The dramas of Christian Dietrich Grabbe 9783111560199, 9783111189574

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S T U D I E S IN G E R M A N L I T E R A T U R E Volume XII

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

T H E D R A M A S OF CHRISTIAN DIETRICH GRABBE by

R O G E R A. N I G H O L L S University of Oregon

1969

MOUTON THE H A G U E • PARIS

© Copyright 1969 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 69-17887

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

For Barbara, Geoffrey and Kate

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Certain sections of this book have appeared in somewhat different form before. I would like to express my thanks here to the editors of The Germanic Review and The German Quarterly for permission to use this material again. My thanks are also due to A. Francke Verlag, Bern, for permission to reproduce in part a contribution to Dichtung und Deutung, Gedächtnisschrift für Hans M. Wolff. I am grateful also to the American Philosophical Society for support while I was doing some of the early research; also particularly to the University of Oregon Office of Scholarly and Scientific Research and the University of Oregon Development Fund for generous financial aid. I would like also to take this opportunity to thank very many friends and colleagues for their help, support and encouragement. The list of names would be too long to include here, but I could not have completed the work without them. Eugene, Oregon

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

5

Introduction

7

I. Grabbe's Life — A Survey

15

II. Herzog Theodor von Gothland

44

III. Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung .

.

IV. Marius und Sulla

91

V. Nanette und Maria; "Uber die Shakespearo-manie" VI. Don Juan und Faust

112 123

VII. The Hohenstaufen dramas: Friedrich

Barbarossa

and Heinrich VI

151

VIII. Aschenbrödel IX. Napoleon oder Die hundert Tage

70

170 .

.

.

.

X. Kosciuszko; Hannibal XI. "Das Theater in Düsseldorf"; Der Cid: Die Hermannsschlacht

194 213 237

Conclusion

251

Bibliography

264

INTRODUCTION

The place of Christian Dietrich Grabbe in 19th century German literature now seems reasonably secure. Few modern studies in the history of the drama or recent examinations of contrasting dramatic techniques fail to recognize the importance of his contribution. But this is a new development. For a long while the work of this unfortunate writer, who was born in 1801 and died in 1836 after a life of great promise but also of hardship and bitter disappointment, was ignored or grossly underrated. Although he enjoyed temporary periods of success during his lifetime, this success was soon followed by disappointment and failure. While he was alive only one of his plays, Don Juan und Faust, was presented on the stage, and that for one performance only in his native city. This neglect continued after his death. It was not until 1875 that any other of his works were performed.1 When Grabbe was considered at all, it was as an anomalous and unsettling figure among the many successors of Friedrich Schiller. His plays were interpreted in relation to the idealist tradition which dominated serious German drama from Schiller to Hebbel or judged in terms of their surface contacts with the theatre of Romanticism. Only towards the end of the century did recognition begin to be paid to the original and characteristic qualities of his writings. New critical editions of his works appeared and some of his plays found a tentative place in the German theatre. First under the influence of the Naturalists and then in the atmosphere of the modern experimental drama Grabbe's name has gradually become better 1 When the two Hohenstaufen dramas, in an adaptation by Alfred von Wolzogen, were given at the Hoftheater in Schwerin.

10

INTRODUCTION

known. The strange techniques, the violence of his themes and language, no longer seem so outrageous. Theorists and exponents of expressionism, as well as of the "epic theatre" and most recently of the "theatre of the absurd", have each in turn pointed to him as a precursor in the search for new dramatic methods and experience.2 The rise of Grabbe's reputation parallels that of two other isolated German dramatists at the beginning of the 19th century, Heinrich von Kleist and Georg Büchner, who also died young and barely recognized. Like them Grabbe is now seen to stand apart from the dominant trends of his time, as a writer startlingly modern in his feelings and attitudes. However, in comparison with them, the extent of Grabbe's recognition has been limited. Büchner and Kleist have become fully established figures in Germany. Their plays are regularly performed and their work has been studied intensively. They have even achieved a certain fame abroad, recently renewed, for example, by their successes in France. Grabbe's work remains comparatively little known. Attempts are made frequently to increase his reputation through new productions on the stage, but they have met with a certain lack of response among critics and public alike. Many scholarly studies, mostly on individual works, have appeared in recent years, often written by well-known and influential critics, and including stimulating chapters by Benno von Wiese in his book on Die deutsche Tragödie von Lessing bis Hebbel,s but here too the reaction has been uncertain and interest has remained spasmodic. Until the recent publication in 1963 of a biography of Grabbe by Fritz Böttger in East Germany, the last full scale monograph, by Friedrich Josef Schneider, appeared as long ago as 1934. Böttger's study is an interesting and sympathetic one but its emphasis is essentially biographical and It is interesting to note that Bertolt Brecht's early and important expressionist drama Baal was written in part to counter the effect of Hans Johst's Der Einsame, a play based on the life of Grabbe. Brecht objected to the fin de siècle romanticism of Johst's portrait. Cf. Ernst Schumacher, Die dramatischen Versuche Bertolt Brechts 1918-1933 (Berlin, 1955), pp. 2 9 ff. 3 Hamburg, 1948. See bibliography for studies by Fritz Martini, Walter Höllerer and others. 2

INTRODUCTION

11

the author's stress on Grabbe's unfortunate relationship to the reactionary society of post-1815 Germany is so insistent as to give the effect of propaganda. Schneider s work is a more essential one, particularly valuable for its knowledge of sources and wide acquaintance with the works of, often minor, Grabbe contemporaries, but it is written from a somewhat unfriendly point of view. Schneider too readily adopts the censorious tone of many earlier critics, judging in a schoolmasterly fashion this element as successful, this as not. It is to be hoped that the long delayed but very handsome new edition of Grabbe's works, edited by Alfred Bergmann, will induce a more sustained response. Fortunately, the moralizing valuations of earlier critics, who had seen reflected in Grabbe's plays the excesses and instability of his own character, have disappeared in later individual studies. But some recent critics, too, however attracted by Grabbe's modernity of feeling, have tended to emphasize weakness in his work, to point to the failure of language or structure, to see Grabbe caught "between the classic and the modern", unable to find his own creative form and too often reduced to violent excesses or self-destructive parody.4 The explanation for this neglect may not be too far to seek. That Grabbe failed to find a fully satisfactory means of expression seems true. He was not as able as Büchner was some years later, not only in Woyzeck but already to some extent in Dantons Tod, to break free from prevailing traditions. Instead he experimented with the many dramatic modes of his time and tried to fill them with his own particular themes. A man of extremes of moods, vacillating between despair and overwhelming self-confidence, his output consists of a series of new beginnings, ever new attempts to find his own manner and style. In this we may contrast him with his somewhat older Viennese contemporary Franz Grillparzer. Grillparzer and Grabbe may both be seen as the successors to multiple, con4 Cf. Walter Höllerer, Zwischen Klassik und Moderne (Stuttgart, 1958) or Hans-Henrik Krummacher, "Bemerkungen zur dramatischen Sprache in Grabbes Don Juan und Faust", in Festgabe für Eduard Berend zum 75. Geburtstag (Weimar, 1959).

12

INTRODUCTION

trasting traditions, but where Grillparzer managed to maintain himself within the older modes, to preserve traditions, yet to fence out his own new path, we feel in Grabbe too often a conflict between his particular purposes and the forms that he adopted. Only in the later historical plays did he boldly enter new ground, but even here, as we shall see, the form did not prove fully adequate. Kleist, Biichner and Grillparzer wrote many plays that stand independently and in their own right on the stage. Grabbe's work needs more often to be understood in its context. No single play can represent him. Instead we have nine or ten extraordinarily interesting dramas, all full of ideas and brilliant situations, but no one of which is totally satisfactory in itself or does full justice to the remarkable possibilities Grabbe had within him. My object in this study is to trace the sequence of Grabbe's plays and attempt to analyze them individually, while also showing their relation to each other and to the dramatic modes that they follow. The individual plays may often seem confusing; we are liable to feel that we have lost our bearings and wonder on what basis to make judgments. We may even be offended by the insistent idiosyncracies of action and language and the apparently perverse lapses of taste. But in following the sequence of his dramas we see the desperate and totally serious effort Grabbe gave to his struggle for expression. The modernity of his work lies not only in his chaotic experience of a seemingly disintegrating world, but in his struggle to present and shape this experience in new dramatic terms. Recurrent in Grabbe's work are two essential attitudes of mind. On the one hand we must recognize the extreme bitterness and sense of disillusion that lies at the roots of all his writings. But at the same time there is a constant urge to assert human energy and defiance against the meaningless confusion of events. Grabbe's heroes, in the final analysis, represent no causes and offer us no standards by which to live. But they glorify in themselves the vital surge of the human spirit which resists all despair. His first drama Herzog Theodor von Gothland reveals once

INTRODUCTION

13

and for all the passionate bitterness with which Grabbe confronted the world. This early play, which was largely writen when he was still at the Gymnasium in his native city of LippeDetmold, echoes on the surface the characteristic passions of the Sturm und Drang. But despite its literary models it creates a totally original tone of horror at a world emptied of all security and faith. The play takes us through the stages of the hero's disillusion. He is shown at first rejoicing in a world of moral harmony and order. Favored with the gifts of love and brotherly friendship, he lives in reasonable assurance that duty, honor and justice are values of the world that will prevail. Under the stress of circumstance this assurance collapses. Gothland, like Job, is exposed to corruption and evil. But he does not, like Job, respond in patient humility. On the contrary his passion is aroused to meet evil with evil. Because he feels justice has not been done to him, he takes sides against his countrymen and friends, and allies himself with the barbaric invaders of the homeland which he had once been proud to defend. But with disillusion comes despair. All hopes of civilized order and of a benevolent God now seem to him like the inventions of weakness, dreams created by men who are afraid to face the truth of life. He freely indulges the violent, destructive drives which he feels within himself. Life seems to consist in cruelty and suffering, in fear and pain. If there is a God he must be responsible for evil. How can he then condemn his creatures without condemning himself? Gothland's joy in inflicting pain takes its lead from heaven where psalms of joy are sung while men burn eternally in hell. Gothland denies all sanctions of morality yet never achieves the ruthless logic of a man beyond good and evil. He seeks consolation in the possession of power but remains constantly tormented by the conflict between remorse and his love of revenge. He longs for some road to salvation but waits in vain for the voice of God. Knowledge of Gothland's experience underlies our reading of the plays that follow. Yet an essential change of tone occurs. Grabbe's later figures seem to have accepted the nature of the

14

INTRODUCTION

world that caused Gothland to despair. Already in the comedy Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung, which followed immediately after Gothland and which he described as arising "aus den nämlichen Grundansichten" (Wuk. V. 278), the particular qualities of the work seem to originate in the very matter of fact acceptance of a world without illusions. The extravagant outcries of the earlier play now seem naive. Life must be accepted as it is. For all the folly of human behavior and the obvious incoherence of human fate, men are carried along by a certain native vitality and zest for life that needs no external values and justifications. This same interaction between moral disillusion and an inborn urge to assert the human spirit is given eloquent expression again in Don Juan und Faust. But it also indirectly provides the pervasive mood of the history dramas which make up the main body of Grabbe's later work. Here no direct expression is given to Grabbe's vision of a distorted world. There are no laments and no accusations against God. The participants do not, like Gothland or Faust, explain their motives or struggle to express their torment. The heroes, already in the early Marius und Sulla and again in Napoleon and Hannibal, are characteristically secretive and taciturn, unwilling or unable to find words to reveal the central core of their experience. But in the repressed straining of their speeches and above all in the quality of the action, the recurrent emphasis on the cruelty of life and the implacability of human conflict, indeed in the very absence of all convictions and articles of faith, we recognize the distraught tension with which Grabbe reacted to the world. Yet if all the traditional hopes in man's dignity and value seem like empty dreams to Grabbe, his plays do not linger in a mood of nihilism. Against the unspoken despair at human fate stands the recurrent urge to impose some order on the apparently meaningless cycle of existence. In his heroes Grabbe creates men who exercise some manly control over the chaos of things. However much they may offend against our moral sensibilities, these great figures of history, in their capacity for action and achievement, nevertheless provide us with the spirit and fire of life.

I GRABBE'S LIFE - A SURVEY

There are many sources of information for a study of Grabbe's life and character. A considerable number of his letters have been assembled, including letters to his parents from the university, an interesting exchange with his first publisher Georg Ferdinand Kettembeil after 1827, during one of the most optimistic and energetic periods of his writing, and also an intensive correspondence with the dramatist and novelist Karl Immermann in 1834 and 1835. Some interesting sketches were made by contemporaries, among them a very sympathetic and attractive picture by Heinrich Heine in his memoirs of university days in Berlin, while Immermann himself writes in some detail in his Memorabilien of Grabbe as he knew him in Düsseldorf. Most substantial, however, are two biographical studies by friends of Grabbe, the first written in 1838 by Eduard Duller, the second, longer and more reliable, in 1855 by a Detmold lawyer Karl Ziegler. Duller's work was commissioned by the Düsseldorf publisher Carl George Schreiner as an introduction to the posthumous publication of Die Hermannsschlacht. Duller was a man making a living by his writing, who had to work quickly and who aimed to some extent at journalistic effects. Although he had been a loyal friend of Grabbe's, who had held close to him during the last tormented years, he knew only a limited amount about Grabbe's life at first hand and had to rely largely on information provided by the widow Louise. He attempts to uphold Grabbe against the vilifications of some of his townsmen and others, but his picture of his friend's character, written often in an inflated and irritating tone, fails to

16

GRABBE'S LIFE — A SURVEY

give us much of the real man underneath. Louise's antagonisms are very clearly reflected, especially in the account of their marriage and also in the picture of Grabbe's family upbringing, where Duller very much had to depend on her accounts. The portrait of Grabbe's mother is extremely prejudiced and even openly wrong. The often repeated story that Grabbe's addiction to drink came from his childhood originates here. Duller claims that the mother used to keep spirits at his bedside in order to pacify the three year old child. This in itself is not so unlikely, but the implication that Grabbe from then on was dependent on alcohol seems very far-fetched. Ziegler wrote in part to oppose this portrait, and his account is both more objective and more circumstantial. He had known Grabbe for many years in Detmold and had gained further information about Grabbe's early life from his own wife who had been a servant in the household of Grabbe's parents. His study includes a large number of lively and absorbing anecdotes. Episodes and reminiscences from Grabbe's life are told with very well remembered detail. His book thus provides an invaluable fund of information, although his conclusions are not always so convincing and he does not make relevant his portrait of a curious and sometimes unbalanced eccentric to the achievements of Grabbe's work. His account has been subject to some critical analysis in recent times and with the growing interest in Grabbe's dramas a new picture is emerging. For this in particular gratitude is due to Alfred Bergmann who in a lifetime series of studies has investigated the authenticity of the witnesses for Grabbe's life and character, has brought to light a number of new facts and assembled the information to give a more convincing portrait. Any examination of Grabbe's life must be very indebted to his work.1 Grabbe was born in December 1801 in Detmold, the small 1

Especially important among Bergmann's many publications is Die Glaubenswiirdigkeit der Zeugnisse fur den Lebensgang und Charahter Christian Dietrich Crabbes (= Germanische Studien, 137, Berlin, 1933). Cited below as Zeugnisse. This also includes a very convenient guide to the primary sources of information on Grabbe's life.

GRABBE's LIFE - A SURVEY

17

capital city of the principality of Lippe, a small independent state in Westfalia. His background was entirely proletarian. His ancestry shows no trace of intellectual forebears. Both his father and mother were of peasant Lippe stock and for generations back the families seem to have consisted of peasants and occasional craftsmen. The father, who had been for some time a country mailman in nearby Lemgo, took over the post of warden (Zuchtmeister) of the Detmold city prison a few months before Grabbe was born. The boy was brought up in an apartment close to the cells, reached from the outside only by passing guards and barred doors. The effect of such circumstances on a sensitive boy must have been very unfavorable. While the prison was certainly not, as some early writers seem to suggest, a kind of medieval torture chamber working its effect on the imagination of the child, it was no doubt a harsh and cruel place in which floggings were an everyday event. According to Immermann, Grabbe once told him with a certain, perhaps humorous, self-dramatization: "What should become of a man whose first memory it is to have taken an old murderer for a walk in the fresh air?" 2 At the same time the low social standing of his family also affected the growing boy. While his father's position must have required authority and conscientiousness it carried no social prestige. In an age when scarcely anyone entered the liberal professions who was not from the middle and upper classes, Grabbe was very conscious, not only as a boy but throughout his life, of his own inferior background. He was rarely able to find the right tone in society and protected himself often by exaggerated rudeness or clumsy attempts at camaraderie. His parents, however, were very devoted to him. He was their only child, born after eight years of marriage when they were both 36, and throughout their lives, for all the shocks of Grabbe's career, they seem to have been surprised and delighted by their delicate but brilliantly gifted son. The letters of the father to his son in college are simple but full of feeling. They show how little brutalized the man had become Grabbe, Erzählung, Charakteristik, Briefe. In Memorabilien, Part 2. In Immermanns Werke, ed. Robert Boxberger (Berlin), part 19, p. 33.

1

18

GRABBES LIFE - A SURVEY

by his profession, but also reveal how completely the interests in life of the parents were absorbed in the son. They had an adequate but meager income and the father had to supplement the pay with outside jobs. His reliability and honesty, however, were well known and he later combined his position as warden with that of administrator of a "loan bank". (Leihbank) They were able to send their son from grade school on to the Gymnasium. Themselves pious people, they hoped nothing more than that the boy should grow up to be a preacher. Reports agree that the father, despite his profession, was of a gentle and yielding disposition. The mother was of a stronger will, and more violent and excitable by temperament. Even the favorably inclined Ziegler suggests her nature had something passionate and hasty in it and speaks of her obstinate insistence on the fulfilment of her own ideas. Yet she too adored her son. Heinrich Heine describes her from Grabbe's own accounts as a "rough but tender she-wolf', who in caressing her son, "sometimes scratched him with her loving paws".3 This romantic image seems a little out of place, but fits with the picture of a harsh-spoken but loving woman who much adored and pampered her child. Little is known of Grabbe's early childhood but he seems to have been kept much to himself, and the loneliness of his later years may have begun then. As a boy the excitability and changeableness of his temperament was already evident. Ziegler reports on his violent changes of mood, cast down by opposition and yet inclined to be overweening and extravagant in success. At times he was very independent and kept his thoughts to himself, on other occasions he was like a plaything of the winds, easily led and convinced by others. Sometimes mild and easy-going, he could become very arrogant and assertive, especially if he felt he was not getting enough recognition. Although Grabbe made friends at the Gymnasium, he led an isolated life. He was never sure of himself and was over-eager to impress. He liked to pretend that he could master everything by » Cf. Heinrich Heines Memoiren. Nach seinen Werken, Briefen und Gesprächen, ed. Gustav Karpeles (Berlin, 1888), p. 120.

19

GRABBE S LIFE - A SUBVEY

inborn genius, rather than by industrious effort. A friend visiting him one day saw him through the window reading Caesar and looking up the words conscientiously in his lexicon, but when Grabbe heard him, he hid the books and pretended to be reading a novel.4 In school his main interests were in subjects appealing to his imagination, especially history and geography, rather than in the classical languages, and it seems likely that the requirements of work in the school, at least by more recent German standards, were not too stringent. F. J. Schneider in particular emphasizes the lack of scholarly discipline in his school training. He loved reading, sitting up far into the night "while his mother kept the coffee hot". His abilities were early recognized and a curious tale is told of a teacher much concerned with style and exercise in writing who asked the boys to compose their own fairy story. After a series of pedestrian efforts by his classmates, Grabbe read aloud his own composition. The teacher was amazed and said quite seriously: "Where did you get that from? Why, it's as if one were reading something by Calderon or Shakespeare." 5 He experimented early in the drama and when he was still fifteen sent the manuscript of a play, Theodora, to the Goschen publishing house in Leipzig accompanied by a curiously jejune letter in which he makes some detailed requirements of how the publishers should react, both financially and in the matter of printing. The manuscript, however, was returned and nothing more is known of the play. There are references in Ziegler also to another play, Der Erbprinz, but this too is missing. Possibly some elements of these plays were incorporated in Gothland. Another interesting letter exists, writen when he was sixteen, addressed to his parents although he was still living at home at the time. He asks their help in buying a copy of Shakespeare's tragedies, "the first book of the world, valued by many more than the Bible, . . . a book of which some assert it was written by a God" (Wuk. V, 227), and declares his hope of himself 4 Karl Ziegler, Grabbe's 20-21. » Ziegler, p. 18.

Leben

und

Charakter

(Hamburg,

1855),

pp.

20

GRABBE's LIFE - A SURVEY

being a writer in Shakespeare's general area. Hopefully arguing the possibilty of making money as a sideline at the University, he declares: Durch eine Tragödie kann man sich Ruhm bei Kaisern und ein Honorar von Tausenden erwerben, und durch Shakespeares Tragödien kann man lernen, gute zu machen, denn er ist der erste der Welt, wie Schiller sagt, bei dessen Stücke Weiber zu frühzeitig geboren haben. (Wuk. V, 228) Socially, Grabbe was shy and awkward. The family enjoyed the sympathy and support of his father's superior, Christian Gottlieb Clostermeier, who in addition to being Commissioner of the prison was also a city councillor and director of the city archives. Clostermeier early recognized Grabbe's gifts. He took a benevolent interest in the boy's future and may have helped to stimulate Grabbe's interest in history, which lasted all his life. He could not persuade the boy, however, to mingle in his own circle. Grabbe was clumsy in appearance and stature; he lacked all social graces and took no interest in dancing and music or other social pastimes. Already at this time he seems to have felt more at home in the city taverns, where he was freer to indulge his fancies. Ziegler describes among the students a large number who lived a rowdy and uncontrolled life "in which card playing, smoking and drinking belonged to the order of the day".6 Stories of Grabbe's drinking begin in his boyhood, although the actual dates are not clear. One day, caught out of bounds in a "Conditorladen" by a teacher, Grabbe felt both defiant and embarrassed so that he ordered and drank six liqueurs one after the other. A result of this psychological insecurity was that the school hesitated to grant him the leaving certificate that would enable him to enroll at the University. At Easter 1819, when Grabbe was seventeen, his teachers decided to postpone the certificate for a year, not because of inadequate preparation but because they felt he was psychologically unready in view of his youth. This decision was probably an unfortunate one. A further year •

Ziegler, p. 21.

GRABBES LIFE - A SURVEY

21

in Detmold must have been boring and upsetting for the boy and may have encouraged his inclination to excess. A year later he registered at the University of Leipzig, supported in part by funds from a local charity. His aim was to study law, a choice made after some hesitation and possibly in the hope of preparing himself as a successor to his patron Clostermeier as director of archives. But apart from attending lectures in different branches of jurisprudence he had plenty of time to continue work on the manuscript of Gothland which he took with him from home. Although he made several friends, including his later publisher Kettembeil, he was still very much isolated. He enjoyed the attractions of a much bigger city, attended theatres and concerts and loved to walk in the surrounding countryside. At the same time he continued his taste for low life, was involved in heavy drinking bouts, and seems to have been a frequent visitor of the city prostitutes. In his letters to his parents Grabbe never reveals anything of his feelings; he tells them only what he thought they wanted to hear. He is always optimistic about his propects and agreeably boastful about the contacts he is making. If in a moment of childlike confession he speaks of his bad moods, he hastens to add that they should not take him too seriously, he means "nothing more than an hour when I don't feel really cheerful" (Wuk. V. 235). Grabbe has been accused of hypocrisy in these letters or of revealing only his boredom in having to write. It is true that he jumps hastily from topic to topic making no attempt to organize his thoughts or develop an argument. It is of course sad that he does not even attempt to explain his feelings to his family. But the result has its own attractions. Thoughts come into his head and go straight down on paper. He gives the effect of a pleasant gossip as he chats amiably about this and that. Grabbe was often scornful of letters that show signs of being carefully drafted. "Das Ideal eines Briefes ist völliger Ersatz mündlichen Gesprächs", he wrote once to Kettembeil (Wuk. V, 271). In these family letters in particular he tries to preserve the spontaneity of conversation and to break through the formal barrier existing between thoughts as

22

GRABBE's LIFE - A SURVEY

they come to mind and the inevitable artificiality of carefully composed prose.7 In the Spring of 1822, following a normal German student custom, Grabbe changed universities and moved to the newly founded University of Berlin. Berlin had become a literary center under the Romantics and it may have been this or the attraction of important scholars that induced Grabbe to move. Hegel had moved to Berlin in 1818 and many other celebrated scholars and thinkers were there. Grabbe's interest in history was still very much alive. He read energetically "three or four books of history a week" and attended many courses of lectures, including those by the author of an important History of the Hohenstaufen, Friedrich von Raumer, whom Grabbe came to know personally and whose book was the main source for his Hohenstaufen dramas. Meanwhile, his Gothland was almost ready. In June he gave it the finishing touches and the play caused a stir wherever it was read. Grabbe was introduced into literary circles that included Heinrich Heine and the later popular playwright Friedrich von Uechtritz, as well as Friedrich Wilhelm Gubitz, the editor of the influential Gesellschafter. Here Grabbe seemed a very striking and original figure; hopes of success began to excite him. In his letters to his parents he talks eagerly of his new friends and their response to his work. Free tickets to the theatre, hopes of performance and publication, a writer who tells him his work is for the centuries to come, contact with the best circles, "young officials who are members of the nobility and each of them . . . eager to do him a favor" (Wuk. V, 240), — all these things lead him to feel "far happier than in Leipzig". Heine, however, reports of some not unnatural hesitation in literary circles about Gothland. When the manuscript was read by Frau Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, a woman of great influence in the circle of the younger Romantics, she sent to Heine at midnight and begged him to take the fearful thing away "as she could not sleep so long as it was 7 For a sympathetic understanding of this point of view, written under the influence of expressionism, cf. Ludwig Marcuse, Die Welt der Tragödie (Berlin, 1923).

GRABBES LIFE - A SURVEY

23

8

in the house". Grabbe's comedy, which he wrote rapidly during these months, met with more general acceptance, but here too his early hopes began to be disappointed. In November he talks of refusing one publisher's offer of publication and performance because it came to only one louis dor per page. But other offers were not forthcoming and his dreams began to fade. Despite the generosity of his parents Grabbe was living in great poverty. Heine's account of this in his memoirs is colored with a somewhat self-conscious charm but nevertheless gives a lively picture. Beim Abschied, erzählte mir Grabbe, drückte sie ihm ein Paket in die Hand, worin, weich unwickelt mit Baumwolle, sich ein halb Dutzend silberner Löffel neben sechs dito kleinen Kaffeelöffeln und ein großer dito Potagelöffel befand, ein stolzer Hausschatz, dessen die Frauen aus dem Volke sich nie ohne Herzbluten entäußern, da sie gleichsam eine silberne Dekoration sind, wodurch sie sich von dem gewöhnlichen zinnernen Pöbel zu unterscheiden glauben. Als ich Grabbe kennenlernte, hatte er bereits den Potagelöffel, den Goliat, wie er ihn nannte, aufgezehrt. Befragte ich ihn manchmal, wie es ihm gehe, antwortete er mit bewölkter Stirn lakonisch: ich bin an meinem dritten Löffel, oder ich bin an meinem vierten Löffel. Die großen gehen dahin, seufzte er einst, und es wird sehr schmale Bissen geben, wenn die kleinen, die Kaffeelöffelchen, an die Reihe kommen und wenn diese dahin sind, gibt's gar keine Bissen mehr. 0

The thought of returning to Detmold horrified him. Even to his parents he wrote: . . . in einer beschränkten kleinen Stadt wie Detmold können mich die Leute nicht begreifen, und ich muß dann verkümmern wie welkes Laub; hier haben meine Bekannten Nachsicht mit meinen Fehlern, weil sie einsehen, daß dieselben aus meinen Vorzügen entspringen. (Wuk. V, 240)

Less and less interested in his law studies, he turned to the theatre with the hope of becoming an actor or obtaining some other position. But there too difficulties arose. Despite Grabbe's own confidence in his abilities, contemporaries felt that neither his appearance nor his voice made him suitable for the stage. 8

•

Heines Memoiren, p. 122. Heines Memoiren, p. 120.

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On March 23rd 1823 he travelled back to Leipzig in the hope of making contact with the theatre director there, but with poor results. A Leipzig actor, Eduard Jerrmann, later published a very negative (and, as Ziegler insists, probably very exaggerated) account of Grabbe's strange behavior, his extraordinary shyness and humility compensated for by periods of bumptiousness. In these circumstances he turned to the celebrated Ludwig Tieck, whom he had described to his parents as "after Goethe the first author now living in Germany". Already in September 1822 Grabbe had sent a copy of Gothland to Tieck in Dresden and asked for his opinion. Tieck's reply showed that he had read the manuscript very carefully and had been very much impressed. Although concerned at the despair and cynicism of the play and wondering, if the author's "poetic power of hope and life had so early dwindled, where he would find bread on his journeyings through the wasteland" 10 (I, 5), he nevertheless expressed confidence in the tremendous abilities of the author, who would achieve, he felt convinced, something better than this play. Tieck's reply had reached Grabbe on his 21st birthday, "the finest and worthiest birthday present I have ever received" (Wuk. V, 242). He accepted much of the criticism, described his own life to date and sent a copy of Scherz. This time there was no reply and in March he wrote again, two letters, the second in a very desperate tone asking for some position in the Dresden theatre. Tieck invited him, but unfortunately the result was again a failure. Grabbe in his letters made excessive claims about his acting ability which Tieck in the event thought quite unfounded. Grabbe's voice was weak; he seems to have spoken with a strong Lippe dialect and his appearance was far from impressive. Grabbe, conscious of his failure, became all the more confused and awkward. Tieck found it difficult to make contact with the young man and Grabbe no doubt lacked the talent to ingratiate himself with the distinguished author. HowTieck's letter was given as a preface to the first publication of Herzog Theodor von Gothland and has been included ever since in Grabbe editions. 10

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25

ever, Grabbe stayed for two or three months in Dresden, moving in Tieck's literary circles and supported by funds from the director of the court theatre. He evidently enjoyed his stay and described it later to Tieck as the three best months of his life. He enjoyed the advantages of the attractive city, the German "Rome" as it was called and made a walking trip in the neighboring "Saxon Switzerland", but his hopes of a lasting position, once more confidently expressed to his parents, faded again. He left in a state of great bitterness. Still anxious to avoid a return to Detmold, he lingered for six weeks in Leipzig, led astray "partly by too great a fondness" for the city, partly by the inducements of his friends, then travelled on to Braunschweig and Hannover, still seeking vainly for some entrée to the theatre. In August he was forced to return home. In a letter to Tieck he describes the occasion: So schlich ich mich nachts um elf Uhr in das verwünschte Detmold ein, weckte meine Eltern aus dem Schlafe und ward von ihnen, denen ich ihr ganzes kleines Vermögen weggesogen, die ich so oft mit leeren Hoffnungen getäuscht, die meinetwegen von der halben Stadt verspottet werden, mit Freudentränen empfangen. (Wuk. V, 260)

In the address of his letter to Tieck he gives himself the title: "Stud, jur." (student of law), which he had included in his early days at the University but which he had let drop for several months. Yet for some time he was unable to take up again his legal studies. His literary hopes and ambitions were still alive, encouraged by Tieck's continued interest. He hoped even now for some small post to support himself and his family, and above all to get away from the emptiness of Detmold, in which "one only knows of literature by hearsay". As he grew to realize that Tieck would not help him further, he gave way to loneliness, wandering by himself in the wild but attractive Lippe countryside and spending evenings and nights in debauch. For four months, he told Kettembeil later, he lived a wild and dissolute life which very much worsened his already scandalous reputation in the town. Gradually, however, he became bored with it; he gathered his spirits and set to work rapidly to pass his exams. He determined to overcome the

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prejudice against him and make a career for himself in Detmold. Against the expectations of many of his townsmen he soon succeeded. In June 1824 he passed an oral exam and was granted the right to practice law. Of the next years little is known. Grabbe seems to have worked industriously, though mostly on petty and poorly paid cases, and slowly gained a new reputation for serious and conscientious work which spread even amongst the high officials of the city and state. He did no writing, perhaps with the idea of establishing a position and source of income before going back to literature. It is known from the records of the city library, unearthed by Bergmann, that he borrowed books fairly extensively at this time, largely history but also belles-lettres. His hopes for a time were centered on becoming the assistant and successor to the director of archives, the old family friend Christian Clostermeier. When in 1826 a vacancy became open, Clostermeier did what he could to get Grabbe accepted, but his pleas were rejected and, despite his protests, another and certainly far less well prepared candidate was appointed. At much the same time, however, another though less attractive position became available, as substitute and assistant to the military "Auditeur" or officer of justice. This time Grabbe was appointed, thanks largely to the support of a government councillor (Regierungsrat) Christian von Meien whose report has been preserved, in which he emphasized how Grabbe had proven himself not only theoretically but practically in many fields and shown his reliability and solidity. This position Grabbe occupied for several years, first as substitute to the sick predecessor and later as Auditeur himself. Grabbe's determination and practical success at this time refutes those early judgments which were made about his vacillation and lack of character. That his pose of seriousness in the petty legal wrangles in which he was involved was a mask, is clear enough. But he carried out industriously often very tiresome and demanding tasks. The underlying mood of these years, however, is described in a letter he wrote somewhat later.

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Ich und Jetzt, ein Fisch im Morast, der doch nicht stirbt, sondern sich durchdrängt. . . . Ich stehe erträglich und verdiene auch erträglich — aber ich bin nicht glücklich, werde es auch wohl nie wieder. Ich glaube, hoffe, wünsche, liebe, achte, hasse nichts, sondern verachte nur noch immer das Gemeine-, ich bin mir selbst so gleichgültig, wie es mir ein Dritter ist; ich lese tausend Bücher, aber keines zieht mich an; Ruhm und Ehre sind Sterne, derenthalben ich nicht einmal aufblicke . . . Meine jahrelange Operation, den Verstand als Scheidewasser auf mein Gefühl zu gießen, scheint ihrem Ende zu nahen: der Verstand ist ausgegossen und das Gefühl zertrümmert. (Wuk. V, 269-271)

Such personal confessions are rare in Grabbe's letters. In this case he was induced into it by a sudden and unexpected offer of help. A friend from University days, Georg Ferdinand Kettembeil, who had become the owner of a book store and publishing house in Frankfurt, remembered Grabbe's earlier works and wrote suggesting the possibility of publication. This letter of April 1827 was a turning point in Grabbe's life. It inspired him to a new outpouring of creative energy and enthusiasm. A few weeks before, he had been looking through some old manuscripts again and now his long pent-up ambitions found release. His letters to Kettembeil reveal a growing excitement with the possibilities of success. At times he is very uncertain what the response will be. He cautiously added to the published version of his plays an introduction separating his present self from these early extravagances; he wanted to put another of his early plays first, the innocuous (and in fact very feeble) rural Italian tragedy Nannette und Maria, as a lure to his readers and to reconcile those who might be offended by Gothland. But on other occasions he is convinced of the tremendous power of his work and the contrast between it and the triviality of what has been successful among his contemporaries. He included in his published works an essay on the Shakespeare mania, polemical and assertive in its attacks on what he thought had become merely a popular cult, but at the same time curiously disguising his own feeling and literary attitudes. He is eager to impress, to make his name and assert himself. He sends model reviews to Kettembeil to guide public

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reaction and to stress those aspects of his plays likely to make the most effect. Feeling free to indulge his deepest thought to Kettembeil, he is at times almost overbearingly confident, certain that he knows the best way to stir the public and arouse the interest of influential critics. His mind is also full of new plans and ideas. He suggests the possibility of a journal to be published in Frankfurt and to be filled in part with a daily survey of the follies appearing in the other journals (Wuk. V, 282). He talks of becoming a politician or of writing a book on the danger threatening Europe from Russia. The world seems open to him; the man of energy can achieve anything he wills. At times these ambitions border on the frenzied and seem to lose contact with reality. In August 1827 he writes: Wo ich Endzweck sehe, bin ich unermüdlich. Zwei Trauerspiele, zwei Komödien, sechs Abhandlungen über Literatur und ihre Heroen, eine Masse Kritiken, auch Wissenschaftlichkeiten, Trotz und Überbietung von allem, was mir in den Weg kommt, — das schaffe ich Jahr für Jahr. (Wuk. VI, 297) Yet these next years were filled with a remarkable series of productions. New works appeared in different moods but each imbued with Grabbe's personality and spirit. And they were created despite the heavy requirements of his legal work which needed his constant attention and energy. His temporary position as substitute was made permanent in January 1828 when his predecessor died, and his "skill, industry and accuracy" were praised. Two years later in January 1830 when he received a 50% raise in pay, this report on his work was repeated with further references to his "practical skill, sense of honor, willingness to work and disinclination to taking bribes". The publication of his plays met with considerable success. A broad and lively interest was shown and many serious and intelligent reviews were written across Germany and even abroad. An article in the Foreign Quarterly Review in London by the Scottish scholar and enthusiast for German literature Robert Pearse Gillies mingled serious admiration for a "rising genius" with irony. Mr. Grabbe can write and has written such things, both in prose and

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verse, as were most assuredly never written or conceived in our sublunary sphere till now, and such as we imagine no imitator will dare hope to equal.11 The city began to be proud of him. He was the center of attention at concerts and the theatre. Strangers came to town to see the noted and reputedly eccentric author. Despite quarrels with the court theatre in Detmold arising from Grabbe's strictures on some of their productions, his Don Juan und Faust was performed there in March 1829. Accompanying music was provided by the noted minor composer Albert Lortzing, also a native of Detmold, who himself played Leporello, while his wife played Donna Anna. The play was apparently successful enough but was not repeated, and indeed Grabbe's period of success gradually merged into a new era of neglect and uncertainty. Even at this "peak of fortune", as Ziegler refers to it, the insecurity of Grabbe's character was evident. He was fairly well off at this time and lived in pleasant rooms, but this comfort did not enter his spirit. His appearance and moods revealed a deep-rooted melancholy. Ziegler describes his appearance at this time. Freilich hatte er von Natur einen feinen und schwächlichen Körperbau oder es war vielmehr Kraft und Schwäche wunderbar darin gemischt, denn während er auf seinen Schultern einen Kopf trug, der eine hochgewölbte, an griechische Weltweisen erinnernde Stirn hatte, unter der ein paar rollende Augen blitzten, war doch sein Mund nicht sehr fein geschnitten, indem die obere Lippe über die untere herabhing, wich auch Mund und Kinn zu viel zurück und fielen die Schultern ab wie bei einem Mädchen. Es schien als ob die unteren Theile des Körpers zu den hochfliegenden Gedanken des Kopfes nicht passen wollten. Aber er hielt sich doch weit nachlässiger, als dies durch seine natürliche Körperbeschaffenheit bedingt würde. Wenn er dahin wanderte, . . . zog er seine Schritte sehr langsam nach, hatte gewöhnlich das Haupt gesenkt und in seine Gesichte lag etwas tief Verdrießliches, die Oberlippe preßte die Unterlippe, theils als ob er einen widerlichen Geschmack auf der Zunge hätte, theils als ob er einen Schmerz verbisse.12 11

Cf. Alfred Bergmann, Grabbes Werke in der zeitgenössischen Kritik (Detmold, 1958), vol. I, p. 88. " Ziegler, pp. 69-70.

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There were reports of his eccentricities. Ziegler tells the story of an occasion when he was administering the oath to new officer recruits. They found him at his desk in his nightshirt and underpants with the usual glass of rum at his side. To prepare himself better for the oath he put on some black silk stockings which came up to his knees, put a black dress coat over his nightshirt and a black cravatte round his bare neck. As he stood there with the articles of war in his hand the young men began to laugh but Grabbe cut a serious face. "The oath is a solemn occasion", he said, "think of God, man, think of God".13 Often by himself, he had close ties only with young people from the universities who were attracted by his genius and completely under his sway. In such company he was lively and quick-witted and overflowing with ideas. But with his elders or with people of his own age and rank he was less able to find the right tone. He seems never to have found any pleasure in peaceful conversation and tended in company either to sit sulkily in a corner or else in more exhilarated mood to dominate the scene, moving rapidly from theme to theme and drawing the boldest contrasts and conclusions. Although capable of rare loyalty and self-sacrifice for his friends he was very changeable, easily induced into new moods and easily irritated and upset. Difficulties began to arise with the loyal Kettembeil over the publication of Heinrich VI, and Grabbe repeatedly had to defend this work in letters to his friend, who seems to have even made difficulties about the fulfillment of the contract. Kettembeil wanted Grabbe to write further comedies but at the same time would not accept the first version of Aschenbrödel. Grabbe meanwhile struggled with the material of Napoleon. His health became uncertain. In December 1829 he broke his arm during a sleighing party and the effect lasted for many months. In March 1830 it was still uncertain whether he would lose his arm altogether. He began to suffer from gout and in a letter in August he complained further of the effects 13

Ziegler, p. 86.

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of a bite by a mad dog. The pressure of his legal work added to the strain and by November 1830 he told Kettembeil how his "mad way of life", together with eternally sitting over the monstrous Napoleon, had led to his spitting blood and endangered his life. Severe nervous attacks also plagued him. In the middle of 1831, however, Napoleon was finished and Grabbe looked round for new plans. He spoke of a vast scheme to interpret the revolutions of the past and to forecast ones to come, not only in the political but also in the religious and philosophic sphere. The idea of going back to the Hohenstaufen and writing more dramas along the lines of his earlier proposal of six to eight plays no longer attracted him now that he had entered the contemporary world. On Kettembeil's suggestion he developed a play on the life of the Polish freedom fighter, Thaddäus Kosciuszko, but without much enthusiasm, and only a fragmentary one and a half acts were written. Several references are made in the next years to his work on one or more novels but no manuscripts have come to light. Despite his frequent optimism, a period of unproductivity had developed. In part he was sustained by thoughts of marriage. In the Spring of 1831 he became secretly engaged to Henriette Meyer, a simple but young and attractive girl he had met about a year before. Grabbe was very enlivened by the engagement and his friends hoped for a more stable and assured future for him. But despite Grabbe's attempts to change his way of life, difficulties arose. He could not really accept her bourgeois values and she did not know what to make of his extravagances. She expected normal attentions and the support of his love; Grabbe seems rarely to have found the right tone, vacillating between passion and shyness. When Henriette broke off the engagement Grabbe became very conciliatory and eager to re-convince her. He could not, Ziegler argues, bear that anyone should be really angry with him. But she remained obdurate and in early 1832 married another man. Grabbe turned to Louise Clostermeier, the daughter of an old family friend. He had established close ties with her in 1829 after her father's death when he felt himself something of the protector of the family. He had even

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asked her to marry him then and after her refusal continued to plead with her violently and passionately for some months before breaking off the relationship. In 1831 and 1832 contacts were reestablished and finally, with Louise's hesitation overcome, they were married in March 1833. From the beginning things went wrong. Neither seems to have been very much in love. Grabbe's own feelings were stimulated by her opposition; when she refused him he threatened suicide more than once and gave the most violent expression to his desires, but he may not have considered too seriously what marriage would mean. He is reported to have said on the very day of the wedding: "Now my troubles are about to begin." Her original hesitation had been partly caused by his social inferiority, emphasized because Grabbe's father was the direct subordinate of Councillor Clostermeier. This problem was no doubt eased by the death of Grabbe's father in December 1832 and with her own mother's death she must have felt lonely and worried about her future. Nevertheless she still had doubts about the stability and suitability of Grabbe. She was attracted by his literary reputation but had little feeling for literature or sympathy with Grabbe's problems as a writer. Adored by her father, she had come to see his essay on "Where Arminius defeated Varus" as the peak of literary achievement. She was ten years older than he and apparently very settled in her ways and opinions. That she was of a dominating and quarrelsome nature seems clear. From the beginning of the marriage she was worried about finances and afraid that her husband's disorderly way of life would mean that she would have to support him out of the hard earned money her father had left her. Grabbe of course was scarcely suited for marriage. The noted psychiatrist Edmund Bergler 14 in a medical study of Grabbe's life puts forward the hypothesis that he was the victim, frequently met with in the artist, of an "oral fixation". He suggests very reasonably that Grabbe needed as a wife a loving motherly woman but chose, perhaps through his own self-destructive 14 Edmund Bergler, Talleyrand, Napoleon, Stendhal, Grabbe: Psychoanalytisch-btographische Essays (Vienna, 1935).

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impulses, a kind of man destroyer. Another biographer, Wilhelm Schottler,15 attempts to show Grabbe's unresolved homosexual tendencies and points to the closeness of his ties with men in contrast with his casual and often cavalier indifference to women. The drawback to such interpretations is the lack of adequate evidence. The biographical material is too sparse, and not too much reliance can be placed on the characteristic use of themes and images in Grabbe's plays and letters. In any case Grabbe's hopes of comfort and sympathy through marriage were soon disappointed; instead, new pressures, added to the old, brought him to the verge of a psychological and physical collapse. Sad and distressing stories of marital conflict are told both in Ziegler and Duller. Domestic quarrels grew into public brawls. Friends, particularly his old school comrade Petri and his superior in the military service, Regierungsrat von Meien, attempted mediation but could only patch up the growing split between them. Grabbe found some relief from his troubles in his writing. After a long period of uncertainty as to where next to direct his literary energies, he had discovered in the life of Hannibal a material that appealed to him. In his low state of health, however, he was rarely able to work at it for more than an hour at a time. It now seemed impossible for him to continue any longer to combine his law work with his ambitions in literature. He had given up his private practice some years before but now the demands of his position as Auditeur seemed too much for him. In a letter of February 12, 1834, to his superior Christian von Meien he declared that he was still full of life, still full of interest for literature and knowledge, but could no longer bear, with all his new worries, the dull routine of his job. He had previously requested the Prince that he be granted a stipend to live freely as a poet. The Prince had directed the request to his cabinet and asked Grabbe to explain his motives in more detail. The cabinet, however, turned this down, as they did also his request for a pension on which he could support ls

Wilhelm Schottler, Die innere Motivierung 1931).

in Grabbes Vramen (Berlin,

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himself and his family. On February 15th he asked the Prince to be allowed to resign but through the intercession of his friends he was granted instead a six months leave, bearing in mind the general state of his health and mind. Grabbe had tended to neglect his duties at the beginning of the year but with the conscientiousness he always showed despite his disorderly way of life, he felt it his duty and a matter of honor to bring the numerous and complicated papers into the best of order. As the year dragged on amidst continued misery and ill health it seemed as if a final break was the only solution. The circumstances of his decision to resign in September when his leave of absence was over have been disputed. According to the reports of both Duller and Ziegler, based on assertions from Louise, Grabbe was not able finally to make up his mind till the very last minute. Both accounts tell how he went to von Meien on September 14th with the idea of asking either for re-instatement or for prolongation of his leave but came home deathly pale to tell his wife he had resigned. The circumstances are given in detail: Grabbe, characteristically, as it is implied, saying the opposite of what he really felt, announced that he had come to discuss his resignation, but intended it only jokingly and to see what response he got. Von Meien, however, took him seriously and suggested it was after all too petty a post for a man like Grabbe to whom the whole world was open. Louise's anger and worry about money led her to assume that Grabbe's vanity had been played on and she refused to believe that the decision was final until it later became all too clear. In general this report of events, mainly made by Duller, is supported by a letter from Louise herself to the Detmold poet of the Jungdeutschland movement Ferdinand Freiligrath in August 1838, although she takes issue with certain minor details asserted by Duller.16 However, the inquiries of Alfred Bergmann have put the whole circumstantial account of Grabbes vacillation into doubt. An exchange of official letters has come " Letter published by Otto Nieten in "Neue Kunde über Grabbe", Westfälisches Magazin, N. F. XII-XIII (Dortmund, 1910).

