turning 
 the nature into channels tor its best development. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Another article plunges bravely into a discussion of free-will, the 
 writer deciding according to his own temperament, as this subject has always 
 been settled time out of mind. 
 
 Discussions in the realm of philosophy are always, however, absorbingly 
 interesting, if only for the play of intellectual faculty which they bring forth. 
 We hope this will be a regular feature of the magazine. 
 
 * * * 
 
 As usual with writers of the day, when the subject of women is touched 
 upon, the opinions expressed give a rather appalling revelation of the status 
 of the masculine mind in this regard. There is a poem not bad in expression 
 but made according to the most commonplace of receipts: An ounce of 
 love, twenty-five ounces of pain, and the delights of secret passion according 
 to taste. Can it be possible that the latest-day poets have no other con- 
 ception of love but this, or is it a disease of youth ? The expression of a 
 belief in, or at least an inspiration toward a noble, whole-hearted, dignified 
 love w^ould be, at least, a pleasant change. Perhaps the day may come 
 when poets will be as much ashamed of these diseases of the emotional 
 nature as they are now at intellectual or physical degeneracy.
 
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