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to light that indicates over a longish period Grabbe's determination to leave. One letter written on the very day in question, September 14th, finally assumes the decision is already made and asks for a travel pass to enable him to go to Frankfurt within a few days.17 In any case Grabbe left at the beginning of October. Louise refused to accompany him. Such a move made without any financial backing was a desperate shot in the dark. His first hopes were directed to Kettembeil in Frankfurt, but these were soon disappointed. Kettembeil was willing to help but only on his own terms, requiring Grabbe to adapt himself to the needs of the publisher. Grabbe was scarcely willing now, having sacrificed so much, to compromise his literary plans. To Petri he wrote indignantly afterwards: In Frankf. blieb ich nicht, weil mein Verleger viel versprach, auch allerlei tat, aber nicht so, wie ich es wünschte; ich sollte sein Hund werden, bald hier, bald da nach seinem Willen korrigieren, damit das Zeugs dem oder dem Blatt anpaßte, und er begriff nicht, daß fremde Korrektur schlimmer als ein Originalfehler. Ich verzeih's ihm. Er will heiraten. (Wuk. VI, 58)

Grabbe lingered for a while in Frankfurt and took up a friendship there with his later biographer Eduard Duller. He moved in a literary circle of sorts but according to a contemporary report his condition was a sad one. He looked an old and sick man and took part in the conversation only in short broken sentences.18 In November he wrote for help, first to the editor Wolfgang Menzel who had written favorable reviews of his work in the past, and then without waiting for a reply, to the dramatist Karl Immermann in Düsseldorf. Immermann had met Grabbe several years before in Detmold, and although disturbed by his strange and unsettled behavior and the difficulties of Grabbe's life, he felt confident that Grabbe's nature was strong enough for him to win his way through. Now Grabbe in a curious but desperate letter, written Letter cited in Bergmann, Zeugnisse, pp. 446-447. Cf. Graf Adolf Friedrich von Schack, Ein halbes Jahrhundert, Erinnerungen und Aufzeichnungen (Stuttgart and Leipzig, Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1889), vol. I, pp. 90-91. 17

18

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to this virtual stranger, put a plea for help side by side with marital complaints: Ich habe Zutrauen zu Ihnen und hoffe auf Sie. Ich glaube nämlich, ich und eine alte Mutter sind verloren, wenn Sie mir nicht zu helfen suchen. Zwar hab' ich seit IV2 Jahren eine ziemlich reiche Frau, jedoch so interessant, daß ich sie nur aus der Ferne, jetzt von hier aus, bewundern kann, und von dem Vermögen nehm' ich dem Weibe nichts, obgleich es mir mitgehört, dazu bin ich zu stolz, habe vielmehr mein Eingebrachtes der Dame großenteils auch gelassen. (Wuk. VI, 53) After speaking of his disappointments in Frankfurt he writes: Helfen Sie also mir, und könnten Sie mir auch nur ein Stübchen schaffen, und etwa (was Ihnen nicht schwer fallen kann) juristische oder nichtjuristische Abschreibereien gegen ein Billiges. (Wuk. VI, 53) To Grabbe's surprise and delight Immermann replied in a kindly and generous way. When Grabbe came to Düsseldorf the next month Immermann provided a quiet room in the home of an elderly and understanding widow, where Grabbe could also take his meals to avoid using the inn, and he produced a publisher, a young man Carl Georg Schreiner, who took a great interest in Grabbe's work. Immermann's position was not easy. He was a man of substance in the town; as "Oberlandesgerichtsrat" he had occupied an important post as a judge of the superior provincial court, and he had recently become director of the newly founded city theatre. By nature too he was serious and given to a regular, settled life. In his memoirs he points out his own heavy obligations and his hesitations in taking on responsibility for this eccentric figure. He talks of smuggling in this strange man into "our elegant, aristocratic and strait-laced Düsseldorf". And then discusses their meeting: Eintretend sah ich eine hagere, kümmerliche Gestalt im Hemd auf dem Bette liegend, obgleich es schon Elf geschlagen hatte. Das Zimmer war ungeheizt und kein Ofen in demselben, die Decemberkälte groß. Man hatte ihn wegen Ueberfüllung des Hauses mit Besuch oder — was weiß ich welchem Grunde in dieses dürftige Gemach eingespündet. Er reichte mir die vor Frost zitternden Hände; seine Zähne klapperten. Er versicherte mich zu wiederholten Malen, er sei

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gut, sehr gut, woran ich noch keinen Zweifel geäußert hatte, und forderte mich auf, ihn zu achten und zu lieben, was ich ihm gern zusagte. He goes on: Wenn ein Bewohner des Mondes auf die Erde fiele, er würde sich zu uns Anderen nur ungefähr so fremd verhalten, wie mein irrender Ritter der Poesie. Nichts stimmte in diesem Körper zusammen. Fein und zart — Hände und Füße von solcher Kleinheit, daß sie mir wie unentwickelt vorkamen, — regte er sich in eckichten, rohen und ungeschlachten Bewegungen; die Arme wußten nicht, was die Hände thaten; Oberkörper und Füße standen nicht selten im Widerstreite. Diese Contraste erreichten in seinem Gesichte ihren Gipfel. Eine Stirn, hoch, oval, gewölbt, wie ich sie nur in Shakespeare's (freilich ganz unhistorischem) Bildnisse von ähnlicher Pracht gesehen habe, darunter große geisterhaftweite Augenhöhlen und Augen von tiefer, seelenvoller Bläue, eine zierlich gebildete Nase, bis dahin — das dünne, fahle Haar, welches nur einzelne Stellen des Schädels spärlich bedeckte, abgerechnet — Alles schön. Und von da hinunter Alles häßlich, verworren, ungereimt! Ein schlaffer Mund, verdrossen über dem Kinn hängend, das Kinn kaum vom Halse sich lösend, der ganze untere Theil des Gesichts überhaupt so scheu zurückkriechend, wie der obere sich frei und stolz hervorbaute.19 F o r all his other tasks, Immermann for a while took great care of Grabbe and Grabbe very amenably followed his direction, allowing himself to be led, as he wrote to Petri, as long as he was not dominated. Immermann could not, however, doubt that he saw a great nature in ruins. Several glasses of the strongest liquor were necessary for Grabbe each morning and his whole organism seemed to Immermann already gravely deteriorated. His digestion felt an unconquerable resistance to solid food. Grabbe's conversation too, Immermann found revealing of his sickness, as he wandered often brilliantly but desultorily from subject to subject. Immermann's influence for a while, however, was very beneficial; he managed even to get Grabbe to take an oath to give up the disastrous morning rum in favor of milder spirits. He tried cautiously to bring the visitor out of the loneliness of his room and into society. He invited Grabbe to the house he shared with his long time mistress 19 Memorabilien, in Werke, part 19, pp. 9-12.

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Countess Elisa von Ahlefeldt, and Grabbe would occasionally make the journey, although he had to be led in daylight by his landlady's maid walking a few paces ahead, whether from inability to find the way himself or other fear of strange places. He noted that when Grabbe did appear, his sparkling conversation and flow of inventive and comic ideas made him very attractive company, especially to women, in whom admiration was joined with pity. In every gathering amidst the minor men of letters Grabbe was the center of interest. In a letter of March 1835, cited by Ziegler, Grabbe wrote: 'Hier werde ich zum Theil von den vornehmsten Ständen über Verdienst geschätzt und wo ich von meinen alten Launen, die aus meiner frühern Erziehung und Stellung entsprangen, noch etwas habe, mit Nachsicht behandelt wie ein Kind, daß ich mich schäme und mich bessere'.20 An account by the somewhat conventional humorous writer Theodor von Kobbe, who visited Düsseldorf in 1835, gives another picture of Grabbe in society, but may also be indicative of Grabbe's character. Commenting on the basic irony behind Grabbe's attitudes, he notes how anything elevated or noble in feeling seemed always like idle fancy to Grabbe. He goes on to complain that even in ordinary conversation, just when the subject grew lively and interesting Grabbe could not resist breaking the mood, often by rude and indecent language, "even in the presence of the most respectable ladies". When he was reproached for this Grabbe would smile quietly, "like a madman who has just carried out some naughty prank". 21 During this period Grabbe threw himself into his work with an excess of energy. Long letters to Immermann written day after day in the next few months reveal the growth of his plans and the variety of his interests. The manuscript of Hannibal which he had offered to Kettembeil was revised and rewritten. On Immermann's advice he had transferred the language from the iambic verse, to which he had returned after Napoleon, 20

Ziegler, pp. 149-150. Humoresken aus dem Philisterleben (Bremen, Verlag von Wilhelm Kaiser, 1841), vol. II, p. 18.

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39

into prose. The Aschenbrödel, also rejected by Kettembeil, he rewrote and got ready for printing. Already in a letter of December 18, 1834, he planned an essay on the objectives and work of the newly founded Düsseldorf theatre which he felt were not sufficiently understood, and this grew into a fairly long appreciative study on "The Theatre in Düsseldorf with a Retrospective Glance at the Rest of the German Stage" which he revised in April of the following year partly according to suggestions and wishes of Immermann himself. All three works were brought out by his new publisher Schreiner in June 1835. Other plans also occupied him; a comedy on Eulenspiegel, a theme which he had often played with before, tragedies on Alexander and on Christ of which only the barest fragments exist, as well as a serious effort to translate Hamlet from the so-called first quarto which had recently been discovered. He wrote reviews of the Düsseldorf theatre and planned as an act of gratitude a sympathetic interpretation of Immermann's published works, of which four volumes had now appeared. He seemed to be living as he had hoped as an independent man of letters. He was in touch with several journals and other writers, making contacts among others with the famous author of the Jungdeutschiand movement, Karl Gutzkow. But this very energy itself Immermann regarded as a dangerous symptom, a sign perhaps that Grabbe secretly foresaw his own death. He recognized that despite periods of liveliness and apparently overflowing spirits Grabbe was at bottom profoundly miserable. The cheerful and even boisterous moments which he enjoyed with Grabbe "sprang only from the appearance of true happiness". He felt in the end that the only solution to Grabbe's troubles was in death and claimed Grabbe recognized this himself and spoke often about it. As he grew feebler, Grabbe began to quarrel with all those who genuinely meant him well. The ties with Immermann grew progressively weaker and Grabbe began to retreat again into a life of the cafes. By June 1835 relations had grown distinctly troubled. Immermann was very occupied with the writing of his important novel Die Epigonen, which was to give in the

40

GRABBES LIFE - A SURVEY

title alone a phrase to catch the intellectual mood of the time after the classical and romantic eras — the mood of "latecomers" tormented by the past and yet unable to accept the future of a middle-class, industrial world. In the late summer and autumn his legal duties kept him away from Düsseldorf for long periods of time and when he came back in late fall he had to admit that he and Grabbe had become strangers. Immermann was offended by Grabbe's strictures on the city theatre in February 1836 and their personal ties came to an end in a series of angry exchanges. Criticism has been made of Immermann for his failure to do more to help Grabbe. He has been attacked for giving Grabbe demeaning work as a copyist helping to write out the parts of the plays, and also for making use of him to further the development of his own theatre. Immermann in his Memorabilien says there was only one instance of copying — a four act play by Töpfer which he gave Grabbe at his request when he first arrived. He was himself naturally very involved in the plans of his new theatre and he did try to elicit Grabbe's help, but it is difficult to see what else he could have done and what other way he might have induced Grabbe back into an active life. He hoped to exercise a cure, to help Grabbe into a measured life through measured work. When this began to fail he may have lacked patience. He shows in his own account no real appreciation of the qualities of Grabbe's work. He made no attempt to produce any of his plays, although he did present at this very time a play on Heinrich VI by Ernst Raupach, a very routine dramatist of the day. Immermann himself admits they were never real friends; their natures were too far apart. But across this gap he had a feeling for a powerful human being struggling with his pain. Grabbe may have felt ashamed later of his earlier devotion to Immermann, but according to Ziegler, whose antagonism to Immermann is clear, he remained in his last days loyal and sympathetic to the man who had helped him. During his later days in Düsseldorf Grabbe began to spend more and more hours in a café "Zum Drachenfels". He was happiest in the company of a young musician Norbert Burg-

GRABBE's LIFE - A SURVEY

41

müller whom he had met by chance and whose career had been dogged by miseries and ill-fortune. They became very close and they would sit together for hours, talking, drinking or merely silent together. For Burgmüller Grabbe wrote Der Cid, an extravagant parody of the normal insipid opera text. The news of Burgmüllers accidental death in May 1836 — he drowned in a bath as the result of an attack of epilepsy — was one of the last blows Grabbe suffered before his final return to Detmold. The owner of the café Jakob Stang, a brother-in-law of Grabbe's publisher Schreiner, also became a close friend. He and his family helped and encouraged the ailing writer for many months. A correspondence between Stang and Grabbe's wife has been published by Alfred Bergmann as an appendix to his study of the witnesses for Grabbe's life, and the letters which begin in January 1836 reveal both the degree of Stang's sympathy and interest and the extraordinary passion and even desperation with which Louise viewed the possible return of Grabbe to his home town. Her concern was still primarily over her financial future; her continued accusations and prolonged arguments on money matters reveal the intensity of her feelings. In February she turned to Immermann begging him to continue to look after her husband but unveiling once more her anger. After a long account in which she asserts her view of their finances against the false view she presumes Grabbe was spreading, she continues: Nehmen Sie den Unglücklichen ferner unter Ihre liebevolle Obhut; aber glauben Sie niemals seinen Betheurungen. Denn alles, was er spricht, ist, ehrlich gesagt, nichts anderes, als Hirngespinst und Lüge. Sie werden, wenn Sie ihm einmal geglaubt, sicher noch nach Jahren erfahren, dass er Sie getäuscht. Durch scheinbare Gutmüthigkeit hat er mich vor der E h e getäuscht; aber er täuscht mich in derselben nicht zum zweitenmal. E r verläugnet beständig seine Gefühle, weil er meint, er müsse sich ihrer schämen, und spricht stets anders, als er denkt. Aber durch unermüdet angewendete List, kommt man endlich der Wahrheit auf die Spur. Erhalten Sie ihn gütigst in der Furcht; er liebt, so lange er fürchtet. 2 2 28

Bergmann, Zeugnisse, p. 555.

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GRABBE's LIFE - A SURVEY

Grabbe in fact does seem to have been very insistent on money matters and evidently Immermann sympathized with Louise in feeling that Grabbe really had no claim.23 However, by this time he was estranged from his visitor "who thought it proper to go his own ways" and expressed his inability to help. For Grabbe the realization that there was nothing more for him in Düsseldorf gradually became clear. For months he had been dependent on advances made by Schreiner for the manuscript of his new play Die Hermannsschlacht. But the play progressed very slowly. He wrote and re-wrote scenes on odd scraps of paper struggling to find an adequate expression. In April 1836 he wrote to Duller that the play was finished and that the Eulenspiegel would follow as a comic "satyr play", but two weeks later he told Petri only that "it was finished as a whole, not yet polished up in detail". The work was both a torment and a last hold on life. The decision to go home was forced on him during the Spring of 1836, though it was a sad and shaming choice to go back in such distress. On April 29th he wrote to his loyal friend Petri asking him for a loan of "30 or if possible 36 Taler" to make the journey. The alternative was a "leap in the Rhine", but for that he thought himself too good. He asked Petri further to look out for legal copying work to be provided by colleagues from better days, as well as for help in finding a small lodging place with "a table, two chairs and a bed", so that he need not, at least at first, "worry himself to death at his own home". Petri's reply24 was firm and confident and assured him of support and help, but the end was near. Grabbe arrived in Detmold at the end of May. For two months he did not attempt to enter his home with Louise but lived in a café, unable to concentrate for any length of time, without the quiet of mind or patience for reading, but working in short bursts at his Hermannsschlacht. In July he sent a draft of his revisions to Petri and it seemed that with this work finished Grabbe was preparing for the end. Ziegler reports of later plans as he lay in ® Cf. Kobbe, Humoresken, p. 20. Cf. Bergmann, Zeugnisse, p. 459.

2

24

G R A B B E S L I F E - A SURVEY

43

bed but he had no strength to develop them. He now informed his wife of his decision to go home and he even went to the length of having a police official accompany him in case of difficulties. Petri warned Louise of Grabbe's condition and demanded she fulfil her duties to him as his wife, but there seems little reason to doubt Ziegler's horrible account of the last weeks. Grabbe was not to be spared many final indignities. He had to tell his mother not to come and visit him as it only aroused Louise to vent her anger on him. In his last days his mother twice attempted to see her dying son but was driven from the door amidst a storm of accusations and insults. Only on the final day, September 12, did Louise relent. The mother spent the day with her son and Grabbe died in the afternoon in her arms. He was 34.

II HERZOG THEODOR

VON

GOTHLAND

The reader of Herzog Theodor von Gothland is confronted by an extraordinary violence of language and action. With the scene set in northern Europe in what seems to be early feudal times, when the newly Christianized Swedes are exposed to the attacks of the pagan Finns, the play presents a life of blood and brutality, of heroic passions and ungovernable fury. Violence is piled on violence; scenes and descriptions of horror and cruelty fill the stage. We seem involved in a new eruption of the "Sturm und Drang". It is tempting to see the work in terms of its literary models: the extravagance of metaphor and imagery is reminiscent of the German Baroque as well as of the Elizabethans; the heroic Northerners recall the romantic mythological dramas and tales of Fouque; the sense of doom and destruction echoes from the fate tragedies of Werner, Miillner or the early Grillparzer. The vehement, declamatory language, though it is filled with genuine feeling, strains after the passion of its predecessors, reaching out for means to express the enormity of the emotions. But to emphasize literary sources is unsatisfactory; Grabbe uses the means available to him in the traditional heroic drama of passion in order to present his own spiritual crisis and his own tormented vision of the world. The real source of the play's excitement lies, not in the welter of blood and violence, but in the youthful extremity of feeling with which Grabbe presents his hero, torn from his faith in the meaning of existence and exposed to a world of bitterness and horror. The play was written over a period of several years. Plans

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and early drafts go back to Grabbe's days at the Gymnasium. Ziegler in his biography suggests that passages have been included from an earlier tragedy, Der Erbprinz, which is otherwise unknown. He quotes from comments of Grabbe's old friend Moritz Leopold Petri, later "Geheimer Regierungsrat" in Detmold, who found that here Grabbe like a young titan piled Pelion on Ossa, pouring forth passages of an uncommon power of expression, "without one's being aware of an adequate motivation".1 Grabbe took the manuscript with him to the University in Leipzig in late 1820 and worked on it there, at times very intensely. It was not, however, until February 1822 that he could claim in a letter (Wuk. V, 226) that the play was daily closer to being finished. It was finally completed in Berlin in June of the same year. It would not be surprising for a play that he had kept so long with him and written over a period in his life naturally subject to so much change and development, to show inconsistencies and confusion of detail. Certainly some passages are far too long and elaborate. There are speeches which it seems Grabbe might have been too fond of and too unwilling to let go. At first sight, moreover, the play seems to be divided into two separate spheres of action, the one a family tragedy, the other a battle for power between Finns and Swedes. It might be interesting to try to unravel stages in the progress of writing to see whether these two themes existed from the beginning. But in the absence of any earlier drafts — no earlier manuscripts have survived — such an attempt would remain uncertain. As it stands the play has an unquestionable unity, for the two spheres of action are separate only on the surface; as we examine the play we will see how firmly and necessarily they are welded together through the psychological development of the hero. A Swedish nobleman, Theodor von Gothland, in the passionate grief he feels at the sudden death of his dearly-loved brother is falsely led to believe, through the workings of unfortunate chance but also by the direct malice of his villainous enemy, the Negro Berdoa, that the murderer is a third brother, 1

Grabbe, pp. 18-19.

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"HERZOG THEODOR VON GOTHLAND"

Chancellor to the King of Sweden. Gothland demands justice, but the King finds the evidence inadequate and refuses to act. Gothland, driven by his grief, sees only a conspiracy against himself, takes his own revenge on his brother and flees from the court. In the third act he learns that he has been deceived; we might expect despair and repentance. Gothland laments that Providence has led him into error; he feels that his noblest qualities, his selfless love for his brothers and friends and his trust in the benevolence and justice of God have been betrayed. But the recognition does not drive him to submission, only to further and more desperate revolt. Here what might be termed a second action develops. Grabbe himself in a letter to Kettembeil (June 1, 1827) recognizes that a new dramatic movement begins in the third act. Gothland, forced into flight, allies himself with the Finnish invaders of his homeland and seeks to drive out his sense of guilt by the joy of revenge over his enemy Berdoa and the quest for power and action. Only in battle and control over the lives of men can he hide the empty desperation in his heart. This action inclines towards a characteristic theme of Grabbe's later plays, presenting the ambitious struggle of the strong energetic ruler weighing his chances against his enemies in a fight for power. But the first action continues through the second half of the play and the theme of an implacable fate holds the plot together and brings the play to its end. The spiritual conflicts in Gothland remain the essential center of interest; Berdoa continues to tempt Gothland into evil and Gothland is driven on from one despairing act of villainy to the next. His crimes have to be avenged; his father pursues him like a angel of doom to restore the family honor. When at last Gothland has the chance to kill Berdoa, he finds no meaning left in life; tortured by his own sense of guilt he collapses and is destroyed. That there were practical difficulties for the author in bringing the two spheres of action together may be seen clearly at the beginning. In the opening scene the Finnish army under the leadership of Berdoa is seen landing on the Swedish coast; Berdoa is severely wounded but recovers to lead the Finns on

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47

to attack. In scene 2 when we move to the Swedish camp, the immediate emphasis is not at all on preparations for defense — action is undertaken against the Finns only incidentally — but on Gothland's personal conflicts. From the point of view of the family tragedy that is to ensue, there is no reason why the Finnish invaders should be there at all. As far as the plot is concerned their presence is only essential in that it gives Gothland the opportunity to side with the enemy when he is driven out by his own people. In this sense the presentation of the Finnish invaders in the first scene prepares us for the second part of the drama. But more important than this difficulty is the problem in the character of Berdoa. In his case Grabbe has deliberately united two essentially distinct roles. In the one action he plays the part of Iago: out of a hatred that is arbitrarily motivated — Gothland in some obscure period in the past has had him flogged — he spreads the seed of distrust in Gothland that leads him to believe that brother has murdered brother. But beyond this, Berdoa is the surprising Negro leader of the Finns in their attack on Sweden. As such he is not only Gothland's deadly enemy, but also a rival for power in the changing fortunes of the Finnish/Swedish struggle. Berdoa hurries on ahead of his comrades in pursuit of Gothland. In the second scene he has made his way into Gothland's castle. Exactly why and how he managed this remains a mystery. His motives for going are unconvincing. He apparently plans to kill his hated enemy in person, for it is only by chance when he arrives that he learns of the strange circumstances of the death of Gothland's brother. On the inspiration of the moment he decides not to kill Gothland but to use this information for the prolonged spiritual torture of his enemy. When Berdoa is recognized by the Swedes he is not taken prisoner; his presence is accepted through some outrageous rights of primitive hospitality. Why does Grabbe allow himself to be involved in such improbabilities? It is clear that in the juxtaposition of these scenes he has sacrificed reasonable motivation for the sake of creating a mood of fear and awe. We have seen the Finns, barbarians

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" H E R Z O G THEODOR VON G O T H L A N D "

outside the pale of the Christian world, landing on the Swedish coast in a frightful storm when no one thinks a landing is possible; we have seen Berdoa badly wounded only that he may triumph over his wound by sheer determination of will. And we have seen beyond the savagery and power of the invaders, that there exists at least in Berdoa a deliberate, bitter and calculated hatred against the Europeans and against Gothland, the Swedish hero, in particular. It is only against this background of power and deliberate malevolence that Gothland's own situation can be understood. For it is only the presence of such destructive forces that make comprehensible the fearful changes that are to happen in Gothland himself. Gothland's opening speeches in the second scene reveal a man apparently at peace with himself in a harmonious world, rejoicing over the happy genius that rules his life. But our knowledge of the evil threatening gives the speeches an air of naive presumption, of innocence waiting for inevitable disillusion, and leads us to understand the raging outbursts of despair that overwhelm him with the news of his brother's death. Gothland is to betray within himself the same threatening forces that in scene 1 are attacking from outside. The values of the civilization within which he lives are proven tenuous and insecure. It is for this reason we can understand why Grabbe united in Berdoa the two distinct roles. It is not simply a matter of an attempt at dramatic concentration. Berdoa is, as it were, the force of evil both outside and within. In his Iago role as Gothland's intimate he is a devilish tempter leading Gothland into destruction, as leader of the Finns he is a man driving to overwhelm the civilization he hates. The essential concern of the drama lies in the character of Gothland. Our interest is held by the stages of his spiritual collapse. But in order to appreciate what happens to Gothland we may do well to understand further what Grabbe hoped to present in the figure of Berdoa and study him more closely. Attempts to explain Berdoa in normal psychological terms have never been successful. The unrelieved blackness of his nature exceeds that of all possible models that might be suggested,

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49

whether it be Iago himself or the moor Aaron in Titus Andronicus or the characteristic villains of the "Sturm und Drang". Certainly at times Grabbe does offer suggestions for ordinary human motivation; in a longish speech in the third scene of Act I Berdoa justifies his rage against the Europeans, outlining the brutal and humiliating treatment he received as a slave in their hands. Some details of his youth appear, the killing of a friend, for example, that led him to flee from his home. There is a possible hint of one-time innocence in his own past and of a disillusioned love of the ideal, but this seems like an echo of Gothland's own situation rather than native to Berdoa himself. In any cases these human features, his natural sense of resentment and hate or his individual isolation, do not seem to direct his actions and speeches. They are external attempts to make his character more understandable. Essentially, however, in the violence of his passions, in his cunning intrigues, his slyness, his joy in the misery of others, we feel a scarcely human love of evil. It is difficult to avoid seeing him as a symbolic representative of the forces of darkness, and this applies to both his roles. As false friend Berdoa passes easily into the voice of Satan, not only tempting Gothland into evil, but rejoicing in his downfall. In the first scene of Act 3 when Gothland has learnt the truth about his brother's death and curses the gods that they have permitted him to indulge in such crimes, Berdoa exults in his despair and calls on the world of things to witness to Gothland's blasphemy. Höret, höret, höret! Hört schaudernd wie der Gotteslästerer rast, Damit ihr einstens alle, Wälder, Meer Und Stürme, zeugen könnet wider ihn! (I, 83) Later, when Gothland pleads with Berdoa to assure him there is no God, no judge or guide to truth, Berdoa, now the devil sure of his victim, gloatingly tortures him the more by claiming the path to repentance had always been open and that he had chosen the easier and deadly way of revolt and revenge. But also as leader of the Finns Berdoa is again the deadly enemy of the Christian, and of Gothland as the representative hero of

50

"HERZOG THEODOR VON GOTHLAND"

the feudal Christian society. Here the Christian coincides with white, civilized Europe. Berdoa's antagonism is directed against order and civilization as a whole. He himself has no specific place of origin, his home is all Africa. Like the Africans of the Elizabethan drama, Berdoa is referred to indiscriminately as a Moor, an Ethiopian, a creature of Senegal. The images with which he recalls his homeland are equally those of the vast plains or the jungle or the desert. His Africa is a world of violence and danger; to think of it is for him to conjure up visions of savage beasts, of poisonous snakes and fearful disseases, of destructive heat and bitter cold, all that contrasts with the temperate world of Europe. The startling association of a Negro with the Finns can only be explained in that Berdoa thinks of them as Asians, another part of the forces encircling Europe (I, 16). Regarding Berdoa in this light, it is tempting to see in him Grabbe's concept of natural man, man as he would be if it were not for the restraints of religion and civilization. If so, he is the polar opposite of Rousseau's vision. For him nature is not man's benevolent home, it brings to mind the jungle and the beast of prey who in Berdoa's imagination kills not only to survive but for the joy in blood and pain. As natural man, Berdoa has in fact qualities of the heroic that recall the old pagan sagas — capacities that seem no longer possible in civilized life. This is stressed in the opening scene. The fact that he is wounded (and almost fatally wounded) in the landing on the Swedish coast has no significance in the development of the action. The scene reveals Berdoa's sheer animal vitality, but more than that it shows the primitive capacity of spirit that enables him to overcome his wounds. In grandiloquent defiance of his sufferings he rejects the tears of his comrades: Ein Held liebt Tränen: doch Nicht solche, wie ein Weib sie weint; die Tränen, Die roten Wunden, das Geseufz der Feinde Erfreuen sein Gemüt! (I, 14) In this heroic quality there is some foreshadowing of a Nietzschean "superman". For Berdoa's sense of natural values

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51

leads him to despise what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Europeans, whose Christian morality seems only a mask for weakness and submission. He is contemptuous of Gothland's follower Rolf who swallows down injuries he cannot repay and allows himself to think he has been insulted only when he can take an easy revenge. He interprets Rolf's moral scruples as mere excuses of cowardice, fear of the gallows or fear of hell. He sees Gothland haunted by his dreams as the victim of an anxiety-ridden European world which, when it does retain the power to act, is tortured by its own bad conscience. We may feel Berdoa in this mood becomes the voice of Grabbe's own youthful hatred of hypocrisy, but he goes on to draw the extreme consequences of this doctrine of immorality. When he has seduced Gothland's son Gustav into the joys of sensuality, he urges on him the abandonment of all sentimental illusions. Man is driven only by his own egoism. Virtue is superstitious folly; love and generosity disguised self-seeking. If man does good it is because it is easier for him than evil. Nero and Socrates are at bottom alike, each seeks only the circumstances of his own self-satisfaction (I, 144). Gustav calls this with a shudder the religion of hell. And we may ask if it is Berdoa the devil or the natural African savage who is speaking. It seems that the teaching of the "heroic pagan" beyond good and evil has come to coincide with the message of Satan. Gothland is vulnerably exposed to both powers. Ready to listen to the voice of the devilish tempter, he is also not so far removed from the world of paganism. The period of the drama is vague and unhistorical, but it is somewhere at the beginnings of Christian Europe as it emerges from its pagan past. Sweden itself lies very much on the outskirts of this civilization. In Gothland lives on much of the old Norse hero, reflected often enough in German Romantic literature, whose powers and passions range beyond those of normal civilized men. When we first see him, Gothland is living in a state of apparent well-being. His first long speech is a monologue celebrating the pure genius of friendship that has tied him so closely with his two brothers and given a spirit of harmony to

52

"HERZOG THEODOR VON GOTHLAND"

his life. But at once this peace is shattered. Report comes that Manfred, the brother he loved best, is dead. From then on the emphasis of the play lies in Gothland's attempts to maintain his faith in a benevolent God in the teeth of disaster. Characteristically, his response to the news that Manfred was killed by a stroke in bed is an impulsive cry of hate: "Schlagfluß?/ Banditenstreich des Todes sag' vielmehr — Auch/der Himmel mordet" (I, 25). But this exclamation is followed at once by a sense of Christian submission. Doch sei ruhig, Zunge; Gott schuf mein Herz, dafür hat er das Recht, Es zu zerreißen, wann es ihm beliebt. Klagen darf der Mensch, Nicht rechten. - (I, 25) Gothland is tested like Job. Gothland too is God's favored son, who for forty years according to his wife Cäcilia has owed a debt to misfortune (I, 29) and is suddenly exposed to the force of disaster. But unlike Job, Gothland's reaction is that of a soldier; his is a conflict between religious faith and the passion of the warrior hero. He longs for revenge, for some enemy in whose destruction he might find comfort (cf. I, 31). For this reason the lies Berdoa manages to spread about Manfred's death arouse a response in Gothland, although he knows Berdoa to be his deadly enemy. Gothland's violence does not break out immediately. Grabbe seems to have been concerned to make convincing grounds for Gothland's suspicions. The death of Manfred had taken place a week before but all had been afraid to tell Gothland; the third brother and chancellor Friedrich who had been a witness to the death had left in haste the following day on orders from the king — it is never in fact explained why — and had not been present at the funeral. Supplementary reasons — the coldness of Friedrich's nature in comparison with his brothers, the fact that he has taken over Manfred's estates — are also presented. Whether we are convinced or not, Grabbe makes the weight of evidence such that the nobles of the court believe in the Chancellor's guilt. Only the king stands out against them,

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53

precisely because the chief witness is their common enemy Berdoa. It is important to note also how Gothland struggles to resist the urge to violent and destructive revenge. In a moving passage he prays to the powers above to maintain his faith in man: Höret mich, ihr obern Mächte! Hört mich, den Wurm, dem man sein einzig Gut Will rauben! Nehmt Gesundheit mir und Habe, — doch Den Glauben an die Menschheit, diesen Trost Des Menschen in den Nöten, ohne den Es keine Liebe, ew'gen Haß nur gibt, Der mich vertrauen lehret auf mich selbst, Der mich beglückt, wenn ich mein Weib Umfasse, der den Menschen menschlich macht, Den Glauben an die Menschheit raubt mir nicht! (I, 33-34) Gothland waits readily for the court's decision, makes no hasty attempts on the Chancellor's life, even begs him to flee so that revenge will be impossible. Even in the duel with his brother which follows the King's refusal to find the Chancellor guilty, Gothland is in two minds. He almost stops the battle when he sees his brother wounded. The Chancellor insists they continue. When Gothland causes another wound, he calls for bandages to stanch his brother's blood. Later in the play Berdoa taunts Gothland for his willingness to be deceived, his eager agreement to do the devil's work (cf. I, 183), but this does not really accord with Gothland's actions at the time. Grabbe has been anxious to build up the tension, to show the conflict of will in Gothland, and show the progressive stages whereby he becomes the captive of his fate. However, despite our awareness of these positive elements in Gothland and the genuineness of his efforts to find the truth, we are also conscious from the beginning of strong forces driving him to destruction. An underlying pessimism and bitterness colors and even dominates the whole movement of the drama. It is this pessimism, expressed in Gothland's own character but also reflected in the constant emphasis during the course of the action on the cruelty and suffering of life, which makes Berdoa's overshadowing presence so significant. Even

54

"HERZOG THEODOR VON GOTHLAND"

in Gothland's opening speech there is a foreshadowing of the dangers to come. His praise of the spirit of friendship in his life has a manic quality that does not arouse a sense of normal confidence and trust. We have seen that the threat of Berdoa and the Finns in the opening scene gives an ironic cast to Gothland's speech on the blessings of his life. But the irony is heightened by the very expression of Gothland's joy. Underneath the ecstatic tone there is a feeling that life is acceptable only if such gifts are forthcoming. It is as if he can live only with the assurance of God's blessing. The transitoriness of existence and the fact of death seem to him like unworthy limitations on the dignity of man. Their brotherly friendship had been a support against what was underneath the bare loneliness of existence. This theme of his opening monologue is introduced again when he prays for his trust in mankind to be preserved and declares that only on his brother's bosom has he found sanctuary amidst the tumult of life (I, 33). Particular lines of Gothland's spoken soon after the news of his brother's death may consciously recall the confident idealism of Schiller's "Ode to Joy". Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt; Brüder — überm Sternenzelt Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen. 2

But the tone has changed. Gothland makes his faith conditional. He can accept the world only if the stars are the shores of a better land, only if those whom death has parted meet again: Dann selig all ihr Millionen, die Ihr unterm Sternenzelte wandelt, selig ihr Betrübten, welche ihr an Grabeshugeln um Verlorne weinet! (I, 29)

The assured harmony of Schillers verses has changed into characterically struggling and broken lines. Life itself is cruel and harsh and man unprotected against Sämtliche Werke, Säkular-Ausgabe, ed. E. von der Hellen (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1905), I, 4.

1

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suffering and pain. Again and again the cruelty of nature and man is emphasized. Examples may be found everywhere. The opening scene had shown the malignant power of Berdoa and the Finns. Even such an expository speech as Berdoa's explanation of his hatred for the Europeans provides a chance to describe the particular nature of their cruelty to him. The false account of Manfred's killing, invented by the chancellor's messenger Rolf under pressure from Berdoa, lingers in detail on the brutality of the crime. Later again the prolonged death agonies of the Chancellor seem intended to show man's capacity for pain; after once apparently expiring he revives only in order to describe in more detail the pains of death. In the third act when Rolf confesses to Gothland that his story was a lie, he describes, once more in some elaboration, the horrors of his suffering, buried alive by Gothland in the vault, biting his own fingers from hunger and involved in a fearful struggle with the corpse-eating snakes. The cruelty of the world is reflected even in Gothland's quest for justice. In an early speech he extols the pagan capacity for grief, recalling the laments of Achilles at the death of his friend Patroclus and his rejection of all comfort. No limits exist for Gothland's grief nor in his search for truth. He will use even the flames of hell for light amidst his black doubts (cf. I, 35). When the Swedish King refuses to accept the Chancellor's guilt, Gothland makes an appeal to the eternal law of the world that revenge is our sovereign right and that only blood atones for blood. Of this law even the beast of prey has a shuddering presentiment. The human generations disappear like snowflakes in the storm, but this remains (I, 62). Legitimate though Gothland's search may be, it assumes a monstrous and unnatural form. If the story of his brother's guilt is credible, we still feel the Chancellor is right that only a "villain", only a man longing to believe the worst, would accept it. Gothland compares his lot with the melancholy fate of Orestes, while at the same time his insistence to the King that the matter be pursued to the end, "ich kann nicht anders", is reminiscent by implication perhaps of Luther in his break

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with the church. Yet his intransigeance, emphasized in the repeated cry: "Gerechtigkeit, stiirzt auch der Weltbau ein", seems closer to that of Heinrich von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas. Kohlhaas, like Gothland, feels his own individual existence threatened by the breakdown of a just order. His sense of injustice is equally imbued with a feeling of personal injury that drives him to excess. The assertion of the King that Gothland is storming beyond the bounds of nature, that his actions are monstrous and thus sinful might also be applied to Kohlhaas himself (cf. I, 54). This parallel between the two works can be taken further if we compare the attempts of Gothland's wife Cacilia to recall her husband to principles of honor and duty with those of Lisbeth, Kohlhaas' wife, to preserve her husband's Christian charity. But for all the elements in common the atmosphere in the two works is different. In the Kleist Novelle the terrible deeds of the hero, even as leader of a rebel band, have a positive force lacking in Gothland. Kohlhaas in his deepest personal indignation still seeks to create a juster social order and he clashes with Luther on this very issue. Gothland's drive for revenge becomes a form of retaliation on all of God's world. It arises from his inherent picture of man as "ein geschminkter Tiger", of a world where "happiness is sin", where, in the Chancellor's phrase, whatever is worst is always the most probable. Gothland's profound pessimism becomes of course most clearly evident in Act 3 after he learns from Rolf that he has been deceived. Here in a series of magnificent monologues (in themselves a tremendous achievement of Grabbe's) we witness the emergence of his bitter despair. Rolf announces that Gothland himself is guilty of the very crime of fratricide of which he has accused his brother, and calls on him for repentance. Gothland's initial reaction is one of horror and shame — where shall he conceal his face? But his despairing remorse changes into hatred against the malign powers of fate. In a prolonged figure of speech he compares himself to a traveller who has camped unwittingly under an avalanche. The description brings to mind many previous images emphasizing the cruelty of

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nature. In this case nature, if terrible, is unconscious and innocent, but the image suggests, behind the innocence, the incalculable and destructive working of fate. Gothland stumbles over the phrase: "my deed" and feels he has been the victim of forces beyond himself. It is not he who is guilty, but the guilt lies elsewhere, in Rolf and the Negro who have tricked him, in the deceptions of chance, in the heavens that permitted him to be misled (cf. I, 78). Rolf's appeals for repentance now fall on deaf ears. Gothland is obdurate: all prayer is a form of begging, the act of a child hoping to undo what has already been done. It is not indeed for him to ask forgiveness, but himself to forgive the powers that have led him to evil. Here is the turning point in the action. Gothland stands "an meiner Sonnenwende" (I, 79). In killing Rolf he commits his first consciously sinful act. For he kills him in order that Rolfs secret knowledge will remain unknown. He vows now to accept the destiny bestowed on him (I, 79). Hell has triumphed. beschränkt An Geist und Sinn, beherrscht durchs kranke Herz, Nicht einmal klug genug um Tugend von Dem Laster zu unterscheiden, scheint Der Mensch gemacht zu sein, Daß über ihn die Hölle triumphiere, — . . . (I, 79)

The optimistic assertion of God's purpose from the prologue in heaven in Goethe's Faust is reversed. Man in his dark urges knows enough, not to find the true path, but only to be the more fearfully deceived. Gothland seeks relief in battle with his enemies and his struggle for power. "Hab' ich keine inn're Größe mehr, So muß ich sie mit äußerer ersetzen;" (I, 88). Excitement in the second half of Act 3 is aroused through the development of the plot when Gothland takes command of the Finnish armies and outwits the Swedes in battle. But the advances and regressions in Gothland's fortunes that follow are clumsily managed, and the changes in loyalty on the part of the Finnish leaders as they side first with Gothland and then with Berdoa are weakly motivated and inadequately prepared. At one moment of crisis,

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for example, Gothland wins over Usbek, the Finnish cavalry leader, by showing him, entirely without preparation, papers that prove Berdoa had killed Usbek's father (I, 98). The working out of reasonable intrigues has been sacrificed to dramatic scenes showing Gothland's reaction to alternate triumph and despair. Our interest lies less in the manipulation of power than in the psychological conflicts of the hero. The course of action is subordinate to Gothland's long and desperate wrestling with himself and with God. Grabbe puts his greatest subtlety of feeling into Gothland's monologues and his eager questioning of Berdoa, wherever he searches for some source of comfort or meaning in a disintegrating world. Gothland's moods carry him from hatred and defiance to savage, but uneasy cruelty and despondent pity. It is possible, however, to follow a sequence of logic and reason in the turmoil of his thoughts and feelings. His sense of human misery leads him to question the existence of God. In the face of a world of suffering the idea of a God who permits it seems terrible. Gothland's cry: "Nein, nein, es ist kein Gott, zu seiner Ehre will ich das glauben" (I, 81), foreshadows Nietzsche's laconic statement that "God's only excuse is that he does not exist". The thought that God is an illusion, that there is no standard or judge beyond our own world, provides Gothland with a recurrent mood of relief. Without God there are no ultimate values; all acts are justified, there is nothing beyond our own satisfaction. The foolish dreams of immortality or of rewards after death, like the force for good in history (I, 80-81), are merely the inventions of man in his weakness afraid to face the truth. Yet Gothland cannot in the long run escape the fact of evil, nor perhaps ultimately of a greater hope. It is only through an all-powerful force of evil that he can understand the urge to destruction working in himself. In a terrifying speech he questions the sources of human events. Is it allpowerful madness that has created the world? The concept of man's life governed by mere blind fate, as it was held by the Greeks, is not enough. Not fate prevails, but an actively cruel and cunning force, all-powerful evil. There follows a moment

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of fear in Gothland at his blasphemy, but then he recovers: (Sehr laut) Ja, Gott Ist boshaft, und Verzweiflung ist Der wahre Gottesdienst! (I, 82-83) This tremendous monologue is followed by what might be termed a hymn of despair, built around the three times repeated refrain: "Weil es verderben soll, ist das Erschaffene erschaffen!" Deshalb ist unsers Leibes kleinster Nerv so Empfänglich für den ungeheu'rsten Schmerz, Deshalb sind unsere Glieder so gebrechlich, Deshalb sind wir so fasernackt geboren! Unsterblich sind wir für — die Höllenstrafen! (I, 83) If evil rules, then he too has the right to live evilly. All life lives by killing. Before whom should he blush? God cannot condemn him, "for it would be to condemn himself' (I, 183). Moments of horror and pity for man interchange with acts of savage cruelty and joy in suffering. Gothland never achieves the calm ruthless logic of a man beyond the sanctions of morality. In one scene he questions Berdoa as to the existence of God and orders the immediate execution of 5,000 Swedish prisoners in the assurance that God cannot exist and that no supernatural retaliation is possible. But his action is not conditioned by some maniacal atheist logic; it is induced rather by fearful spite, by brutal defiance against a world of cruelty and against a God in whom he had longed for comfort and love. The treacherous and cynical Swedish leader Arboga who serves willingly with his own people and with the Finns clearly provides a contrast to Gothland. Arboga carries out orders for murder and execution with apparent detachment from all human ties. Untroubled by conscience, caring nothing for ultimate judges or notions of immortality, he has no concern other than his own advantage. He observes the world's cruelty and passion as a simple fact of life and faces even his own death with stoic indifference. Gothland regards him with a mixture of horror and awe, and yet sees him as a model he has to attain (I, 173). Such attainment is impossible. Gothland's very desperation

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and bitterness bear witness against him. He can never become a totally independent man of action, for he can never be free from the knowledge of good and evil. His relations with his son Gustav reveal the same lesson. Gustav, "erst . . . blöd, doch jetzt . . . fast unverschämt", experiences the same bitter disillusion as his father, though transposed into terms of the erotic. His early romantic dreams of pure love are converted through Berdoa's cunning into the crudest sensuality. His longing for the absent beloved becomes joy in the possession of a seductive whore. Gothland, now king both of the Swedes and the Finns, tries to get his son to abandon thoughts of love for a political marriage. He asserts that his ambitions have been made for his son, that he has driven feeling and pity out of his own breast in order to build a powerful empire for him to inherit. In a tense dramatic moment he induces Gustav to swear he will harden his heart, kill his dreams and feel no repentance. But Gustav bitterly turns the lesson on his father; he hardens his heart only to oppose Gothland; following Gothland's own principles, he cynically rejects all claims beyond his own pleasure and refuses all obligations. Gothland sees the consequences of his own logic and faces despairingly the implications of the political "realism" he had aimed at. Gothland ends in a state of apathy and boredom. Although earlier after his defection to the Finns he had prayed for a long life of action (I, 100) and later again at the end of the third act at least that he might preserve his "poor, naked life" (I, 121), the last act shows him desperate and exhausted. Overnight he has become an old man. He talks insanely of seventy-six years passing in what in fact has been a few hours. So empty is the passage of time, it would seem, that life flows away from him at an overwhelming pace. The temporary revival of Berdoa's powers incites him to new and furious activity, but when Berdoa is killed, Gothland's purpose in life is gone and he sinks again into indifference. There is no feeling of atonement, no chance of ultimate repentance, merely submission because he no longer has any will to live. He welcomes his own death. Hell at least may be something new.

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Gothland has plunged into action in order to escape the desolation in his heart. Yet he never achieves the independence of the pure man of action. Throughout he is exposed to the malignancy of the devilish Berdoa and the torment of his own regret. His father s avenging figure haunts him. In the excesses of his crimes there remains a lingering spark of hope that God will take pity on him. The echoes of love, Gothland's recurring moments of regret for the harmony of his earlier days, his knowledge that: "ausgelöscht sind mir die Leuchttürme meines Lebens" (I, 86), arouse our sympathy, despite the grimness and brutality of his life. But the end is one of complete negation. All ends in destruction. "Die Gothlands sind nicht mehr." It is possible to read the play in terms of a normal tragic sequence. The hero is driven to his downfall both by fate and by his own tragic flaw, his lack of trust in man and in God. This tragic sequence may be the more clearly articulated because of Grabbe's evident borrowings from the newly popular fate tragedy. The first of these so-called "Schicksalsdramen", Zacharias Werner's Der 24. Februar, had appeared in 1810, to be followed by many successors, of which the best known is Grillparzer's Die Ahnfrau (1817). Here an attempt had been made to revive a feeling for the tragic by trying to show in a closely bound series of events the inscrutable workings of fate. These dramas sought to recapture something of the spirit of Greek tragedy, especially of Sophocles, in showing man exposed to a law of tragic necessity whereby he was involved in guilt and atonement. Grabbe has made use of external devices frequently exploited in the fate dramas, where a family quarrel was a characteristic motif. He has adopted methods by which an atmosphere of mystery is attained. The storms, thunder, lightning, rain, which appear at moments of crisis, the appearance of comets and meteors, the howling of wolves, all are made to seem like the voices of some supernatural power. Further reminiscences may be felt in Gothland's hallucinations of wraiths from the grave in Acts 3 and 5 or in the meeting scenes in an isolated hut in Act 4 where Gothland, seeking refuge, finds by chance both his father and father-in-law come to the point of

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rendezvous for the returning Swedish armies. Such an isolated cabin was a favorite locale in the fate dramas. These elements, however, are mostly external; they are techniques by which he can heighten the tension of individual scenes. More essential is the emphasis on a tragic structuring of events. The drama, liable after Act 3 to break loose into a realm of power play, intrigue and counter intrigue, can be brought through the working of fate to a well rounded conclusion. Yet this tragic sequence does not correspond to the total effect of the play. Gothland's desperate suffering breaks the limits of the structure; hence there is no real feeling of catharsis, no sense of the hero's atonement, which will allow us to accept the restoration of order. Sophocles, finally, teaches us to honor the gods. Even in the fate tragedy our faith in the goodness of man and the reality of sin is preserved. But in Gothland the good in man has itself become devilish. This personal and deep-founded pessimism has been felt by readers of the play from the beginning. Ludwig Tieck already, in the friendly letter which Grabbe used as a preface, deplored the stress on the cruel and the "cynical". From his own characteristic standpoint he insisted on a value beyond this. " . . . die Wahrheit unsres Seins, das Echte, Göttliche liegt in einer unsichtbaren Region, die ich so wenig mit meinen Händen aufbauen als zerstören kann" (I, 4). Grabbe was very aware of the differences between his outlook and Tieck's but in the protective notes with which he supplied his work when it was published several years after it was written, he also showed himself very conscious that such criticism might be expected and he tried to impose a moderating interpretation which stressed the author's ability, not only to arouse "the flames of the abyss", but also to show them "weakened and even destroyed of their own power". (Compare the note to line 1922, Act 3, scene 1, on I, 79, the beginning of a speech of Gothland's already quoted where he sees man on earth already in the hands of hell). But such later and often elliptical comments are not very convincing. To the mood of negation in the play there is no comparable answering voice. At certain moments the roar of thunder or

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some other sign of nature raises the characters' thoughts to powers beyond the human, but the meaning of such signs remains misty and ambiguous. When the Chancellor formally denies the murder of which he is accused, the thunder that sounds in the background seems like a witness against him and thus to compound the error in Gothland's mind. A few minutes later, however, when he assures his son of the necessity that led him to revenge, the thunder is heard again, apparently in rejection of Gothland's act, though Gothland denies it. "Der Donner über unsren Häuptern gilt nicht mir" (I, 65). Later again when Gothland in the presence of Berdoa denies the existence of God (I, 81), or when in desperate hatred of a world that seems composed only of blood and pain he calls God evil and despair the true divine service, the claps of thunder and the roars of the storm are heard once more (I, 8283). This seems to be in repudiation of Gothland's blasphemy, but of course it may equally well be a super-human echo of Gothland's own raging defiance. Later in the play such signs become rarer. Their existence belongs to the fate tragedy motif and it is difficult to see in them more than part of the theatrical apparatus by which tension is achieved. While the voices from above have been at best ambiguous and finally dwindle into silence, the representatives in the drama of law and civilization seldom play more than a subordinate and conventional role. In the opening scene the Swedish King's ambassador, Count Holm, in defying Berdoa, welcomes the news of his injury for the sake of Christian Europe and boldly proclaims that the good rejoice in the face of evil's downfall. Yet this proclamation has few echoes in the later development of the action. A few secondary characters are left to maintain the order that is challenged. The role of the Swedish King has in it possibilities of development that have not been pursued. The scene in Act 2 where in accordance with the tradition of the medieval monarch he formally announces the banishment of Gothland outside the protection of society and the law, provides him with a moment of grandeur that he rarely again assumes.

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Zieht eure Schwerter, um an ihm Die Acht des Königs zu vollstrecken! (Sie ziehen die Schwerter) Fortan, verstoßen Von der heimatlichen Herde, Wandl er unstet durch die Erde, Verderben zeichne seine Bahn! Wenn des Waldes Blätter rauschen, Donnre ihm sein Blutgericht; In den Klüften soll er lauschen, Wie die Eule scheue er das Licht! (I, 69-70) The King remains steadfast of purpose, in his support of the Chancellor and in his efforts to maintain justice, as well as later in the confidence with which he seeks a new army to establish himself again after he has been totally defeated by the Finns and the renegade Gothland. But there is no sense of his being a full counterweight against Gothland. He never takes the center of the stage, and remaining in the background has no opportunity to radiate any sense of assurance in the feudal standards of authority and justice which he represents. Gothland's father also does not provide a balance of honor and truth against the perfidy of his son. His role is circumscribed by the necessities of the tragic action, on the one hand as the avenging spirit seeking to atone for the family disgrace and on the other hand as a suffering old man who calls forth our pity for the disaster that has stricken him. Although he and the king return to the stage at key moments of the action and it is they as the survivors who have the final word after Gothland's destruction, they are sketchy and unsatisfactory figures whose roles seem limited in the bare requirements of the plot. Gothland's wife Cäcilia and her old father Skiold likewise cling to the old order, but they are the helpless victims of events whose efforts to dissuade Gothland from his crimes seem tentative and inevitably unavailing. Striking is the rarity of any reference to Christian grace or the Savior. The characters in their appeals to the powers above almost never call on Christ, b u t on some other vaguer force, "die ewigen Gesetze", "ihr obern Mächte", "die schützenden

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Gewalten in den Himmelshöhen". Although the King, when he announces Gothland's banishment, ends with a formal medieval Christian plea that men may pray for Gothland's soul, such prayers are rarely forthcoming. Nor is the hope of repentance kept alive. It is left to the scoundrelly servant Rolf, who had previously witnessed against Gothland's brother on Berdoa's behalf, to call on Gothland for atonement and expiation (I, 76). Only once does Cacilia suggest Christian hope, in the fourth act when she appears with her father in Gothland's camp. Der Reue Träne ist noch nie umsonst geflossen, Des Heilands Blut ist auch für dich vergossen, Die düstere Vergangenheit wird schwinden, Den Frieden sollst du wiederfinden . . . (I, 137) But Cäcilia, for all her simple purity, is uncertain in her own faith. To her father she suggests we can do no more than hope. Of God and virtue and immortality we know nothing and can only hope they exist despite the darkness of life (I, 157). Earlier, in a variant on the Kantian "categorical imperative" she had appealed to the reality of virtue to hold Gothland back from his dark deeds, but claimed no more than that he should live and act "as i f ' an eternal existed. Our own sense of nobility must make the concept of virtue real. Es lebt in jeder edlen Brust Ein Bürge der Unsterblichkeit: die Tugend! Sie ist ewig, und wäre sie es nicht, So geht sie unter mit dem Hochgefühle, Daß sie verdienet es zu sein. (I, 29) Such a faith remains a weak support against the desperation of Gothland. Finally it is only Berdoa who makes Gothland half believe that penitence once was possible and that the way of atonement had been open. But this is only a refinement of torture. Berdoa is here openly playing the devil, teasing his prey with dreams of salvation. The chance lay in the past and is gone forever, swallowed up by the growing proliferation of his crimes. To suggest now that there once was an alternative, that Gothland had deliberately chosen vengeance because it was

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easier, more tempting and attractive to his own egoism than submission and humility, all this makes his present misery the more unbearable (Act 5, sc. 3). The idea finds credence in Gothland only because it corresponds to his own fears of a God of hate, who disguishes the truth, revealing too late the path that might have been taken. To suggest that Christian mercy might be available in the present — such a possibility has no means of entry into Gothland's heart. What is Gothland's final state? Are we to see him doomed to hell or is he justified to think that the concept of an afterlife and a God of judgment is a fantastic hoax? In order to answer this question we must emphasize again the dual role of Berdoa. Berdoa is in one respect primitive man with an almost animal vitality, but he also has by implication a religious function in the drama. Is Gothland joined in battle with an elemental life force (basically cruel and even evil apparently) or is he struggling with the devil and losing the fight for his salvation? In Don Juan und Faust such questions on man's fate are specifically raised and answered. Faust wrestles with an apparently devil-dominated world. Here the problem is left open. Berdoa's ambiguous role seems essential to the effect of the work. If he were specifically the devil, then we would be presented with a morality play ending in the hero's final defeat. If he were ouly a demonic elemental force, or perhaps the tool of a malign and implacable fate, then Gothland's reaction might be justified. Gothland's refusal to recant and his determination to maintain himself against his enemies by any means in his power gives him heroic stature. But to preserve his life means to abandon civilized restraints and adopt to the full the elemental brutality of Berdoa. This arouses our horror; our sympathy with him is given precisely at his human level, in his regrets, his longing for God and the peaceful order of his past. In many dramas to come, in Marius und Sulla and Heinrich VI and elsewhere, this is no longer true; such conflicts of values are not specifically involved. Though we may see signs of disillusion and bitterness underneath, the hero is shown explicitly as the ruthless man of power. For the moment this stage has not been reached.

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The mood of Herzog Theodor von Gothland is one of fierce and sustained tension. The pitch of excitement aroused first by the landing on the Swedish coast and then by the growing passion of hate and suspicion in Gothland, has to be maintained at a comparable level throughout. For five long and unwieldy acts we are living under the pressure of horror and despair. The extremes of emotion find a correspondence in the violence of the language. The rhythm of the iambic pentameters is broken by constant interjections and outcries. The lines stumble forward revealing the tempestuous emotions of the speakers through the recurring interruptions of the meter, the use of fragmented lines and frequent pauses, heavily weighted accents and awkward accumulations of sound. Moments when the language assumes any normal rhythm and harmony are rare. There are too many pressures within that burst the lines open. The stresses and pauses do not correspond with the natural requirements of breathing, the verses force the speaker to break the rhythm and struggle for expression. In a play with more than 5500 lines, the exaggerations and underlinings grow wearisome; we are overwhelmed by the intensity of the demands on us and long for relief. Yet to admit this is not to deny the play's effectiveness and dramatic force. However we may resist the overwhelming assault on our emotions, and even though we find something comic or absurd in the heaping up of horrors and the outmoded techniques, the genuineness of Grabbe's feeling and the vitality of his dramatic ability sustains us. Tieck, again in the letter published as an introduction to the play, suggested that at bottom Grabbe's talent might not be a dramatic one and that his future could lie in some other literary genre (I, 5). Our emphasis on Gothland's personal despair, the recognition that during the vast scale actions of the second half of the play the center of interest always remains in the continuing spiritual crisis of the hero, may seem to justify such a judgment. Certainly much in the inner wrestling of Gothland's long monologues seems an all too clear echo of the author's own distress. Yet Grabbe's nature was, as his development shows, essentially that of a dramatist. As in the case of

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Heinrich von Kleist, the inner tension of the author finds its most natural expression in the dualism of the drama. He can only present the world in action and resistance, conflict and opposition. For the dramatic effectiveness of Gothland to become clear the play should be presented expressionistically. Any attempt at a realistic treatment, or to follow the stylized interpretations of the classic history dramas, whether of Schiller or Shakespeare, will only emphasize the inadequacies. Grabbe's play is weak in both plot and character. The direction of the line of action is poor and many of the episodes that keep things moving are clumsily repetitive. Grabbe's later ability to fill out the characters and give them depth and perspective has not yet come to fruition. In this respect Tieck's criticism is justified. Only the primary roles are worked out. Especially weak are the moments of pathos or tenderness. Father Gothland's laments on the fate of his family and the misery that has come on him in his old age are artificial and unconvincing. Here, as well as in the plight of Gothland's wife Cacilia, or in Gothland's emotional scenes with his son, there is a feeling that Grabbe is imposing himself with a set task, filling out the action in an acceptable poetic language. But if the presentation highlights the sense of man's ultimate fate, of Gothland exposed to the reality of evil, then the symbolic force of the action and the tension of the individual scenes will be recognized. Grabbe makes every sacrifice for the sake of presenting the central theatrical moments directly on the stage. What in reading seems awkward may result in performance in a series of vital and impassioned scenes. Such a production might take into account recent interpretations of King Lear which stress the bare outlines of tragic experience.3 The influence of Grabbe's long and careful study of Shakespeare may frequently be felt in reading the play. The tendency of criticism has been to stress the effect of the more Cf. Jan Kott, Shakespeare, our Contemporary, translated Boleslaw Taborski (Garden City, New York, 1964). Note also the recent productions of King Lear by Peter Brook. 3

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melodramatic of Shakespeare's early works, of Titus Andronicus or Timon of Athens. But associations may also be made with King Lear, however inferior Gothland may seem in imagery and power of presentation. Specific episodes remind us of Lear, the scene for example of the old man Skiold and his daughter Cacilia driven out from Gothland's Finnish camp on to the mountains in the winter night; and indeed the whole of Cacilia's role has echoes from that of Lear's faithful Cordelia. In the two plays we see man cast adrift from his old order and exposed to an empty and hostile world. In both cases the weaknesses of the plot cannot take away from the real passion of the play, the revelation of man helpless in a world of suffering. In this respect the contrast between Gothland and the fate tragedies may well be emphasized. However willing we may be to appreciate the objectives of the authors of the fate tragedies in reviving a sense of the tragic, we feel disheartened by the contrast between the skillful techniques used and the thinness of the emotional content. The inadequacy of the metaphysical basis to the plays makes the events artificial and theatrical. In Grabbe, on the contrary, the relative clumsiness of his techniques, the sometimes naive motivation, the melodramatic excesses of individual scenes, do not in the end matter. We are convinced and carried along by the very passion of Grabbe's experience, and the intensity and dramatic power with which he is able to convey the tragic desperation of his hero.

III SCHERZ, SATIRE, IRONIE

UND TIEFERE

BEDEUTUNG

Grabbe had scarcely completed work on Gothland in June 1822 when he turned with enthusiasm to his comedy. He was enjoying a period of success. His letters to his parents reveal his pleasure in the literary friends he was making in Berlin and the hopeful response that his work aroused. It is true that in writing to his family Grabbe always aimed to send good news and tell them things that they wanted to hear, but his letters also show his own youthful hopes. In one place he writes: Mein Werk schafft mir allmählich immer mehr Freunde, Bekannte und Bewunderer, besonders lerne ich dadurch viele Adliche kennen; einer ist darunter, mit dem ich fast alle Donnerstag Abend esse. Das Stück ist aber so ausgezeichnet und groß, daß sie mir alle raten, ich müßte es nur außerordentlich geistreichen Männern zeigen, weil das gewöhnliche Volk es nicht verstände. Ein Doktor Gustav sagte mir, daß mir meine Sachen, wenn erst eins gedruckt worden wäre, sehr hoch bezahlt werden würden. In 14 Tagen bin ich noch dazu mit einem Lustspiel fertig, von dem die meisten noch mehr erwarten als von meinem Trauerspiel. (Wuk. V, 238/9)

In this mood the comedy progressed rapidly. It was on September 2nd that he told his parents he hoped to have the play finished in two weeks. In the middle of September the manuscript was read aloud to members of a literary group in Berlin. By December, which was the month of his 21st birthday, he was able to send a copy to Ludwig Tieck. The contrast between the comedy and Gothland is remarkable. Later, when the works were published in 1827, Grabbe insisted on the relationship between the two plays, emphasizing to Kettembeil to what extent they arose "aus den nämlichen

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Grundansichten" (Wuk. V, 278). But in form and treatment the plays are totally different. After the excessive length of Gothland and its apparent lack of cohesion, the comedy is concise, restricted in scope and sharply dramatic. The unrestrained emotional language of the tragedy gives way to earthly realism and comic rhetoric. The author who had lingered in a mood of despair reveals now a very different side of his character, the sardonic wit of a man standing apart and laughing at the human spectacle and enjoying the pleasure of his own laughter. Of Grabbe's plays Scherz has probably been the most successful. Although it had to wait until 1876 for a first private performance at the Akademie-Theater in Vienna and was not given a full public performance until 1907, the comedy has since been frequently revived and greeted with enthusiasm. It lends itself to imaginative productions and has even acquired a certain international reputation. The now celebrated Alfred Jarry, the eccentric forerunner of the theatre of the absurd, made a very early translation of some extracts of the play into French under the title Les Silènes.1 In 1946 Eric Bentley, in his influential study The Playwright as Thinker, described the work as a "gem of fantastic comedy", and since then two English translations have appeared.2 In 1963 the play was performed with success at the Edinburgh festival. To some extent the pungency and sharp outlines of the work appear even more effective in the new Bergmann edition. Dr. Bergmann has relied on the manuscript of 1822 rather than the published form of 1827 and thus omits changes and softening effects suggested by the publisher Kettembeil or made in order to avoid the censor. The title alone prepares us for something unusual. There is a suggestion of parody on the "categories of the comic" of which Romantic theorists and critics were fond. We are ready Cf. Alfred Jarry, Oeuvres complètes (Monte Carlo, Éditions du Livre, 1948), vol. VI. 2 The one, Jest, Satire, Irony and Deeper Meaning, by Maurice Edwards included in From the Modern Repertoire, series 2, ed. E. R. Bentley (New York, 1952), the other, Comedy, Satire, Irony and Deeper Meaning, by Barbara Wright (London, Gaberdocken Press, 1957). 1

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to expect a program of comic effects rather than any normal dependence on plot and intrigue. And in fact the play does not rely on the development of a comic action in the traditional sense. Although there is a central plot, following a reasonable sequence, around which incidents and episodes are connected, this plot has an air of improvisation and is so overlaid by the atmosphere of farcical burlesque that it never seriously demands the acceptance of the audience. Everyday comic situations are grossly exaggerated. Scenes that begin at a broadly humorous level are carried into the absurd and preposterous. We move out of a normal social setting into a world of caricature. Although the satire and irony promised in the title are constantly in evidence as Grabbe exposes to ridicule foolish conventions of life or literature, they are subordinate to this world of strange farce. The peculiar quirks of Grabbe's character, his love of startling his friends by his oddness and extravagance, frequently commented on by his contemporaries and no doubt deliberately cultivated by him as a young man, here find a natural and inventive expression. The opening scene already sets the tone: The schoolmaster is sitting in his study drinking one glass after another from a large bottle. Utile cum dulci, Schnaps mit Zucker! — Es wird heute ein saurer Tag, — ich muß den Bauerjungen die erste Deklination beibringen. Ein Bauerjunge und die erste Deklination! Das kommt mir vor als wenn ein Rabe ein rein Hemd anziehen wollte! (Er blickt durch das Fenster) Alle Wetter, da kommt der schiefbeinige Tobies mit seinem einfältigen Schlingel! Schwerenot, wo verstecke ich meinen Schnaps? — geschwind, geschwind, ich will ihn in meinen Bauch verbergen! (Er säuft die Bouteille mit einer entsetzlichen Schnelligkeit aus) Ah, das war ein Schluck, dessen sich selbst Pestalozzi nicht hätte zu schämen brauchen! Die leere Flasche zum Fenster hinaus! (I, 215)

The Latin tag of the scholar is translated into the homely needs of the schoolmaster. Schnaps and sugar alone will sweeten the bitter day ahead with the peasant lads. Typical are the short sentences, often awkward, but sharp and pointed in effect. The blunt tone of the language, whereby a brusque exterior helps protect the feelings, shows the particular character of the

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schoolmaster but also sets the mood for the play to come where sentiment and feeling are concealed by a rough humor. Grabbe introduces traditional characters from social comedy as well as from more primitive comic forms, but he gives them a zest and novelty of outline that provides a great deal to the spirit of the play. The devil himself, wandering on earth for no better reason than that hell is being scrubbed out, finds himself freezingly cold on a hot August day and his frozen body subject to investigation by quarrelsome and hopelessly prejudiced scientists. Later, under the guise of a prebendary canon, decorated by the Pope for his services to the faith during the Middle Ages in keeping the people in constant fear of hell fire, and passing himself off under the name of Theophil Christian Teufel, he uses the occasion of his visit for a mockery of everyday fashions and ideas, but is willing to turn his hand to evil when the opportunity for the abduction of the heroine arises. The tradition of the comic devil goes back to the mystery plays and carnival comedies of late medieval and Reformation times and was still alive in the popular farces or "Volkspossen". Grabbe offers ironic variations on comic routines or familiar characteristics associated with the devil, while also introducing his own original absurdities. The devil's character is given a whole new quality by the change in setting and the more sophisticated background. The village schoolmaster, too, is a comic character of long standing, although one which has also literary predecessors — we may think of Wenzeslaus in Lenz's Der Hofmeister or Sempronius in Gryphius's Horribilicribrifax. In accepted fashion he is both a bully and a drunkard. His attitudes, again as tradition demands, combine arrogance towards his social inferiors and humility to those above him. While as we have seen, he attributes to Pestalozzi's example his special capacity for rapid drinking, he has also made his own contribution to educational theory by emphasizing any new instruction with a vigorous box on the ears, so that the lesson and its accompanying distress may be remembered together. Nevertheless his lively and spirited skepticism and his eager enjoyment of comic situations

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make him into a likeable figure. He is rarely the comic dupe; on the contrary he is the sympathetic friend of the hero and plays an essential role in the happy outcome by capturing the devil in a trap. The heroine Liddy counts on his help in her secret work of charity in the village. Any expression of noble sentiment, however, embarrasses him and arouses his acute sense of irony. When the hero who has just returned from Italy gives way to an expression of patriotic feeling at the beauty of his native land, the schoolmaster sardonically apostrophizes the great German forests as a source of future schoolbenches and foresees the woods cut down for the intellectual benefit of the peasants. Or when Liddy's uncle, the local Baron, despairing at the state of the German literary scene, pleads with impassioned rhetoric for a new genius to enter the German Parnassus, the schoolmaster introduces his latest protégé, the stupid peasant boy Gottliebchen, as the answer, hoping as he does to gain a stipend for the boy's studies. The schoolmaster's advice to the boy, either to keep silent or else make only curiously perverse or otherwise incomprehensible contributions to the conversation, seems reasonable enough at its own comic level, but he goes on — and this is characteristic of the way in which broad satire gradually merges into the strangest extravagance — to suggest that Gottlieb might pick up and eat a few spiders occasionally if he wants to gain a reputation for eccentricity, or else he might keep a dead cat in his watchpocket, draw it out when he is walking with his girl at night, only to exclaim: "My God, I thought it was a star." If there is an obscure vulgarity intended here, the absurdity remains. A natural center to the action is provided by the wooing of the Baron's niece Liddy, and the love story evolves with a pleasant charm, even if without any concessions to psychological reality. The lively Liddy makes a very attractive heroine and alone of all the characters rarely lends herself to ridicule. If there is something foolish in the way she collects worthless eccentrics into her uncle's home, — the futile poet Rattengift and even the devil himself for a while find a place there — she usually remains gaily undeceived by the follies and weaknesses

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of others. She is sympathetic and understanding to the schoolmaster though she at once sees the limitations of the peasant boy. Her good deeds to the villagers make the devil cry. Her brave defiance of the villains at the end may suggest a mild parody of the romantic heroine, able to move mountains in defense of her honor, but also is the expression of her own vigor and liveliness. The hero, Mollfels, on the other hand, is more abnormal. Although he has other qualities of character proper to a hero, he is unfortunately phenomenally ugly. When he appears at the castle, seven old women spring in the pond at the sight of his face. According to his own self-deprecating account his back has learnt eternal modesty and is bent in a stereotyped compliment, while his arms are so long that he can button up his shoes while standing up. In the circumstances it is not surprising that he is lacking in self-confidence and interrupts his declaration of love for Liddy by a detailed extravaganza on the ugliness of his appearance. Plots for Liddy's undoing, the plan to ambush her at a remote cottage in the forest and her rescue by her true lover, although in themselves, like Liddy's attitude, a mild parody on popular melodrama, gain our attention for a while and provide a suitable climax. The trapping of the devil by the schoolmaster — he attracts him into a cage by the prospect of examining some new-fangled and highly scandalous contraceptives 3 — apparently has only the loosest connections with the main intrigue, but is necessary to the happy rounding off of the play. Only the devil's temporary impotence allows the happy ending to take place. Grabbe, however, brings the episode to an entirely arbitrary end when the devil's grandmother appears as a young and very pretty girl, warmly dressed in Russian furs as a protection against the cold world, and pleads for her grandson. The Schoolmaster yields at once, after the devil has obediently agreed to put out his paw and beg. The casual inconsequence of events, Grabbe's sovereign attiThese are the contents of the trap according to the earlier manuscript which Bergmann now uses. In the first published version the devil is tempted by copies of the recently appeared Memoirs of Casanova.

3

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tude towards the action, suggest his debt to the whole tradition of Romantic comedy, as well as to the specific influence of the marionette and puppet theatres. It is known that Grabbe's friends in Berlin were particularly interested in the puppet theatre which has so many connecting links with the varied elements of the popular stage. Karl Köchy, who remained for some time after a loyal friend of Grabbe's, was himself the director of such a theatre. Something of the world of puppets is suggested by the sense of unreality and the element of distortion in both plot and characters; there is even a feeling of fragmented and disjointed movement. Beyond this, however, the play belongs in a school that had found a new start with Ludwig Tieck's Der gestiefelte Kater in 1797. The Romantics continued the resistance begun already in the early "Sturm und Drang" against the Enlightenment emphasis on social or demestic comedy and the bourgeois sentiment of the "comedie larmoyante'. The poet in Tieck's Der gestiefelte Kater declares of his own play: "Ich wollte einen Versuch machen, durch Laune, wenn sie mir gelungen ist, durch Heiterkeit, durch wirkliche Possen zu belustigen, da unsre neuesten Stücke so selten zum Lachen Gelegenheit geben." 4 Such ambitions revived interest in the cruder popular farce, in the figure of Hanswurst, which Gottsched and followers had tried to banish from the German stage, as well as in the improvisations and long standing comic routines of the "Commedia dell' Arte" and its many offshoots. In his famous early essay on Aristophanes, Friedrich Schlegel justifies comedy, not as a decoration to an essentially serious action, but as the open expression of unrestrained joy, celebrated by the Greeks as part of the festival of Bacchus. In particular he defends Aristophanes against criticism of his lack of unity, his breaking of the illusion and his inclination to caricature, by appealing to the nature of comic inspiration: Diese Verletzung ist nicht Ungeschicklichkeit, sondern besonnener Cf. edition in the series Deutsche (Berlin and Stuttgart, [1893]), p. 6.

4

National-Litteratur,

C X L I V , part 1

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Mutwille, überschäumende Lebensfülle und tut oft keine üble Wirkung, erhöht sie vielmehr . . .5 Such justifications of the independent comic spirit continued, even though later Romantic theory moved towards a concept of comedy that incorporated it within a "progressive universal poetry" rather than as a separate category. August Wilhelm Schlegel, for example in the 11th of his Viennese lectures on art and literature writes: Der komische Dichter versetzt wie der tragische seine Personen in ein idealistisches Element; aber nicht in eine Welt wo die Notwendigkeit, sondern wo die Willkür des erfinderischen Witzes unbedingt herrscht, und die Gesetze der Wirklichkeit aufgehoben sind. Er ist folglich befugt, die Handlung so keck und phantastisch wie möglich zu ersinnen; sie darf sogar unzusammenhängend und widersinnig sein, wenn sie nur geschickt ist, einen Kreis von komischen Lebensverhältnissen und Charakteren in das grellste Licht zu setzen.6 On the surface it is more understandable that Grabbe had hoped with his plan than with Gothland to win the support of Ludwig Tieck. While he does not depend as Tieck does in Der gestiefelte Kater and to some extent its successors, Die verkehrte Welt and Prinz Zerbino, on the constant breaking of dramatic illusion, on the confusion and contrast between different levels of reality, that of the stage play and the audience in the theatre, the title of Grabbe's play along shows his indifference to the presentation of a self-contained plot. There are in fact only two occasions when the illusion of a stage play is fully broken. The first is when the villains Mordax and Wernthal, indignant with the dismal failure of their conspiracy against Liddy and upset by the Baron's cheerful and detailed plans for their public punishment, march off angrily into the orchestra and subsequently join in the cries of amazement when the devil is brought in. The other occurs at the very last minute when Grabbe himself appears with a burning lantern (like Diogenes perhaps in "Vom aesthetischen Werte der Griechischen Komödie", (1794), in Friedrich Schlegels Jugendschriften, ed. J. Minor (Vienna, 2nd ed. 1906), vol. II, p. 281. ' August Wilhelm von Schlegel's sämtliche Werke, ed. Eduard Böcking (Leipzig, 1846-1847), V, 184. 5

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search of an honest man) and manages to make his way on stage despite the resistance of the schoolmaster against his fellow drunkard. Neither incident affects the action, for the first is quite ignored by the participants. Nevertheless it has been seen that the comedy constantly turns on itself. There is little more than a nominal pretense that people are taking the action seriously and that we are really involved in the imitation of life. By the heaping up of exaggerations and his willingness to hold back the action for an entirely extraneous discussion, Grabbe constantly shatters that "suspension of disbelief' in the story which traditional social comedy, like all drama, requires. When Mollfels interrupts his proposal to Liddy to tell the plot of an extraordinary drama he has written, "a story too foolish for him not to resist telling it straight away", the problem of the intrigue, whether Liddy is to chose the right husband, is put aside as too obvious to be bothered with. Or again when the devil comes to terms with the villain Mordax to help in his pursuit of Liddy and offers as conditions a) that his eldest son must study philosophy and b) that Mordax himself must kill 13 tailor's apprentices, the most innocent of all human beings, and Mordax agrees to kill seven, or finally even twelve, but not one more, this is a form of absurdity that has absolutely no link with the normal course of expected events. There are accepted possibilities as to the type of behavior the devil will exhibit on stage and of human response to it, but this goes far beyond them. This arbitrary attitude to the action, the head-long unconcern for normal dramatic precepts reflects the Romantic mood. Grabbe's comedy has a vital energy, a deep-rooted connection with the primitive forces of the comic that the Romantics reemphasized, seeking as they did with Aristotle the origins of comedy in Dionysian ritual and phallic songs. Nevertheless the tone is very different from that required by Romantic theory or exhibited in Romantic practice. In Grabbe there is no trace of that predominant Romantic self-irony, the authoritative control of the creative artist playing with the form and the material. The Romantic artist wants to reveal the freedom of

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the creative spirit. The independence he shows towards his own work has its roots in a sense of the insufficiency of any argument or statement about life or any artistic reproduction of the world to correspond to the limitless possibilities that our soul dimly recognizes. Tieck, in his comedies as in some of his Novellen, want to draw the ground away from under our feet so that we admit of the ambiguity of human experience or the mysteries of existence. Particularly in his early comedies he is mocking the philistine notion that the everyday world we live in has a solid reality. Later we find, what may also be felt already in Brentano's Ponce de Leon and the many fairy tale comedies, a reflection of the characteristic Romantic distinction between the unrestricted prospects open to the artist and the limitations of any specific artistic form, the conflict between the boundless ego and the restrictions of space and time. The Romantic poet is in a curious way both disengaged from and involved in his subject. He is arbitrarily separate from and master of his material in the sense of Friedrich Schlegel's famous passage that Romantic poetry "allein ist unendlich, weil sie frei ist, und das als ihr erstes Gesetz anerkennt, daß die Willkür des Dichters kein Gesetz über sich leide".7 But just for this reason he also constantly intrudes himself into his characters and into his work. He does not allow his figures to work out, as it were, their own destiny but imposes his own convictions, his own lyricism and passion on to the action. In Grabbe these characteristics seem reversed. He has managed to construct very clear cut, boldly invented and vigorously presented figures who have their own vital existence. Though he draws his characters in the sharpest lines, bordering on caricature, they have their own assurance and a strange expressionistic reality. For a man who had no immediate contact with the theatre Grabbe shows an extraordinary flair for the dramatic and for realizing how a character could be effectively presented on the stage. In face of this play particularly it seems all the more regrettable that his plans for a career with the theatre came to nothing. Romantic plays, and particularly the fairy tale comedies, are 7

Athenäums-Fragmente

in Jugendschriften,

ed. J. Minor, vol. II, p. 221.

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essentially undramatic. There are too many motifs and themes appealing to the fantasy that do not serve a dramatic purpose. Grabbe's play has loose ends, but it has its own unity and its own force of effect, just precisely in its characteristic tone. The interruptions of the action that have been pointed to serve this tone, — they are not pursued with the pedantic excess often felt in Tieck, but play an integral part in providing the curious quality of the whole. On the other hand, Grabbe never seems the ironic master of his material; the essence of Grabbe's world is confusion. The disorder, the pressure of the fantastic, are a reflection of reality. Instead of an intellectual playing with illusions, we are confronted with the farce and absurdity of existence. Another connecting link between Grabbe's comedy and the Romantics lies in its emphasis on literary satire. This element played an important role in the plays of Tieck and Brentano at the beginning of the century and continued in comedies of Platen, Eichendorff, and many others. Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung has the same constant polemical tone. Literary allusions are unending and every opportunity for literary reference is taken. Although Grabbe's jokes range wide and include such varied topics as the inadequacies of the fire department, the extravagant polemics of the newspapers or the inadequate street lighting and the consequent lack of innocence of the modern girl, it is only on literary subjects that they become very specific. A vast assembly of writers are the subjects for detailed puns and witticisms. Popular women novelists of the time like Caroline von Pichler or Hermina von Chezy, successful men of letters like Theodor Hell (an obvious name for jokes), or characteristic Schiller epigones like Freiherr von Auffenberg, all come in for attack. Interesting in view of Gothland are the attacks on some of the writers of fate tragedies, notably Houwald, one of the most prolific authors of this school, but the schoolmaster goes out of his way to justify Milliner's Die Schuld, whose qualities are too great for critics to understand them. Although Grabbe boldly includes Goethe and Schiller among his

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victims, the attacks are mostly directed against unimportant figures. Grabbe is usually circumspect as far as his more impressive contemporaries are concerned. This is also true in Tieck's comedies where often very trivial writers are made fun of, but a distinction in tone between Grabbe and the Romantics may here too be made. Romantic theory is essentially optimistic. It is founded on a belief in the capacity of the human spirit. Underlying Romantic literature lies a conviction of ultimate transcendental values. Essentially, Romantic satire pays tribute to Schiller's demand that it reflect a sense of the true and the ideal. Its object is to reveal what Schiller describes in his essay "Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung:" "In der Satire wird die Wirklichkeit als Mangel dem Ideal als der höchsten Realität gegenübergestellt." 8 Tieck's attacks in Der gestiefelte Kater and elsewhere usually have a definite purpose. They are directed against the limitations of rationalism and the Enlightenment as well as against the dullness of bourgeois self-satisfaction. His mockery of the tearful pathos of Iffland and his followers assumes the conviction that the road is to be opened for a better literature to come. Grabbe's literary attacks do not have any such positive reforming basis. They are the spirited outcome of his own vitality and a youthful love of destroying accepted idols. As a young man of immense possibilities he sees the inadequacies of his contemporaries. But there is no standard by which judgment is made other than his own youthful intolerance of compromise or vulgarity. He attacks because he sees only weakness and delusion. Critics have stressed Grabbe's gift for satire 9 but it does not seem that the satirical really provides the essential tone of his comedy. Mocking and polemical though the play is, the satire is a means by which the play is held together rather than an end in itself. Effective satire requires precisely that intellectual separation from the follies attacked that Grabbe lacks. Grabbe Schiller, Sämtliche Werke (Säkular-Ausgabe), ed. Eduard von der Hellen (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1905), XII, 194. * Cf. particularly Heinrich Riedel, Grabbe als Komiker unter besonderer Betrachtung von "Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung" (diss. Leipzig, 1929).

8

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is never sufficiently cool an observer to find the most cutting edge to pierce the heart of weakness. It is not only that he brings his attacks on to himself both directly and indirectly. We may recognize many of Grabbe's own features in the different characters, the misanthropy of the Baron, the ugliness of Mollfels, the addiction to drink of the schoolmaster, perhaps even the straining after form in the poet Rattengift. The schoolmaster himself curses the author: " . . . die zwergigte Krabbe, der Verfasser dieses S tucks! Er ist so dumm wie'n KuhfuB, schimpft auf alle Schriftsteller und taugt selber nichts" (I, 273). More important is the fact that all Grabbe's attacks are colored by a prevailing mockery that refuses to take anything too seriously, including himself. This joking tone gives the satire a kinder face and we would be hard put to it to take offense at any of his assaults. Even those scenes or speeches which are primarily satirical in aim are colored by the mood of burlesque. The discussion of "herring literature" for example between the Baron and the schoolmaster — the latter gets his literary news in the paper wrapped round the herrings his cousin sends him from the city — leads to a series of passing shots at contemporary writers. The two men indulge their wit in variations and embellishments on the general theme of this as an unexpected but not at all unsuitable end for the writers in question, whose mawkish and sentimental tone they find offensive. The idea is amusing enough, but the particular jokes and witticisms are too simple and crude to be effective individually. We must not look in Grabbe for examples of striking wit. It may be that a really successful joke should incoiporate some unexpected turn of thought, perhaps even suggest a new insight or connection between things. If so, this is very rarely true of Grabbe. He uses any joke that comes to mind, often very obvious ones. There is little attention given to the careful control of phrase or polished statement necessary to real wit. Grabbe's jokes rarely strike home with convincing force. He relies rather on a spontaneous-seeming flow, one joke after another, dependent for effect on eccentric and even outlandish leaps of thought. The Baron's anger has no restraint: the muse of tragedy a whore

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which every German lad thinks he can rape at will, critics on their night-stools who injure good men even by their praise, sluts with voices so sharp one can cut bread with them, actors so dull the audience claps when they leave the stage — these are the heroes of the hour. We are attracted to scenes such as these, not by the jokes themselves, but by the farcical mood, the power of atmosphere, which makes the success or failure of the individual attacks unimportant. Indeed the very accumulation of silly jokes helps provide the tone, for we are left reeling by the rapid flow of words. It is similarly doubtful if too much emphasis should be placed on the play's social criticism. It is true that the society of Restoration Germany reflected in the comedy is a sad one. It is an unsatisfactory world in which the devil is so readily taken into good society, where drunken teachers seem to be the accepted norm and where the nobility is represented by men like Herr von Wernthal, who sells his bride to a passing collector for 20,000 thalers, or a mass murderer of tailor's apprentices like Baron von Mordax, who is only concerned that his clothes should not be spoiled by their blood. Yet these are the elements of the comic plot that Grabbe indulges. There is no suggestion of social reform, no sense of hatred against the abuses of the social order, only a casual acceptance that the order is patently absurd. Grabbe here at least seems to share the indifference to social prejudice exemplified by the Baron and his niece. They adopt a casually democratic manner in relation to the poet and the schoolmaster and never think to enquire about the hero Mollfels' social position. The essence of Grabbe's comedy is burlesque. This is reflected in the rapidity of the action and the staccato movement of the individual scenes. Grabbe does not develop and exploit comic situations in the manner of traditional comedy. He does not build up a comic sequence through new twists and skillfully planned and timed devices. What we have characteristically are episodes which originate in an absurd situation and are then extended by means of the broadest and often very bizarre exaggeration. Rattengift, the boastful poet-in-residence at the

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Baron's house, sits at a table, chewing his pen and searching for a subject for a poem. He has plenty of rhymes but no ideas. Suddenly he hits on a solution: Ach, die Gedanken! Reime sind da, aber die Gedanken, die Gedanken! Da sitze ich, trinke Kaffee, kaue Federn, schreibe hin, streiche aus, und kann keinen Gedanken finden, keinen Gedanken! Ha, wie ergreife ichs nun? — Herrlich! göttlich! eben über den Gedanken, daß ich keinen Gedanken finden kann, will ich ein Sonett machen, und wahrhaftig dieser Gedanke über die Gedankenlosigkeit, ist der genialste Gedanke, der mir nur einfallen konnte! Ich mache gleichsam eben darüber, daß ich nicht zu dichten vermag, ein Gedicht! Wie pikant! wie originell! (Er läuft schnell vor den Spiegel) Auf Ehre, ich sehe doch recht genial aus! (Er setzt sich an einen Tisch) Nun will ich anfangen! (Er schreibt) Sonett Ich saß an meinem Tisch und kaute Federn, So wie Ja, was in aller Welt sitzt nun so, daß es aussieht wie ich, wenn ich Federn kaue? Wo bekomme ich hier ein schickliches Bild her? Ich will ans Fenster springen und sehen, ob ich draußen nichts Ähnliches erblicke! (Er macht das Fenster auf und sieht ins Freie) Dort sitzt ein Junge und kackt — Ne, so sieht es nicht aus! (I, 239) Depite his denial we are perhaps expected to add our own comparison: So wie ein Mann, der seinen Stuhlgang macht. This indulgence in burlesque, Grabbe's willingness to translate each scene into the extravagant and irrational, has an ambiguous effect. Our laughter is disturbed by the curious and frequently grotesque exaggeration. Satire and wit cheer us by the power of reason. We stand above the follies attacked and appreciate man's ability to master error. Grabbe's farce arouses a sense of doubt. We may accept the vitality with which the world is torn up but still feel uneasy at the result. The limitations of human undertakings seem all too obvious, we are pressed in by a half-unconscious feeling that things are pointless and absurd. We should not perhaps go too far in asserting this disturbing factor. In many ways the comedy supports a normal moral world order. A happy ending, after all, is the only accept-

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able one. The devil is not all that much at home on earth — it is much too cold for him here. His attacks reveal by contrast at least the existence of certain values. Since he eschews courtesy and politeness when the Baron offers him a room, we may feel that these are for humans useful civilized qualities. If he chooses particularly valuable chairs to use as wood for the fire, at least there are chairs of value whose loss is worth regretting. Nevertheless the tone remains troubling and if we are to look for the "deeper meaning" Grabbe ironically promises in the title, it lies in this uncertainty of mood rather than in any specific episodes or even specific philosophy in the play. Certainly there is no articulate spokesman to expound the play's meaning or present the author's point of view, nor is there a hero to set the tone. Mollfels might have developed as a forerunner to Cyrano de Bergerac, but he is never in fact allowed to become of central importance and any incipient sentimental melancholy on his part is kept within strict bounds. This absence of any selfconscious philosophizing on man's fate is significant. Grabbe reveals his world indirectly in the very spirit of the play itself. Even in Georg Büchner, where we may likewise feel the threat of a meaningless world, there is in Danton or Leonce or Lenz an extremely eloquent hero who seeks to clarify the causes and meaning of his disillusion. But this Byronic eloquence of Büchner's heroes sometimes seems sentimental and even self-pitying beside the harsher realities of Grabbe's vision. Only in Woyzeck does Büchner create a hero who is the uncomprehending victim of an empty and apparently futile world. Earlier indeed in Büchner there is a characteristically Romantic suggestion of an escape into nature. In Leonce und Lena the hero hopes for relief from loneliness, even though ironically, in the simplicity and naive qualities of his Lena, "unendlich schon und unendlich geistlos". Lenz too finds temporary shelter and hope in the quiet village pastorage in Waldbach. Such longing for the peace of nature is far removed from Grabbe, who was perhaps too close to the country and to his many peasant relatives to be deluded. Nature in Scherz is represented by the oafish village boy whom the schoolmaster has to look after and the father who knows

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what headwork is from watching the oxen sweat to pull the cart with their heads, and who ("O blessed naivety, O sweet innocence, fled from the cities into the countryman's hut!", as the schoolmaster puts it) has his teeth pulled even though they are perfectly healthy, because the traveling dentist will do it free. Although there is no spokesman for the mood of the play — and to have one would be to change the tone decisively — there are several elements that help to show a little more clearly the effect of the whole. Underneath the jokes there are certain guiding lines that may be taken seriously. Through the devil Grabbe exposes the hollowness of human pretensions and the falseness of our judgments. The natural scientists who examine his body at the beginning to see what kind of creature this is have to admit that it looks as if it must be the devil, but such a thing is impossible, they have proved the devil does not exist. "Das ist ab initio unmöglich, denn der Teufel paßt nicht in unser System." A similarly naive conviction in the enlightened good sense of modern man is expressed by the poet Rattengift. But in a key scene in Act 2, scene 2 (the importance of which Grabbe himself pointed to), the devil shows him in a vigorous assault the inadequacy of his philosophical and literary models. A chief occupation in hell seems to be the reading of contemporary German literature, which evidently spreads a mood of paralyzing boredom, and the devil is very well informed. As Rattengift inquires about the fates of his literary heroes in the other world, hoping to hear of their happy reception in heaven, the devil reveals them one after another to have found their proper destiny in hell. Among lesser figures we learn that that model of noble friendship in Schiller's Don Carlos, the Marquis of Posa, has become a procurer and ale house keeper. The great tragic Schillerian hero Wallenstein, whose lack of decisive action brought his downfall, has found his true place as a schoolmaster unable to make up his mind whether to strike his pupils or not. "Hier ist nicht Raum zu schlagen", "wohlan, es sei", "ich wills lieber doch nicht tun". These are just jokes, the outcome of Grabbe's irreverence

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and boyish good spirits. But it is important that not only the vulgar and trivial and palpably false come under attack, but also as it were the idealistic heroes of the age. Under this foolishness is a feeling that everything is rightly the subject for a joke. No other attitude is possible. The devil proclaims some of his works that have recently appeared in popular editions. His masterpiece is "The French Revolution, a tragedy in 14 years, with a prologue by Louis XV". At present he is at work on a farce under the title: "The Greek War of Independence, by the author of The French Revolution, to be published by the Turkish Emperor." But not only political movements are made fun of. The whole world is a ridiculous book according to the devil, "a second rate comedy planned by a very callow young angel still at school and scribbled down during his vacation". This conceit is not original, but Grabbe pursues it with great zest. Das Exemplar, in dem wir uns befinden, steht, so glaube ich, in der Leihbibliothek zu X, und eben jetzt wird es von einer hübschen Dame gelesen, welche den Verfasser kennt und ihm heute abend, d.h. über sechs Trillionen Jahre, beim Teetische ihr Urteil darüber mitteilen will. (I, 242)

Hell, it transpires, is the ironic part of the play and, "as so often happens with immature authors", has succeeded much better than heaven which is the purely cheerful part. The world is a comedy and nothing then is to be taken seriously. Anger or enthusiasm are out of place. When a murderer comes to hell he is simply ridiculed that he took so much trouble as to kill a fellow being. This is the devil speaking, but, though he is properly outwitted at the end of the play, his point of view is not refuted. Other important characters share his cynical and disillusioned attitude to things. Although their hearts, unlike his, are with the cause of good, they find relief from the world they live in, in ironic detachment. Mollfels' ugliness is symptomatic of a completely unjust and misleading world of appearance. His lack of confidence comes from the fact that all the things he instinctively values are ignored or disparaged by the world,

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while superficial qualities gain the day. Liddy, like a true heroine of romance, causes an improbable happy ending by recognizing his inner worth, despite his apparent lack of charm or masculine self-assertion. The Baron and the schoolmaster have similar characteristics. They too are cynical of success or ambition, because in fact the world's judgments and values are always false. Hence their contact with the world is indirect and ironic. The Baron retires behind the brusque air of a man of the world feigning to accept things as they are, but finding relief in explosions of rage at the impudence and false presumptions of modern scribblers; the schoolmaster, closer to the facts of human stupidity, relieves himself in drink. Yet all three have a certain capacity for enthusiasm and gaiety. Despite their pessimism they have an innate vigor for life and manage pretty well along their own particular lines. When Mollfels thinks of suicide in contemplating his own ugliness and the impossibility of winning Liddy's love, he is easily persuaded to get drunk instead. The scene that follows between him and the schoolmaster and Rattengift, where the schoolmaster tells of youthful misadventures in love and a delicate situation in the dark where his advances towards the school principal's daughter mistakenly arouse a yielding response from the principal himself, is one of the funniest in the play and worthy of the Mozart drinking song which they sing together: "Vivat Bacchus, Bacchus lebe, Bacchus war ein braver Mann." Grabbe himself when discussing the play emphasized the underlying pessimism. When he sent to Kettembeil an example of a sample review to be passed on to various journals, he asserted that the play would arouse "loud laughter but at bottom only a laughter of despair" (Wuk. V, 278). And of the author himself he said: "Er selbst ist mit sich uneins, er ist sich nichts, deshalb ihm auch die Welt" (Wuk. V, 309). But we must be cautious here, as at other times, in accepting too readily Grabbe's own later judgments. He is writing defensively, anxious to distance himself from his early work by emphasizing that the plays reflect a mood long past that he has now overcome. Too much emphasis on the underlying bitterness may

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be out of place. Grabbe's play contrasts with those of his contemporaries in its complete disillusion, but it has its own spirit of gaiety. To the 19th century Grabbe's love of farce and his inclination to the grotesque may have seemed crude and distressing. For us the lack of illusion of the play and its bitter and disturbing overtones are a source of attraction. We are grateful for a work that reflects so laconically and with such matter of fact acceptance a disjointed world. Thus we are freer to sympathize with the mood of skeptical gaiety that it radiates and are more able to appreciate Grabbe's genuine originality. The dramatic force with which Grabbe has developed his characters and scenes is clearer to us. There is nothing to be taken seriously. Foolish though it would be to expect too much, we can enjoy the absurdity of things. The underlying irrational joy of life that is at bottom after all the source of the comic comes out in explosive form. Critics still often retain a moralizing attitude towards farce as an inferior form of comedy. Yet it may be that today there is a growing understanding for the character of the farcical and a realization of its ties with deep-rooted needs in human nature. We are becoming aware, perhaps under the pressure of our own sense of uncontrollable dangers, to what extent farce can reflect more vigorously than any satirical comedy of manners the innate contradictions of human life. Tragi-comedies of Diirrenmatt as well as of Ionesco, Beckett and others now associated with the "theatre of the absurd" have shown man in a ludicrous plight. No longer supported by accepted traditions and values, we are exposed to the contrast between our ideal aspirations and the pathetic weakness of our own real nature. In an essay on "Experiences du théâtre", in which he expresses his admiration for Kleist und Biichner but does not mention Grabbe, Ionesco nevertheless comes close to describing the situation of Grabbe's play: Si donc l'essence du théâtre était dans le grossissement des effets, il fallait les grossir davantage encore, les souligner, les accentuer au maximum. Pousser le théâtre au-delà de cette zone intermédiaire qui n'est ni théâtre, ni littérature, c'est le restituer à son cadre propre, à

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ses limites naturelles. Il fallait non pas cacher les ficelles, mais les rendre plus visibles encore, délibérément évidentes, aller à fond dans le grotesque, la caricature, au-delà de la pâle ironie des spirituelles comédies de salon. Pas de comédies de salon, mais la farce, la charge parodique extrême. Humour, oui, mais avec les moyens du burlesque. Un comique dur, sans finesse, excessif. . . . Pousser tout au paroxysme, là où sont les sources du tragique. 10 In this atmosphere Grabbe's brilliant work may yet come f u r ther into its own a n d the play b e allowed to act on us directly by its own natural creative energy.

10

La Nouvelle Nouvelle Revue Française, VI (Feb. 1958), p. 259.

IV MARIUS UND

SULLA

The third of Grabbe's important early works, Marius und Sulla, comes down to us in two versions, interestingly contrasted in manner, but both incomplete. Although fragments, these two attempts at a historical tragedy are both stimulating and original. Grabbe does not turn to history, as did Schiller and his successors, in order to give dignity and value to essential moral conflicts. His aim in this "streng historisches Stück" (Wuk. V, 248) is rather to show the reality of historical forces, the quality of character of the hero, the confusion of conflicting purposes out of which decisive action is taken. Grabbe's choice of subject is itself significant. Marius and Sulla are great military leaders, but they are also cruel and ruthless despots living in a brutal age, where the security of Rome is threatened from outside by barbarians and from within by the greed and narrow ambitions of its own people. Neither is representative of any clear cut political or moral force. Historically, Marius was leader of the popular party, Sulla of the aristocratic. But for Grabbe these are only elements to be incorporated in the general elaboration of their character. His essential concern is to contrast the capacity for achievement of his heroes and show us, for all their other differing qualities, the energy of will which gives them power of command. Both are aware of Roman decadence and oppose to it their own passion. In both cases love for their native city is intermingled with the bitterest hatred. Marius is activated by a half insane urge for revenge on the Romans who have betrayed him, Sulla by concern to restore Roman greatness through the most savage blood-letting. Yet as we see

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them in the drama they are not equal figures. Marius is shown at the last period of his life. Although he is still too strong a force for his enemies or the allies who delude themselves that they can use him as a tool, he collapses before Sulla's sheer energy of character and commanding power of decision. Both versions date from 1823, although some additions and further notes to the second version were added after Kettembeil's momentous letter in 1827. The first version, which consists only of the first three acts, was composed between March and June of 1823, after Grabbe had left Berlin and had returned to Leipzig, and then during his visit to Tieck in Dresden. After his failure to gain a position with the theatre in Dresden Grabbe returned across Germany, still hoping he might find some theatrical entrée. In Braunschweig the director August Klingemann, according to a later Grabbe letter, offered him money to finish the play (Cf. Wuk. V, 266). Instead of doing so, however, Grabbe started again. The first two acts were written while he was in Hannover still looking for a job, and in August he wrote to Tieck that he was working on the last two acts (Wuk. V, 261). For the next years this play, like Grabbers other works, was put aside. With the prospect of publication in view in 1827 Grabbe started to work on it again, at first with serious hopes that he could finish it. Finally he decided to leave the second version too as a fragment, providing the play with detailed notes as to how the action would develop. He also added a somewhat strained comment in the preface that it was for the public to decide whether the work was worth finishing or not. He would follow their verdict. The play begins during Marius' exile in North Africa in 88 B.C. We are to see his successful return to Rome to become consul for the seventh time and his death while occupying that office. Sulla, victorious in the opening scenes over the Asian leader Mithridates, returns to Rome to defeat the already fragmented armies of Marius' successors. Gathering his forces for one more battle, he overcomes also the dangerous Samnites who have taken advantage of the civil war to threaten Rome. He enters the city in triumph and is elected dictator perpetuus,

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but at the very height of his power he voluntarily resigns from office. To some extent Grabbe has collapsed historical events in order to provide a clearer dramatic sequence. Historically, Marius died three weeks after his seventh appointment as consul; Sulla did not return to Italy after defeating Mithridates until two years later. In the drama Marius' death takes place as he marches out to defend himself against Sulla. Yet there is still no central confrontation between the two heroes. In his plans Grabbe suggests the mere recurrent name of Sulla has to replace for Marius the actual presence of his superior rival (I, 389). Grabbe has chosen to omit the earlier struggle between them as to who would be made commander of the army against Mithridates, which might have provided a central dramatic clash. This struggle which led to Marius' exile now becomes merely a minor part of the exposition. Although we thus never see the two figures immediately in conflict, only separately wrestling with the confusion of events, the dramatic tension has to lie in the contrast of character, the differences of temperament and capacity for action between the aging Marius and the younger, more sternly incisive Sulla. This is particularly evident in the first version, when we turn in short, rapidly moving scenes from one camp to the other to follow the course of events. In this version the Marius action is the most explicitly developed. Sulla is shown in battle with Mithridates and making terms after his victory; in Act 3, scene 1, he is the leader of his army returning to Italy. In both cases his arrogant and brutal self-assurance, and his rapid, confident capacity for decision come clearly to light. But for the rest we are concerned with Marius, his allies and enemies. His is a violent and passionate nature. We see his implacable longing for revenge on the Roman citizens who have betrayed him, and later the ruthless and sadistic joy with which he destroys his enemies and incites his troops to orgies of killing in the streets and homes of Rome. As with Sulla, emphasis is on the strength of his personality, shown in contrast to his allied leaders Cinna and Sertorius. They plan to use his name for their own ambitions but find themselves inevitably over-

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whelmed by Marius' natural control of command. Yet at the same time signs of weakness are made clear. In Rome his power of decision fails him; he does not act in time, his forces are dissipated, his armies defeated one by one. He allows the incompetent Cinna to remain in command and to march separately against Sulla. Cinna's fate — he is attacked and killed by his own troops — is only in fact told in the prose sketches of the second version, but has been prepared by a scene of revolt which Cinna barely succeeds in putting down, and then only thanks to Sertorius's superior strength of will. Sertorius himself, partly out of disgust with the cruel excesses of Marius, leaves with his army to fight for a new home in Spain, but before going succeeds in surrounding Marius's most loyal troops (who have been mainly responsible for the massacres) and destroying them. The first version ends with the destruction of the Marian troops and Marius's desperate laments. The prospect of his own death does not seem far off. In the second version Grabbe has introduced fairly extensive notes to show scene by scene the planned course of events in acts 4 and 5. Occasionally he inserts a few lines, usually in verse, "zur Erbauung eingeflickt" as he wrote Kettembeil (Wuk. V, 298). But he has also considerably widened the scope of the earlier action, sometimes in plan only, but also by incorporating new and elaborately worked-out scenes. In particular Act 2 has been extended, to show the atmosphere in Rome, the attitudes of the citizens and Senators, the apparent chaos of conflicting opinions and ambitions. Already in the first version Grabbe had introduced a brief scene to show the mood in Rome during Marius's advance. But this had seemed largely a means to follow, through secondhand reports and by the reactions of the people, the progress of the action. In the second version two long and detailed scenes are inserted, the one at a meeting of the senate, the other in the streets of Rome. The forward movement of the action is held up. Out of the clash of arguments we gain a feeling of the degeneration in Rome, the narrow self-interest and obstinacy of the wealthy, the greedy, hypocritical reactions of the

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ordinary citizens. To the participants themselves the old Roman virtues, the sense of honor and self-sacrifice, seem far off dreams. But if the virtues of a simpler past are gone, the cruel savage instincts of man still emerge underneath the presentday avarice and fear. These two brilliantly written scenes are forerunners of the characteristic crowd scenes in Napoleon oder die hundert Tage. Here as there we have a series of sharply characterized individuals lending their voices to the chorus of the whole. In both cases, despite the epic breadth of tone whereby the immediate progress of the action towards its goal seems suspended, dramatic tension is maintained, at least within the scene itself, by the expectation and fear dominating all arguments and decisions. Interesting is the role of the tribune of the people Saturnius who scornfully resists the pressure of the Senators and relies on his cynical gift for inciting to violence the people whom he himself despises. The possibility of such a character was already present in the first version, but the unnamed ringleader of the mob who had only one important speech, is now given a comparatively long and complicated role. Saturnius is like Jouve in Napoleon who leads the mob after the Bourbons have fled from Paris and before Napoleon's arrival. Both are invented, non-historical figures, both cynical and sharp-witted and completely unscrupulous, rising to power with the breakdown of the laws and using their gifts to arouse the lowest and cruelest impulses of the people. Through each we see the danger of chaos, of a breakdown in the texture of the state. Each serves as a foil to the hero. Napoleon, in rapidly establishing order, leaves Jouve with no role other than as an impotent and cynical commentator of events. According to the plans, Saturnius manages to insinuate himself with Marius and share in the bloodshed, but Sulla at once sees through him and has him killed (Cf. I, 407/8). Against this background the historical roles of Marius and particularly Sulla gain much more significance. In a note for further scenes amongst the people, not dramatically worked out, Grabbe states his objective:

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Immer deutlicher leuchtet aus dem Gange des Stückes hervor, daß die römische Welt weder auf der Erde noch in der Religion einen festen Haltpunkt mehr hat, und daß, wenn sie nicht auseinanderfallen soll, nur der Despotismus sie halten kann. Darum mußten Männer wie Marius und Sulla erscheinen und das werden, was sie geworden sind.1 (I, 388)

Despotism is essential for the preservation of Rome. Sulla, as he is sketched out for the unwritten acts to come, is to be a triumphant figure, at least in part and at least in prospect, come to restore the true worth of Rome. Apart from elaborating the historical background, Grabbe seems also to have been concerned in the second version to give added breadth and naturalness to the action. This is particularly evident in the opening scene of all where the exiled Marius is shown with his closest companions wandering in North Africa near the ruins of Carthage. In the first version Grabbe begins in medias res-, after a companion has lamented for four lines the fearful heat of the African sun, Marius urges courage on his companions and tells of a boyhood incident when a snake wrapped itself seven times around his forehead and of the prophecy, not yet finally fulfilled, that he would be consul of Rome seven times. Such a direct form of exposition is avoided in the second version where Grabbe engenders a more orthodox and more naturally prepared mood of excitement. Fishermen wandering in the ruins suggest the atmosphere of the locale and prepare us for the approach of Marius and his followers. The story of the prophecy is omitted; instead we have a conversation that gradually reveals the situation, showing the feelings not only of Marius but also of his followers. The sudden reversal of fortune with the arrival of Marius's son and the news of Cinna's uprising against the present rulers in Rome, which is startlingly brief in the first version, is also expanded to create more sense of tension and expectation. This scene has mostly been transferred into prose, which Grabbe was to use again, after meantime returning to the traCf. the discussion by Alfred Bergmann in the new Grabbe edition, Werke und Briefe, I, 632. See also Otto Nieten, Christian Dietrich Grabbe. Sein Leben und seine Werke (Dortmund, 1908), pp. 109-110. 1

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ditional meter, in Napoleon and the later plays. In this case he apparently intended to use both forms. Many new episodes are in verse, and in the new Roman scenes of the second act Grabbe seems to follow broadly the Shakespeare tradition when the citizens mostly speak in prose and the senators in verse. This choice of prose is interesting. It has often been noted what advantages the iambic meter gives to the German language. It is a form that allows for richness of feeling, adds metric force to the expression of emotions, and at the same time offers a protection against the dangers of an unbalanced syntax, or the too heavy grouping of consonants and multi-syllabic phrases. Grabbe was clearly in two minds, as he was again in Hannibal:, whether to abandon it, yet his prose has, particularly in this opening scene, its own excitement. The language is sharp-edged and discordant but vigorously to the point. The sentences are usually short, hard and filled with striking imagery. An interesting contrast may be seen in what is in the first version the opening speech of the play by Marius's follower Carbo. Unselges Afrika! Weh dem, der dich Vertrieben und verfolgt durchirrt! Du sengst Mit deiner Sonne ihm Gehirn Und Adern aus! (I, 305)

which becomes Die Zunge brennt mir im Munde, wie eine Flamme; gleich einem dürstigen Löwen saugt mir die gelbrote, afrikanische Sonne das Blut weg! (I, 344)

Despite the broken rhythm of the first version, the metric flow of the iambics gives a certain elevation, even a certain poetic distance to the lines. In the second, the images of the tongue like a flame in his mouth, the sun sucking his blood like a thirsty lion, clearly extended from those in the poetry version, are now characteristically more startling and extreme. In general it would be a mistake to consider the second version as necessarily superior to the first. W e might be inclined to read this opening scene as a sketch or draft plan, but the speeches have been written with considerable care and

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attention to detail. When Marius replies to Carbo, for example, the story of the boyhood prophecy is told in carefully planned and attractively flowing lines. The snake had wrapped itself seven times around his head, his parents are desperate: doch die Schlange ließ Mich kosend, langsam wieder los, Und war in einem Nu dem Aug verloren; Ein Seher aber, welchen man Um seine Deutung fragte, faßte ernst An meine Stirn und sprach: er wird Zu siebenmalen Konsul werden! — Was meint ihr nun? Sechsmal Ist seine Prophezeiung eingetroffen, Und tief in meiner Seele weiß ich klar, Daß ich nicht eher untergehen kann, Als bis sie auch zum siebenten Erfüllt ist! (I, 305) The danger and weakness of the first version is that the action seems sudden and unprepared. In the opening scene, as in other similar scenes through the play, the brevity of the action may seem to border on the absurd, but once we are accustomed to this rapidity of tone we recognize Grabbe's objective in leaping along the sequence of events to provide strikingly vivid moments of history. The action has a vigor and jagged directness that carries us with it. If the second version in its greater breadth of scope foreshadows Napoleon, the first reminds us of techniques used again in Hannibal. The panorama of history with its vast mass of detail is compressed into short pregnant scenes. Instead of the gradual development of interest in the progression of plot and interplay of character, here we have the sharp expressionistic outline of events, key incidents and moments of dialogue that convey a sense of the dramatic whole. In the second version some of these scenes still remain, particularly in the first act with Sulla and Mithridates before and after the battles, and such episodes contrast in tone with the broader scope of the later scenes. These latter were themselves brilliantly written but the danger that the line of action will be lost is very serious. Already the two new scenes in Act 2 amongst

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the populace outweigh by sheer mass of material the effect of the scenes with Sulla or Marius. Yet Grabbe has planned two more scenes amongst the Roman people in the second act, as well as extending the episode where Sulla's wife plans her escape from the city. The further acts were planned on a similar scale. In Napoleon, as we shall see, Grabbe managed to master and control a vast mass of material; it is likely that he might have achieved the same effect here. Yet the attractions of such a work in providing a vivid and intimate picture of Roman life would be countered by the lack of dramatic concentration. Napoleon proved a most stimulating experiment, yet Grabbe afterwards felt the need for another form, more suited for theatrical effect. One other point of comparison between the two versions which shows the development of Grabbe's interests, may be seen in the battle in the first act between the armies of Sulla and Mithridates. In the first version the action is very simple. Mithridates' attempt at encirclement causes a moment of fear in the Roman hearts, but Sulla strikes sharply and decisively at the enemy center. There is a period of desperate uncertainty as the battle is joined, then the Romans gain the day. In the second version many more details of the battle are shown. Sulla's personal courage is revealed as he stands before the chariots of the enemy and calls on his men to stop them before they reach their commander; the discipline of his troops is emphasized as they remain serenely in position in the thick of the fighting, waiting orders for the moment to strike. In this second version the contrast, which is only implicit in the earlier draft, if existent at all, between the frightening and elaborate plans of the Asian force and the simple directness of the Romans, is made more specific. Other details of the battle are also shown. The scene moves across different parts of the battlefield. The emphasis on the battle which was to become such a vital force in Grabbe's later plays, seems already here quite legitimate. Only in this way can the true genius of the commander be revealed. We realize that the greatness of Rome lies not in the forum as such but depends on her armies in the field.

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where the old courage and discipline are preserved. Grabbe planned further battle scenes. Although Sulla's enemies during the middle of the play seem to vanish of themselves — Marius dies before the battle can be joined, while Cinna and Marius's son are killed off stage — Grabbe proposes to bring the fourth act to a climax in a pitch battle outside Rome against the Samnites. The two armies are to meet on stage, moments of terrible danger are felt by Sulla and his men before the victory is won. While the battles do not form the climax that Waterloo inevitably provides for Napoleon's 100 days, the elaborations of the battle scenes already point to Grabbe's later habits. Grabbe does not, at least in the battle with Mithridates, go beyond the limits of normal stage presentation. He adopts accepted techniques, the use of reports, messengers, small groups of fighting men, to show the progress of the battle. Yet the implications of this emphasis bring our interest on to a new level. This battle is not simply the extension of a clash between individual personalities, as it was in Gothland, nor is it a spectacle in its own right. On the battlefield the decisive choices are made. The conflict of ideas or values represented in the different figures now takes second place. The essential turning points of history lie in victory or defeat in war. Here chance and skill combine. The whims of fortune, but also the genius of the leader, the spirit and discipline of his troops, decide the day. The central emphasis in the drama lies in the revelation of character — not in the traditional sense that we follow the emotional development of the hero through a dramatic crisis, but rather in that we see the qualities of the heroes emerge out of the conflicts and struggle for power. The possibility existed in the historical material that Grabbe could have developed a clash of moral values in the leading protagonists. In Octavius, for example, the consul in Rome who struggles to sustain a defense against the approaching armies of Marius and his allies, we see represented a patriot lamenting the lost Roman traditions but determined to do his duty, to fight without fears to preserve order. In certain of the Roman senators, whose roles

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are only introduced in the second version, particularly in the elder Crassus, we are shown aristocrats in whom the past virtues of Rome are still alive, despite the sensuality and new found luxury of life. Sertorius, who with Cinna is Marius's main ally, also maintains traditional moral values. In a scene with Cinna (Act 2, scene 1), in this respect unchanged in the two versions, he asserts his principles of conduct as "determination, justice and clemency" (Entschlossenheit, Gerechtigkeit und Milde, I, 359) and although the skeptical Cinna denies that his troops would see any value in the latter two qualities, Sertorius proves himself a better master of affairs than Cinna does. Yet all these characters remain very much in the background. Grabbe's comment in the notes for the second version of Act 2, scene 5, that the attempts of Cinna and Sertorius to restrain the extremes of Marius's fury show only how empty and insignificant they are in relation to Marius (I, 368), may be extended to the other protagonists. No one is able to maintain himself against the vitality and force of character of the two heroes. In Marius and Sulla the moral purpose is little to the point. In each the dominating force is an imperative will to power (although contained in the end by Sulla in his final decision to retire from office). Grabbe has built their roles out of his historical sources, above all, it seems, from the accounts in Plutarch's Lives and Appian's Bellum Civile; many of the incidents that help to reveal character are adapted from here. He had allowed himself to follow something of the ambiguity, even apparent contradictoriness, that the historical sources reveal. But the author's hand may be felt quite clearly in the psychological exposition of the two heroes. There is something intimate to Grabbe in them which suggests a relationship to the previous plays, above all to Gothland. There Grabbe had an entirely different dramatic purpose; the conflict lay in the mortal crisis whereby Gothland was shaken out of a happy confidence in the world order and driven into evil. But Gothland's state of mind, especially in the later acts, helps us to understand these other figures. We saw in Gothland a savage strain of cruelty and violence. It was remarkable in him how readily he accepted

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the breakdown of the world order and how little he did to maintain the civilized standards in which he had been brought up. Once he felt that justice was to be denied him, his confident assurance in the world collapsed and he yielded to his own burning impulses of hatred and revenge. The desultory efforts of his wife Cacilia to suggest that virtue and pride might impel us to act honorably even in a brutal world, met with no response in Gothland, who leaped from a vision of a godless universe into a raging conviction that "all is permitted". Gothland reacts to injustice and cruelty with his own savage brutality and his own limitless ambitions. In Marius and Sulla there is similarly absent any urge to maintain hard won civilized values. Although Sulla is concerned with the restoration of the Republic and a revival of old Rome, Grabbe's emphasis lies in the calculated massacres, the ruthless vengeance of the "proscriptions", when thousands of names were casually placed on a list of men to be slaughtered. The years of government, the conservative constitution with which he tried to preserve order — these are specifically not shown in the play, for Sulla resigns just at the moment of power. In the earlier drama, Gothland himself refers to Sulla, together with Attila and Caesar, as one of the great blood letters of history, who with fire and sword, war and pestilence, bring man the only medicaments he can use (Cf. I, 110). They become almost an ideal for Gothland, because they are men free from his own recurrent sense of regret and repentance, his desperate longing to escape the cycle of his crimes. For Marius and for Sulla such regret is scarcely evident, although in Sulla there are moments of uncertainty (cf. a line of verse expressing his horror, put into the plan for Act 4, scene 2, but immediately controlled.) In Marius's case the opportunity lay at hand for Grabbe to introduce an evil influence in the ally Sulpicius, a tribune of the people, whose villainy, according to Plutarch, was second to none, "so that the question was not whom else he surpassed in wickedness, but in what he surpassed his own wickedness".2 It is possible to imagine a relation2 Plutarch's Lives (London & New York, Loeb Clasical Library, 1916), IV, 349.

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ship between Sulpicius and Marius comparable to that between Berdoa and Gothland. But in fact all reference to Sulpicius has been omitted and responsibility for the crimes falls entirely on Marius himself. Yet, although he shows no feeling of regret and indeed scarcely explains or justifies his motives to us in any way, the driving urge in Marius seems comparable to that in Gothland — an underlying and horrified sense of disillusion, an impulse to take revenge on a brutal world, a sense of hollowness that only can be satisfied in the indulgence of cruelty and the ambition of power. Marius in the ruins of Carthage finds comfort in thoughts of retaliation on his enemies in Rome who have betrayed him. Yet it seems less that they are specific enemies than that the whole world seems to have wronged him. Circumstances have granted him a chance for "honest revenge". In the first version he declares: Wahrlich, wünscht ich nicht, daß mir Ein Haufe fürs Beherrschen übrig bliebe — Ich rottete die undankbare Stadt So auf den Grund aus, daß man sie Samt ihren Türmen und Palästen durch Ein Sieb zu sä'n vermöchte! (I, 306) In the second version many speeches in a like mood have been transferred to Marius's followers, yet it is clear that they echo the feelings of their leader. When he enters Rome, Marius pauses in order to savor the moment before giving the fearful order to his Marian troops that none they meet should be spared. According to his son, generosity is vain, only vengeance gives consolation for their previous fall (cf. I, 384). Marius revels in the triumph of power. Knocking on his breast, he cries: "Schling die Stunde ein, du gierge Höhle!" (I, 326). Only thus for the moment can the hollowness in his breast be filled. Yet as with Gothland this sense of triumph is shortlived. Underneath the splendor is a knowledge of fear. This fear is made concrete by the enmity of Sulla, whose name alone causes him to pause, but the source seems to lie in an inner failing. An old man now, he suffers from a dread emptiness. Events seem unreal; if it were not

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for the thunderous clamor of the buildings crashing down: "Ich wüßte nicht, ob alles dies nicht bloß Ein wüster Traum sei, wie ich so häufig Auf meiner Flucht gehabt!" (I, 325) This passage and the reference to the hollow breast above are quoted from the first version. They were not included later, but in return, the second version emphasizes more than the first an inner melancholy in Marius, already present in the opening scene in the ruins of Carthage and lingering through the scenes of his triumphant return. The very thought of his past fall has to be put out of his mind for it makes him giddy; to have taken part in the world of events at all seems like a doubtful choice (cf. I, 385). Thus we are prepared for his mood of despondency in the third act which is so close in spirit to Gothland's final boredom and disintegration. Just as the urge to destroy Berdoa served as a source of vitality to Gothland, so now the cruel joy of Marius's revenge has given him a new spark of life, but this too is losing its savor. Marius describes the vault of the sky as a vast brain pan in which human lives are passing whims — he himself is one on the point of being forgotten (Cf. I, 333, or I, 396). The killing of his loyal Marian troops arouses a new fire of hate, but he no longer has the strength to sustain it. Marius is a creature of passion and impulse. His response to changing fortunes is felt and expressed openly and extravagantly. In contrast, Sulla has a sovereign control over his inner nature. The one is a violent tempered peasant son, the other a restrained, apparently coldblooded, aristocrat. Yet the calm is not absence of temperament. Grabbe shows all too clearly the inner passion in Sulla. In a scene of victory in Act 3 he first reveals the bloody revenge he has in store: Der Pöbel irrt sich, wenn er glaubt, Ich hätte keine Leidenschaften, weil Ich sie gebändigt! O sie sind nur um So furchtbarer, je mehr sie mir gehorchen! (I, 330 and I, 393) Sulla is further removed in spirit from Gothland, yet here too

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the personal element that Grabbe injects into his character becomes apparent. This role is only partly worked out. The development of the drama would largely depend on the growing revelation of Sulla's character. As it is, he appears only in comparatively short scenes in the first and third acts and not at all in the second act, a fact that is all the more striking in the later version where this act is much prolonged. Only with the victory in the fourth act over Marius's successors would his role become dominant. From the historian's point of view Sulla's character is strangely problematic. It is difficult to gain a convincing picture from the sources that have come down to us. Scholars are violently opposed in their assessments. Grabbe reflects something of this ambiguity, yet it is possible to see already in the earlier scenes and in the sketched-out plans the outlines of a dramatically exciting and coherent figure. Grabbe's treatment of Sulla's apparently superstitious reliance on luck, which was a problem both to Plutarch and to a lesser extent to Appian, is particularly interesting. Plutarch tells how, in contrast to other generals who have stressed to what extent the success of a campaign is due to their own genius, never to chance, Sulla magnified the aid of Fortune, and he does not know whether to ascribe this attitude to a genuine modesty or to a superstitious belief in a divine agency or perhaps a noble pride in claiming himself beloved by the gods (cf. I, 339, 341). Grabbe makes Sulla's reliance on the caprices of fortune a source of strength. For all the extreme clarity of his mind, which is shown to the full in his relation with Mithridates, his clear ability to weigh the pros and cons of a situation, his immediate insight into what Mithridates' position is after defeat and what his bargaining strengths are, Sulla nevertheless sees that reason alone is not sufficient to understand the incalculable character of events. The man of action depends not on reason, but on a deeper rooted intuition and confidence in his luck. Sulla follows his star and very willingly accepts his title, "Felix". "Ich bin ein Sohn des Glücks! Das Glück Ist himmlisch, Größe menschlich, selbst Die Götter wären keine Götter, wenn

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Das Glück sie nicht vor Tausenden Dazu erkoren hätte!" (I, 328, and I, 391) Something of this dependence on the irrational whims of life is briefly suggested in a few lines of dialogue with his follower Kaphis. When Sulla declares before the battle that, as it is raining, Mithridates must have something in mind, Kaphis is at a loss to know what the connection is between these two things. Sulla's reply that at great battles it often rains, that the gods seek to keep the air pure, has an attractive impenetrability, but is really no answer at all. Yet it is not by any means Kaphis' mild and perfectly reasonable skepticism that prevails in our minds; Sulla is far too much the master of the situation for that. Thus a moment later we share his air of superiority when he mockingly refers to his companion as "Wise Kaphis" (I, 310 and I, 349). Kaphis indeed finally adopts the wisest and most rational course of all by retiring from the world of battles to his own country estate. Sulla is too impelled by his own drive to action to adopt any such reasonable policy. It has been suggested that Grabbe's Sulla is a preview of the portrait developed by the famous 19th century historian Theodor Mommsen in his History of Rome. Both portraits stand in contrast to the more one-sidedly censorious judgments of history. It is interesting that Mommsen called Sulla the "Don Juan of Politics",3 for Grabbe's own portrait of Don Juan has some of Sulla's characteristics as we shall see — the control of his emotions, for example, as well as the capacity to fill his life with experiences and yet stand back and observe himself in action. But the Sulla portrait in Mommsen has a very different emphasis from Grabbe's. Mommsen suggests the elegant aristocrat, coolly distant from his fellows, whose whole political actions are pervaded by a "half ironical frivolity". He minimizes Sulla's role in the terrible proscriptions, ascribing the terrorism to the aristocracy, enervated and embittered by age, while calling Sulla merely the tool, "the executioner's axe following the conscious thought as its unconscious instrument".4 He stresses the 3 4

Römische Geschichte, book IV, chapter 10 (Berlin, 1912), II, 376. Römische Geschichte, book IV, chapter 10, II, 373.

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constitution, specifically not as a work of political genius, but at least as evidence of Sulla's masterly gift of organization, and as a means, within the limits of its conservative objectives, of maintaining the old order against the near approach of anarchy. Grabbe's picture, on the other hand, shows the courage and decisive power of the soldier. We can appreciate from the battle scenes the amazingly successful general, of whom Plutarch says it was "no easy matter even to enumerate the pitched battles which he won and the myriads of enemies whom he slew".5 But, again like Plutarch who scarcely mentions the matter, Grabbe puts little or no stress on the constitution. He proposes to ignore Sulla's years in power and to advance the time of his retirement to the very moment of victory. Instead he emphasizes Sulla's deliberate choice to annihilate his enemies, already begun after his victory at Fidentia in Act 3. In his notes Grabbe asserts that Sulla's decision is clear and complete: "he will without pity seek to purify the age of its excesses. With terror he will drive them out in order all the more surely to rebuild the good" (I, 393). Thus is to be understood the casual indifference as to whose names are to be put on the proscription list, the contrast between his moments of unexpected leniency and his bloodthirsty acts of revenge. Grabbe goes on to say that Sulla's "conscience is clear, he feels too sure of himself to feel pangs of regret, only in his humor, curiously growing with each new scene of terror, is his strange and fearful state of mind to be observed". This emphasis on humor, not of course worked out in the play itself, is a new aspect of Sulla in Grabbe, possibly suggested by Sulla's well-known intimacy with his lighthearted drinking companions, his friendly treatment of his theatrical friends and his love of debauch, but very different in tone. It is something far removed from any simple release of tension, nor does it appear like Mommsen's "ironical frivolity". On the contrary, it suggests in context a bitterly destructive, even nihilistic, hatred that allows the suffering to take place — an attitude felt under the surface in many of Grabbe's characters. Comparing Grabbe's Sulla with Mommsen's thus seems 5

Plutarch's Lives, IV, 453.

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out of place. Mommsen judges the Roman general in terms of of traditional moral and legal values and attempts to create a more favorable picture for history. Grabbe's Sulla must be understood in relation to the recurrent longing felt throughout the nineteenth century for the man of power, the hero who will revive manly virtues and counter the corrupting elements of a dominantly bourgeois world, by insisting on the need for cruelty, blood and suffering. This passion is felt in the Napoleon cult and was revived in the concepts of "immoralism" and "Renaissanceism" at the end of the century, forming a recurrent counter theme against the hypocrisy and vulgarity inherent in the progress of liberalism and democracy. Sulla is the first of Grabbe's great heroes, men of power conjured up to counter the spirit of the time. Through him he makes a brutal thrust against the homely self-satisfaction of the Biedermeier era, the world of second-rate success that was to ignore him. Superman elements that were to return in the figures of Don Juan and Faust and Heinrich VI and elsewhere, are already to be felt in the earliest drafts of the play. Kaphis, for instance, stunned by Sulla's cold superiority and indifference to the merely human, sees in him wonderingly a man who treats "men like a boy playing with flies". Sulla's relation to his wife Metella — she in fleeing from Marius's Rome to Sulla's camp scorns to cut off her hair or otherwise disguise the beauty that had won her husband's love — has elements of the Nietzschean dream of an ideal relation between the sexes, man the warrior and woman the devoted plaything for his hours of leisure. At the same time, Grabbe more than once suggests a relationship between Sulla and himself. To Kettembeil he wrote: Offenherzig, der Sulla selbst wird ein höchst kurioser Kerl; er soll das Ideal (vergiß nicht, das Ideal, denn sonst wär' es sehr wenig) von mir werden. (Wuk. V, 288) This suggestion has to some extent been adopted by critics, notably by Alfred Bergmann who frequently emphasizes the autobiographical in Grabbe's writings.6 Bergmann insists on the Cf. the "Nachwort" to his Grabbes Marius und Sulla. Zweite Fassung (Detmold, Ernst Schnelle, 1948).

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struggle between intellect and feeling, incorporated in Sulla and Marius, as a central conflict of Grabbe's life. Where Marius is the victim of his passions, Sulla gains the day because his intellect is always in control. He further argues a connection between Grabbe's ambitious aims as a reformer of the stage and Sulla's achievements. The tone of Grabbe's letters to Kettembeil in 1827 reveals his eagerness to play the successful artist imposing his will on his contemporaries. Side by side with moments of doubt as to the likely response to his work are recurrent assertions of the need to impress, to score a drastic and forcible effect. He expresses often bitter contempt for the men who are making their mark at the present time, but while he is thus hesitant as to what such success can be worth, he feels it all the more urgent to assert himself. Under the spur of Kettembeil's plans Grabbe's energy seems to have been enormous. It does not sound as if he is exaggerating when he tells Kettembeil how busy his duties have kept him and of the rapid incisive way in which he gets through his work. At the same time his letters overflow with enthusiastic plans, comments, possible revisions, suggested model-reviews, methods of making an impression. The Sulla sketched out at this time in the notes to the last three acts is clearly relevant to this mood. He is to be ruthless, clear-sighted, beyond ordinary morality, the master of events: Mit dem schneidendsten Witze, von der gründlichsten Erkenntnis der Verhältnisse geleitet, beurteilt Sulla den Zustand Roms und der Welt. Großartige Auffassung, ja, eine hochbeflügelte Phantasie lassen sich in ihm nicht verkennen. (I, 403)

His scornful abandonment of power at the height of his glory when "master of the world" is on the same level; the peak of worldly success once achieved, he sees its vanity. By turning to history Grabbe was able, it seems, both to escape from his age and from his own spiritual emptiness. In searching for the bold and heroic he could at once compensate for his own weakness and also avoid the pettiness of his contemporary world. At the same time the writing of historical dramas offered him a literary road forward, a means of satis-

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fying his ambition, an opportunity to achieve a success in the world of letters comparable with Sulla's. But the artistic intentions of Grabbe's drama offer more difficulties. The play was another experiment in a very unusual form. In a note appended to the end of the play Grabbe claimed that the poet's primary duty was to "unravel the true spirit of history. As long as he did no injury to this, a literal historical accuracy was not important" (I, 409). The phrase "den wahren Geist der Geschichte" and the explicit distinction between this and precise accuracy of detail has caused some speculation among critics and seems to indicate, as Schneider puts it, that Grabbe was after all a son of the Hegel age.7 There is no specific evidence of Grabbe having studied Hegel, but it seems only likely that he would have attended the much anticipated lectures on the philosophy of history which Hegel gave in Berlin for the first time in 1822/ 23 just when Grabbe was enrolled there. Grabbe's drama certainly reflects a picture, which Hegel called the first impression that we have of history, of a world of constant changes in which human action and suffering predominate. But Hegel continues, in the introduction of the published lectures on the philosophy of history, to argue that "change while it imports dissolution, involves at the same time the rise of a new life — that while death is the issue of life, life is also the issue of death".8 It might be argued that Sulla's bloodthirsty actions are to lead to a new beginning for Rome, that the drama suggests the possibility of human advance. But no indication is made in the play of any way in which this bloodletting will serve new life. Hegel has eventually to ask the question: "to what final aim these enormous sacrifices demanded by history have been offered?" Grabbe may wish to reveal a recurrent pattern, to Alfred Bergmann in contrast argues that the phrase and general concept corresponds to the requirements on the historian made by Wilhelm von Humboldt in a famous talk which he held in Berlin in April 1821 and published soon after: "Uber die Aufgabe des Geschichtsschreibers." Cf. the introduction to Dietrich Christian Grabbe: Ein Brevier (Munich, 1955), p. 31. 8 Lectures on the Philosophy of History, translated J. Sibree (London, 1857), p. 76. 7

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suggest even in such remote events a relation to the present. But his concept of life is essentially removed from any teleological concept of history. He chooses highly important figures at an important moment in time, but they are not "world historic" personalities in Hegel's sense. In Grabbe there is no sense of "world reason" or feeling that from a conflict of values an advance will follow. Nor, as so many critics have tried to show in Hebbel, is there any suggestion that the tragic outcome for the individual is countered by a sense of world advancement and acceptance of the necessity of suffering. Sulla is not the victim, he is the master of his conscience to the end. The result is a work that does not have the symmetry of a symbolic drama. It is a picture of history drawn from facts, a dramatic pattern imposed on events. In contrast to Napoleon, where the closeness of events to the present made alterations in the history difficult, he is able to change details readily, but only in order that the whole might correspond to the vision that Grabbe has grasped, the "idea" that emerges from events. At the same time the heroic is displayed; the clash of men and circumstances give evidence of the quality of greatness. It is not surprising that Grabbe was unable at this time to finish a drama so removed from the normal sequence of tragedy. In Don Juan und Faust he returned to a drama of ideas, in Friedrich Barbarossa to a partly Romantic concept of medieval kingship, but gradually he was to come back to a view of history without illusions and reproduce again his own picture of the human conflict.

V NANNETTE UND MARIA; "UBER DIE SHAKESPEARO-MANIE"

The collection of Grabbe's Dramatische Dichtungen that Kettembeil published in 1827 included, beside Gothland, Scherz and the two versions of Marius und Sulla, a further brief drama in three acts, Nannette und Maria, and an essay "On the Shakespeare Mania". Both works are of minor importance, of interest perhaps more for the light they throw on Grabbe's character than in their own right. Nannette und Maria in particular need not keep us long. Written in Berlin in the first few weeks of 1823, after Grabbe had finished Scherz and before he turned to Marius und Sulla, it is a deliberate experiment in a popular form, an attempt, startling enough after the rebellious and destructive mood of his earlier plays, to follow an acceptable and more conventional tone. The setting of the play is in Italy, in the valley of the Arno near Florence. Count Leonardo, betrothed by arrangement of the families to the stately Maria, falls in love with the young and simple Nannette, a child just blossoming into girlhood. Maria is too proud to admit her love for Leonardo and coldly accepts his rejection of her, but to her brother Alfredi she as good as confesses her true feelings. Nannette and Leonardo are married at a remote hilltop pastorage, but the violent and passionate Alfredi follows the lovers to their home and finding Nannette alone kills her. Maria, afraid of her brother's anger, follows him and is found by Leonardo with Nannette's body. She encourages him to believe that she herself is guilty and he stabs her to death. Alfredi appears and the two men begin to fight, but when both are wounded they realize their common

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misery at the appalling tragedy and the curtain falls with them united in grief. There are echoes here from various literary fashions. The extravagance of Leonardo's passion and of Alfredi's fury, as well as the general conflict of impulsive love and vengeance, bring to mind the atmosphere of operatic melodrama. On the other hand, open air rural scenes offer an idyllic relief from the pressing tragic fate. Here the sweetness of the love scenes between Leonardo and Nannette, the gentle tone of the relationship between Nannette and her father or of the young girls playfully mocking their pastor, seems to follow the taste of the ladies' almanachs that Grabbe had so ruthlessly made fun of in Scherz. Grabbe aims at naive simplicity but to achieve it adopts the commonplace features of conventional Romantic coloring. Grapes on the vine, roses fluttering in the June wind, even the distant sounds of hunting horns, create the "secret longing" of a warm summer afternoon. In an evening scene the nightingale, "priestess of love", sings, and even a millwheel is heard from a neighboring village. Particular elements suggest a more characteristic Grabbe tone. Leonardo in particular has aspects of a typical Grabbe hero. The expression of his passion for Nannette shows something other than the required Italian fervor, nor does it fit entirely into the atmosphere of a love idyll. Nannette's sudden captivation by his love and consequent maturing into womanhood — dramatically in fact the development of her love is almost ludicrously rapid in its lack of preparation — seems to show the feminine response to the extreme masculinity of the hero. Leonardo declares his feelings in images that move away from convention, not only into the strange and unexpected, but also into the frightening, suggesting a cruel undertone to love, an inward connection between passion and hate. LEONARDO:

Deine Augenbrauen sind

Zwei Raben in dem Schnee, und wenn du sie Zusammenzögst, so würd ich denken, daß Sie ihre Flügel regten, um mir auf Den Busen loszufliegen und ihn aus-

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Zuhacken! Pfui doch, du erschreckst mich vor Mir selbst, — kaum wage ich an meine Stirn Zu fassen, — meine Augenbrauen könnten Mir in den Finger beißen! Deine Finger Verdienten das um meinetwillen! Halb Geöffnet, gleich schlau ausgestellten Mäusefallen, Erwischen sie mit Einem Druck die Herzen. . . . (I, 280)

But such passages are out of keeping with the whole; they do not so much add individuality to the form as break the mood and set our thoughts and feelings into other directions. It is not in itself surprising that Grabbe should write a minor conventional work in the midst of his daring experiments. But there are peculiar factors involved. From the beginning his object seems to have been to placate readers likely to have been shocked and horrified by Gothland and who indeed were to be badgered further by the excesses of Marius und Sulla. He was determined to show himself in a more favorable light. The reaction in Berlin to his first plays, after a period of surprise and enthusiasm, seems to have turned against him. His hopes of a literary and theatrical career began to dwindle, so that on March 8, 1823, when he wrote a further letter to Tieck, his mood was close to despair. "I look round once more at the world and see no one, no one but you to whom I can turn." He willingly acknowledges here and in his next letter the weaknesses of his earlier work, putting himself at a distance from them and insisting on how he has developed. On March 18 he wrote apropos of Scherz: Gewiß beurteilen Sie zwar nicht mein Lustspiel, aber mich selbst zu strenge, wenn Sie glauben, daß ich mich noch jetzt in solchen Gemeinheiten gefalle; das Stück entstand ja mit dem Gothland zugleich in einer Periode, die nun schon wenigstens insoweit vorüber ist, daß ich neulich, als ich im stillen mein Trauerspiel wieder durchsah, glühend rot wurde. (Wuk. V, 249) Nannette und Maria offered itself as natural evidence of a change of heart. He could send it to Tieck confident that here another side of his character as a writer was to be seen. We

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cannot say that his motives were deliberately deceptive or cynical. It would seem rather that he was still very unsure of his own way of development. He felt aware of the excesses of his earlier work and was seeking to exercise his talent in a happier sphere. Just as in the essay on the Shakespeare mania, where as we shall see, there is a striking contrast between the theory he develops and his practice, so here we see Grabbe uncertain of himself, giving his energies into a new and apparently more promising and acceptable form, but in doing so really betraying his own natural bent. There is no evidence in the play itself of Grabbe's skepticism towards the subject or that he was not as involved in this material as in his other plays. Although afterwards he adopts a certain ironic tone, for instance, when he refers to the play to Tieck as "ein ländlich-heiteres Trauerspiel in 3 Akten", (Wuk. V, 248) he still did not feel that the play was lacking the qualities it required, and he continued to justify the directness and simplicity of his verse. Four years after, in 1827, he speaks cynically of the play, describing it as a bait to trap the reader into swallowing the other works (cf. Wuk. V, 278). He wanted this work printed first and when Kettembeil determined on giving that honor to Gothland, still insisted that it should be the first work in the second volume. But under this apparent cynicism we see Grabbe's instinct for self-protection. A foreword was printed expressing the hope that the play would reconcile many readers who were liable to have taken offense at Gothland (cf. I, 276). As in other introductory comments to this edition when Grabbe insists on how far behind him these works now are, he hopes apparently to ingratiate himself with the readers while still keeping free his own path of development. The story of the publication of the essay "On the Shakespeare Mania" also has certain curious features. In the preface Grabbe claims that this work too originates from earlier years, but it seems clear from the letters to Kettembeil that the essay was mostly written, or at least very exensively developed and rewriten for publication, in 1827. In a letter of July 26, 1827, he tells Kettembeil he is sending the essay "heiß wie er aus der

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Pfanne kommt" (Wuk. V, 289). In the same letter he declares that he has reasons, which Kettembeil knows, why the essay should be prefaced with the statement that it was written several years before. Once again this seems a question of self-defense, but the problem in particular is connected to Grabbe's relation with Ludwig Tieck. Tieck, through his translations with Schlegel, as well as by his many essays, had become one of the most active and vigorous propagators of Shakespeare's fame. Clearly the essay was directed partly against him and his followers. Grabbe hesitated to offend his early patron but his sense of circumspection yielded to his urge to arouse attention and force his name forward in the literary journals. As a conciliatory gesture, but perhaps also in order to give more sauce to his polemic, he introduced a somewhat awkward note in the preface that it would be cowardly to deny that Tieck was amongst those writers he had in mind. He felt sure however, he added, that Tieck himself would not take offense, for such a criticism did not reduce the love and admiration he felt for this distinguished writer. The tone of the essay varies. Grabbe adopts a broadly expansive manner and gives the impression at times, as he claimed was his object in his letters, of writing casually, just as his thoughts flow. On occasion he argues tightly and intensely, but often, for example in considering some of the features of individual Shakespeare plays, he allows himself a free and easy range, moving casually from subject to subject. His objectives are also various. In part he is concerned with the advantages and dangers for contemporary writing in the spreading admiration of Shakespeare. He wants to reconsider some of Shakespeare's qualities and see how useful he may be as a model. In part he attacks the admiration itself as the expression of a snobbish literary cult. In this mood he develops a rapid fire of gibes against his opponents. He criticizes men of letters who had found a safe position in admiring this great poet whose fame in Germany had for at least seventy years been steadily growing. Insignificant critics and scholars whose own achievements were minimal were able to set themselves up as standard

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bearers of the great man and in his name to denigrate the attempts of fellow writers trying to achieve their own creative work. But his attack is not only on minor literary figures. He felt that even for leading Romantic critics Shakespeare had become the hero of an inner clique. Like the later politicallyminded writers of Jungdeutschland, Grabbe disliked the sense of belonging to the initiated and elite which may be felt in the attitude to Shakespeare of the Romantic periodicals. His criticism of the Romantics, however, spreads further. He writes freely of weaknesses he finds in August Wilhelm Schlegel's lectures on the dramatic theater, in which Shakespeare takes an essential role, and he is bold enough to offer reasons why Shakespeare had become so important for the Romantic school in general. Whatever the accomplishments of particular poets, of Novalis or Tieck himself for example, they had not created a work that could stand in rivalry with the classicist achievements of Goethe and Schiller. Only in translations, and above all in the Shakespeare translations, had the Romantic school established a firm and lasting basis for its importance. He acknowledged the value of the translations in themselves, but stresses the danger that they had provided a substitute for original creative effort. In arguing that Shakespeare often lay as a deadweight on the imagination of contemporary writers Grabbe was not of course covering new ground. From the early days when Shakespeare was re-introduced into Germany there had been no lack of warnings, from Lessing and Wieland among many others, that his work must be understood as an incentive to new creative effort. Again and again it was emphasized that a contemporary and German work was needed, stimulated by the inspiration from abroad. Yet Grabbe's complaint was a very real one. Just as Keats and many other English Romantic writers were oppressed by the overwhelming power of Shakespeare's work, so in Germany the effect of Shakespeare was often to stifle original effort. Dramatists as successful as Grillparzer and Hebbel continue to feel overwhelmed by Shakespeare's imaginative force. That Grabbe himself suffered from this problem

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is clear enough in his letters. At one time he refers to "den verfluchten, göttlichen, kleinen englischen Pferdedieb, der uns dummen Kerlen schon alles vorweg gedichtet hat". At the same time Grabbe points to the contrast between the high level of literary criticism — Schlegel's lectures were of course for a long time extremely far-reaching in the development of Shakespeare studies — and the actual state of Shakespeare productions on the stage. He argues interestingly that versions of Shakespeare's plays were still influenced by the atmosphere of 18th century middle class drama. Other English influences which came into Germany with Shakespeare, now almost forgotten plays like Lillo's The London Merchant, had had, together with French examples of "drame sérieux" or "comédie larmoyante", a more lasting effect on the German theatre. Grabbe points to versions of King Lear — he cites the performances of the famous actor of the Romantic school, Ludwig Devrient, in Berlin — where Lear is treated as a kind of Diderot "père de famille" whose unkind children bring about a state of domestic unhappiness. On top of this he argues that the bizarre elements in Shakespeare, the extravagance of language and metaphor, the violence of the action, the rapid changes of scene, had often had external influences without the true spirit being understood. The dramatic histories that were so much in favor at the time had merely taken over such elements that could be easily adopted in order to add new color to their own effects. From such factors Grabbe concludes that the real Shakespeare had not become popular in Germany; in contrast to Schiller whose best works had also achieved great and repeated success on the stage, Shakespeare remained a stranger. His works arouse a sense of awe but no intimate enjoyment and understanding. Such comments seem well taken, yet it is impossible in reading this essay not to feel also Grabbe's own lack of sympathy with Shakespeare. He does not question Shakespeare's genius and on one occasion he rather oddly suggests that Shakespeare stands to Goethe as Michelangelo does to Raphael. He admires Shakespeare's capacity (thinking perhaps of a

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problem in his own work) for giving life to his characters, so that they are never puppets of the intrigue, always apparently independent creatures. But the comments and criticisms he makes in trying to analyze the quality of Shakespeare's work are often decidedly unsympathetic. His arguments come close to familiar classicist positions. He criticizes the lack of taste or lack of feeling shown in the juxtaposition of comic or extravagant scenes beside tragic or deeply moving ones. Like Schiller who excluded the porter scenes from Macbeth, Grabbe objects to Romeo's puns at Juliet's grave and indeed to the whole vulgar presence of the nurse beside the beloved Juliet. He objects to the lack of dramatic order, even finds the language often clumsy, far-fetched and affected, dislikes the element of the strange and abnormal constantly appearing in Shakespeare's characters, regrets the frequent anachronisms and the fact that the oddities and even open errors are all too often called subtleties by devoted critics. He seeks to show in Hamlet the dullness of the intrigue, and the weakness of the minor figures. He feels a vast discrepancy between the chance repetitions of the action and the richness of the psychological characterization. Such judgments are no doubt aimed to bring Shakespeare down to a normal level of criticism from the pedestal on which he thought the Romantics had placed him. Yet Grabbe follows the consequences of his own arguments and concludes that, in view of so many dubious factors, Shakespeare is a doubtful model for the modern writer. He expresses a great preference for Molière as a writer of comedies, a figure much neglected by the Romantics, and suggests a return for the tragedian to Sophocles and Aeschylus. Here there is nothing unnecessary, nothing grotesque. Terror is resolved within reconciliation and peace. Such a conclusion is surprising. For of all the German dramatists in this period, broadly between 1750 and 1850, where drama flourished so richly, Grabbe seems the closest in spirit to Shakespeare. Heinrich Heine's striking judgment that Grabbe was "ein betrunkener Shakespeare" does not seem so altogether out of place. From early days Shakespeare had been one of the

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great influences in Grabbe's life. A letter to his parents written when he was sixteen has already been quoted in which he argues how much he would gain from owning his own copy of Shakespeare's tragedies, a book of which "some assert a god was the author" (Wuk. V, 227). If he were to have a future as a playwright, he assured them, it was only in the most thorough study of Shakespeare that he could learn the essentials. Other early letters reveal Grabbe's continued youthful enthusiasm, and evidence of Shakespearean influence can certainly be seen in Gothland and may continue to be felt in Marius und Sulla and the whole development of his later drama. Above all it might be imagined that Shakespeare would be a guide in Grabbe's struggle to create a drama free from the moralist purposes of Schiller, that in Shakespeare he might find the objectivity and universality of spirit that he himself seemed to be aiming at in Marius und Sulla. It is with this consideration in mind, and in the absence of other theoretical writings by Grabbe, that many critics have turned to the essay, in the hope that here a guide might be found to Grabbe's own intentions which would help us to understand the development of his own dramatic principles. But in this respect the essay is not helpful. The quality he finds lacking in Shakespeare's historical dramas is precisely an awareness of the "idea of history" and he suggests the plays are nothing more than poetically decorated chronicles (Wuk. VI, 32). The expression "Idee der Geschichte" recalls the phrase "den wahren Geist der Geschichte" which Grabbe used rather surprisingly at the end of his notes for the completion of Marius und Sulla. Yet it is no more likely in this case than before that we can understand the phrase in any neo-Hegelian sense. It seems rather that Grabbe is aware of dangers in Shakespeare that he felt in his own work. It is precisely this lack of a dominating and controlling idea that Grabbe must have felt uncertain of in his own plans for a historical drama. Thus we are induced to see in Grabbe's criticism all too much the elements of self-criticism. The wildness and bombast of the language, the excesses of the action, the strange extravagance of the characters — these features Grabbe

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regretted in Shakespeare are all precisely the elements readers are likely to attack in Grabbe himself. It is not sufficient to say, as Schneider does, that this is an extreme case of Grabbe's casting out the mote in his neighbor's eye while ignoring the beam in his own. For he was himself at one level quite aware of the contrast between his critical judgment and his practice. In a letter to Kettembeil he incorporates a model review which includes the sentence: Nur wundert es Rez., wie ein so gelehrter und kritischer Dichter, als hier der Verf. sich ausweiset, selbst so weit gegen seine eigenen Regeln in seinen Stücken sündigen konnte. (Wuk. V, 310) This comment suggests the real interest of the essay. As a document in the history of the reaction to Shakespeare in Germany the essay is of minor importance. It may well be argued that the influence of Shakespeare in German literary history was no longer a vital factor at this time. Grabbe's essay was too late and his demand for a German theatre, rather than an imitation of the English, was no longer necessary. Shakespeare was to have an important place in the German theatre, but it was a clearly defined and limited one, no longer a focus of conflict for movement and counter-movement in the history of the drama.1 As a psychological document, however, the essay is most interesting. It seems more evidence of the uncertainty of Grabbe's direction, an uncertainty which may be very understandable in a man whose work had met with so little acceptance and who was leading into strange new developments in the drama, but which still emphasizes the violent contrasts of his character. The attack on Shakespeare is further evidence of his contradictoriness, his antagonism against all success. Essentially the essay belongs in mood with the many prefaces in which he adopts a cautious and rather unnaturally humble tone. Grabbe wants here again to protect himself against criticism, to throw doubt as to the basis on which judgments against him might be made, and generally inveigle a favorable response. In the review in question Grabbe continues with a broad survey of the works and concludes: 1

Cf. Roy Pascal, Shakespeare in Germany (Cambridge, England, 1937).

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Dennoch spürt man in seinen Stücken überall nur die Trümmer einer zerstörten Subjektivität; der Verf. hat Ruinen gemacht, um daraus neu zu bauen; seine Werke erfreuen nicht, aber erschüttern, und schwerlich wird oder kann ein Mensch, wie der Verf., femer etwas leisten. (Wuk. V, 310) The statement may have been a sop to fate, for he himself must have felt much more confidence. Under the stimulation of the publication of his work his mind was full of new and lively plans. Energetically he was throwing himself again into his work.

VI DON JUAN UND FAUST

Grabbe's plans for a drama on the theme of "Don Juan und Faust" go back to his days in Leipzig. In March 1823, according to the actor Eduard Jerrmann, when Grabbe was interested in getting a position at the Leipzig theatre, he read aloud a scene between the two heroes from this prospective tragedy. A letter to Tieck on August 29, 1823, sent after Grabbe left Dresden and found an unwilling road back to his native Detmold, indicates that his early sketches and plans may have been fairly well advanced. " . . . the idea of another Faust, who comes into contact with Don Juan, is developing in my brain more and more; in respect to this piece I have vigorously sought after the cheerful humor which has so moderating an effect on the tragic in Hamlet" (Wuk. V, 261). During the next years, with the painful dissolution of his literary hopes, Grabbe seems to have done little more. But when Kettembeil's fateful letter of April 1827 arrived suggesting the possibility of publishing Grabbe's works, he at once thought of his plan again. In the course of his very long reply dated May 4th, 1827, after discussing the situation of his early works, he declared: "Then recently, just to see if I could still write poetry, I have worked on two scenes from 'Don Juan and Faust' and they are a success" (Wuk. V, 273). A few days later he sent his friend a sample scene between Don Juan and Donna Anna, as it now appears in Act 2. Despite this lively new start, work on the play had to wait for his other plans. It was only in 1828 after he had finished his revision of the essay on the Shakespeare mania and he had left his second attempt at Marius und Sulla as an unfinished

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fragment, that he turned to the play seriously again. In March 1828 his conception of the work was still uncertain: he speaks of five acts where the completed play has only four. But after that, despite the pressure of his legal duties in Detmold and the competing claims of the Hohenstaufen cycle on which he was beginning work, the play advanced rapidly. By the end of August it was ready and it was published by Kettembeil the following Spring. To what extent this final version corresponded to earlier plans is not known. Certain odd scenes of minor importance in the play suggest alternative developments that might have been pursued. Faust digging in the earth with the gnomes in Act 4, scene 2 seems an irrelevancy as the play now stands. The scene leads nowhere, its meaning is obscure. The comic interludes between Signor Negro and the police director Signor Rubio do not fit very clearly into the sequence of the whole. But except for the extract sent to Kettembeil there are only the very briefest fragments of early sketches available and we have to rely entirely on the printed version. The idea of a drama in which these two semi-legendary heroes of the western tradition are confronted on the same stage (and in which it seems the atmosphere of Hamlet is not entirely missing) is certainly an extravagant one. It is understandable that the more antagonistic of Grabbe's earlier critics saw here a characteristic echo of the vast scale ambitions of the "Sturm und Drang". Grabbe could be accused of making rather crudely specific a relationship between the two heroes which had often enough previously been suggested or hinted at.1 Certainly a project of this kind appealed to the mood of extravagant optimism aroused by Kettembeil's plans of publication. In moods such as this Grabbe's ambitions seemed to lose contact with reality. In a letter to Kettembeil of August 1827 he writes for example: "Where I see a final purpose there I am inexhaustible. Two tragedies, two comedies, six treatises on literature and its 1 Cf. among the many discussions on this topic: E . M. Butler, Fortunes of Faust (Cambridge, [Eng.]), 1952; Hans Heckel, Das Don Juan-Problem in der neueren Dichtung (Stuttgart, 1915) and Georges Gendarme de Bevotte, La Légende de Don Juan (Paris, 1911).

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heroes, a mass of critical writings as well as scholarly matters; defiance and victory over everything that comes in my way — this is what I plan year by year" (Wuk. V, 297). In Don Juan und Faust he was able at one stroke to challenge the many writers who had treated these figures and thrust his own name inexorably into the limelight. Grabbe borrows openly from his predecessors. The action and figures of the Don Juan story are closely modelled on the libretto of Mozart's Don Giovanni-, the Faust action has reminiscent echoes from various sources, including very clear ones from Goethe. Yet neither the history of the play's writing nor the actual construction of the work itself indicates too overweening an ambition. Little can be gathered from the few Grabbe letters available for 1828 of the mood in which the play was finally written. But it is curious that there seems to be no point at which his Don Juan und Faust is the all important work. Before he had time to develop the play it already seems to have been replaced in his heart by his Hohenstaufen plans. In a letter of January 20, 1828, for instance, he writes with great enthusiasm of his Faust as a work which will surpass all his previous efforts. But it is notable that later on in the same letter he passes over the play with a lighthearted question as to what Don Juan should offer the Commendatore's statue when he comes to carry him off to hell and adds: "Even so though I think the greatest thing in my life will be the Hohenstaufen" (Wuk. V, 316). The rapidity with which the work was finally written may explain something of its character as it now stands. Granted the vast implications of the plan Grabbe has in fact managed an unexpected concentration of action. Where we might expect limitless speculations, we have brevity and shaip dramatic outline. In contrast to Gothland with its inordinate length and heavy accumulation of incidental detail, or Marius und Sulla where Grabbe failed even at the second attempt to develop a successful dramatic structure, Don Juan und Faust is relatively simple and direct. Grabbe has given each of his heroes the chance to expatiate on his own thoughts and feelings and work out his own fate, yet he has managed by introducing a plot

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which centers around their common love for Donna Anna to provide at least an external center for the movement of the play. The lively and often brilliantly funny Don Juan episodes contrast with the somber but impassioned Faust scenes. Though Grabbe is necessarily involved in two separate expositions and the working out of some kind of independent resolution in each case, the actions move vigorously and rapidly to their own conclusions. This effective dramatic concentration has made the play comparatively successful on the stage. It was the only work of Grabbe's to be produced during his lifetime, having its first performance at the Detmold Hoftheater in March 1829, and it has enjoyed comparatively frequent revivals. At the same time the simplification and concentration of the dramatic action creates certain curious effects. The play does not produce a feeling of completeness in itself. The characters at times seem to speak and act as if with a knowledge of their own literary predecessors. Goethe's Faust and Mozart's Don Giovanni are themselves heirs to their own long traditions. But their form and existence is new; they have become independent and vastly symbolical figures in their own right. Grabbe's two heroes do not carry this sense of totality, but function almost as commentators on their own existence. Their speeches on occasion, not only in monologues but in dialogues too, seem scarcely adapted to the moment at hand. Instead of directing their speech to each other in order to advance the action, they pause to explain themselves, pursuing as it were their own appropriate pose. They talk past each other in order to discuss and comment on the implications of their own roles.2 Each hero carries his own fame with him, so that all are aware from the beginning what the names Faust and Don Juan mean. Thus the play seems less a challenge to those which had come before it than a personal, and certainly highly original, variation on traditional and well known themes. Grabbe found an opportunity here, to a greater degree than in any other of his plays, Cf. the analysis of Hans-Henrik Krummacher, "Bemerkungen zur dramatischen Sprache in Grabbes Don Juan und Faust", in: Festgabe fur Eduard Berend zum 75. Geburtstag (Weimar, 1959). 2

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to expound his own conception of man's fate. He himself described the play as "der Schlußstein meines bisherigen Gedankenkreises". Through the conscious reflections of his heroes he could formulate ideas and problems central to his thought. Such opportunities became more and more lacking as he developed his historical dramas. But at the same time the play can make no claim to be the definitive work of Grabbe's. Achim von Arnim suggested that every poet must write his own Faust, that is to say " . . . his personal work of confession in which he answers from his own being final questions about God and man, sin and redemption". 3 But this play seems less a final declaration of faith than a tentative personal extension of ideas and implications inherent in the subject matter, an interpretation of the material along his own line of thinking. The form and tone of the drama suggest a new experiment. Grabbe has produced one more possible answer, as he had in Scherz and Marius und Sulla, in his search for an adequate means of dramatic expression. There are still many stages ahead. The setting of the action is Rome, an international meeting ground for the once essentially national heroes. The opening scene brings us characters familiar from the Mozart-Da Ponte opera. Leporello, Don Octavio, Donna Anna and the Commendatore (now ambassador to the Pope and known after his title as Governor of Seville) are all involved. The exposition moves rapidly. Don Juan is intent on the seduction of Donna Anna and we are offered the prospect of an intrigue whereby he will win her away from the path of duty before her forthcoming marriage to Don Octavio. In the second scene the atmosphere has changed. We are introduced to Faust in his study on the Aventine. Faust is in despair that all his learning brings no answer to his questions of the meaning and purpose of life. He conjures up the devil in the form of a 16th century knight dressed in black, signs a pact in blood and sets out with him on the traditional exploration of heaven and hell. When we s Cited by Julius Petersen, "Faustdichtungen nach Goethe", Vierteljahrsschrift, XIV (1936), pp. 473-494.

Deutsche

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meet them again, however, in the next act, Faust has already recognized the limitations of the devil's knowledge and determines to use him simply as a supernatural servant. The knight promises him the attractions of love and dazzles him with the portrait of Donna Anna. With all sources of knowledge closed to him Faust willingly yields to the world of the senses. Don Juan meanwhile has found a way to meet his beloved and despite her loyal resistance soon finds a weakness for him in her heart. He plans a disturbance at her wedding; at first all goes as he intends — he forces a quarrel on Don Octavia, kills him and is about to flee with Donna Anna. Faust, however, rejuvenated and in disguise, has also appeared. Intervening at the last moment he magically forces Don Juan's sword arm to drop and carries Donna Anna off to a castle on Mont Blanc hastily built for him by the devil. Faust, however, fails to profit by his triumph. Neither the splendor of the castle and its background nor Faust's dominating personality impress Donna Anna. Though there is nothing Faust will not do to win her — he sends the devil to suffer himself in hell and kills his own wife in Wittenberg by the plague — Donna Anna feels nothing but horror. Don Juan appears again. Having killed the Governor in a duel, he continues his pursuit, leading Leporello with him up the heights of Mont Blanc. For a moment the two heroes confront each other, then Faust sends Don Juan flying back on the winds to Rome. Now all things move to a conclusion. Nothing availing to win Donna Anna's love, Faust in a fury of frustration kills her. But with her death, life has lost its last meaning; he yields to the devil, asking him only before he dies that he may bring the news of Donna Anna's death to Don Juan. He expects a similar despair in his rival but Juan remains unmoved. He does not, like Faust, pursue the impossible. While the possession of Donna Anna gave meaning to life for a while, now she is dead there are a thousand other beautiful women to love. But the bounds ot fate are beginning to encircle him too. In scenes adopted freely from Mozart, Grabbe introduces the statue of the Governor as the angel of revenge. Don Juan derisively bids Leporello invite

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him to dinner and continues to mock when the statue arrives. The last scene shows both heroes carried off to death, each facing in horror the pains of hell, yet each, as we shall see, unbeaten, asserting his own independence in the teeth of fate. Many of the incidents of this plot are lively and original. There are moments of gaiety and passion and great dramatic tension. Yet it is clear from this outline that the center of interest has to lie in the characters rather than in the significance of the action. The play depends for its effects not on the unfolding of a dramatic sequence in itself but on the presentation of a psychological crisis. The vastness of the subject matter and the semi-mythological qualities of the heroes, even when treated separately, makes any normal dramatic resolution hardly imaginable. Grabbe puts forward a conclusion which necessarily cannot carry total dramatic seriousness. To understand the play, the structure of the action is less important than understanding what Grabbe made of his heroes, and we must examine them in some detail. Grabbe's Don Juan is one of the most brilliant and attractive of his figures. At first sight he seems to live much in the manner of his predecessors. He is an aristocrat, splendidly self-assured and arrogant, a courageous soldier and swordsman, witty, dazzling, full of vitality, oblivious to the feelings of others. Yet as we observe him, new aspects begin to emerge, features characteristic of Grabbe that put this figure into a new light. This is no longer the light-hearted 18th century libertine that springs forth in Mozart's music; Grabbe's hero has become much more complex, more intensely and determinedly constant in maintaining his position and more self aware. In Mozart or in Moliere's Don Juan, for example, the hero has more than one opportunity to discuss himself with his servant or one of his mistresses and offer an explanation for his actions, but in essence he remains un-selfconscious, rejoicing simply in the existence he had made for himself and denying the claims of the outer world. Grabbe's hero is all too sensible of his own motives and his own philosophy of life. For all his evident joy and vitality he creates a curiously ambiguous impression.

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This ambiguity may be seen in his relationship with Donna Anna. It is never quite clear how strongly his feelings are involved. On the one hand, he seems the genuine hedonist, always the master of his desires, never their victim. He is scornfully critical of men like Don Octavio and later indeed of Faust for being the heavy-handed dupes of their own emotions: "they do not have spirit and fantasy enough to play with passion and decorate life's horizon with it" (I, 449). Until he wins Donna Anna she is, as he says, the polar star around which all revolves. When he has won her, the interest will be gone. Thus the intellect is always in control. During a scene in the second act when he is interrupted in his impassioned declaration of love for Donna Anna he is still able to laugh: Verflucht, ich war Im besten Zuge. Meinem Mund entströmten Die Bilder dutzendweise. (I, 449) Yet during the wooing we are not so sure. He has such driving energy that we are, like Donna Anna, liable to be persuaded by the eloquence of his passion. Indeed he himself seems to be carried away by his new love and declares in honest indignation to Leporello: "Solch eine Liebe hab' ich nie empfunden!" (I, 418). The absence from the story as it is found in the opera of Donna Elvira and Zerlina adds to the impression of Don Juan's seriousness. For the course of the play it is only Donna Anna that he loves. Though we hear of Anna's maid we do not see him involved with her. Thus in a sense Don Juan achieves the "ironic" standpoint of the Romantics' ambition: he is both involved and yet free to observe, he acts and lives according to his passions and yet is independent, standing apart. Some of the curious qualities of Don Juan's character appear already in the opening scene, even amidst the unfolding of his plans for his later conquest. When the name Don Octavio is mentioned it arouses in him a disproportionate anger and scorn. His hatred for the self-satisfied limitations of this respectable young man flares up with strange intensity. Leporello begins to describe him:

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. . . ein Herr Von Bildung, feinem Äußern, nettem Herzen, — Er trägt sich schwarz, führt weiße seidne Handschuh — and is interrupted by his master: — lebt mäßig, gibt nicht Anstoß, tanzt gut, reitet Erträglich, spricht französisch, kann mit Anstand Im Kreise der Gesellschaft sich bewegen, Und schreibt vielleicht sogar auch orthographisch! — Dergleichen Schuften in den Weg zu treten, Ist mir die höchste Seligkeit! (I, 418/9) The power of feeling that overcomes him is such that he immediately has to explain himself further. To be a man, it seems, is to search beyond the complacency of the moment. It is not a particular goal Don Juan wants, but an eagerness for life. Weg mit dem Ziel — Nenn' es mir nicht, ob ich auch darnach ringe — Verwünscht ist der Gedanke: jedes Ziel Ist Tod — Wohl dem, der ewig strebt, ja Heil, Heil ihm, der ewig hungern könnte! (I, 419) Leporello turns it into a joke. "I see your are letting me go hungry according to principles." But a few minutes later the undercurrents of Don Juan's feeling come to the surface again. Leporello half humorously describes his master as a man of universal genius, for in the very moment of adoring the mistress, Donna Anna, he has his eyes wide open to the particular charms of the maid. Die Herrin lieben, von der Dienerin Entzückt, — und das so durcheinander während Desselben Augenblicks — Weh mir! Mir schwindelt! Don Juan seems to answer in the same tone, but his mood changes: Mensch, hältst du mich für einen albernen Pedanten, eingewurzelt in Systeme? Wo ich die Schönheit finde, schätz' ich solche, Und sei sie, welcher Art sie wolle. Die Dienerin liebt anders als die Herrin, Und nur Abwechslung gibt dem Leben Reiz Und lässt uns seine Unerträglichkeit Vergessen! (I, 425/6)

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The laconic confession that life is at bottom intolerable reveals a new Don Juan. Instead of spontaneous revelry we are confronted with pessimism and disillusion. A spiritual void has emerged which Don Juan covers b y his ever eager pursuit of women and his own native vitality. These underlying doubts become gradually clearer as the play proceeds. But to understand Don Juan one particular scene is especially revealing. Talking to the dying Governor after their duel, Don Juan scorns to pretend any sympathy with the Governor's belief. O n the contrary he feels the need to explain and extol his own life and values. Here he denies all basis for moral standards of right and wrong. Each man seeks his own satisfactions and follows his own desires and each claims he is in the right. There is no essential difference between the Governor's morality and his own life of pleasure. Das Recht ist hundertfach und jeder übt Sein eigenes. Mich leitete, was Euch, Was mich, was jeden Erdbewohner führt, Nur nennt man es verschieden. — Warum betet Der Priester? Warum quält sich der Geschäftsmann? Weswegen schlägt der König seine Schlachten, Den Blitz und Donner an Zertrümmerung Und Tosen überbietend? Weil sie endlich Vergnügt sein wollen. (I, 472) This is a philosophy expressed with equal boldness once before in Grabbe, by the devilish Berdoa. Gothland's son Gustav called it "the religion of hell". W h a t was then the expression of a world torn to pieces and void of all purpose, a desperate vision of horror, is now the dispassionately accepted basis of Don Juan's life. All values are equally justified. However we may argue, we find only supports for our own prejudices. Truth is an illusion for we are all the more or less unconscious victims of our desires. T h e calm assertion of such disillusion is startling. W h e r e Schopenhauer still allowed the possibility for the poet, the thinker or the saint to escape, for moments at least, the complete dominance of the will, G r a b b e foreshadows the Nietzschean all-pervasive will to power or the Bergson "élan

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vital". We cannot break free from this controlling drive. All we can do is decorate its naked force by our own dreams and delusions. Once we recognize this ultimate pessimism in Don Juan, other features of his character become more understandable. We have an explanation for the ruthlessness and the muffled air of desperation to be felt under the surface gaiety. There is an element of the frantic in Don Juan's urge for danger, the agitation that makes him challenge his own fate, gambling "all his money, all his life" (I, 429), on the turn of a card. Climbing Mont Blanc, in a curiously modern twist, he learns to love the threat of the mountains. "Freund, da nur, wo es in Gefahr gerät, bekommt das Leben ein wenig Wert" (I, 482). During the course of the play Don Juan never rests; he spends nights without sleep, it appears, and declares that it is time won from death. The violence of his thoughts and actions betray the same mood. Such violence arises from his own ruthless logic and lack of sentimentality, but it is a force that frequently recurs in Grabbe's plays, revealing a current of uncontrollable cruelty. Don Juan responds to the harsh disillusion he has suffered from the world by brutally striking back. For him love is a form of conquest, not of lands but of hearts that feel. When the Governor boasts of his daughter's honor, Don Juan's response is to find it all the more enthralling "über solch ein Weib zu triumphieren". He deliberately plans and executes the killing of his rival Don Octavio (something which of course does not occur in Mozart). The duel with the Governor is not an unavoidable clash but calmly accepted by a man who knows he must win. If this is the road to Donna Anna then it must be taken. For as he declared at the beginning: "Ich erreiche dich, und wenn ich über Leichen, durch deines Vaters Blutstrom schreiten müsste" (I, 420). It may be that under the bluster of these actions we are not so far removed from a modern interpretation of Don Juan whose constant search for women would seem like the necessary reassurance of his own manliness. There are moments

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indeed when Don Juan seems to expose his fear that his zest for living, his ideal of "eternally hungering", may one day dwindle, that kisses, "the only food of which we are never glutted" (I, 429), may themselves begin to pall. But the curious feature in Don Juan is neither his insecurity nor his violence, but his astonishing capacity for life, the success with which he manages to fill the surface of existence with his own vitality. In contrast to Faust who, as we shall see, is constantly on the verge of destruction, Don Juan really savors the beauty of life. In the pursuit and the possession of the woman he desires life is given a meaning and a center. For in this goal all his capacities are called into play. He is willing to kill and to risk his own life. For all our hidden doubts, we recognize that his life is lived with an extraordinary intensity. His plots and intrigues have an air of constant celebration; there is a gaiety that permeates even the banquet with the Governor's statue and the approaching doom. Nor is Don Juan indifferent to the other attractions of the world. We learn of his love for Rome and the splendors of the Roman countryside and of his love for the mountains. When Faust sends him on his magic journey back from Mont Blanc, Don Juan has no fear, only a sense of the marvels of the world paraded below him. He is open to all new experiences. When Leporello on the mountain finds a striking phrase to describe a fear of falling upwards, as if the heights above them were really abysses, Don Juan understands and rewards him for the originality of the conception. All in all it is clear that he is not boasting or merely being frivolous when he tells the Governor his life has been too occupied with the pleasures of the world to think of God. He can genuinely claim to have no time for speculations of this sort: Die Erde ist so allerliebst, daß mir Vor lauter Lust und Wonne Zeit fehlt, lim An den zu denken, der sie schuf. Ist's Gott — Nun, um so größrer Ruhm für ihn . . . (I, 472) To appreciate Don Juan we must examine him in relation to the characters around him, especially to Leporello and Don Octavio. Each takes his role from Mozart but each is subtly

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and significantly changed. Leporello in Mozart is merely a good-natured, cowardly buffoon, the unwilling tool of his master. If he naively enjoys listing Don Giovanni's amorous successes, he is also horrified by his master's life, afraid to break with him, but also afraid of continuing in his service. In Grabbe he is an artful accomplice to Don Juan, quite willing, for example, to provoke Don Octavio into a quarrel, and is at the same time not beyond skillfully cheating his master's accounts. Himself something of an expert in seduction, he woos the servant girls in the guise of a nobleman and talks in a matter of fact way of his successes. Where Mozart has Don Giovanni force Leporello to disguise himself as the Don and quite inadequately seek to ingratiate himself with Donna Elvira on his behalf, Grabbe in a somewhat parallel scene shows Leporello successful and quite without conscience in tempting Donna Anna's maid. Leporello thus contributes to the feeling of ruthlessness, to the atmosphere in which men and women alike are regarded as victims waiting to be exploited. Leporello feels there is no difference between himself and his master except in wealth, that if he had the chance he would lead the same sort of life as Don Juan. But the audience knows this to be quite untrue. Leporello is capable of hurling a stone at the statue at sixty feet away, but he could never break his rapier on it or attack it with a dagger as Don Juan does. Where Don Juan is carried away by enthusiasm for the woman he desires, Leporello's is the voice of cautious common sense. When Don Juan indulges in flights of imagination, Leporello brings him all the more grossly back to earth. For when Don Juan is intoxicated by the air of Rome, Leporello smells only the cooking; when Don Juan admires the man who always hungers, Leporello enjoys the prospect of always eating. Don Juan needs the stimulation of love to escape the monotony of life; Leporello is apparently quite satisfied with the way things are. He is concerned only to exploit his own advantage when the chance is given; purely self-seeking, he merely takes what common sense suggests is possible, trimming his sails to meet the demands of society.

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The role of Don Octavio has always been a thankless one. In the earliest Spanish versions of the story he already has many features of the booby, even if he does manage to maintain a certain dignity as the representative of the righteous. Mozart's score often suggests an echo of mockery; even in the final scene when they are all rejoicing over Don Giovanni's downfall Don Ottavio is once more disappointed in his suit, for Donna Anna insists they wait another year in mourning before he gains his reward. Mozart, however, could not allow any figure on the stage without giving him his own individuality. Don Ottavio not only contributes to the magnificent ensembles but himself has two wonderful tenor arias, which go a long way to reconciling us to him. In Grabbe Don Octavio never makes an appearance except under the biting commentary of Don Juan. There is no action of his that is allowed to speak for itself; we see him only through Don Juan's eyes. As in Byron's poem Don Juan the hero faces the recurrent hypocrisy of the middle class. In Octavio he sees the depressing and odious triumph of the bourgeoisie, whose staid, settled, self-satisfied existence is exemplified in marriage and family life. . . . Geld, Heirat und Auskommen Die Pole seines Lebens! Schade daß Maschinen fehlen, um im Ehebett Und in der Kirche, auf dem Ackerfeld Und in der Küche solches Volk ersetzen Zu können! (I, 451) Don Juan's attacks on marriage as an attempt to domesticate passion and bring it into the family parlor are part of the expected "esprit", but carry a tone that goes beyond this. When Leporello promises reform and marriage to Lisette, Don Juan looks on this as an insult against feeling: Das ist der frevelhafte, künstliche Versuch, die freiste göttlichste Empfindung, aus Der Waldesfrei' in die Familienstub Zu locken. (I, 483)

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In relating Don Juan to these two figures his more admirable qualities come to the fore. For all his cruel indifference to the feelings of others and his willing utilization of them for his own purposes, his are the values of the nobleman against the vulgar and the bourgeois. Leporello takes what he can get and is as crooked as he dare be without endangering himself; Octavio is the tamed, respectable citizen; but Don Juan acts according to his own aristocratic principles. His pride does not allow him any kind of compromise. He always remains loyal to himself. Though he openly recognizes the standards he lives by are arbitrary and the ones which happen to give him pleasure, yet they are an essential element of his own nature. Nothing will make him yield. Das Leben ist ein Nichts, wenn es nicht allem, Was ihm begegnet, Stirne bietet! (I, 512) He rejects utterly the repeated calls of the Governor's statue to repent. For him repentance means to abandon oneself, no longer to be what one is. He has lived the only way he knew how and would not wish it altered. He would rather be Don Juan in hell than someone else, a saint, in paradise. Thus he reasserts his own rights and manages a sense of triumph in the face of death and defeat. The opening Faust scene transfers us to a vastly different world from Don Juan's. Here at his desk far into the night Faust reveals his desperate search for knowledge. While the one action follows Mozart, the other has its starting point in Goethe. The long winding reflections of the opening monologue echo broadly the sequence of thought in Goethe's Faust in the familiar study scenes. For Grabbe's hero too all paths to knowledge seem closed, he too turns to magic and through magic to the devil. Even specific phrases in his speech seem deliberate reminiscences from Goethe; his ambition, for instance, "in mir die ganze Menschheit aufzunehmen" (I, 433) or the longing "Könnt' ich euch fühlen, tiefste Pulse der Natur" (I, 438) are restatements of significant lines in Goethe, included already in the "Fragment" of 1790: "Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt ist/Will ich in meinen innern Selbst ge-

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nießen", (1. 1770) and "Wo faß' ich dich, unendliche Natur?/ Euch Brüste, wo?" (11. 455-6). There are, however, significant changes in mood. In Goethe the immediacy of Faust's despair is modified by the context of the whole and above all by the prologues that immediately precede the study scenes. It may be too that the lyrical beauty of the monologue itself provides an underlying element of consolation. In Grabbe there is no such comfort. The gaiety and underlying desperation of the Don Juan action only heightens our sense of the frantic groping in Faust. The language — dark, discordant, heavily accented — adds force to the grimness of his situation. A few lines may show something of the tone. When his thoughts come to Luther, Faust is proud of his fellow citizen from Wittenberg, and yet: — Und — doch, o doch! — Auch Luther, du! Den Wahn hast du verjagt, Zermalmt, zernichtet, hast du wie der Blitz, Nur etwas andres, Wahrheit, die besteht, Beruhigt, hast du nicht gegeben — Offner Als je tut sich vor dem enttäuschten Auge Die Tiefe auf — Zertrümmern, mit den Trümmern Ein Trümmerwerk erbaun, das kann der Mensch, Das kann er mit den Körben oder Eimern, Durch die er Stein zum Stein, Tropfen trägt Zum Tropfen, die er Kunst und Wissenschaft Benennt! (I, 4 3 2 / 3 )

The distinction from Goethe comes clearly to light in the terms of the pact with the devil. In Goethe we have a wager ultimately under the benevolent protection of the Lord. Faust challenges the devil to show him any way of life which would make him betray his own power of striving and linger in the comforts of the world. "Werd' ich beruhigt je mich auf ein Faulbett legen,/ So sei es gleich um mich getan!" (11. 1692-3). Grabbe brings the pact back closer to the medieval, a sacrifice to the devil if he will meet Faust's needs. The devil himself has nothing of the urbane, witty courtier we find in Mephistopheles. A knight in 16th Century costume, pale faced, dressed entirely in black — he is a figure from Luther's world, inexorably cruel, vicious,

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bursting with hate, conjuring up memories of the "Ritter, Tod und Teufel" in which Dürer gives us a Reformation concept of the demonic. The pact in fact goes further than in the early tradition, for Faust's demands carry no hope of fruition, even on earth. There is no question of the devil serving him for a certain length of time, such as the twenty four years of the chapbooks. While he requires in accepted fashion that he should be shown the purposes of the world and the nature of existence, Faust asks for himself only to know the way by which he could have found happiness and peace, "der Theorie nur halber, denn/Die Praxis geb' ich auf, seit ich mich dir/Ergeben . . . " (I, 439). Thus the pact springs from complete despair with human experience. By signing it Faust has already yielded up his hopes on earth. The next scene between Faust and the devil in Act 2 makes it clear that the devil has been unable in their voyage around the universe to reveal the secret of things to Faust. When Faust demands: Zeige mir Den Abgrund, welchen ich nicht bodenloser, Den Gipfel, den ich mir nicht schwindelnder, Das Weltall, welches ich mir nicht Unendlich größer denken könnt — . . . (I, 453)

the devil has no answer. Indeed he makes the paralyzing assertion that the purpose would be incomprehensible to man. DER BITTER:

U n d die Kraft,

Den Zweck begreifst du nicht, selbst wenn ich sie Entzifferte. FAUST: Weshalb nicht? DER HITTER: Weil sie jenseits Der Sprache liegen. Nur was ihr in Worte Könnt fassen, könnt' ihr denken. (I, 454)

This seems like a variation on the situation for Goethe's Faust after the spectacle of the Erdgeist. "Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst, nicht mir!" (1. 511). But where in Goethe Faust is led beyond this moment of defeat to ever new experiences and new understanding of life, Grabbe's Faust is faced with the

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abandonment of all his greater hopes. Because the transcendental is barred he is thrown into the worldly and sensual. Love is not as in Goethe the path to knowledge of human fortune but an escape from dreams of the ideal to the sexual reality — a woman's breast becomes more to him than the world. Although in his opening scene Faust declared (I, 440) that he did not conjure up the devil merely to become the slave of love, he finds now this is all the devil offers. He accepts the invitation to indulge his lust, knowing it is deception, knowing the devil has assembled the fires of hell to give magic power to Donna Anna's portrait. Doch sei's ein Trug — der Trug ist mehr wert als Die Wahrheit, als zu wissen, daß man nichts weiß! (I, 457) Thus Faust has come to a position very close to Don Juan's. Both see the world as empty of meaning and seek distraction in the realm of the sensual. Yet it is at once clear that Faust will never be a genuine rival to Don Juan. Love cannot be for Faust a joyful means of decorating the horizon of life. He pours into it, as into his search for knowledge, all the desperate desires and conflicts of his nature. There is a moment after the devil has shown Faust the image of Donna Anna when he seems freed from his own self. He has become a child again, gone back to the protection of a homeland quite different from his own. "Gibt's andere Heimaten als das Geburtsland?" (I, 457). But the moment passes. T h e old Faust at once reasserts himself and the intensity of his demands comes back to him. T h e thought of Donna Anna and her wedding celebrations grips him with pain. Like thunder he will strike at the summer day of their festivals. "Hell stands in my service, and with hell's aid I will storm heaven" (I, 458). He woos Donna Anna as if he would conquer a citadel. But for all his power he cannot force her love. Protected as she is in part by her hidden love for Don Juan, she sees in him only a barbaric Northern conqueror bringing terror and pain. In face of her resistance Faust's passion bursts forth in hate. Already in his opening monologue Faust had compared himself to a beast of prey:

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Ein Raubtier wird man, bloß um sich zu nähren! Empfindungen, Gedanken, — Herzen, Seelen — Den Menschen und das Leben, — Welt und Götter Ergreift es und erwürgt es sich zur Beute Und schreit vor Zorn und Hunger, wenn es kaum Zehn Tropfen Bluts in ihren Adern findet. (I, 430) And this image of a tiger tearing at the flesh now returns. His despair has nothing of the self-satisfied melancholy of the romantic. Like Don Juan, and in the manner of many Grabbe heroes, he reacts by brutality. To show Donna Anna his power he tortures the devil in hell and kills his wife by plague. He sees himself like Attila putting out his hand to possess all that he desires and destroying what he cannot conquer. When nothing moves Donna Anna, in his hate he kills her too. In his rantings before Donna Anna Faust appears, for all his savagery, as a pitiful, even a ludicrous figure. And after he has killed her he seems to acknowledge the absurdity of his own actions. He recognizes the justice in Don Juan's accusation that he is a man who now as always in his life has destroyed his own heaven. Thus he has reached the lowest depths of humiliation. As the search for knowledge proved futile, so love has meant only frustrated desire. There is no path forward in this world. Without Donna Anna life is valueless. He gives up his claims on the devil's services and yields himself up in penitence and dismay. Yet the outcome of the Faust drama is not defeat alone any more than for the Don Juan action. Faust ends by defying the devil and we recognize that the power of longing that he has put into all his life remains unchallenged. If we look back again at his interchange with the devil in Act 2 after their unrewarding flight around the universe, we may see a situation in which the devil is tempting Faust into false paths. One by one he offers Faust possible solutions and one by one Faust resists. Already earlier when Faust had demanded the secret of how he could have been happy, the devil with open contempt for man had proposed modest submission: Glück ist die Bescheidenheit,

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Mit der der Wurm nicht weiter strebt zu kriechen, Als seine Kraft ihn trägt . . . (I, 440)

Now he insists that once more Faust should not artificially stir up his desires, but like his fellow men learn to "sleep, eat, drink and be satisfied" (I, 454). When this prosaic suggestion is greeted with scorn, the devil changes his role from tempter to the proud defiant rebel; he tries to win Faust over into his own battle, to bring him to associate himself with a supernatural struggle in which the spirits of resistance forced out of heaven are still eager for victory. The devil at his first appearance had proclaimed his battle with God in which he felt not finally defeated but only temporarily cast down. Faust now rejects such an alliance. The powers of hatred and darkness seem pitiful to him; they are worthy of the beast but not of man, for man's object is to understand the cause of love, not compensate with hate (cf. I, 455). Faust is here resisting dangers in himself. If we tend to forget that the devil is essentially a force within Faust, we are reminded of it again a little later when the devil himself explains how love and hate are interwoven and that only he who has loved can know what hatred is (cf. I, 464). Where the devil has willingly succumbed to this hatred, Faust goes on longing for love. Finally the devil offers through Donna Anna the joys of lust. Here too Faust does not succumb. For him to accept the sensual as an end in itself would mean defeat as much as if he had accepted the creature comforts the devil first suggested and had learnt to live and be content. The capacity for love that Faust pours into his desire for Donna Anna leaves him always unsatisfied. Though he destroys Donna Anna in a moment of despair when his love like the devil's turns to hate, it is this love which supports him to the end. He recognizes the world was not as bad as he thought: Was ist die Welt? — Viel ist — viel war Sie wert — Man kann drin lieben! — Und was ist Die Liebe ohne Gegenstand? — Nichts, nichts. Das Mädchen, das ich lieb, ist alles. (I, 498)

The power of love sustains him. Thus it is not mere heroics that

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leads him finally to assert himself as an unyielding "dreamer of God" and to proclaim in his last lines that if his spirit is immortal he will fight the devil through eternity. Curiously, the two elements of the conclusion foreshadow significant features in Goethe's Faust, Part II, which had not yet been published and was certainly unknown to Grabbe. These are not similarities in language as before quoted, but in idea, arrived at independently from the material itself. In his opening speech in Part II, Goethe's Faust on the flowery turf feels in himself again the pulse of life. Here in a famous monologue in terza rima he begins to recognize that if the world beyond is closed to us there is value in the transitory experiences of life, "des bunten Bogens Wechsel-Dauer". And thus concludes: " . . . Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben" (1. 4727). Grabbe's Faust too has learnt the need of intermediaries if he is to know the value of life. In the speech quoted just above, after the death of Donna Anna, Faust continues: Armselig ist der Mensch! Nichts Großes, sei's Religion, sei's Liebe, kommt unmittelbar Zu ihm — Er muß 'ne Wetterleiter haben! — Wie glücklich könnt' ich sein, wenn ich nicht Mich an die Hölle damals schon verkauft, Als ich dies Weib zuerst erblickte! (I, 498) Similarly it is woman who leads man in his highest struggle. Where Goethe concludes with the mystic chorus' song: "das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan", Grabbe causes the image of Donna Anna to uphold Faust in his final battle. Though he will never see her again, the thought of her alone will destroy the power of hell: Nie Erblick' ich deiner Augen Schimmer, nie Bad' ich in deiner Schönheit Glanz mich wieder . . . Doch ewig werd' ich dein gedenken, und Schon der Gedanke wird die Wirklichkeit Der Holl' zuschande machen! (I, 506) Though Grabbe's drama ends, of course, with no resolution comparable to Goethe's there is yet a suggestion of a road

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forward. Faust's death, like Don Juan's, enhances the value of life. Before continuing with further implications in the fate of the two heroes it is now necessary to consider something more of the dramatic structure of the play. The absence of a center of organization is obvious enough. The two stories follow their own individual sequences without being intrinsically involved with each other. There is no clear point of contact and contrast between them. In his own sample review Grabbe suggested one possibility when he argued that the legends had been associated with heroes who were the one too worldly, the other too far from the world, — " . . . der zu sinnlichen . . . " and der zu übersinnlichen Natur im Menschen" (Wuk. V, 321). But this distinction only sets the starting point for his own play. He has not embodied in Faust and Don Juan such clear cut alternatives of human nature. Faust, as we have seen, is not at all free from the sensual world, nor is Don Juan unconcerned with the metaphysical. Rather than organize the play around any such direct and straightforward contrast, Grabbe has become involved in the psychological development of the two individuals, drawing out and elaborating the consequences of their personal experiences. As a result it is possible to seek out all manner of interesting differences and oppositions between them without finding one central point of conflict. Their very juxtaposition involves a new appreciation of their qualities. Their national origins are very much emphasized and the way in which within a common western culture they represent the outlooks of Germany and Spain. Faust, very consciously German, is particularly concerned with his national tradition and the problems of achieving fulfillment for himself outside the German tradition, but Don Juan too, in his half loving, half mocking attitude to his native Spain, reveals his own national roots. It is tempting to go further and find in the contrasting heroes Grabbe's own extension of favorite distinctions of his time. When we consider Don Juan, successful, confident, living in the world of reality, against Faust, introspective, on the verge of despair, dreaming of harmony he cannot attain, we

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may be inclined to see represented not only southern as against northern man, but also Grabbe's development of the contrast between classic and romantic, or between Schiller's "naiv" and "sentimentalisch". But such distinctions have to be extracted out of the individuality of the characters; they are never sufficiently pointed to provide a controlling center for the action and essential conflicts of the play. As a result the scenes between Don Juan and Faust, where we might anticipate a dramatic climax, are short and inconsequential. They in fact only meet on the stage on three occasions and only once, at the end of Act 3, on Mont Blanc outside Faust's magic palace, do they have any interchange of ideas. But even here there is no resolution or an essential concentration of their conflicts. The scene is too short — just over 50 lines — to give us more than a chance to see the two heroes face to face. Each is defiant, each unwilling to recognize the qualities of his adversary. They scarcely have the chance to recognize what the audience necessarily sees, that they are unwitting allies against the mediocrity of the ordinary world. The distinctions between them, already developed at length in their own particular spheres of action, are simply reiterated. There is no advance and no new insight. This lack of a center is reflected in the form of the drama. By reducing the play to four acts Grabbe already shows his independence towards the traditional tragic sequence of developing action, climax and dénouement. The scene between Faust and Don Juan only provides a climax on a purely external level and only in as far as the Faust plot is concerned. It is clear now at the end of Act 3 that Don Juan cannot intervene on Donna Anna's behalf and also that Faust's failure with her is inevitable. But there is no connecting link between the two catastrophes. If Faust's death is now dramatically necessary, Don Juan's own downfall is purely arbitrary. His attitude to the news of Donna Anna's death reveals how little this really touches him. When we look at the individual acts we do not find they correspond to a particular psychological stage in the

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structure of the drama. Essentially the presentation of the play requires a series of contrasting scenes which have to be provided with some sort of dramatic progression; the organization into acts is artificial. This structural uncertainty seems inevitable. Yet granted its existence, Grabbe is remarkably successful in maintaining interest in his two parallel plots. Only at the beginning is the effect notably weak. The opening scene arouses such interest in the lively and witty presentation of the Don Juan story that the following monologues in Faust's room seem at first oppressive and irritating. We have to force ourselves to accept this change of atmosphere. Gradually, however, Faust gains our attention. It belongs to the dynamic nature of his life that he rather than Don Juan should carry the primary dramatic movement. Don Juan's identity and philosophy are already firmly and clearly established, Faust's is in the process of development. Thus the Don Juan sequence forms a contrast and provides recurring light relief from Faust's somber and earnest struggle. Yet Don Juan provides his own source of interest. Each time he returns to the stage after a protracted Faust episode, Grabbe succeeds in a few vigorous and effective strokes in reestablishing his character. He is drawn with sufficient vitality and inner power for him to support the final scenes of the play. After Faust's death Don Juan's own fate, modelled as it is so closely after Mozart, still demands our full attention. It may well be unjust to ask more of the play than that it should achieve some form of external conclusion. Even in Goethe, tremendous though the outcome of his work is, it is achieved poetically, through vast symbolic images, and at the cost of normal dramatic ambitions. The ending of Part I is by itself incomplete. In Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and Mozart's Don Giovanni, as in so many other treatments of these stories, there is an unreconciled contrast between the orthodox condemnation of the hero and the sympathy his qualities have aroused. Though Faustus and Giovanni are condemned to hell, in our hearts their spirit triumphs over the petty and inadequate

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morality of their antagonists. It is not surprising then that Grabbe's play too ends by arousing problems rather than resolving them. We are left with the heroes defeated, yet with the knowledge that in some future world their unending battle will continue. It is most significant that both Don Juan and Faust are conscious of a world that has lost its meaning. Common to them both is a feeling that things once were otherwise, that the character of life has somehow changed. Don Juan's lamentations on the nature of the age to come, which he sees represented in Don Octavio, are expressed in a melancholy prophecy: Nun, es naht die Zeit, Wo Krieg und Frieden, Lieb' und Glück, und Gott Und Glauben nur die Worte sind von dem, Was sie gewesen. (I, 420) Words and feelings, words and actions, no longer connect. An age is coming, it seems, when convention and hypocrisy, the cautious ambitions, perhaps, of the middle class, will have destroyed the directness of passion and experience man once enjoyed. The old values of life remain only phrases, still readily used and in everyone's mouth, which have lost all real meaning. Don Juan cries for release when he hears the Governor and Don Octavio exchanging the civilities of the day: Luft! Luft! O Worte! Worte! Auch, nur da, Wo Küsse euch ersticken, lebt sich's selig. (I, 424) Faust goes further in feeling a world of fragments, of which the whole is lost. If the dominant tone in Goethe's Faust might possibly be encompassed in the word "Streben" — "Wer immer strebend sich bemüht . . . " , the characteristic word in Grabbe is "fragmentation" — "zertrümmern", "mit Trümmern ein Trümmerwerk erbauen". That we live our life in fragments, pieces which we are unable to put together into any unity, this is Faust's lament. Aus Nichts schafft Gott, wir schaffen aus Ruinen! Erst zu Stücken müssen wir Uns schlagen, eh' wir wissen, was wir sind Und was wir können! (I, 433)

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He finally comes to express the lesson of his experience in an image that prefigures Nietzsche's famous cry that "God is dead"; and it foreshadows our modern awareness of life without a center. Es gab einst einen Gott, der ward Zerschlagen — Wir sind seine Stücke — Sprache Und Wehmut — Lieb' und Religion und Schmerz Sind Träume nur von ihm. (I, 499) The traditional values of the past have their representation in the play in the characters of the Governor and his daughter Donna Anna. Both maintain their inherited standards of honor and virtue in the teeth of their enemies. By accepting death rather than submit, Donna Anna follows to the end the precepts of her father. Just as she had previously declared to Don Juan that though she could not overcome her own sentiments of love she would, whatever happened, retain her honor, so to Faust's threats she protects herself conclusively with the "golden flower of virtue". In the same way the Governor, dying after his duel, defiantly resists Don Juan's eloquent cynicism, proclaiming there is a God and a scale of standards by which to adhere: Es lebt ein Gott Es gibt einen Ernst, Der mehr bedeutet als wie das Vergnügen, Die Tugend nur ist unvergänglich . . . (I, 472/3) But his assertions carry little conviction for those who remain. W e are left sharing Don Juan's response who scorns the combination in the Governor of two essentially conflicting philosophies. The heroic but arrogant chivalry of the Spanish grandee goes harshly together with his professed Christian submission and humility. Having fought a duel to the death for revenge on the insult done to his family honor, the Governor dying calls for a priest. Don Juan listens with scornful impatience to the Governor's conventional piety. Amen, Schlecht Und unnütz tönt das Wort zum Schall des Stahls. Wo nichts mehr helfen kann, da ruft man Pfaffen!

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Und das ganz folgerecht. Denn niemand hilft So wenig als ein Pfaffe. (I, 470/1) Later the inscription on the Governor's statue arouses a similarly scornful reaction. "Here rests the Governor Don Gusman; and revenge awaits his murderer." Don Juan sees an absurd intermingling of opposing worlds, "neither Christian nor heathen" (I. 488/9). Thus even the Governor's return in supernatural form to make true his conviction that God is not mocked does not shake Don Juan's skepticism and self-assurance. A God that so little answers to his own human needs has no meaning and validity for him. If God is dead, there is lacking only the superman to replace him. The very term "Ubermensch" is used — perhaps the only occasion it is found between its original use in Goethe's Faust and in Nietzsche. In the scene between Faust and Don Juan on Mont Blanc at the end of Act 3, otherwise so inconclusive, Don Juan is led to mock the Nordic extravagance of Faust who is unable even with his superhuman powers to conquer the heart of Donna Anna: . . . Wozu übermenschlich Wenn du ein Mensch bleibst? to which Faust replies: . .. Wozu Mensch Wenn du nach Übermenschlichem

nicht strebst. (I, 485)

Don Juan himself lives beyond good and evil. He scorns the moral code of the middle class, which he explicitly sees as a barrier of the weak, behind which they can live their timid, petty lives. Faust goes further. Only in surpassing the human is man's true nature revealed. Only the heroic achievements of man can replace the dead values of the past. Only if man can conquer his own weakness, can he resist the otherwise triumphant power of the devil. Don Juan's defiance is echoed by Faust who proclaims that his spirit will continue the battle even in a world to come, until the devil himself is conquered. The ambiguity of tone and feeling in the drama, the way in

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which the play makes use of plots and figures extraneous to itself, leads us to hesitate to accept these metaphysical assertions of defiance. Yet if Grabbe fails to carry us dramatically to this height, the play makes clear the passion of his longing to resist the world around him. Neither hero offers a valid purpose or standard of values by which man may live, but each enhances the dignity of life by the intensity and endurance of his desires. He did not attempt again such an expression of his faith. Yet in the historical portraits of his later plays we feel Grabbe's longing to believe in the greatness of man's spirit and in the possibility of a hero who can validly assert himself against the apparently meaningless course of history.

VII THE HOHENSTAUFEN DRAMAS: FRIEDRICH

BARBAROSSA

AND HEINRICH

VI

Many literary plans flourished in Grabbe's mind during the hopeful months of 1827 and 1828. In a letter of June 25, 1827, already before he took up work again seriously on Don Juan und Faust, he speaks of his idea of a novel from the period of 1806 to 1814, of which nothing seems to have come, and refers to the attractions of the Hohenstaufen, "in whom national pride and poetry are united" (Wuk. V, 281). In the essay on the Shakespeare mania, re-written largely during the next weeks, Grabbe insisted further on the need for a German national historical drama, to put beside the English. His enthusiasm for the subject continued and in January 1828, in one of his many references to the Hohenstaufen, he announced confidently to Kettembeil his aim, "sich und die Nation in 6-8 Dramen zu verherrlichen". He continues: "Und welcher Nationalstoff! Kein Volk hat einen auch nur etwas gleich großen. Und wie soll fast jeder irgend bedeutende deutsche Fleck verherrlicht werden. . . . (Wuk. V, 316)

Such an ambition was very much in keeping with the feeling of the times. Historical dramas, and even specifically dramas on the Hohenstaufen, were extremely popular in the first decades of the 19th century. August Wilhelm Schlegel had pointed to the Hohenstaufen as a splendid theme for a genuine poet, "who like Shakespeare knew how to grasp the poetic side of great world events".1 Grabbe's objective of stimulating local At the close of his Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur, Sämtliche Werke, ed. E. Böcking (Leipzig, 1846-1847), VI, 434.

1

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patriotism recalls Schlegel's praise of Shakespeare's histories which, he claims, arouse a love of local tradition and familiarize the people with the great names of the past. Even in England, Coleridge, from a similar sense of patriotic purpose, found it desirable "that some man of dramatic genius should dramatize all those [kings] omitted by Shakespeare, as far down as Henry VII". 2 In Germany, the popular dramatist Ernst Raupach had suggested the plan of dramas to cover all the German kings from Heinrich I to the Peace of Westfalia and himself made a considerable start with a series which included four plays (in 23 acts) on Friedrich Barbarossa.3 Grabbe's plays have much in common with those of his many rivals. He introduces the same heroic tone, eager patriotic fervor and splendor of medieval spectacle that they sought to achieve. Although we shall see many striking qualities in the two plays that Grabbe completed which make them quite distinct from those of his rivals, his work like theirs seems far removed in spirit from Shakespeare's. Shakespeare's plays, however politically oriented they may be towards the House of Lancaster, seem to reflect in some way the memory and outlook of the people and of his age. Grabbe looks back consciously to a far removed and romantically colored past. He shares the sophisticated urge of the 19th century to revive a simpler age. As a result much in his plays seems artificial, the speeches often vainglorious and empty, the characterization, especially of the minor figures, exaggerated and over-emphatic. To emphasize these characteristics, however, or to judge from the point of view of an extraneous tradition, is to ignore the true value and interest of Grabbe's plays. Grabbe's attempt at creating a myth for his day from the German past may be unsatisfactory, but his concern with an interpretation of the medieval world is genuine and born of his own needs. Grabbe was attracted to the Middle Ages as a period of youthful con* In his Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare, Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (New York, 1860), IV, 117. s For the popularity of the Hohenstaufen as a subject compare the list of dramas in Werner Deetjen's study of Immermann's "Kaiser Friedrich der Ztoeite" (Berlin, 1901).

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fidence in man's history in which his vitality had natural and frank expression. He wanted to show the possibility of standards other than those of his own time, to indicate the nature of the heroic against the placid materialism of post-Napoleonic Germany. In presenting the great deeds of his half-legendary heroes he can be seen grappling as before with the question of human greatness and the problem of ultimate meaning in human life. But the meaning of life is not the subject of abstract speculation as it largely was in Don Juan und Faust. It is revealed through the quality of his heroes' actions, their vitality and unchallengeable conviction of their own right. The real excitement of the plays lies in the contrasting character of the two heroes. While Barbarossa and Heinrich have in common that vastness of ambition and unwillingness to recognize any limits to their authority and their demands on the world which makes the Hohenstaufen so enthralling a subject, they are in other respects striking opposites. In Barbarossa it will be seen that Grabbe has envisaged the possibility of the whole man, as the product of the medieval age of faith, free from the devastating self-division of modern times. Thus his will to power seems contained, as it were, within the natural order of things and is expressed in the pageantry and symbolic authority of the Emperor granted by God rule over Christendom and insistent on his divine right. His son Heinrich VI is a realist, a forerunner of the Renaissance, who coldly and without scruple uses the concept of the Emperor as a means in his open craving for power. Heinrich shares the vital impulses and assurance of his father but represents a return to the characteristic Grabbe hero, bitterly sceptical and desperately in search of satisfying ambitions. This contrast may in fact explain why Grabbe failed to continue the cycle as originally planned. His primary concern came to lie in the nature of the hero, not simply in the presentation of history in dramatic terms. The portrait of Heinrich VI in particular has gone beyond historical sources and has probably incorporated, especially in the final Sicilian scenes, something of the character of Heinrich's son, the great Friedrich II, whom

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Grabbe had referred to in an early letter as "mein Liebling von je". And the lives of the other Emperors may have seemed to offer only an uninspiring confusion of struggles and brutality, of interest from the point of view of a national historical drama, but contributing little for Grabbe's own purposes. Recognition of Grabbe's emphasis on the contrast in character of his two heroes may help us to understand more clearly something of the form and structure of the plays. Though apparently using conventional dramatic means in the language and in the construction of plot and action, Grabbe may be seen struggling with new methods of presentation, relevant for his own needs and his own vision of history. Through techniques he was to develop more consistently and self-consciously later, Grabbe already here achieves unexpected and original effects. An analysis of the sequence of action is necessary in making the nature and quality of the two plays more understandable. A dramatist of history has to find a source of coherence and unity in the confusion of historical events. In Friedrich Barbarossa Grabbe appears to achieve this unity by following the traditional structure of a moral tragedy, somewhat on Schillerian lines. A center to events is provided by concentration on Barbarossa's fraternal conflict with the north German hero and Welf leader, Heinrich the Lion. Barbarossa's Italian campaign, his struggle for power with Pope Alexander III, his dreams of fame in a crusade, even his ideal of chivalry and valor, may be regarded as part of this very conflict, in which the unlimited, supra-national ambitions of the Roman-German Emperor are opposed to the obstinately local patriotic particularism of the north German peoples. But in examining the play more carefully it will be seen that this conflict does not provide a sufficient compass for the total action; it seems rather to serve as a means by which another objective, essentially the presentation of Barbarossa as heroic man in a world of faith, is achieved. In Heinrich VI there is no central dramatic antagonist. Grabbe is forced to present Heinrich's life through a sequence of loosely connected episodes organized around the hero. If there is unity beyond this, it comes from outside the realistic reproduction

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of historical events, inasmuch as there is a suggestion of ultimate fatality pervading the action and underlining the meaninglessness of Heinrich's life. For we are always half-aware of the early death that is to put an end to his apparent triumphs and render them fruitless. The first drama begins in the later half of Barbarossa's long reign. The Emperor has assembled his feudal German followers for a new campaign in Italy to put down the uprising of his old enemies of Lombardy and Milan and establish his authority against the Pope. On the brink of battle Heinrich the Lion of Saxony, the leader of half the Emperor's army, withdraws his support — an event that historically took place some six months before — and Barbarossa's weakened forces are defeated at Legnano by the Milanese. In order to re-establish his authority in Germany and take revenge on Heinrich, Barbarossa makes peace with the Pope. In Act III in Venice Friedrich formally acknowledges the Pope as God's viceregent with moral authority even over the Emperor. But the act of submission does not affect Friedrich's energy; still in Venice he sends his son to woo the daughter and heir of the King of Sicily and Naples, and thus opens the prospect of a new encirclement of the Pope. Returning to Germany, Act IV presents the famous assembly of European poets and knights at Mainz and then contrasts the northern camp as they wait for the advance of Friedrich. In a bloody battle reminiscent of the heroic conflicts of the Nibelungenlied Friedrich defeats Heinrich the Lion and forces him into exile. At the moment of success his son returns with his bride; Friedrich feels his cup of triumph is flowing over and to give the ultimate expression of his life's work determines in the final scene to set off on a new crusade. In a model review sent to Kettembeil, intended as publicity for the new play, Grabbe described the work as a "fate drama" in which Friedrich and Heinrich the Lion are friends and comrades driven into deadly enmity by circumstances and the very force of their own natures (Cf. Wuk. V, 333). This sense of a fraternal conflict is constantly emphasized. Heinrich in an opening monologue hesitates between loyalty to his friend and

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the necessity of a clash. A bitterly lonely figure at the moment, he feels the destiny of his people incorporated in himself and is even made aware that his decision may involve a deep and lasting division in the history of the German people, initiating a "thousand year conflict". The Emperor, despite his anger, understands the causes of Heinrich's disloyalty. He sees that in asserting his independence Heinrich is driven by the same forces as work in himself, that he is acting under the control of his star, and that his honor is unimpaired. Hence the significance of the scene when Heinrich announces his decision to leave and Friedrich falls on his knees to plead with him. He kneels, not in order to beg for support against the despised Lombard League, but to try and turn away the inevitable, to keep the Germans united when the force of history drives them apart. Yet it is uncertain to what extent the center of dramatic interest really lies in this symbolic fraternal struggle. Can it be said that the clash with Heinrich represents an essential spiritual crisis of Barbarossa's life? There is no doubt he is deeply hurt by Heinrich's action, and he is very aware how their friendship clashes with the demands of historic necessity. But once he has recovered from the shock, his attitude to Heinrich's defection is that of any military commander faced with a new strategic problem. He accepts the loss of Heinrich's friendship as he claims he would the loss of a "million lives" for the sake of his ambition. Consequently the final battle with which the play reaches its apparent climax has a decidedly ambiguous effect. There is undoubtedly a sense of tragic disaster as the knights and heroes of Germany destroy each other with no thought of yielding. This legendary atmosphere of tragic doom hanging over the German heroes has in it the spirit of the Nibelungen, a fact emphasized by the presence of Heinrich von Ofterdingen whom Grabbe, following a suggestion made popular by A. W. Schlegel, makes into the author of this anonymous epic. The battle itself has epic qualities. There is no strategic plan, as in other Grabbe battle scenes, merely a sequence of hand to hand conflicts. But although we see Barbarossa involved in this

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atmosphere, fighting in deadly combat with his friends turned enemies, we are at the same time aware that his total fortunes are no more at stake in this battle than they were in previous ones or will be again. Barbarossa willingly admits the possibility of defeat and death at each stage of his life.This is simply one more victory to be gained. As Emperor and man of action driving towards his goal Barbarossa stands removed from the tragic spirit of the battle, and the very atmosphere of prospective disaster prevailing in the northern camp and infusing the battle itself has in fact made clear his eventual success. Victory won, Barbarossa turns at once to new plans and new fields to conquer. It is left for Heinrich to carry the emotional climax. Hence the touching and tearful scenes which reveal the loyalty of his dying followers and the bleakness of exile that awaits him and his family. Before discussing further some of the implications of this ending, we should examine the portrait of Barbarossa. This is not merely a romantic idealization, but a complicated and conscientious study. It is interesting that our first knowledge of him comes through the eyes of his enemies in Milan. The opening scene shows us the Milanese returning to their city and recalling the horror of its conquest. We seem almost prepared for a drama of the liberation of the Italians from their alien rulers. Barbarossa is a "Meteor des Grausens", the savage from the north. But the Milanese for whom our sympathy is aroused only appear once more — on the battlefield at Legnano — and then quite clearly as the foil to Barbarossa and the Germans. The first impression of Barbarossa's brutaliy is, however, fostered in the next scene when he orders the execution of the Milanese embassies and by his unyielding ruthlessness in planning the destruction of the enemy. It is only gradually, and then not all that clearly, that we learn of the background of the dispute and that it is not a simple German-Italian quarrel. This beginning makes us frighteningly aware of the power behind Barbarossa and the courage required to resist him. This is a world removed from all security; decisions of any kind are fraught with risk and carry fear of their consequences.

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When Barbarossa first enters he calls the names of his liegemen whom he has summoned to the war in Italy. The scene serves as a patriotic flourish as the great names are called, but we have a vision of Germany surrounded by enemies and ever on guard. Barbarossa is called on for bold, harsh decisions; it is a world of danger in which he flourishes. At the same time the character of the Milanese helps to reveal what the nature of power is. The people of Milan are passionately angry, longing for revenge. But their passion is short-lived; in battle they do not have the staying power to sustain them. Gherardo, their leader, stands aloof, a brilliant and skeptical figure who recognizes their weaknesses and hardly believes in their power to win. He struggles to control them, to manoeuvre and deploy his forces, to restrain them from wasting their power and yet preserve the passion which alone can drive them to win. In contrast, Barbarossa is one with his army. He and they have an inner confidence that seems indestructible. Even after the defection of Heinrich's troops, the remaining Germans reveal a joy in battle, a wealth of vital power, that makes them rejoice in the worthiness of their enemies. This emphasis on Barbarossa's primitive energy and will is significant. As the richer sides of his nature are revealed, his chivalry, his high sense of honor, his instinct for what is noble, his love of poetry and the color and pageantry of life, the fact of his simple, ruthless urge to power is never lost sight of. For the ideals he incorporates are not the product of a world of security and order, but the fruits of an overbearing, aristocratic, even arrogant, state of mind that needs enemies just as much as it needs its limitless dreams. Barbarossa is never governed by political realism. Reason tells him that it is the northern world which is the center of power and which he must control, but German unity serves only as a basis for his unquenchable ambition of being truly Roman-German Emperor and leader of Christian Europe against the infidel. And in these dreams of unity and purpose Barbarossa incorporates the longings of the time, just as much as he does in his ideals of honor and chivalry. He is in harmony with the spirit of the

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age, the carrier and representative of a rich, overflowing civilization. As such he is unique among Grabbe's heroes. When we look at Sulla or Napoleon or Hannibal, the same urge to power, the same ruthlessness and vitality, may be observed. But they seem to fight for themselves alone, or at best in a fruitless attempt to preserve something inevitably lost. They are skeptics, dependent only on their own strength, their capacity to resist the opposition of the world and the enmity of fate. Barbarossa is a man of faith, not necessarily faith in God or in his own divine mission — such things are suggested but given little prominence —, but faith in himself, that his feelings and actions are right, in harmony with the nature of the world. In the central scene of Act III Pope Alexander challenges Barbarossa's motives. What does he offer mankind? When he claims to bring freedom and liberation from the dominance of the priesthood, this is mere pretence. Is it not to replace this domination by the tyranny of the Emperor? Friedrich cannot answer yet feels the justification of his acts unshaken nevertheless: Der Taten, der Gedanken tiefste Keime Im Busen zu ergründen, ist gefährlich. Es liegen in ihm Schlünde, höllentief, Und wehe dem, der sich in sie versenkt! (II, 67) This urge to stay on the surface curiously foreshadows an argument of Nietzsche's on the nature of man free from the inroads of decadence, when he said of the Greeks that they understood the art of living: Dazu thut noth, tapfer bei der Oberfläche, der Falte, der Haut stehn zu bleiben, den Schein anzubeten, an Formen, an Töne, an Worte, an den ganzen Olymp des Scheins zu glauben! Diese Griechen waren 4 oberflächlich — aus Tiefe Barbarossa is not unaware of the danger of a meaningless life. Allusions occur to the chaos beneath; man without love and friendship is seen as "ein in den Wind gefalln's Blatt". But such fears are put aside. Introspection, the search for motives, In Nietzsche contra Wagner, Nietzsche's Werke (Leipzig, Alfred Kroner Verlag, 1910), VIII, 209.

4

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are things that cannot be permitted; Barbarossa lives naively and directly, his emotions, given natural expression, are free and undistorted. Even when he betrays the Pope at the very moment of reconciliation by planning to establish his son as heir to the throne of Naples, his cunning has a kind of innocence about it, so completely does he act in accordance with his own unreflecting will to power. For this reason Barbarossa's life contains its own meaning; driven on though he is by limitless ambition, he manages to give to the passing stages of life genuine expression and reality. It is important to see how Grabbe succeeds within the framework of the play in showing something of the richness with which his life is filled. The triumphant scenes of pageantry, the ceremonial marches and processions, the brave music and display, are not to be regarded only as spectacle or romantic decoration, for they reveal the quality of Barbarossa's life. The medieval panoply with which he surrounds himself is not something external. His speeches, his gestures, are never those of the private individual, always of the Emperor whose life is enveloped within the concept of his imperial authority. Everything he says or does has, as it were, a sacramental character, is the outward expression of an inner, spiritual force. Even in the scenes of love with his wife we do not hear the individual; as the lover his is the voice of the true chivalrous knight addressing his lady. The man is absorbed in the lover. The criticism has frequently been made that the scenes of pageantry do not serve the advancing action. It has been pointed out that in Grillparzer's Ottokar, for example, where the Bohemian rebel kneels to the Habsburg Emperor, the symbolic pageantry of the Emperor's court and assembly serves as a significant background to this dramatic action. In contrast, Grabbe's spectacular scenes, such as the field of chivalry at Mainz, seem static interludes in which there is no movement forward of the whole. 5 But such a criticism may be out of place. Scenes of pageantry that appear to hold back the action have their meaning in themselves. They deliberately prevent the constant advance 5

Cf. Schneider, Grabbe, p. 222.

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towards some future inevitable climax. These transitory moments are the fabric out of which our lives are made and which Barbarossa fills with value and meaning. As long as we look only at the action between Barbarossa and Heinrich the Lion, then each scene must contribute a step in the progressive sequence leading to a dramatic climax. But the conflict involved and the consequent dramatic crisis do not constitute the total content of the play. We are also shown Barbarossa's achievement, what his life has meant, what he has created in the course of his life. With this knowledge in mind we must now look again at the conclusion of the drama. By bringing the action to a close with the defeat of Heinrich and by leaving the news of the disastrous failure of the crusade and the accidental death of Barbarossa to the next play, Grabbe seems to have imposed an effective pattern on the confusion of history. But the ending is curiously inconclusive. The triumphant march of the future crusaders on which the curtain falls does not entirely overpower our knowledge of the future. Lingering in our minds is the awareness that Barbarossa's plans are to collapse, that Heinrich will return, that the power of the Welfs is unconquered, and that the particularism that Heinrich represents will continue to flourish. Indeed in the last scene but one there is a specific warning from Heinrich the Lion to this effect. Strangely enough a similar situation had occured before, at the end of the first act, where triumphant pageantry concealed a precarious situation. As Friedrich's army prepares for battle with the Milanese we are already aware that Heinrich proposes to abandon the Emperor, yet the scene ends with Heinrich taking his place with the other feudal rulers, the Kings of Poland and Bohemia, the Archduke of Austria, Hohenzollern and others, in the formal ceremonial of the guard keeping watch around the Emperor's tent. The effect of this earlier scene is not ironic, contrasting apparent grandeur and unfortunate reality; the ceremony itself is the expression of Barbarossa's achievement. By standing guard with the others Heinrich pays tribute formally to the imperial ideal.

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All achievements are precarious, nothing lasts, yet each moment is rich and to be savored for itself. And so the triumphant march becomes a legitimate end to a life Barbarossa has made so rich and impressive. And death itself, as the last line of the play reminds us, is given splendor and significance. "Und Sterben selbst! Im Kreuzzug ist's Gewinnen!" In Heinrich VI there is no central conflict around which the action is focused. The story develops around three main antagonists, Tancred, leader of the Normans revolting against Heinrich's rule in Naples and Sicily, Heinrich the Lion, who has returned to his possessions in Saxony and threatens a new outbreak of strife between Welf and Waiblingen, and Richard the Lion-Heart, captured on imperial territory after his return from the crusades. Yet none of these opponents presents a real threat to Heinrich's plans. Tancred is too aware of Norman degeneration and too filled with a foreboding of failure to prove a danger, Heinrich the Lion is too old, his previous energy lost, Richard too helpless, from the beginning a captive in Heinrich's power. Even the sense of multiple perils surrounding Heinrich, very much present in historical accounts of his reign, has been curiously modified. Heinrich seems always in control of events and thus removed from danger. Exciting as individual scenes are, there is little feeling of sustained tension. W e respect the boldness of Heinrich's decisions, his unarmed ride to the Welf camp to make peace, for example, or the use of the army of crusaders for his own battle with the Normans, but we are not very conscious of grave threats overcome. The developing actions seem as a result little more than episodes through which the atmosphere of Heinrich's life and the world in which he lives can be revealed. Our interest is divided between the outer world and the particular character of Heinrich himself, whose cold, ruthless ambition conquers all restrictions and recognizes no limitations. The play begins among the Norman leaders, in a scene that reveals them made soft and degenerate by the indulgence and luxurious ease of the south. While this scene serves the unfolding action by showing their plans of revolt, the effect is

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also to emphasize, rather as the Milanese scenes in Friedrich Barbarossa do, the nature and reality of power. Tancred accepts his duty as leader against the Germans but betrays a pessimistic insight into the realities of decadence that counteracts the finesounding phrases and rhetorical patriotism of his countrymen. They cannot compensate for the inadequacy of their vital energy by determination to overcome weakness or a deliberate will to resist. Genuine power is a force of nature that cannot be willed or wished for. A contrasting glimpse of the lusty confidence of the German troops is shown in the same scene. Savage and cruel, they possess a simple, primitive force. Their captain, von Schwarzenegg, in his commands to his men, seems as it were to offer a comment on Tancred's discursive selfdebates: Sprich nicht in Reih und Glied — nicht räsonniert! Das Räsonnieren schadet nur, macht Langeweile, hält auf, und wird doch nicht beachtet — Könnte das Kind räsonnieren, bei Gott, es käme nicht aus dem Mutterleib - . (II, 119)

When we turn to Heinrich in scene 2, he reveals himself at once as the hard, virile conqueror who is not to be tempted by the seductions and treachery of the Italian south. This is a man not unlike the arrogant boy portrayed in Friedrich Barbarossa, who, at the moment of Heinrich the Lion's treachery, full of the family pride of the Hohenstaufen, sneered at the petty ambitions and scruples of Barbarossa's rival. This arrogance is not that of the leisured aristocrat or aesthete, but springs from a masterful power expressed in a love of danger and battle and in the cry: "Heil uns, die Schlacht ist da!" For the most part Heinrich remains a cold, unemotional man of action. Rational, free and aloof from the illusions or dreams of his contemporaries, he plans only his own road to power. This is how he appears above all in Act III at the Imperial Assembly at Hagenau, manipulating his German feudal followers according to his own needs, feigning anger in order to arouse a certain response, using their sense of honor to further his own coldly planned intrigues. There are, however, intensely emotional moments in the play that reveal other aspects of his

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character. When at the beginning his father's body is brought back to Naples and Heinrich realizes the circumstances of his death and the disastrous outcome of the crusade, he is then seen struggling with his feelings, trying to overcome the torments of his heart: "Seid, was ihr scheint, ihr Augen: gestähltes, blaues Erz." For a moment some of the bitterness underneath is indicated, Heinrich's recognition of the bleakness of life, even his feeling of ideals lost. "Ist denn das Leben auch wohl einer Träne wert?" But knowledge of suffering is overcome by pride and the will to act. Clear thought and powerful action are the weapons to use against the blows of life, and there is no time for grief and lament. Long before the end of the scene Heinrich is in command of himself again. The rescue of his infant son later provides another moment of emotional release. Only his cousin Agnes, a fellow Hohenstaufen, understands this vital force in him. When her husband suggests that Heinrich has never known love, she asserts that he must have longed for it all the more. This deeply hidden longing for love is the spring in Heinrich's character. It is in no way satisfied by his wife Constanze; in her arms his thoughts are elsewhere and he dreams of lands and conquests unknown. Nor does she in turn know the man under the mask; she does not feel his heart, follows him only in awe and doubt, overwhelmed by his ruthless power. Here the contrast with Barbarossa is very evident. For Barbarossa, love for his wife Beatrice flows from him as part of nature. When he is with her he is as completely involved in the world of reality as in every other aspect of his life. He is the gallant wooer, she the beloved, providing joy and relaxation for the warrior. But Barbarossa is the total man, his actions spontaneous and free; Heinrich is already "fragmented" and modern, torn by contrasting forces, ever dissatisfied. When Heinrich sacrifices to the Romans the town of Tusculum which had been for years loyal to the Waiblingen, in order to gain Roman support for his claim as Emperor, he speaks darkly of sacrificing his heart to his head and thinks he had already done so when he abandoned his childhood love for a political marriage with Constanze of Sicily. It is in the

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same spirit that he sees Richard the Lion-Heart of England as the "first hero of the world", and yet at the same time holds him prisoner for ransom. "Ich seh' nicht einen nur! ich seh' die Welt." Such divisions would be impossible for Barbarossa, who is never thus at war with himself; the world is a unit, feelings and actions spring from the whole. Heinrich lives without friends and without love, without contacts with men even, and everything is devoted to his own tense, feverish ambition. There are echoes only of the world of faith that Barbarossa represented; echoes that center around particular characters and episodes. Richard Coeur de Lion in his bluff good humor and giant strength is a true epic hero of the high crusades. His royal pride cannot bear the menial disguise of the monk; he would rather be captured than hide furtively from his enemies. The presence of Blondel, his faithful minstrel, is a reminder too of the romantic middle ages. At Hagenau, when his case is heard by the Emperor, his own manoeuvres to avoid falling into the hands of the French seem innocent and childlike beside Heinrich's intrigues. He is, however, enough aware of the implications of Heinrich's methods to foresee a future political morality of the Renaissance, "poison in crystal glasses", and thereby dimly recognize the prospective triumph of the political over the heroic. Heinrich the Lion is another reminder of Barbarossa's world. But his acts and thoughts are colored now by the feeling of everything over and done with. An old man returning to his native land looks back on past love and friendship, the memory of his wife, the loyalty of his followers, the rich passions of his battle with Friedrich. "Die ganze Gegend ist mir nur die Spur von dem, was war." Even his own previous adventures seem part of an epic past. It is, in his own words, "as if he were reading in an old chronicle" (II, 156). It is keeping with the mood of a new era that the romantically patriotic elements, so essential in Barbarossa, now dwindle in importance. The German nobles who assemble at the Imperial Diet at Hagenau no longer seem the embodiment of local German pride. They have no contact with Heinrich as they

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had with Barbarossa. They do not play the part of loyal liegemen or friends, because they do not understand their ruler, but are simply perplexed and bamboozled by the sharpness of his mind and the subtlety of his intrigue. Similarly, the scenes of pageantry are no longer essential to the atmosphere of medieval life. The spectacular parades and costumes are only decorative, representative merely of the colorful world in which Heinrich takes part. The drama begins on Vesuvius and ends on Mt. Etna. The mountain heights, the volcanoes — Stromboli is also seen in the background — provide a scene of an entirely different quality, expressive, as it were, of the passions of the hero, his striving ambition and the tempestuous, overflowing violence of his nature. Naples stretches out before the spectator's eyes, revealing the seductive temptations of indulgence in the flesh. This scenery is no longer representational in any normal sense; it does not provide background or atmosphere; it is expressionistic and symbolic, suggestive of the conflict in Heinrich himself. Images from the mountains and the volcanoes are significantly taken over in Heinrich's speeches. His opening words are a call for ice from Etna — the cool purity of ice, it is to be presumed, serving as a protection against the treacherous warmth of southern Italy. And in the last few minutes of the play Heinrich makes explicit a comparison of himself with the natural power of the volcano: Wo Feuer ist, da brennt's, bald so, bald so, — Etwas muß es verzehren. — Sieh den Ätna, — Er machts nicht besser, bald beglückt Und bald zerstört er - . . . (II, 236) Without strictly breaking the continuity of the scenic background Grabbe manages to contrast in the first and last acts the isolated world of Heinrich's ambition with the pageant of medieval life from which he stands aloof, but in which as a man he lives and operates. Everything leads us to concentrate attention on Heinrich himself. Yet what has been said shows there can be no real question of tragic development. There is no central significant experience through which Heinrich develops or in which he

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may learn to recognize his destiny. The world is something external which does not touch his inner being. When we look at the last act, we see that victory has been won, Italy and Germany are united under his rule, and he is no longer engrossed in the struggle for power. Thus the man of action gives way to the dreamer. He shows himself as unsatisfied as ever, seeking only new ambitions. The last scene presents him, ostensibly hunting, on Mt. Etna. Here his imagination is free to soar. He sees the beauty of Sicily in a Homeric vision as if the gods of Olympus were around him. But his pessimism returns; happiness, he feels, lies in the valleys; in the mountains there are only visions and prospects to torment us further. For those destined to the heights there is no hope of attainment. Plans of a conquest of the holy land, the sight of unknown Africa on the horizon, come to fill the emptiness of his heart. Thus removed from the conflicts of the world of action, Heinrich reminds us for a moment of Grabbe's Faust in his struggle for knowledge. Each seeks the unattainable. For each, one apparent victory is only a step towards a new desire. Just as for Faust, despite his pact with the devil, the transcendental is barred to Heinrich. Christianity has no meaning for him, its message is ignored. The concept of a world after death is merely a distant mystery, irrelevant to his life on earth. Like Faust, Heinrich seems in the last scenes to have all worldly power in his possession, but he has no goal for which to use it. Possession itself is empty and fruitless. To hide this knowledge he seeks new tasks and new enemies. If we are to look for an ultimate antagonist against whom Heinrich is ranged, it must be on this symbolic level, in death itself. There is no other enemy for Heinrich than man's own limitations, the transitoriness of life, the knowledge that our end is inevitable. Death is in fact almost personified for a moment at the end. "Weh, was schlug? Wer klopft? Das ist mein Herz nicht - Der Tod! Der Hund!" (II, 238). The threat of death is repeatedly interwoven into the drama. It is the news of Barbarossa's death and the bringing back of his body to Europe that sets the action into motion. This scene provides

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in its solemn ceremonial a last example of the pageantry of Barbarossa's world, but it also reveals the danger threatening all life, the fatality all men are subject to. This expectation of death likewise pervades the Heinrich the Lion episodes, emphasizing the impermanence of human achievements and the inexorable law that conditions all life. We see the fear of death in the Norman leaders executed by Heinrich, and in the last act an old Sicilian woman forecasts the death of Heinrich himself. In a brief penultimate scene two Sicilian countrymen find comfort from the present misery in reflection on the passing parade of rulers who have thought to conquer their island and yet have left only fragmentary traces behind. Nevertheless when death comes to Heinrich it is sudden and without warning. The last few lines of the play seem almost an outline sketch for the action, so rapidly and completely is the situation reversed, so unprepared are we for this final blow. Heinrich at the top of his power dreaming of new conquests is suddenly struck down. All his ambitions collapse with him, for the Empire holds together only under his rule. The son and heir whom he hoped to make hereditary Emperor is an infant still, and the Empire fated to a period of civil war and confusion. The dramatist of history is limited by his obligations to historical facts. But if death comes unexpectedly we must still be convinced by some sense of inward necessity. Grabbe has admittedly changed the cause of death from dysentery to a dramatically more acceptable heart attack, but the arbitrariness of the ending is so striking as to seem deliberately provocative. The absence of any moral connection between his life and death is thus underscored. There is no guilt and expiation, no judgment or sense of death's redemptive power; nor is there any question of fate responding to individual hybris. It is an arbitrary end to an arbitrary life. And yet one might say the very lack of order, the very absence of meaning, connects his life and death. It is as if the unifying principle lay paradoxically in the very absence of any unifying force. We face directly the complete meaninglessness of his activities. He offers the world

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nothing: his purely egotistic ambitions for greater and greater power have collapsed. We should not infer that any judgment is to be passed on Heinrich. It is the nature of the world that things should be so; Grabbe bluntly confronts us with the chaos of life. Nor is the result necessarily completely negative. Heinrichs last words: So unerwartet, schmählich hinzusterben — O war' ich lieber nimmermehr geboren! (II, 238) must not be accepted as an evaluation of his whole life. He is speaking in a moment of despair. If these were the final words of a drama centered in some form of moral sequence, then they would have to be taken as such an evaluation or ultimate judgment. As it is, this is merely an outcry called forth by the moment of blackness. It does not negate the earlier will to action. The death of his father had stimulated the young man to deeds and revivified his energy and determination. Fate was not then an inimical force, but yielded and responded to the man of power. This vital capacity, that contrasted with the decadence of the Normans, convinced us of his likely victory over his worldly enemies. From our analysis it will have been seen that the two plays fulfill a variety of purposes. Justice to them can only be done by a willingness to appreciate Grabbe's originality and particular intentions. Ultimately the center of interest seems to lie in the contrast of characters. Barbarossa and Heinrich share the youthful intensity of living that Grabbe longs for, but Barbarossa alone expresses his vision of a world of harmony. Barbarossa felt reality and meaning in all experiences of life. Both he and Heinrich the Lion lived and thrived in a world that carried its own values. But such figures represent for Grabbe a dream of a world he could not experience. Heinrich VI is the familial Grabbe figure, who seeks and finds no answer. Yet to some extent his life is expressed and justified in living itself. And the play reveals in individual scenes and episodes his capacity for life and action. Though he ends in failure and blackness, he has revealed by the power of his own desires the strength of man.

VIII ASCHENBRÖDEL

While he was still involved in his proposed Hohenstaufen cycle, Grabbe interrupted work to try his hand at another popular dramatic form. Where in the one case he had hoped to emulate the successful romantic historical dramas of his contemporaries, he sought in Aschenbrödel to capture the mood and charm of the still popular fairy tale comedies. Always confident of his versatility, Grabbe exercised his skill in a new sphere, in one more effort to achieve the success he longed for. This time he followed a fashion renewed at the turn of the century by Ludwig Tieck, but still continued in different forms, notably by Platen, Raimund and Immermann, as well as by many writers of comic opera, in which poetic fairy tale episodes are interspersed with realistic humor and satire. Grabbe shows us, on the one hand, the poor neglected Cinderella translated through the good offices of her fairy godmother into a world of grace and wonder where her true beauty is revealed, while at the same time developing scenes of her father and stepmother and her ugly sisters or of the court where her lover is found, which lend themselves to broad humor and vigorous social and literary satire. The comic and the idyllic, farce and romance, go side by side. It is a form that looks back to Gozzi's Venetian comedies and Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, but above all is associated with Tieck, through his influential essay on "Shakespeares Behandlung des Wunderbaren" as well as through his many comedies. Grabbe's hopes of success, however, once more came to nothing. Of all his plays Aschenbrödel has been one of the

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most sadly neglected. Difficulties were to arise from the beginning. The first manuscript was written during the early part of 1829. A letter to Kettembeil of April 18 reports that his plans were already then fairly advanced: he refers to the action as "tollkomisch" and cites two brief passages that were later included in the fairy scenes of Act 2. Grabbe was enthusiastic and he adds gleefully, with reference also to his historical plans: "Bin ich nicht ein bißchen ein Sappermenter? Den Sir Shakespeare wollen wir doch noch wohl unterkriegen (Wuk. V, 326/ 7). This was the time when Grabbe was putting the finishing touches to Friedrich Barbarossa and rapidly beginning work on Heinrich VI. The plays progressed together. On April 26th he wrote in one brief paragraph: "Aschenbrödel ist wohl gewiß Juli fertig. Heinrich VI wächst riesenhaft. Er spiegelt sich in Neapels Golf und tränkt sich mit Blut" (Wuk. V, 328). This manuscript was very probably finished by the end of July as he forecast, for a letter of August 2nd (Wuk. V, 334) shows that Grabbe believed the play to be already in the hands of the printer. Kettembeil, however, who had previously been so encouraging and sympathetic, raised problems for the first time about publication. Grabbe for a while explained the difficulties to himself by thinking his friend was anxious to concentrate on the Hohenstaufen cycle and keep the other in reserve. But in letters of April 1830 he renewed his efforts to induce Kettembeil to go ahead and publish, only to meet with blank refusal. Grabbe was forced to put his plans aside. Only fragmentary "sample scenes" from the fairy tale episodes that Grabbe sent to different periodicals were to appear and virtually nothing more was heard of the play until over four years later in the Autumn of 1834. Grabbe took a copy with him, together with the early drafts of Hannibal, when he went to Düsseldorf. With Immermann's help and encouragement he set to work to rewrite the play, shorten it and prepare it for the stage. On December 26, 1834, he thought the play ready. From a letter of Grabbe's, however, it is clear that Immermann suggested still further abbreviations including the omission of "useless puns", to which Grabbe agreed. Finally in 1835 the play was

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printed in a separate volume by the Düsseldorf book dealer Carl Georg Schreiner. Until recently this very curtailed second version has been the only one available. Early editors of the collected works, including Wukadinovic, restrict themselves to quotations in the notes of a few striking passages which were later omitted. It was only in 1950 that Alfred Bergmann published for the first time the earlier draft, based on the manuscript sent to Kettembeil in 1829, and this only in a very limited edition under the auspices of the Grabbe-Gesellschaft in Detmold. The new large Bergmann edition shows the two versions in the same volume for the first time. Although Bergmann himself makes no extreme claims for the literary merit of the earlier version, there is no question that knowledge of it puts Grabbe's play in a new light. It is only here, in the originality of the characterization and the bitter extravagance of the comedy, that genuine Grabbe features are clearly evident. The very negative judgments of early critics that Grabbe was, as in Nanette und Maria, artificially applying himself to a mode that did not correspond with his own genuine needs and feelings, no longer seems applicable. The form of the fairy tale drama, somewhat tiresomely revived by Romantic and post-Romantic authors, was not necessarily exhausted and the hackneyed story even seems to fit reasonably well with Grabbe's special purpose. In working over his material in Düsseldorf Grabbe retained the same order of scenes and the same sequence of action. Comedy and romance are still interspersed, but only the poetic faiiy tale episodes where Cinderella is raised above the level of everyday reality, have been retained in anything like their original form. Because of the drastic cuts elsewhere this poetic atmosphere now assumes predominant importance and the mood of a Romantic idyll sets the all-prevailing tone. Other features have suffered. Even the characterization of Cinderella and her lover has been softened and conventionalized. In the earlier version we feel in them some expression of the author's own impassioned idealism that longs for a world of harmony and truth; in the later draft this becomes merely a conventional

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willingness to yield to the power of romance. But it is above all the comedy that has been most seriously reduced. Grabbe has constantly aimed at compression and speeding up the action. As a result the comic sequences, whether centered round Cinderella's father, the baron, and his antagonism to a world that is constantly too much for him or whether showing the cynical values of the court, have tended to lose their own identity and become little more than interludes — moments of relief from the sentiment of the fairy tale theme. Yet it is the vitality of the comic scenes, and in particular their bizarre and original tone, reminiscent of Scherz, which gives the play much of its quality. Although the humor is not entirely lost in the later version, it has become so abbreviated that its real character has been overlooked or misunderstood. As a matter of fact, in looking over the later version after reading the first, we see the outlines of the comedy retained. But by itself the second version is so brief and fragmentary that it reads almost like a sketch plan which the actor or director will have to fill out, rather than a completed work. It seems at times as if Grabbe wanted to retain as many jokes as possible while he was doing the cutting, but that their point and effectiveness has been lost by the overwhelming need for brevity. It would be a mistake to emphasize only the advantages of the earlier version. As it stands it is undoubtedly too long. Some of the comedy is clumsy and not very effectively directed. The literary satire is often tiresome and far less effectively interwoven into the play as a whole than in Scherz. Many of the allusions that were later omitted can very well be spared, and were indeed already out of date by 1835. Moreover, Grabbe has at times given the language of his second version some of the directness we find in his later plays, especially Hannibal. Some of the verse passages, outside the fairy scenes, have been abandoned in favor of a vigorous, sharply outlined prose. Where at times the play reads like a sketch for the action, at other times it strikes us by its precision and jagged effectiveness. Neither version, therefore, can claim to be the better. What would be needed for a good stage production today would be

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a sympathetic combination of the two drafts. From a critical point of view, however, the earlier draft is undoubtedly much more enlightening and if we are to understand Grabbe's purposes it is only here that we will find them clearly apparent. The story of Cinderella was of course common property and Grabbe follows the traditional and familiar action. Extensive enquiries into his use of sources as well as his dependence on predecessors have been made by Alfred Bergmann, as well as earlier by Arnulf Perger and others, and we need mention only a few points here. The importance Grabbe gives to the role of the fairy queen who, with the help of her fairy train, brings Cinderella her coach and gown and introduces her to the world of beauty and romance, points to the influence of Perrault's story in the Contes des Fées rather than to the version in the Grimm Brothers collection of Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Grabbe is known to have taken a German copy of Perrault from the Detmold library in March 1829. There is no place in Grabbe's play for the doves who in Grimm help Cinderella in her task of picking the peas from the ashes and bring her the splendid gown. Of other works Platen's successful "heroic comedy" Der gläserne Pantoffel (1823) in which Cinderella themes are interspersed with elements from "Sleeping Beauty" may have suggested ideas to Grabbe. There is little evidence of specific influence, however, though certain parallels in the action are inevitable. On the other hand, Grabbe clearly owes particular incidents to the opera text of Cendrillon written by Charles Guillaume Etienne to music by Niccolo Isouard. This very successful opera was given in Detmold in 1827 and 1828 and was very widely known. A certain ironic tone is given to the story in that Grabbe calls his heroine Olympia, though she is referred to by her family and others as Aschenbrödel. At one point the King's jester, presumably referring to the Etienne libretto, declares that the girl ran away from the ball leaving her shoe behind "grade wie Aschenbrödel in der Oper" (II, 303). It might seem that the outward circumstances of Olympia's situation are like those of Cinderella and that this outward similarity then determines

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her fate which follows that of the fairy tale heroine. This theme, not unusual among the Romantics, is scarcely developed, however, and remains unimportant. For all real purposes Olympia is Aschenbrödel. It is significant that Grabbe, like Etienne, has combined the ordinary Cinderella story with the old motif of the hero exchanging roles. Cinderella's lover, in Grabbe as in Etienne, is no longer the son of the King, but a ruler in his own right, and in both cases he exchanges clothes with members of the court in order to seek his true bride in disguise. This lends the opportunity for satirical scenes of court life in which Cinderella's two half-sisters use their charms in vain flattery of the false king. These episodes, however, are quite different in detail. A particular harshness is added in that Grabbe causes the King to hand over his royal clothes, not as in Etienne to a courtier, but to the "Rüpel" — a name with a long history in German folk comedy which suggests more than the Court Fool, rather the Court Oaf. An interesting detail which shows how incidents from different sources overlap in Grabbe, and in particular points to the intermingling of Perrault and Etienne as origins, lies in the role of the King's advisor. In Etienne there is no fairy queen to bring the lovers together and this happy solution is achieved by the magic powers of the King's counsellor. In the first Grabbe version it is notable that the King's former teacher and advisor Alastor shows some signs of magical knowledge about the future fortunes of the king that are no longer necessary for the plot. These signs are omitted later, and even the name Alastor, which suggests sorcerer associations, has been changed to Mahan. Essentially characteristic of Grabbe's Aschenbrödel, and something that takes it beyond its predecessors, is the intense contrast between the idealism in the story of the King and Cinderella and the realism, and even bitter cynicism, of the comic episodes. This antithesis between the real and the ideal is perhaps inherent in any literary adaptation of a fairy story. Already in Perrault there are two alternative morals suggested

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to the Cinderella tale, one that "la bonne grace est le vrai don des Fees", the other that whatever qualities of spirit and mind you may possess, advancement in this world will not follow Si vous n'avez, pour les faire valoir, Ou des parrains ou des Marraines. In this spirit an interplay between the fairy tale world of wonder and more realistic social comment is essentially characteristic of certain comedies by Tieck as well as of Raimund and Platen, but Grabbe has given new emphasis both to the nature of the longing of the hero and heroine for love and to the comic counterpoint of disenchantment and pessimism. The character of the two lovers has been subtly developed by Grabbe and each reveals under stress a surprising intensity of feeling. No longer merely puppets serving the action, they have been infused with the poet's own passions so that they become themselves a genuine source of dramatic interest. This is perhaps more clearly evident in the King than in Aschenbrödel herself. The hero, as he appears in both Grimm and Perrault, is a purely cardboard figure. In Etienne where he is no longer merely the prince but his own master, his character has been developed accordingly, but he remains largely conventional. In Grabbe the King seeks a wife, not in the fulfilment of his late father's commands, as in Etienne, but in order to escape the isolation of his throne. At first sight this seems to be very much in accordance with the normal requirements of the Romantic hero. It is only to be expected that the girl he seeks should possess "innocence and grace", as the King's counsellor Alastor suggests, and not be deceived by false appearance or empty show. But here as in the comparable figure of Leonce in Büchners Leonce und Lena there is an undertone that points beyond the accepted conventional language and suggests a disturbing depth of passion. Something of this may be felt in Alastor's understanding speech on the King's need for love: Weg siehst du aus dem Getümmel, Und suchst das Auge, welches An deinem sich entzückt, in dem du selig

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Das eigne in Verklärung wiederfindest, Das dich errät in deiner tiefsten Seele — (II, 252) The complications of the rhythm and syntax point to the problematic nature of his desires. Again the King's lament on the empty fate of the ruler has a serious and personal quality: Wir Unselgen! — So umgibt Uns Schmeichelei, daß wir kaum wissen, ob Wir Gutes tun, ob Schlechtes — ob wir bloß Der Krone Zeichen, oder echte Herrscher? Zart muß man fühlen, und ein Fels im Meer Doch sein, wenn man den Szepter trägt! — (II, 253) For the most part, however, these early scenes keep to the surface. Only later in the violence of the King's anger do the genuine passions of his nature come clearly to light. In Act 3 where he is himself disguised, he looks on with contempt at the hypocritical flattery paid to the Court Jester in the King's clothes. The revulsion he expresses at this time can only come from dreams and ideals betrayed. We realize the power of his desire and the inherent danger of disillusion. The speech is characteristic of Grabbe and brings to mind a similar sense of horror in Sulla or Heinrich VI. — Fürwahr, die Menschen sind verächtlich. Zum Tyrannen könnt man werden, und das Volk Wie Spinn und Kröt behandeln — Neros Taten Sind eher komisch als entsetzlich! — (II, 274) H e thinks of breaking free from the futilities of the court into the blood of battle: wo statt Der Freundschaft und der Liebe Heucheln, Das diese Tanzmusik begleitet, beim Geklirr Der Bajonette, bei der Batterien Donnern Der Feind dem Feind entgegenstürmt, — Da weiß ich doch, daß nicht ein leerer Schein, Daß mich Gefahr und Tod umgibt! (II, 275) In the second version this scene has been retained. The emotional tone has been controlled, the speech transferred into

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prose and given a new and terse directness, but the purpose remains the same. Es muß leicht sein, ein Nero zu werden, sogar natürlich! Das Gepäck da — . . . Ist so die Menschheit? Sind alle so? Ich zweifle schon an mir selbst! (II, 501) Such passion works against the atmosphere of fairy tale harmony. For a moment we forget the happy resolution that is assured through the presence of the fairy queen. Yet a similar anger appears more than once. In the fourth act when he is looking for Aschenbrödel who has run away, the King's scorn for the people, "despicable, lying and greedy", breaks out again as he sees them thronging to try their luck with the glass slipper. The dangers intrinsic to his nature come to the surface. The hyperbole has a Kleistian ring: — Ich schwebe Auf meines Thrones Höhen, wie der Adler Über den Alpen, — Einsam hängt er in Der kalten Luft, und unter ihm nur Gletscher! — Weh mir, mein Herz — es wird zu schwer und drückt Mich nieder in die dumpfen Täler — (II, 307/8) Only the strength of his passion justifies the strangely grotesque image with which he exults when he finds Olympia again, proclaiming the "giant snake of desire" trodden under heel. Desire, which had been so ready to turn on itself and drive him to destruction, is seen as an enemy which he can finally master. O du der Sehnsucht Riesenschlange Die meine Brust so schwer umschlungen, Jetzt lüft ich mich von deinem Drange Und packe dich mit meinen Händen Und unter meinem Fuße sollst du enden! (II, 308) Reflected against such destructive elements in his nature, the ardor of the King's idealism becomes more impressive. W e feel the seriousness of his character and his genuine nobility of feeling. Even amidst the lively jokes of his court followers he cannot restrain himself. When he listens to the cynical comments of the court fool and the court poet about morality and

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truth he calls it the freedom of the irresponsible. In comedy, he asserts, where fancy has free play one may joke with the moral order, for everyone knows you are only joking. But in life one must act nobly (Cf. II, 225). He is also true to himself, one feels, when he proclaims that the goal of art is not the reproduction of everyday emotion and incidents as in Iffland but the glorification of life, the recreating of the world in ultimate harmony. Soil Sich die Natur nicht in der Kunst verklären, Und wie im Meer der heiße Himmel kühler Und schöner wiederglänzt, nicht in dem Werk Des Künstlers sich im Ernst der Scherz und in Dem Scherz der Ernst sich spiegeln? Was im Leben Verworren liegt und ohne Einklang, soll Es nicht die Kunst zur Harmonie vereinen? (II, 289)

It is Strange to find in Grabbe an ideal of art so frankly confessed that comes close to the Romantic dictum of "das Unendliche endlich dargestellt", yet it is a speech that carries conviction. It is to this idealism that Alastor appeals. In an interesting exchange at the end of Act 3 at a time when it seems Aschenbrödel is lost to the King, Alastor insists that even without her he should not give up hope, but learn to act according to his highest principles even when inflicted by the sorrows and torments of life. Sohn: hoffe, Wenn du verzagst, und mit der Kraft bezwing Die Wehmut. Um so mehr der Schmerz dich drückt, So edler wirk, und glücklich wirst du. (II, 304)

The King cannot believe in happiness without Aschenbrödel, but he responds to Alastor with some confidence. Earlier he had shown how aware he was of the problem of the monarch who, surrounded by flattery and deceit, must maintain strength of purpose with charity and kindness of heart. Now he declares his hope for a reign in which, even if he himself is unhappy, he can yet:

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"aschenbrödel" Das alte Gute fördern, neues schaffen, Das alte Schlechte unterdrücken, künftiges Verhindern. (II, 304)

The possibility that this should be achieved without Aschenbrödel is not tested. The workings of the fairy powers make sure that happiness is in store for him. But we are aware of the danger that the King, like other Grabbe heroes, might remain torn between an unfulfilled desire for the ideal and his recognition in reality of a contemptible and false-fronted world. Only through the fairy's intervention does this perilous idealism find safe release. With their help we can foresee the prospect, never possible of achievement for Grabbe's historical heroes, of a happy and benevolent reign. Aschenbrödel remains closer to the traditional role. In her the basic charm of the fairy tale heroine is retained — she is still the poor, neglected, sweet-natured and loving girl who gains her true reward. She is always unselfish and thoughtful towards her father and half-sisters, however neglectful and unkind they are. She stays modestly in the background and does obediently what is asked of her. But it is more than her fairy tale purity that wins the attention of the king. He is attracted by the depth of her character as well as the genuineness and truthfulness of her feelings. Where others pretend and are deceived by their own selfish desires, she responds to her own heart. The royal clothes the court fool wears mean nothing to her; she sees only the wretched man underneath. A minor change from the traditional action (though one also present in Etienne) emphasizes this. Aschenbrödel does not leave the ball at twelve o'clock, according to fairy command. She runs away because she fears the real King, to whom she is already attached, wants her to marry the pretender. The pomp with which the false king is surrounded merely offends her. To the unperceiving, Aschenbrödel is a very simple, plain girl. Her sisters call her "ein einfältiges Ding . . . " , "eine unbedeutende Person, im grauen Gewände . . . " And the gnome who is the comic companion of the fairies on their journeys to earth immediately declares that: "Ich nicht viel Rares an ihr

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seh'!" (II, 266). Admittedly her family sometimes find something mysterious about her. In the second version her sisters refer to her "besondere Gedanken, heimliche Reflektionen . . . " And in both versions the stepmother recognizes she has something her own daughters lack, a feature of character deeper than beauty which she cynically suggests would make her 'interesting' to men. Even the King is not at first attracted to her; only gradually does he recognize her real worth: Als ich vorhin das Mädchen sah, fühlt ich Mich gar nicht von ihm angezogen — Ist Es hübsch auch, viele sind doch schöner — — Doch jetzt, je mehr ich es betrachte, welch Ein rätselhaftes Wesen — Welcher Ernst Und Grazie in dem Aug, in der Gestalt, . . . (II, 290) But once he has realized he loves her, he learns to appreciate more and more the richness of her feelings as well as her intrinsic goodness. For all her modesty, Aschenbrödel is not without longings. Her dreams are all the greater because of her loneliness. She pleads repeatedly with her stepmother to be allowed to go to the ball and feels most oppressively the power of Spring that touches all things but leaves her bereft. Her desires are like the flames of the fire in her desolate room, "Immer strebend, immer zehrend . . . " Like the King she falls to the verge of despair in the fear that her desire is fruitless. If nothing in the world responds to the longing of her heart she fears its power can only destroy. O Sehnsucht, kannst du nur zerstören? Und deine Spuren, sind sie nichts als Rauch? — (Sie blickt durch das Fenster) — Aus grauen Wolken fällt der Regen In schweren Tropfen auf die Au — die Blätter Erschrecken und erzittern unter ihm — Ich armes Kind, mir ists, als fielen Tränen Und weinte die Natur! — Ja, Tränen fallen, Doch glaub' ich, sind es nur die eigenen! (II, 266) The misery of nature's indifference and the world's neglect of her true qualities are only dispelled by the fairy queen. Only

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through the grace of the queen do the sorrows of life disappear and does she learn to follow the fairy command, expressed as we have seen likewise to the King by Alastor: "Fort mit der Wehmut, lerne hoffen!" Unlike Cinderella in Platen's comedy or in the Etienne opera score, Olympia does nothing to help herself. As a result she seems in Grabbe's later version, where her role has been reduced, to be merely a puppet in the hands of the fairy powers. In the earlier version grace comes in response to her deepest longings. It is as if the very intensity of her dreams, involving as they do the danger of bitterness and disillusion, calls forth a response from the fairy world. Some individualization in the character of the hero and heroine was certainly necessary for dramatic purposes. In contrast to Etienne's opera where the music can carry the necessary variations of feeling, Grabbe has to arouse dramatic interest through the figures themselves. But by introducing into them as he does a fear of ideals and dreams rejected, the sense of allembracing harmony controlling their lives is threatened. It is, as it were, a particular miracle that saves them; though we are from the beginning aware that fortune will bring all things right, there are still moments in which we are very conscious of the possibility of a world without such benevolent gods. Many features of the comic action add to this impression of danger. Some of the comic scenes are, it is true, straightforward and uncomplicated enough. The activities of the gnome who is the companion of the fairies, for example, when he sneaks behind the guests at the court ball and drinks their wine without their noticing or when he projects his voice into those of Aschenbrödel's sisters, giving their honest answers to the questions of the Court Jester disguised as the king, are amusing variations on standard farcical proceedings. Even the literary satire with its rapid sequence of victims is essentially harmless. Grabbe is indulging his spleen without seriously challenging the values of those attacked. The jokes are simple and not very malicious and rely as much as anything on speed and lack of restraint. But other elements are disturbing. The misanthropic outbursts of Aschenbrödels father, the Baron, suggest in their

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violence a world ludicrously out of keeping with the harmony of the poetic fairy scenes. The hypocrisy of the Baroness and Aschenbrödels halfsisters or of the courtiers around the king seems a genuine, if outrageous, reflection of normal human behavior, while the court jester, watching their calculation and cunning, offers a sardonic and despondent commentary. A similarly upsetting picture emerges from other details: the parody of love, for instance, in the scenes between Cinderella's unwilling servants, the rat turned coachman and the cat made into a lady's maid, or the almost maniacal greed and selfishness of the Jewish money lender Isaak. The happy ending scarcely offers any resolution to the realities of the human situation that these figures represent. The transforming of a rat into Cinderella's coachman occurs in Perrault. Grabbe has added to this by making a cat into her lady's maid and pushing the two together as a secondary pair of lovers. The resulting relationship provides a curiously flavored humor where the rat is ridiculed because he is frightened of the girl and the maid in her pursuit of the man inadvertently reveals the cat on the prowl. The result is something more than the normal comic device whereby a secondary pair of lovers offers on a lower level a humorous echo of the main love affair. We have here an incipient attack on the human dream of love. To the rat who thinks they are bitting each other when they are kissing, the human lovers seem victims of absurd and incomprehensible desires. The woman seems ugly with her furless skin, for she has no tail and only two legs and two breats, and mostly concealed at that. Similarly meaningless to the rat is the Christian vision of heaven in which the lovers tentatively indulge and which the Queen of the Fairies seems to offer. His aim would be a rat's heaven where he will find his murdered father and the twelve children that he had eaten himself once and hopes to eat again in the world to come. Olympia admits in this regard that heavens seem to be a matter of taste. Thus the longing, that is the source of nobility to the King and Olympia and is expressed in love, is to the cat merely an uncontrollable instinct. Her lines here are clearly a parody.

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"O desire! sweet hope! — How I should like to catch and eat that dear good rat or that nice pretty, gentle dove — Desire sits between the head and the heart, in the neck perhaps, or behind my heart, in the back, — for my neck is swelling and my back arches" (II, 296). The fact is, these are animals dominated by their instincts and unable to understand anything except the satisfaction of their own needs. Yet in the context their directness and realism seems to throw into doubt the possibilities of any values beyond their own. On what grounds, we are forced to wonder, can men claim to be anything more? Olympia's stepmother and her two half-sisters are equally creatures of their own desires. In their portrait Grabbe uses clearly traditional elements of the story, but certain characteristics are interestingly emphasized. Above all it is clear for the girls that marriage is their only possibility for advancement. Limitless effort in intrigue und cunning is given to the achievement of the best possible match. When the mother gives a long speech of practical advice on how to capture a husband — a judicious mixture of flattery and proper self-esteem is required if you are to attract the admiration of a worthy man — it is only an old story to the daughters who know it all by instinct, as it were, and confidently play off their lovers against each other. Any admission of genuine feeling on their part, to allow their hearts to be touched, these are outside their consideration. Inordinate ambition gets the better of them. One reasonably good prospect after another is discarded since they finally hope to win the king himself. Thanks to the king's plan, the lively good sense of the jester and the cunning of the gnome, their falsehood is blatantly exposed. It may be the girls are out of their depth in the court circle, but their attitude, with its naive assurance that they are doing the only thing possible, is not at all different from the cynicism of those around them. Thus the court poet is quite unmoved when he hears himself described as a villain or scoundrel and only reacts indignantly when his verses are attacked. By bad writing he may have made himself seem a fool, his villainy simply shows him a man to be reckoned

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with. This narrow self-seeking is reflected on a more ingenuous level in the mobs who try to fit their daughters' clumsy feet into the delicate slipper Olympia has inadvertently left behind. All are agreed in a search for wealth and fortune that is irrespective of any qualities or merit they may possess. The Baron's main creditor Isaak provides an even more striking example of man completely the victim of the instinctive demands of his own self-interest. Isaak is one of the most lively and interesting creations of the play, and despite some unpleasant anti-Jewish elements in the portrayal it is worthwhile examining his role in some detail. His character possibly reflects earlier plans of Grabbe's, expressed in a letter of 1827, two years before the first reference to Aschenbrödel, to depict "einen wahrhaft gewaltigen, großartigen Juden" (Wuk. V, 284). In the context of the play some of these characteristics have certainly been reduced. Isaak is in part a farcical figure, the comic Jew who is absurdly the victim of his own monomania, but the scenes in which he appears have a vital spirit that derives from the individuality of his character. In the opening scene with the Baron Isaak's greed is purely ludicrous. He forces his face in first at the door then at the window to persuade the Baron to pay his debts, and finally emerges down the chimney to carry off all the goods he can — some even in his mouth. But later at the court when he appears as a kind of comic Shylock insistent on his bond, his relentless pursuit of the money owed him verges on the insane. Nothing can dissuade him from his pound of flesh. This limitless, irrational greed is no longer simply comic, but borders on the grotesque and frightening. When the rat turned coachman swallows the paper on which the debt is acknowledged, Isaak comes after him with unbounded fury. Nothing in the world exists for him but money and the power it grants. Yet the expression of his anger has an ironic overtone as if he were aware of his own folly. "Die Papierchen! die Papierchen! war die ganze Welt doch ein Wechselchen! ich wollte handeln in das Nichts, und neue Welten daraus schaffen, wie der Herr Gott!" Money and possessions are so necessary that nothing in the world matters

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beyond. It may be this separation from all other values that Grabbe sees as characteristically expressed in the Jew. Being isolated from the traditional standards of the community, he is completely dependent on the material. Hence when a Jewish father brings his daughters to try their luck with the glass slipper, the father s advice to the girls to squeeze their feet and bear any suffering for the moment by thinking of the future profits is a kind of parody of the rewards of Christian faith. "The pain is short but the joy eternal." (Kurz ist der Schmerz, und ewig ist die Freude.) (II, 307). The actual line echoes the final word of Schiller's Maid of Orleans confident in the hope of her future reward. Isaak himself is certainly without illusions about his fate as a Jew. When the Jester acting in the role of the King offers to make Isaak a Baron, he rejects the offer. "Und Baron! Was hab ich davon? Ein 'Von'! Aber vom Isaakchen komm ich damit doch nicht davon!" (III, 298). He will hardly avoid his fate that way. It would be better, he proposes, to make the Baron into a Jew rather than the other way round. Isaak interprets history in terms of business transactions. He explains that Joseph bought corn cheap in order to sell at a fine profit in the lean years, and even when Joseph's brothers sold him into captivity they got a good profit for their goods. As a result the Court Fool with mock enthusiasm proposes to employ Isaak as financial advisor to the court. Here Grabbe seems to be satirizing the economic conditions of his time. There is an allusion no doubt to the enormous role of the Rothschilds and other Jewish banking houses in the economic affairs of the early nineteenth century. The five Rothschild brothers, incidentally, received from Austria in 1815 the privilege of hereditary landowners and were all made Barons by the House of Habsburg in 1822. Isaak's prospective role in court policies, however, seems to go beyond any specific satirical objective and is a forecast of the triumphant materialism of the nineteenth century, where wealth and profit are the only considerations and the individual man becomes the victim of large-scale economic speculations. His startlingly modern plans for raising more money, through the state declaring itself

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bankrupt and paying only a fraction of its debts or establishing a monopoly in basic areas of production and raising prices accordingly, are completely free from all moral considerations. "Are we doing right?" the Fool asks? — "If you have the power, what does right matter?" (II, 299). If Isaak points to the triumphant future, it may be the Baron represents the decayed past. Where Isaak is all-aggressive selfassertion, the Baron is void of all will to action and his indolence has left the field open to his enemies. Like his fellow Baron in Scherz, he sits and watches the world's illusion, finding relief for his pent-up resentment against life in outbursts of anger at the nature of women or, on occasion and less pertinently, at the absurdly high reputation enjoyed by second-rate writers. The Baron is no longer, as he was in Perrault or Grimm, simply the victim of a shrewish wife, but one who has brought his fate on himself. He is a living example that man never learns from experience. Having escaped one unpleasant woman by her fortuitous death he has married another. In the revised version the Baron finds an unexpected but apt quotation for this situation from Schiller's Piccolomini — "das eben ist der Fluch der bösen Tat, daß sie fortzeugend Bösres muß gebären!" (II, 476). Unable to look out for Olympia or control the activities of his wife in any way, he takes refuge in smoking and philosophizing. "For everything earthly is smoke! Fame blows away in smoke, and love too (alas, my wife did not blow away, she stayed behind like the ashes after the fire" (II, 241). "Misfortune", he declares, "makes three things, drinkers, poets and philosophers. All three aim at getting drunk, the first on wine, the second on ether, the third on nonsense, many on all three at once" (II, 242). Where the King overcomes his moments of repugnance with the nature of life and man to seek a life of service for the good of the people, the Baron finds all things illusionary and meaningless. Hope and folly go hand in hand. The world is a comedy; we are nothing and therefore it is all the more important we should appear to be something. Appearance is more than truth, for the truth is all too pitiful. Aschenbrödel alone escapes his censure. If his attacks on woman have no relation to her, it may

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be because she is really of the fairy race. The fairy queen does claim her as a relative. There is a moment, however, when the Baron fears she is after all just a woman too and that the king's fate will not be so different from his own, even though he does not yet know what devilish creature may fit her feet into those pretty little slippers (II, 303). Where Isaak, the Baroness and her daughters, as well as the cat and the rat, are all victims of their desires, the Baron stands outside the world and observes its misery. This situation might be validly expressed in Schopenhauerian terms, for an interesting parallel with Schopenhauer's thought may be seen. In the one group belong the creatures of the will, driven on by forces they cannot control and cannot escape; for them there is no questioning as to what is right or wrong; they find things right because they want them so, because they correspond to their own needs and inclinations. That is their only source of value and they are scarcely aware of any other. The Baron, on the other hand, and perhaps the court jester as well, find themselves for moments at least free from the demands of the will. The Baron is able in humorous outbursts or under the influence of wine to stand aside and observe the world as an idea or concept; the court jester, a figure drawn very much under the influence of Shakespeare's fools, offers a sad but authoritative commentary on events from his privileged position of comic irresponsibility. To that extent the wheel of Ixion stands still. Naturally this independence is gained at the cost of all will to action. They are impotent, outside observers. The parallel may be taken one step further. For the Baron reminds us of Schopenhauer himself. Under his pessimism he is healthy and robust enough. There is a certain gaiety and good spirits in his revengeful and vindictive attacks on the world and on women, reminiscent of the colorful and vivid way in which Schopenhauer exposes the miseries and inadequacies of life. The primacy of the will over the moral must also be a challenge to Olympia and the King. It seems that the violence of the King's reaction to the iniquities of man, his desperate hatred for the sycophantic courtiers or the greedy mob, can be ex-

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plained by fears that his own ideals of true love and a life of service to his people are illusionary. The question arises whether anything exists beyond the desire for one's own advantage and whether he and Olympia are not equally creatures of the blind forces of life. The disturbing implications of the comic scenes and of the characters of the King and Aschenbrödel threaten the framework of the story, so that the simple Cinderella theme no longer prevails. The added subtlety of characterization and the bitter extravagance of the humor give the play vitality and spirit, but at the risk of destroying its unity. The center of the work must still lie in the idyll of the lovers and the harmony of the fairy tale. Grabbe in fact seems to have been proudest of the lyrical scenes among the fairies and his presentation of the love story. The fact that the sample scenes he sent to the journals in 1829 were from the fairy episodes and that he retained these most confidently in the later version shows he thought of them as the real attraction of the play. It may well be that the very emphasis on the disruptive gives new meaning to the contrasting harmony. Because we see characteristic Grabbe features in the individuality of the lovers or the problems of the comedy, we are more likely to understand the meaning of the fairy tale scenes. While he is certainly following a fashion that indulges our most obvious desires of wish-fulfillment, it would be a mistake to consider these episodes as purely derivative or insincere. The fairy tale world, like the medieval age of faith in Friedrich Barbarossa, offers an escape from the destructive drives in his own thinking. Here in this never-never land all things have meaning; true love and a life of service are possible because man's life is guided by loving hands. Whereas in Scherz the love story is constantly tinged with irony, here it has its own rights and arouses serious response. Despite the momentary doubts of the lovers that we have emphasized, we know of course from the beginning that all will turn out for the best. Grabbe has emphasized this by causing both Aschenbrödel and the King to recall a time of previous harmony. The King when he first hears of Olympia

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finds in her name an echo from his distant childhood. "Erinnerung und Ahnung erwachen in mir, ich weiß nicht woher" (II, 258). While Olympia herself, when she sees the fairy queen declares: Mir wirds, als kehrten alte Zeiten wieder, Als hört ich zaubervolle Wiegenlieder, Als lag ich an der Mutter Brust Und atmete des Kindes Lust! (II, 267) This impression of a lost paradise still to be regained is emphasized, though with a graceful lightness of tone, in the speeches of the fairy godmother and the fairies themselves. As they sing of the world's wonders, they proclaim the hope of benign heavenly powers seeking our welfare. It is in heaven that Olympia's purity of heart is recognized. Heaven looks on affectionately at the grief of the king when Olympia runs away, knowing all will be well. Nevertheless the lyrical scenes are the weakest feature of the play. Grabbe has not solved the problems inherent in the nature of the fairy tale drama. Fairy stories do not have sufficient concentration of incident or individuality in the characters to allow for easy dramatic presentation. Grabbe, like his Romantic predecessors, depends on the establishment of a lyrical mood, but no more than in the case of his predecessors does the quality of his verses compensate for the lack of dramatic tension. Only Shakespeare's incredible lyrical gifts enabled him to bring off in Midsummer Night's Dream something like a satisfying dramatic totality. Grabbe's verses, modelled on the Romantic lyric and perhaps on parts of Goethe's Faust, seek rather too self-consciously after the naive. The tone is uncertain, although there are moments of real charm and delicacy of feeling. His lyrical potentiality may be felt in the touching love scene of Act 3, where the King is still disguised. DER KÖNIG:

DER KÖNIG:

Weißt Du, wer ich bin? Bist du nicht Du? — Was soll Ich mehr noch wissen? Wär ich nun ein Fürst? War ich der Mächtigste der Herrscher?

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Könntest

OLYMPIA:

Du mächtiger in meinem Busen herrschen? DER KÖNIG: U n d wer bist du? OLYMPIA: Dein! DER KÖNIG: Mein! — O Lippen, Rein und geheiligt, nie verletzt — ihr Rosen, Die nie verwelken, stets erröten, herrlich Ertönen, was die Rose duftet, flüsternd — Nehmt meine Seele hin in diesem Kuß, Verzehret sie in euren Doppelflammen! OLYMPIA: Wie dunkel wird es — Ich vergehe! — (II, 295)

Yet we feel the passage should have ended with "diesem Kuß". The next lines with the "Doppelflammen" and "ich vergehe" seem to fall out of tone and betray Grabbe's constant penchant for the excessive. The opening lines of the scene where the fairies first appear might also show some of the possibilities in Grabbe's poetry: DIE FEEN: ERSTE F E E : ZWEITE F E E : ERSTE F E E :

Wir wiegen uns auf Rosenduft, Und Wollust zittert durch die Luft. Hört! Die Schneeglöckchen klingen! Und wie die Quellen singen! Sie läuten, sie singen Den Frühling herein! Er naht, er naht aus fremder Zone, Und sein Gewand ist Sonnenschein! (II, 261)

Or later their acclaim of Spring: Schützet den Lenz Mit segnender Huld! Wie in dem Auge Trunkener Liebe Abendstern schimmert, Feurger und schöner Als an dem Himmel, Schimmere die Welt! (II, 262) There is grace and simplicity in the queen's words; quoted already by Grabbe in one of his letters to Kettembeil: Nie freut' ich mich mehr meiner Feenkraft, Als wenn sie Heil aus Unheil schafft. In ihrem großen Mißgeschick

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Schenk' ich Olympien das höchste Glück, Die Krone und die Liebe! (II, 264) But other passages, the fairies' greetings to their queen or the description of Olympia's gown created by the fairies from the wonders of the east, fail to raise far befond the banal. It is as if Grabbe's muse would not respond to the demands he put on it. To this extent he is trying to force his normal means of expressiveness into an alien mode. In the revised version where the abridgement of the comic has put corresponding emphasis on the lyrical elements of the plan, the inadequacy of the poetry to hold our attention becomes clearer. With this mood dominating, the play does seem unconvincing and its failure to arouse interest is understandable. It would be too much to claim for the earlier version an effective balance. The elements still pull against each other. The lyrical parts are not rich enough to sustain our attention; our sensitiveness to the fairy concord is too shattered by the drastic vigor of the comedy. Nevertheless the very contrast of harmony and discordance stimulates our excitement. If not a success, the play is still more than a historical curiosity. It reveals the clash within Grabbe himself. He expresses in the lovers his dream of the ideal, while showing at the same time through bizarre exaggeration the bestial, pernicious and absurd elements of human nature. Through a variety of characters he portrays man as the victim of forces which prevent him achieving the ideal state he dreams of. We see men exposed to greed or drink or lust or the morbid desire for recognition and admiration. But Grabbe is too involved to be able to stand apart and ridicule the extent of human folly. He cannot, like the Baron here or the Baron in Scherz, look on and laugh at the human condition. Such a negative cynicism is itself a folly, as Grabbe reveals through the two characters. Thus the satirical sallies in the drama against contemporary literary hacks or the ironic social criticism do not in the end prevail. Satire always gives way to the distorting glass of the grotesque in which all human ambitions are threatened. Grabbe longs for another solution, in this case expressed in

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the purity of heart that sees through worldly distortion and error into the true. The play contrasts appearance and reality. To the Baron all is smoke — at heart we are nothing and we must thus rely on appearance. Aschbrödel takes up this image in the monologue from which we have quoted when she expresses her fear that desire can only destroy, its traces are nothing but smoke. "O Sehnsucht, . . . deine Spuren, sind sie nichts als Rauch?" But her fears are relieved. It is given to her and to the King to recognize the reality of truth beneath the false exterior and to devote their life to love and goodness. In Scherz too the heroine saw in the misshapen body of Mollfels the genuine heart of the lover. The solution then bordered on the absurd. We could not seriously believe in such a discordant hero. Now the solution is presented hesitantly in terms of a fairy tale. Even here every moment of tenderness or nobility of feeling is countered by a scene of brutal cynicism. It is as if Grabbe is castigating himself again and again for the dreams he dares put forth. Yet the dreams recur. Friedrich Barbarossa took us back into an age of faith where men's acts were filled with meaning. Now the King and Aschenbrödel are taught to hope their deepest feelings may also find expression in the world of life. The words of the Queen of the Fairies to Aschenbrödel finally echo in our ears: Wenn Freude lodert, oder Kummer weint, So sprich die Freude, sprich den Kummer In großen Taten aus — Die Freude wird Durch sie erhaben, und der Kummer richtet An ihnen sich voll stolzen Trostes auf, Und beide stellen ihre ewgen Monumente Der Welt dahin! (II, 294)

IX NAPOLEON ODER DIE HUNDERT TAGE

In the Hohenstaufen dramas Grabbe managed to remain within the bounds of traditional dramatic structure. For all the originality and novelty of purpose we have seen in these plays, Grabbe at least on the surface tried to follow the accepted conventions of the drama and organize his werk in terms of a normal exposition, crisis and catastrophe. Napoleon oder die hundert Tage, which followed in the year after Heinrich VI, is a play virtually in a new mold. Here we have no suggestion of the hero involved in some form of tragic dilemma, no moral study of a great man exposed to the power of fate. Instead there is a realistic weighing up of the atmosphere and circumstances of Napoleon's career, the forces against which he was working in his final gamble for power and the conditions that led to his defeat. It is a play that moves beyond the study of individuals to the course of the world itself. Although each scene and action has its center in Napoleon, he himself only appears on the stage on a limited number of occasions. Other figures emerge as the progress of the action requires. Lively and individual though they are as character portrayals, they too rarely appear in more than one or two scenes. Only a few minor individuals, one time members of Napoleon's grand army, for example, take some sort of role throughout the whole play. Others, the citizens of Paris, the courtiers returned from exile who surround the throne of Louis XVIII, Bliicher and the representative figures of the Prussian army, Wellington and the British, have their place only as the course of events rolls by. The dramatic tension of the last two acts is maintained by the

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battles that culminate at Waterloo. But the battles do not reflect a struggle of conflicting ideas. The traditional battles of tragedy seem like an extension of the moral conflicts of the heroes. Here on the contrary there is a reproduction of reality free from any ultimate values or meaning. The outcome of these historically so significant events depends on a variety of circumstances. The will power and capacity for action of the individual leaders contribute to the result, as do the morale and energy of the troops, but also there is the force of chance, incalculable, beyond any individual's control, that helps to determine the day. It would be interesting to study the stages by which Grabbe came to such a startingly new dramatic plan. Unfortunately only the final printed version is available. His letters seem to indicate frequent rewriting and possible changes of approach but nothing of the earlier drafts has survived. Grabbe's first reference to his plans is in a letter of August 1829 at a time when he was still very occupied with the Hohenstaufen. Towards the end of the year when the play was already "under way" he began extensive new background reading on Napoleon's life. Writing continued intermittently through the whole of 1830, interrupted by recurrent bad health and the stringent requirements of Grabbe's professional work. Earlier plans seem to have been in the usual blank verse. What was suitable for Schiller's Wallenstein, he maintained however, did not seem to fit with the contemporary scene. In a letter of July 1830 he justified to Kettembeil his use of prose, though claiming his desire to use a "powerfully Biblical and Lutheran language" (Wuk. V, 345). In the next months enthusiastic references emphasize the excitement of the plans and their aptness for the present time, but also the struggle in which he was involved. In November he apologizes for his slow progress. Meine tolle Lebensart und das ewige Sitzen bei dem Ungetiim von Napoleon hatte mir Bluterbrechen zugezogen und vorigen Donnerstag hing mein Leben von 1/4 Stunde mehr oder weniger Apothekerschnelligkeit ab. (Wuk. V, 353)

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Grabbe persisted, however, struggling with this difficult and complicated material. In February 1831 the complete manuscript was finished and in the hands of the printer. Already in the first reference to the plan Grabbe had added the subtitle "The 100 days". In contrast to the Hohenstaufen where he had to contract events covering several decades of history, Grabbe seems to have had this concentration in time in mind from the beginning. It proved a most fruitful plan. For within this brief and exciting period Grabbe was able to capture the contrasting moods of a whole era. Memories go back to the Revolution itself, to the excitement of the early days and the bitter disillusions of the Reign of Terror. Hopes and fears are lived through again in little. The empty outworn life of the old regime, now painfully revived with the restoration of the Bourbons, is contrasted with the energy and enthusiasm inspired by Napoleon. Once more, and for the last time, he drives France passionately forward to the conquest of Europe. The opening scene, which must be among the most impressive in all dramatic literature, shows us the mood of Paris on the eve of Napoleon's escape from Elba. In the streets of the city under the arcades of the palais royale we see the passing parade of the people. The scene is centered around two discharged and half starving members of the Imperial Guard, but quite naturally and without seeming to be forced, we meet people of all kinds, the hawkers at their stalls, a woman renting chairs, an old milliner woman, one time officers or ordinary officials, even emigrant noblemen, even the royal Duke of Berry. It is characteristic of the technique that our knowledge of the people's feelings does not come primarily from recollections or discussion. Episodes are chosen to externalize the feelings and reveal them dramatically in action. The peepshow exhibit of the battle before Moscow and the retreat across the Beresina brings out violent quarrels over the incidents of the past, the announcement of new measures by the Bourbons to establish order brings to mind exciting proclamations from times gone by, the sensations of the revolution and the news of Napoleon's triumphs, when all men's history seemed to have

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its center in the streets of Paris. The movement of the scene is carried by a growing sense of expectancy. The thought of Napoleon lies under the surface as a hidden point of focus. All are waiting but no one yet knows what for. The next scenes which move us to the court show both the loyalty of the old nobles to the King and the futile inadequacy of his advisers and closest followers. The incomprehension they show for the changed times, their thinblooded unwillingness to face facts, makes it evident how little they can resist any man of power and energy. We are ready for Napoleon; scene 4 shows him on the isle of Elba. Here again Grabbe attempts to concentrate a range of emotions into the one scene. At first there is the emptiness of exile, the sad loyalty of those who have stayed with their old leader, the dream of return. Gradually we realize that all along Napoleon's plans are under way, that longing has turned into action and decision. Grabbe had always, from Gothland on, probably through the influence of Shakespeare, attempted to present the feelings and moods of his characters directly on the stage, rarely by selfconscious reflections or secondhand reports. Such a direct technique runs the danger of being artificial and awkward. Grabbe's skill in using it varies. But here and in the opening scene he is at his best, impressing on us with vivid directness the reality of his characters. Although the scope of action in Napoleon has epic features, the technique in detail is intensely dramatic. Here there is little commentary, no standing aside to observe, but the embodiment of events in doing and acting. Act 2 shows us the advance of Napoleon as it affects the reactions of others, the stupid vanity of the King's courtiers, the excitement of the people, the plans of the one time police minister Fouche and the liberal constitutionalist Carnot to make use of the Emperor for their own purposes. Napoleon himself does not appear; only the irresistible speed of his advance has its echoes on the stage. In Act 3 with the royalists fled, a new outbreak of revolutionary violence is seen on the streets of Paris. The demagogic leader Jouve incites once again the brutality and excesses of revolutionary mob rule. But the speed of

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Napoleon's organization restores order. In the third scene Napoleon appears again, in control, planning, organizing, determined to master his own and the world's fate. This period of external triumph continues until Act 4 with the proclamation of a new constitution and the ceremonies on the Field of Mars. Then interest shifts to his new enemies, to Blucher, to the soldiers, volunteers and professionals, in the Prussian army, later to the British, foolishly dancing but then in heroic mood as the romantic Highlanders march to battle and the red squares of the guards form on Mont Saint Jean. Napoleon appears on the battle fronts, calm and confident, weighing his chances, decisive and vigorous, but he is no longer the overpowering leader carrying all before him, merely one general among others, faced with enemies equally determined. The play ends as history ordains, his army overwhelmed, himself in flight, Blucher and Wellington united in victory. Grabbe is writing fifteen years later in an age of disillusion when petty and reactionary autocrats had re-established their control. The history of the immediate past was still very much alive in people's minds. The years of peace had brought with them the homely comforts and self-satisfaction that were to find expression in the Biedermeier, but men still felt the hopes and passions of the Napoleonic era.1 Grabbe's involvement with this material was a political act. This is the only period in his life when his letters show real interest in passing political events. Into the play he could "shake out", he said, "all the ideas I have had about the revolution" (Wuk. V, 344), and again, "all my spirit, each of my views must go into it" (Wuk. V, 345). He was proud that he had foreseen many of the events that culminated with the rise of the Duke of Orleans to the French throne in July 1830 and put a note in a preface insisting that the actual planning of the play had preceded the events of that year (II, 317). But Grabbe's politics were not tendentious in any limited sense; he defended no cause, justified no party or faith, but observed with the objectivity of the historian. Only 1 Cf. Albert Léon Guérard, Reflections on the Napoleonic Legend (New York, 1924).

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in the portrait of the courtiers around the French King are his sympathies revealed. Where Napoleon's foreign enemies are presented with understanding, the scenes among the royalist sympathizers are openly satirical and the behavior of the foppish courtiers borders on farce. Grabbe's hatred of the royalist reaction throughout Europe is thus revealed, but his antagonisms went further. In this material he was able to show his hatred for the conventional life of comfort and narrow selfseeking. Napoleon seemed a light of hope in an age of boredom and degeneration. Grabbe shows this very clearly in the opening paragraph of an essay, written in 1830, on the published correspondence between Goethe and Schiller. Die Guillotine der Revolution steht still, und ihr Beil rostet, — mit ihm verrostet vielleicht auch manches Große, und das Gemeine, in der Sicherheit, daß ihm nicht mehr der Kopf abgeschlagen werden kann, erhebt gleich dem Unkraut sein Haupt. Napoleons Schlachtendonner sind gleichfalls verschollen. Seine Feinde denken seiner nicht mehr, weil sie ihn nicht mehr sehen noch hören, — Freunde, die ihn kannten, sterben allmählich aus, — jugendliche Enthusiasten bewundern wohl seinen Kriegsglanz, von dem ihnen noch einige Augenzeugen zu erzählen wissen, begreifen aber schwerlich seinen Charakter, seine Sendung und seine Zeit. Mit Napoleons Ende ward es mit der Welt, als wäre sie ein ausgelesenes Buch, und wir ständen, aus ihr hinausgeworfen, als die Leser davor und repertierten und überlegten das Geschehene. . . . (Wuk. V, 91) Yet the play is not an extravagant portrayal of the heroic. The picture of Napoleon that emerges is a long way distant from the dreams of hero-worship. The early scenes breathe the hope of something new; doubts, skepticism, irony, all are to be carried away by the great man. But we are left uncertain how far Napoleon really corresponds to this expectation. In the Hohenstaufen dramas Grabbe presented his hero-kings from many points of view and in many contexts; we saw them through the eyes of their enemies as well as their vacillating allies and their friends. Yet all judgments contributed to a picture of heroic stature. Napoleon too is observed from all sides but proves a far more ambiguous und uncertain figure. This is so much the

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case that many critics have inclined to presume a change of plan in the course of writing. They point to a letter of July 1830 where Grabbe takes a decidedly more critical view than is implied in his essay. Napoleon ist übrigens eine so große Aufgabe nicht. Er ist ein Kerl, den sein Egoismus dahin trieb, seine Zeit zu benutzen — . . . er ist kleiner als die Revolution, und im Grunde ist er nur das Fähnlein an deren Mäste, — nicht Er, die Revolution lebt noch in Europa. . . . Nicht Er, seine Geschichte ist groß. (Wuk. V, 346) The suggestion of a basic inconsistency in the work as it now stands, however, seems unsatisfactory. There is uncertainty as to the greatness of Napoleon's role but this uncertainty belongs to history too. It is clear that a hero so close in time to Grabbe's own age could not be treated like such semi-legendary figures as Faust and Don Juan or even Friedrich Barbarossa and Heinrich VI. There are, admittedly, suggestions that Napoleon might assume for his followers a mythical role. Nature images, above all the recurrent references to Père la Violette who is to return like the violets in Spring, imply something beyond the human. Associations are made with Prometheus and Christ as if Napoleon were a new type of man. But myth yields to reality, to the presentation of a human being with human faults. The ambiguity of the hero's role is already apparent in the first act. Through the scenes in Paris we are led to anticipate a titanic figure beyond common human weaknesses. But in our first view of him on Elba Napoleon seems both boastful and vain. Despite the sharpness of his judgments and the vigor of his decisions there is something disturbing in the arrogant and even vainglorious posturing of this short and aggressive man. His thoughts of the past are touched by an almost self-pitying melancholy. Only as the scene develops do we recognize his power. The loyalty he is able to command in his close associate General Bertrand and his other followers helps us to appreciate what enormous achievements he has been capable of and how passionately he suffers under his present fate. Then we begin to wonder if it is out of place to think of ordinary vanity in such a man. The very scope of his ambitions makes us aware of

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someone beyond normal standards of judgment. As his plans appear we recognize how much will be required to resist this strength and how tremendous is the vitality and will power he asserts. On his next appearance in Act 3 our feelings towards him are buoyed up by knowledge of his astonishing advance. He has conquered after all by his name alone. He has no army behind him; his enemies in France have simply collapsed. Now we see him at his full power, decisive, confident, overwhelmingly assertive. It is difficult not to feel Grabbe's love for his hero at this stage as he conveys the unrestricted scope of Napoleon's imagination, his gift for details, his limitless capacity for turning thoughts into action. His stepdaughter Queen Hortense suggests it is Bertrand who is the great man if he can keep in mind and carry out the innumerable orders Napoleon gives, but we are willing to recognize Napoleon is right, that it is not by talent such as Bertrand's that the world is set in motion, only by the genius of action (Cf. II, 401). Yet our doubts have not been entirely dispelled. The judgments of others have to be taken into account. We cannot ignore the absence in Napoleon of all values and all concerns other than his own advance. The Duchess of Angouleme who alone among his royalist enemies recognizes how dangerous he is and alone has the determination to resist him, sees nothing great in a tyrant who sacrifices all that seems valuable to her — loyalty, justice, honor, love — simply for his own fame and power (Cf. II, 343). Fouche and Carnot, intriguing and selfseeking politicians though they are, at least have in their own ways some ideal of the revolution behind them and consider the establishing of a situation where its purposes may still prevail. Napoleon, as they clearly recognize, serves nothing but his own egoism. Even Hortense boldly questions Napoleon's motives, his unceasing need for action and achievement — he calls his battles the field of honor but they seem rather the field of his own vanity. It may be true that Napoleon like the heroes of the earlier fragments of Marius und Sulla stands above the moral judgments of his fellow men. In the earlier play the actions and purposes of the minor figures, however

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directed and however well-intentioned, collapse before the dominant power of character of the two great heroes. But here the doubts that have been aroused about Napoleon seem confirmed. In the opening scene of the fourth act when Napoleon publicly announces his new constitution on the Field of Mars, he is no longer the clear master of events. This moment of splendor is not shown directly but seen through the eyes of the spectators and notably under the sarcastic comments of the cynical demagogue Jouve. This technique Grabbe usually reserved for those he is satirizing — we saw it in the portrayal of Don Ottavio in Don Juan und Faust who never appears except under the commentary of Don Juan, or in the course of Napoleon itself when the attitudes of the royalists are ironically observed and mocked by the citizens of Paris. Now it is applied to the hero. Historically the proclamation of the new constitution following on so many others, fine sounding but empty of meaning, seems to have been greeted with some disappointment and cynicism in Paris. But the judgments of Jouve are extreme in their harshness. He sees in the pomp-loving Emperor only a play actor and deceiver, gloriously dressed in a green uniform that is little more than a theatrical costume. The times have come, he asserts, when we cannot tell a theatre princess from the real one. Napoleon stands majestic and all are impressed. But if we saw him at home what would he be like? Gossiping, distrait, irritable or cheerful like everyone else. Is he really a great man? He has learnt to make a great noise and stand on others' necks. In the face of this commentary Napoleon never again entirely convinces us. Granted that Jouve's comments are those of a man defeated, their bitterness throws doubts on the validity of all Napoleon's acts. Even in the brutal realities of the war, in the scene showing the cruel training of the horses, or in the pictures of men waiting for battle, where we see the manliness required in the command of an army, our enthusiasm no longer carries us away. When Napoleon is shown on the battlefield asleep because he knows that, despite all the turmoil, the time for battle has not yet come, we realize what self-command this needs, yet have to question how much this

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supposed calm is pose, how much real. Is it done to impress his soldiers or even perhaps to deceive himself? These questions remain unanswered. But they may equally well be asked of the real Napoleon as of Grabbe's. Grabbe reproduces the ambiguity of real life. No final objective judgment is available. The opinions of the Duchess of Angouleme or of Hortense or of the republican politicians or Jouve have no ultimate validity and reveal as much as anything their own limitations. It is an essential part of Grabbe's technique that we should see the reality of the opposition. This is no easy world to conquer. Only outwardly do others yield to the fact of power; their feelings and opinions remain largely independent. It must also be borne in mind that no conclusion may be drawn from the ending. Just as is the death of Heinrich VI, Napoleon's final defeat is a fact of history; it yields no moral implications, it is not interwoven with the course and spirit of his actions, but is the result of accidents and conflicts outside his control. Hence the assertion of Napoleon himself at the end that victory or defeat does not affect his real identity: "Mein Glück fällt, ich falle nicht" (II, 458). The inclination of earlier critics was to read into Napoleon's defeat some inherent spiritual failure, to see a connection between this ending and a moral betrayal, whether of the spirit of the revolution or in his failure to provide a liberal constitution or to establish a reasonable peace. Even the desertion of Josephine many years before the marriage with Marie-Louise was seen as a moral turning point. References are made in the course of the play to these factors and Napoleon himself points to the working of some ultimate fate in his life, contrasting the happy star that lay over his early actions with the dark shadows before Moscow and the uncertainty of his present fortune. But if fate plays a role it is a passing conception only in Napoleon's mind, never as a final and determining force. To ask of Napoleon a moral purpose or to expect to see in him the leader of a political faith is to judge him in a false light. When Napoleon attempts in the course of the play to justify his actions or explain his purposes in terms of some

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higher cause, his arguments are never convincing. When he tells Hortense that all his wars have been forced on him, that he wanted the defense of the west against the Russians, that his object was peace and the welfare of man, we simply cannot believe him. He himself gives up hope of trying to persuade her when he claims it is hopeless to argue with women. Earlier, in Act I, he declared the balance of power was an illusion created by English merchant attitudes, that the happiest times are when the greatest people rule and that France under his leadership was inspired to this role. But this too all seems the thinnest of rationalizations. Even his political cynicism does not seem entirely serious. He adopts an ironic tone towards his enemies who call him a tyrannic dictator and disturber of world peace when their own positions seem equally dependent on the use of power and when they do not hesitate at the partition of Poland. But this too seems like an excuse; it clearly is not the whole truth and Napoleon's tone implies that he knows he is exaggerating. His arguments do not matter. What counts is the inner conviction of his own right, the assurance that his ambitions, his career, his dreams are justified because they are his. If there is value to his life it is because his urge to action, his vitality and power overcome all scruples and create their own laws. This confidence does not desert him. He never hesitates to accept all men's sacrifices for his sake. Even in the last scene during the worst bloodshed of the battle he calmly accepts the loss of his men who have been the comrades of so many wars. Though defeat is certain he still sends the remains of his beloved guards to their death. The wounded, he had declared, do not know for what reason they are suffering, but in forty years the whole world will know (cf. II, 450). Napoleon feels he has given life a spirit and genuine meaning for which men's devotion and sacrifice are justified. In a last speech he prophesies what is to come after him. Not real peace but idleness and half disguised quarrels. Lying and frivolity, diplomatic assemblies, the idolizing of actors and opera stars, fill out the days. Only somewhere in the future will men realize what is lost and the gap which his defeat leaves be filled.

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One particular speech of Napoleon's should be emphasized if we are to understand him further. Speaking to Bertrand on Elba in a moment of reflection while watching the setting sun go down, Napoleon wonders if he should not have allowed the revolution to run its course, whether the results of all his efforts had not been merely to shore up the old order. Ließ ich den empörten Wogen der Revolution ihren Lauf, dämmt ich sie nicht in ihre Ufer zurück, — schwang ich nicht Schwert und Szepter, statt das Beil der Guillotine immer weiter stürzen zu lassen, — wahrhaftig, wie dort am Strande die Muscheln, wären all die morschen Throne, samt den Amphibien, die darin vegetieren, hinweggeschwemmt, und schöner als jenes Abendrot begrüßten wir vielleicht die Aurora einer jungen Zeit. — Ich hielt mich zu stark, und hoffte sie selbst schaffen zu können. (II, 349) This speech is important because it offers in advance some explanation for the significant role of the demagogue Jouve. Criticism has found the place in the play of this invented revolutionary difficult to understand. We have seen that the scenes in which he appears have an overhanging effect, leaving a weight of doubt on Napoleon's career which is not dispelled by the further sequence of the action. Without suggesting that Jouve more than anyone else can serve as an arbiter, the meaning of his role must be understood if we are to judge Napoleon himself. Jouve reminds us of some of the brutal figures in the earlier Grabbe plays, particularly in Gothland. As leader of the bloodthirsty mob his violent impulses for destruction find temporary expression in a cruel and arbitrary tyranny. He shows an impassioned hatred and scorn of mankind, seeing the mob as filth that can be gulled and led wherever he wishes. Above all he detests the hypocritical half-heartedness of the gaping bystanders who look on at the course of history. A ludicrous master tailor, who is unable to separate any cause from his own self-interest and estimates the changing times in terms of his own petty profits, meets a horrible end from Jouve's ferocity. The mob incited by his death recalls the days of the terror. Because they have no red caps yet to distinguish them, they color their hair with the tailors blood and cut off his fingers

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for cigars. A merchant who tries to sell the revolutionary colors at a profit is beaten and strangled by Jouve. But Jouve's anger does not always take such a moral turn; the captain of the gendarmes, even an ex-guardsman, all who come in his way, are attacked. In this scene Jouve seems a bloodthirsty madman. But at his next appearance when Napoleon has restored order and Jouve has to control himself, we recognize the source of his conduct in an extravagantly embittered disillusion. Now he manages the manners of a cynical man of the world, commenting on Napoleon with a certain elegant irony. But this surface humor cannot hold back his inward bitterness. He describes the woman he meets on the Field of Mars, good enough as a temporary distraction, as "another beast smiling from vanity" (II, 396). And later he bursts out: Die ehebrecherische Kokette! Ob nicht im unerforschten Innern der Erde schwarze Höllenlegionen lauern und endlich einmal an das Licht brechen, um all den Schandflitter der Oberfläche zu vernichten? Oder ob nicht einmal Kometen mit feuerroten, zu Berge stehenden Haaren — Doch was sollten unsre Albernheiten, was sollte ein elendes, der Verwesung entgegentaumelndes Gewimmel, wie dieser Haufen, Erdentiefen oder Sternhöhen empören? (II, 399)

Napoleon's failure to win over Jouve reveals the perhaps inevitable limitation of his achievement. Jouve's love of blood is not arbitrary insanity, it recalls that need for bloodletting felt by Marius and Sulla if the decadence of civilization was to be overcome. Napoleon too sees the need for cruelty if life is to be revived when he talks of Europe as an old man become childish again and in need of the punishment rod. Through his very ruthlessness and love of conquest he brings with him a new temporary vitality and passion, but he has not been able to create a new spirit or feeling of rebirth in man which alone might restore Jouve's dreams. Napoleon cannot, any more than Heinrich VI, revive that age of youth that Friedrich Barbarossa and the medieval heroes seemed to enjoy, when the passing events of life were filled with passion and meaning. If these lingering dreams may be felt under the surface of the play the reality of Napoleon's career is given the primary

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role. Although he cannot overcome such deep-rooted cynicism, his vitality is enough to arouse the world to action. His deeds have stirred energy and life in his enemies as well as in the French. Grabbe gives great care and love to the portrayal of these enemies. Only the royalists are seen from an antagonistic and satirical point of view. The breadth of sympathy which Grabbe showed towards men of varying groups and nations apparently left out the world decadence of the rococo. But even here the portrayal of the King has a certain respect for his dignity. He is shown as a man utterly unsuited for his role and caught in an impossible position, yet hoping to do his best. The Duchess of Angouleme, in contrast to her absurd husband, has the energy to resist. Interesting for the tone of the play is the nature of her belief in God. Although she has doubts of her faith she knows God comes "when people fail" (II, 341). She turned to God in despair at the emptiness of life. This faith is born out of the decadence of her time but thus becomes a power of strength. The wealth of her nature and extent of her demands on the world make this hold necessary. By her faith she has the courage to face realities that the other royalists cannot accept. She alone knows that the King's return is hated by the people, that his rule can only be maintained by force and decisive acts which ignore all vague cravings for popularity. Despite Napoleons strictures on the stupidity of his enemies who have come to the top by family tradition rather than merit, the long period of wars has brought to power some opponents worth of him. Particularly in Bliicher Grabbe has embodied the resilient energy of Prussia. The old leader, bluff, outspoken, direct, impetuous, conveys a real zest for battle and for life itself. There is a vigorous individuality in this portrait, as there is in the brief sketches of the other German leaders, Gneisenau and Biilow. The scenes in the Prussian camp show with some grotesque humor but without sentimentality the comradeship of battle, the community of men in a shared cause. Unexpected are moments of literary satire, when various intellectual volunteers among the troops reveal how they cling to their favorite writers from Berlin. Grabbe's sympathy for the men of action,

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for the professionals against these theoretical patriots, is to be expected, but he does some justice to the intellectual enthusiasm of the years of revolt when the soldiers grandly sing together Theodor Körners famous poem of battle: "Lützow's wilde Jagd". In the study of the British too Grabbe is reasonably successful. His skill in capturing a national spirit or character was seen in the Hohenstaufen plays, for instance in the study of the Milanese. In some scenes among the British troops Grabbe indulges local patriotism by showing the spirit and skill of their Hannoverian allies. A local sharpshooter is able to spot the individual enemies where the English see nothing but trees. But the Duke of Brunswick's anger with the British refusal to think ahead and take the dangers seriously, is effectively realistic. In the picture of the British officers frivolously dancing in Brussels when Napoleon is advancing, but then summoning up their courage for a prolonged and determined resistance against odds on Mont Saint Jean, Grabbe celebrates what seems to be a recurring pattern of British history. Wellington too is effectively drawn. In Aschenbrödel one character expresses a cynical view of Wellington's victory, comparing his stand with that of a woman petulantly refusing the advances of the man, but here he shows the courage of the general who sees simply and directly what is to be done and carries out his plans despite all difficulties. It is notable that both Blücher and Wellington accept the need for determined action whatever the outcome. Lord Somerset suggests to Wellington in the middle of the battle (expressing a suspicion often recurrent in British history) that England is sacrificing her blood for an ungrateful world. But Wellington laconically insists there is no alternative except victory or death (Cf. II, 444). In the final speech of the play Blücher thinks of what is to come: "May the future be worthy of you. . . . If it is not, comfort yourself that your sacrifice deserved something better" (II, 459). Although neither supports a persuasive cause or offers hope to his men for a better world as a result of their efforts, they both rely on the need for manly resistance, for courage and determination in the pursuit of duty.

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Grabbe's play offers serious difficulties for presentation on the stage. During the course of writing he suggested in a letter that he had abandoned thoughts of the theatre. His constant ill-success had depressed him. "Als Drama, der Form nach, habe ich mich nach nichts geniert. Die jetzige Biihne verdient's nicht . . . " (Wuk. V, 351). Above all the battle scenes are a great problem. Critics have suggested the surprising closeness of the text at times to a film script. There is a rapid movement from vast panoramic shots of the battlefield to groups of the commanding officers and to the troops themselves. On the stage the difficulty is to avoid having the broad-scale scenes merely as background. Many arrangements of the work have been made in recent years and the play presented with all modern theatre techniques. But when the stage directions read for example "The Prussian army in retreat" (II, 432) or "The heights of Mt. Saint Jean. On them Wellington's army" (II, 443), with all sorts of further details, this necessarily means a backcloth picture or at best — and this has been attempted — a back screen with moving pictures projected on it. Yet Grabbe requires the movement of the officers among the troops and in the thick of the fighting. Bliicher and Gneisenau ride on horse back with the army corps; Wellington and his staff officers move inside the squares of the guards and are under fire from French cannon balls. If this is avoided the result is to depend on second hand and traditional techniques. Grabbe does not omit such accepted methods as discussions of the battle's progress among the commanding officers, messengers with the latest reports, shouts from the troops. But these, like the background noises of martial music and roaring cannons, are interwoven with the direct presentation of battle itself. Grabbe's method is in fact as always to present events as a direct visual experience. He sacrifices any kind of easy expository technique for this purpose. Here he wants to capture the life and mood of battle, the excitement of strategy and tactics plus the fearful reality of war with its blood, courage and the fear of death. Much of this can be conveyed on the stage, but certain crucial scenes will have to remain sketchy. In an imaginative reading we can perhaps be

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more easily carried away by the passion of battle with which the play ends. The problem of putting the play on the stage, however, has not been a matter of such techniques alone. Only in fairly recent times has the real quality of the play begun to be appreciated. The experiments of the naturalist theatre as well as of expressionism and more recently the influence of Brecht's "epic theatre" have opened for us new possibilities of dramatic art. If Grabbe is now recognized as a forerunner of such "open" form it is Napoleon and to some extent the next work Hannibal which has established this reputation. The drama does not depend on a clash of individual protagonists. There is no scene where the leading figures meet; there are no momentous climaxes where Napoleon comes face to face with his enemies. For such a meeting to have significance we should be involved in a symbolic clash of contrasting values. Alfred Bergmann has in his new edition given us a list of characters which always before this had been omitted. The list itself covers several pages, mostly minor figures who appear for a moment or two in the cycle of events. Those who take the leading roles are politically dominant but they are not in the normal sense representative of opposing moral principles. Each man is understood within his particular historical background; he does not stand for or typify any cause or way of thinking beyond his own. Grabbe has moved beyond the possibility of representing life through a symbolic moral conflict. He needs to show reality through a multiplicity of figures and events in order to convey the manysided aspects of life. Once this is recognized, much follows. In the first place there is only a limited sense in which we are sympathetically involved in the fate of the hero. We do not associate ourselves with him, do not allow ourselves the illusion of living in his experience. Grabbe does not, like Brecht, deliberately break this illusion, but Napoleon is observed from the outside and his fate is only understandable in the circumstances of the world around him. There is as a consequence no progressive development of character, no slow unfolding of significant features in an individual's

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nature. The characters are there all at once from the beginning. New aspects are revealed by different circumstances but there is no question of our understanding growing gradually deeper. The play lacks a normal firm center. The scenes do not always unfold in a perspective line; they are connected by the central theme. There is no clear-cut dramatic highpoint, even in a sense no beginning and no end. What we do have is an extract from history, made divisible like a chapter in a book by the nature of events themselves as much as by the plan of the author. As a reflection of history the play offers no meaning beyond itself, and certain critics have tended to see the work as the saga of a pointless world. Stress is laid on the sense of impermanence underlying the action. We follow the progress of the passing world in much the sense of the peepshow exhibition in the opening scene, watching "die ganze Welt, wie sie rollt und lebt". All that man does is inconclusive; nothing is stable. At the Emperor's ceremonial proclamation of his constitution a lady claims this is the end of the revolution. Jouve replies: "Auf das Ende, Madame, folgt stets wieder ein Anfang" (II, 398). Napoleon's own thoughts move easily beyond the present to the inevitable changes of history. When Hortense suggests flight to America as a refuge from the wars of Europe his thoughts immediately leap to the future. He sees the Atlantic as a large Mediterranean around which the old and new worlds will be encamped. "Wie lange, liebe Hortense, währt das aber? Zwei, drei ärmliche Jahrhunderte und dann wandeln auf den Inseln und Küsten der noch grenzenloseren Sudsee die Herrscher des Menschengeschlechts" (II, 400). There are other suggestions of impermanence. The cries of an itinerant Savoyard boy displaying his tame marmot to the Parisian crowds comes through as a kind of mockery at moments of tension, reminding us of the vanity of human grandeur. The old gardener in the "Jardin des Plantes" sees that only the flowers last. The lilies he has grown for the King have become treasonable now that Napoleon is in power. But rulers change and life goes on. " . . . . verwechseln Sie nicht das Reich der

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Natur mit dem Reiche der Bourbons, nicht blühende Lilien mit gemalten" (II, 357). But this is only one side of the picture. For just as all life is transient so it brings back a recurrence of spirit and vitality. The old gardener sees only the passing of life, his young niece and her lover are excited by its power. Napoleon's return coincides with the arrival of Spring. The mythical themes suggested in the opening lines of the play that the world is not yet dead, that Napoleon will come back with the flowers, expresses at least the conviction that man's spirit is ever reviving. We see men's ambitions and courage as well as their failures and are inspired by their capacity for action and life.

X KOSCIUSZKO;

HANNIBAL

In July 1831 Grabbe wrote to Kettembeil saying that his hands were free and asking for suggestions for a play on a contemporary theme. The Polish uprisings against the Russians in 1830 and 1831 had brought this nation again into the public eye. Kettembeil suggested a drama on the earlier Polish general Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a hero of the American War of Independence and a leader of the Polish revolutions in the 1790's. Grabbe claimed to like the idea but expressed many doubts. He found Kosciuszko himself "ein bornierter K o p f and the importance of the Polish cause exaggerated. He foresaw the rapid collapse of the present unrest and recognized in the present the treachery and corruption that had marred earlier revolts. "Of what use is bravery of the individual when the whole is corrupt." Russia, he concluded, would still have to protect many nations. In a curious and almost unique comment among his many letters, he adds: "I am very liberal, but the present rage for revolutions is nothing more than a necessary evil, which will lead mankind through suffering to the point of realizing there is only one source of happiness: to reform oneself (cf. Wuk. VI, 25). Nevertheless Grabbe worked at the play and in reply to Kettembeil's reproaches in October insisted that he was seriously involved. He wanted, however, something more than to appeal to temporary enthusiasm, hoping: "nicht nur ein zeitgemäßes, sondern auch ein in die Zeit sich fügendes Werk daraus zu schaffen" (Wuk. VI, 34). In December he claimed that one and a half acts were ready but added that Russia, as he had ex-

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pected, rather than Poland played the main role. Here he seems to have stopped, for in the following February, in response to further prodding by Kettembeil, he said that he had looked at the play again and found in it "much that was good, much that was bad". "Bitterkeit und Menschenkenntnis, ganz ohne Gène ausgedruckt, war der Hauptcharakter" (Wuk. VI, 41). Six months later in July he declared again that Kosciuszko was an uninteresting figure, "ich liebe ausgezeichnetere Charaktere", but his plans seem to have expanded. In listing the characters involved he includes not only Catherine the Great, Potemkin and Suvorov, but also such apparently remote figures as Robespierre and Danton, the latter two "introduced admittedly in a curious but dramatically effective way" (Wuk. VI, 43). Little more seems to have been done. All that survives comes from manuscripts in Düsseldorf. We have two scenes from the first act, the first at the court of Catherine the Great at the Palace of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the second in a Polish-Jewish tavern in a remote village near Modlin. Beyond this, there is a synopsis, presumably authentic to Grabbe, 1 which indicates very briefly the proposed action through the five acts. The evidence seems to show that the play would have developed much in the manner of Napoleon. Grabbe does not take sides. He is not apparently planning to emphasize the lamentable and tragic fate of the Polish people or of Kosciuszko himself, but rather to reveal again the course of events, to show the circumstances from which action arises and to illuminate the emotions and motives behind them. The opening scene at the Russian court involves us in the problem of Catherine's relationship to her favorites. She is lamenting at the beginning the death of her beloved young lieutenant Lanskoi but comes under the influence again of her old lover, the bluff and vigorous Potemkin. The episode in which he asserts himself against the Empress, the man dominating the woman, and deliberately and consciously working to establish the importance of his own position, is very characteristic of Grabbe and very skillfully 1 Cf. Alfred Bergmann's discussion of the "Überlieferung" in his new edition, II, 761.

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written, but it is only indirectly related to the Polish problem. Poland is only discussed in this whole scene as one of the many issues demanding decision. The second scene in a tavern seems more to the point, showing as it does a quarrel among the Poles themselves between aristocrats and peasants. Casual comments indicate the crudeness of the peasants and the selfish arrogance of the Polish nobles. But here again the scene has its own center of gravity. Though part of the exposition in that it sets the mood, it does not lead into any specific central conflict of the drama as a whole. Out of a half comic atmosphere a brawl erupts in which glasses and stone jars are thrown and the attempts of the landlord to intervene brings attacks from both sides. Suddenly a man is killed. But the tone remains curiously distant. The dead nobleman is another corpse for the wolves. A quotation is made from Caesar: "Happy is he who dies unexpectedly." The action turns away almost with repugnance from the Poles to the Jewish innkeeper and his daughter, who lament their lives as members of a desperately isolated race amidst northern ice and northern savagery. The plans of the synopsis indicate that the play is to end on a heroic note with the defeat of Kosciuszko in battle. Wounded, he is carried off by Russian cossacks and his parting words are those which tradition ascribes: "Finis Poloniae" — "The end of Poland." Yet the action could scarcely have centered around Kosciuszko. In the notes he is not mentioned until the fourth act when he brings order "with an iron hand" among the quarreling Polish generals and leads his men to battle. The indications are that the action would not have included, or at least only rapidly passed over, the earlier struggle which took place after the promulgation of a constitution and the establishment of an inherited monarchy for Poland in 1791. In these struggles which led to the second Partition of Poland in 1793 Kosciuszko played an important role, but the vacillation of the king Stanislaus Poniatowski and his unwillingness to take determined action caused Kosciuszko to give up the struggle and go abroad. References in the first scene make it clear that the time is 1789, but the historical background for the rapid action given

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in the synopsis for Acts 2 and 3 points to events in 1794, that is, after the Partition when further uprisings all over Poland led to Kosciuszko's return from abroad and his taking over command. If Grabbe had developed the drama as the synopsis suggests, then his plan must have been to concentrate the action, to bring incidents from a period of years into a more simplified sequence, but to do so at the expense of Kosciuszko's own involvement. Just as Napoleon, except for one early scene on Elba, only enters into the center of action at the end of Act 3, so Kosciuszko would have remained at first at the perimeter of events. But these events would not have been so intimately related to him as the action in the earlier play is directed towards Napoleon. Kosciuszko whom Grabbe considered so limited a figure would have been forced into the background. Only in the final acts, which would have concentrated as in Napoleon on the battlefield, would Kosciuszko have appeared as the dominant figure. But there too the vast assembly of Russian troops, "Massen auf Massen", makes for Kosciuszko's inevitable failure. Thus the play would not have emphasized Kosciuszko's heroic struggle for Polish freedom, his hopes to achieve for Poland what had been accomplished in America and France, but would have been rather a picture of history, disclosing as clearly as possible in the limited space of a drama, the multiple forces at work. By showing the attitudes of the Russians at home, the bitter conflicts among the Polish people, the activities of the insurrectionists and the reaction of the Russian commanders, the circumstances would have been established in which Kosciuszko's entry into the struggle took place and the final battles occurred, but there would have been little scope for his own role. We would have been given again the breath of history but without that aura of excitement, that stimulation to great deeds, conjured up by Napoleon. Reason enough perhaps why Grabbe failed to continue. The failure of Kosciuszko marked a period of continued unproductivity for Grabbe. This is a time from which few letters are known. Comparatively little information is available about Grabbe's plans. Occasional references are made to work on one

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or more novels but of plans and drafts that he developed nothing has survived. It is not until a letter of April 1834 that he makes a first reference to Hannibal. "Jetzt bin ich beim Hannibal, einer Tragödie, und ich hoffe es sind darin Nebensteige, die nicht an meinen Napoleon erinnern. Nichts schändlicher als Manier" (Wuk. VI, 48). Work on the play seems to have continued spasmodically throughout this difficult year in which Grabbe was plagued by illness and his miserable relations with his wife and in which he finally decided to abandon his legal werk in Detmold. In Frankfurt in October he offered the play to Kettembeil and after the break with his old friend and publisher, he described it as "almost complete" in his plea for help in November to Immermann. How complete it really was is uncertain. From the many letters written during Grabbe's first few weeks in Düsseldorf it is clear that he was not satisfied with the work as it stood. He consulted his sources again, urgently pressing Immermann as well as Petri in Detmold, to help him get hold of Plutarch and Livy as well as two histories from the 18th century which seemed to have been important to him: Guthrie and Gray's General History of the World (London, 1764-67) and Charles Rollin's Histoire romaine (Paris, 1748-54). To Immermann he asked for the sections from Livy on the two Scipios, even if for only a day and a half, to Petri he pleads for Plutarch's pages on Hannibal. "Hannibal wird das Beste, was ich geschrieben — fehlt mir Plutarch, verliert er leicht etwas" (Wuk. VI, 77). He struggled with revisions. "Hannibal burns at my fingers." — "Der Afrikaner ist schlimmer als . . . mein Napoleon, den ich nur einmal umarbeitete, denn ich habe ihn jetzt dreimal zu Boden geworfen, um ihn wieder anders aufzurichten" (Wuk. VI, 58). Only at a later stage and on Immermann's advice did he transfer the play from poetry to prose. On December 17 he wrote to Immermann justifying his verse form, although stressing his freedom to manipulate it as he wished. But the next day he had changed his mind and enthusiastically accepted the suggestions of his friend.

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Sie haben durchweg recht pto des Verses in Hannibal, er ist ein Zwitter, ich zerschlage ihn, wie neue rauhe Chausseesteine, und verwandle ihn in Prosa. Mein Kopf bekommt dadurch noch freieren Spielraum, überall seh ich das Stück besser, moderierter und doch kräftiger werden, und — das ist der Grund — acht' ich einmal die Versmaß-Autorität nicht, so kann ich ja am besten und bequemsten den Rhythmus, welchen ich bezwecke, in Prosa ausdrücken. Auch spür' ich, daß es nur eine alberne Furcht vor dem grauen Altertum war, in dem das Stück spielt. (Wuk. VI, 64) His enthusiasm continued for the new scope opened to him by the decision to write in prose. In the next five to six weeks he was busy rewriting. His letters show the steady progress of his work. On February 11th he sent the manuscript to Immermann and on the 20th received it back with corrections and proposals for improvements. On the 22nd he gave Immermann the manuscript back, ready for printing. Apart from comments on particular lines concerning the motivations and sequence of action, Immermann also suggested the titles which have been given to the five acts of the drama in an effort to encompass and circumscribe the broad movement of the action, and in order to show the scenes to be what he thought them: "eine Reihe bedeutender Bilder aus jenem großen Kampfe." 2 Grabbe does not seem to have resented Immermann's suggestions. On the contrary his gratitude seems quite genuine. His letters are full of thanks for Immermann's help. The short inscription he wrote for publication has a more convincing ring than many of his other prefaces. "To K. Immermann. Immerman provided me with the leisure for completing Hannibal and stood by with most excellent advice. May the play give pleasure to him and its readers." The first version of the drama was published by Schreiner in June 1835. Earlier in January a scene from the first act of the play showing Hannibal at the gates of Rome had appeared in the third number of the new periodical Phönix edited by Karl Gutzkow in Frankfurt. In addition there still exists a fairly considerable accumulation of various drafts and revisions. While the manuscripts for the final published version are missing, 2

Immermann, Memorabilien, p. 27.

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Alfred Bergmann has assembled in his new edition of Grabbe's works a middle version, brought together from widely scattered manuscripts in the possession of various libraries, the main body of which is in the state and city library at Düsseldorf. He has also collected a large number of variants and alternate readings. In this middle version the scenes from the first act and from the beginning of the second act are mostly in verse, as in the early Phönix fragment; later prose is used. It must be presumed that the drafts date from December and January. Comparison of the various versions gives evidence of Grabbe's constant, nervous revision. He erases, makes changes, often to return to his original idea. At the same time the nature of the changes is very limited. Although there are still large gaps in the manuscript which make it impossible to follow the whole action, enough remains to show that the sequence of events, the length and character of the individual scenes and the development of plot remains the same. Most changes are variations in the language. Particular speeches are reduced or elaborated and clarified. Sometimes an obscure comment in the middle draft is elucidated further later, occasionally we may turn back to the manuscript to help to understand enigmatic phrases from the printed version. Certain scenes of brutality are modified, but within very small limits. Even when verse is transferred to prose the changes in the use of words are surprisingly small. Grabbe has rightly emphasized that the erratic rhythms of his iambic verses could be maintained in prose. Even a speech which lends itself to poetic rhetoric like that of Cato Censor's in Act I during the debates in the Roman senate when Hannibal was at the gates of the city, seems to gain by the change to prose. Cato enthusiastically accepts the suggestion that for all apparent dangers at home Rome should strike back at Carthage's power in Spain and in Africa itself. Compare: Trefflich Dein Vorschlag! Denn ob Hannibal auch Sieg An Sieg gekettet, nimmer bricht er mit Gesindel wie das seinige, das nur Im freien Feld zu tummeln weiß,

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"kosciuszko; hannibal" In unsre Gassen, wehrt sich in ihnen Auch nur ein Häuflein noch. Drum junge Mannschaft So viel als möglich ausgehoben, und Nach Spanien mit ihr, — der Rest der Bürger Bleibt sattsam stark, dem grimmen Hunde Aus Africa die Hausthür zu verhalten, Und an der Schwelle soll er knirschen, nach Wie vor. (III, 13)

and Das sei! Denn ob Hannibal auch Sieg' an Siege gekettet, nie bricht er mit Gesindel wie das seinige, das nur im freien Feld zu tummeln weiß, in unsre Straßen, und wehrt sich auch nur ein Häuflein darin. Drum junge Mannschaft, so viel als möglich, ausgehoben, und mit ihr nach Spanien, — dem grimmen Hunde aus Afrika die Tore zu verhalten, bleibt der Rest der Bürger sattsam stark. (III, 98)

In verse the complications of the syntax break the rhythm. By holding back through two lines the resolving conclusion to: "nimmer bricht er . . . In unsere Gassen" and adding to the already heavily loaded sentence the conditional: "wehrt sich in ihnen/Auch nur ein Häuflein noch", the rhetorical flow is led to stumble. This construction is probably deliberately Latinate and reminiscent of Livy, but it means that Cato's reflections on the problems facing the city and the issues involved in their proposed action interrupt the patriotic fervor of his speech. In the prose this effect is reversed. Cato reflects on what is to be done and as he does so converts his thoughts into patriotic oratory. The rhythmic phrases taken directly from the verse form, "nie bricht er mit Gesindel wie das seinige, das nur im freien Feld zu tummeln weiß", give a rhetorical tone to his argument. The statesman's eloquence arises out of his developing thoughts. The same thing occurs in the next sentence. In the verse form the phrase: "Der Rest der Bürger bleibt sattsam stark" is a secondary idea inserted into the statement that troops must be sent to Spain in such a way that the flowing argument is interrupted. The final lines: "Und an der Schwelle soll er knirschen, nach/Wie vor." are needed for him to reassert his defiance. In the prose these last lines are rightly omitted. For the strong rhythmic beats of the words: "Drum junge

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Menschen, so viel als möglich, ausgehoben" has given the argument sufficient rhetorical emphasis. More would be excessive. In Hannibal Grabbe makes far greater allowances with history than he did in the Hohenstaufen or Marius und Sulla. He brings into connection with each other events that spread over more than 80 years. The play begins after Hannibal's overwhelming victory at Cannae in 216 B.C. and closes with the final destruction of Carthage which took place in 146. Moreover the famous defeat of Carthage's ally Numantia in Spain in 133 B.C. has been introduced into the action, being combined with the conquest of Spanish New Carthage in 209 B.C. Grabbe felt the subject remote enough historically for him to incorporate into the play the spirit of Carthage and to center around Hannibal the conflict for power that lasted for several generations between Carthage and Rome. Thus, events from the second and third Punic Wars are boldly intermingled. Hannibal's defeat at the battle of Zama (202 B.C.), which brought to a close the second Punic War, is regarded as the definitive event in the conquest of Carthage. The conditions of peace historically imposed by Rome after this battle are regarded in the play merely as a device to make Carthage helpless in Rome's hands. They are rejected and the war continues. Hannibal who, historically, returned to Carthage after the defeat before seeking his fortune as a professional soldier at foreign courts, is locked out of the city by decision of the Carthaginian triumvirate and forced to seek refuge. The Carthaginian leaders who had failed to support Hannibal in his battles take courage at the last to resist. The fifth act unites the death of Hannibal (183 B.C.), who takes poison at the court of King Prusias in order to avoid being handed over as a prisoner to the Romans, with the news of the progressive annihilation and final burning of Carthage itself. To meet these changes Grabbe had to make comparable alterations in the Roman camp. The Roman victories are won by the two brothers Scipio, the "older" and the "younger", in whose achievements are united the roles of P. Cornelius Scipio,

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the victor at the great battles at New Carthage and Zama, later known as Africanus (major), and his adoptive grandson, Scipio Aemilianus Africanus (minor), who captured and destroyed Carthage and Numantia. Further changes included the shifting forward by several generations of Cato's famous speech "Ceterem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam" ("For the rest I am of the view that Carthage must be destroyed"). This declaration first made before the beginning of the Third Punic War is now attributed to the period just after Cannae, when Rome was besieged. The drama begins with Hannibal's army directly threatening at the gates of Rome. Yet from the start there is a mood of pessimism and doubt in the Carthaginian world. The opening scene begins with a lament. Alitta, daughter of the family of the Barcas to which Hannibal belongs, mourns the death of her parents, taken from her suddenly by the plague. This event seems little relevant to the drama to come. Yet the tone of her lament mingles with her resentment of Carthage's neglect of Hannibal and antagonism to her family. When her lover Brasidas suggests that she as an orphan turn to Carthage, the common mother of them of all, her response implicitly associates the people's indifference to the death of her parents with their lack of concern for the fate of Carthage: "Ach, nichts Schrecklicheres als des Hauses einzige Tochter mit ihren Tränen an der Bahre der Eltern, und Millionen Volks draußen im fremden Getrieb: ein Totenlichtlein in wüster, weiter Nacht!" (III, 89). From lament this scene leads into activity and decision as Alitta induces Brasidas to win her love by joining the armies of Hannibal. The pleasant time when they could sit idly and talk of Hannibal's victories is past. Now he must set an example to his countrymen. But the next scene in the great marketplace of Carthage ironically reflects the contrast between Hannibal's needs and the selfish materialism of the people of Carthage who have no knowledge of their country's honor or even of what their very existence depends on. The victory at Cannae is merely a subject for speeches, the newly arrived caravan from Ethiopia brings the reality of profit and luxury. Two

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further scenes establish Hannibal's position before he is seen in person. The one, amongst the ruling triumvirate of Carthage, reveals the open enmity and treachery Hannibal has to expect from his homeland, the other in the Roman senate shows the determination of his enemies. The central theme of the play is thus given. Hannibal facing a powerful foe is to be betrayed by his own countrymen, who through cowardice, stupidity, illicit ambitions and petty self-seeking, fail to recognize the desperate issues at stake. When we meet Hannibal himself in the last scene of Act I the retreat from Rome has already been ordered. A messenger from Carthage makes clear to Hannibal the situation at home and the neglect he can expect. Hannibal is aware that his greatest success is still not enough. As the act ends he turns to his faithful Negro leader Tumu to ask for a bottle of poison. The episode points to Hannibal's final suicide. Poison remains a last cruel comfort in a world of misery. The action that follows leads us across a broad expanse of time and space, showing the spectacle of great battles and the brutality, ingenuity and heroism of war. But in each of the rapidly shifting scenes we follow the central plot that brings Hannibal and Carthage to their fate. In this personal tragedy of the great general defeated by the futile lack of vision of his own countrymen Grabbe seems to have found the living spirit of his play. In a letter of February 12, 1835 he wrote to Immermann: "Den Hannibal menschlich zu machen, war 'ne Kunst, er steht in der Geschichte wie eine kalte Mythe; nur Napoleon hat nach Montholon etwas anderes in ihm geahnet" (Wuk. VI, 95). To make of Hannibal something more than a cold myth Grabbe introduced his own pessimism, his sense of despair at the way he had himself been neglected and disparaged. Nearly a month earlier he had written to Immermann: Mit dem Hannibal ist es was Schlimmes: ich habe fast nur noch erschütternde Szenen, eine auf die andere, und sie stoßen mich vorwärts, daß ich glaube er ist noch nächste Woche fertig; aber hole die Geier die Schlegel und nicht auch dichtenden Kritiker mit ihrer Meinung: "der Poet schreibe alles so kalt hin." Grade das, was am objektivsten scheint, ist oft das Subjektivste, soll man diese dummen Worte, die

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sich ineinander verwirren, einmal gebrauchen. Ich kann versichern, daß ich den Hannibal immer in Ordre halten muß, damit er nicht bei mir einhaut. (Wuk. VI, 83) The objectivity of history is penetrated with Grabbe's sense of his own tragic fortune. Such a plan brought a new change in Grabbe's treatment of history. Napoleon had shown the variety of conflicting forces in which individual ambitions and struggles are involved. There we were presented with a multiple picture of human history. Although Napoleon, like Hannibal, remains in the end the victim of his time, not the hero creating a new world, the play nevertheless arouses a sense of vitality and hope. It begins with Napoleon's optimistic ambitions and in his defeat still shows the creativity of human energy and effort. The opening scenes of Kosciuszko suggest a similarly broad scale treatment of many-sided events, although the failure of the Polish revolutionary and the proposed conflict between Kosciuszko and his own countrymen might well have foreshadowed Grabbe's personal tragic involvement with Hannibal. In the new drama Grabbe once again moves rapidly from scene to scene, from country to country and camp to camp. Once more an attempt is made to see things objectively from contrasted points of view, to give real force to the character of Hannibal's enemies so that the dangers besetting the hero may be genuinely felt. It is again a world of real enmities in which achievements do not come from the hero's decision but only out of the clash of one man's will against those of others and against the inert force of circumstance. But the pace of action has changed and with it the whole tone of the work. Here is no epic world showing human actions against a background of historical color. The titles Immermann has given to the acts, as Schneider and others have pointed out, are misleading. His object was to hold together scenes that spread across the world, but Grabbe's purpose is far removed from the narration that these titles imply. This is not the recreation of history but a series of rapid scenes carefully directed to sketch out the sequence of action across the vast sweep of events. The total length of the play has been

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reduced to one half or less of Napoleon. But to achieve this Grabbe, as in the second version of Marius und Sulla, leaves himself no time to linger in the creating of moods and setting of character. There is no leisure for the whole to unfold, no time for careful exposition, the gradual build-up of character and action. Everything has to be done in the moment. The advancement of the Scipios to power, for example, is no sooner thought of than done. Each scene strikes in at the key moment when the relevant action is taken. As in Napoleon an enormous number of "dramatis personae" appear, many of them only once, many of them returning at long intervals, in isolated scenes scattered through the drama. But in Napoleon a number of carefully rounded figures emerged, individuals who trod the stage firmly and gave richness and reality to the particular scenes. In Hannibal we have only the outlines of men. A few figures stand out amidst the rapid movement of events, Hannibal himself, the two Scipios, perhaps Prusias, perhaps Gisgon of the Carthaginian triumvirate. But even in their cases we see the individuals caught in characteristic gestures and phrases, revealing their roles in the progress of the action rather than as existing in their own right and posed against a background that can only be sketched out, never elaborated. It has been suggested that the play reads almost like the script for a movie, written 80 years too soon. Certainly the opening scene seems to call for a movie camera when Alitta watches her lover Brasidas from the window as he walks through Carthage to the ships waiting to bring reinforcements to Hannibal. But if it were to be a movie it would have to be in the manner of the silent expressionist film. An action as sharply pointed as this is a deliberate affront to the expectations of reality which the camera particularly encourages. Essentially this is a distorted world, directed to convey the horrifying lesson of Hannibal's fate. Certain scenes are on a broader scale and remind us of earlier plays — the meeting of the Roman senate recalls to mind debates in the same senate in the second version of Marius und Sulla, while the scene in the market place of Carthage reveals the voices of the people with something of the same effect that

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the Paris scenes in Napoleon or the scene amongst the Roman people in Marius und Sulla conveyed. But in the senate Grabbe only characterizes in any detail the one figure of Cato, the others remain anonymous voices required to state contrasting opinions. The market place scene is much shorter than its predecessor and the direction of thought more clearly controlled towards a picture of narrow-minded commercialism in which all things are for sale. As a result the scene shows a tendency to caricature. Already in Napoleon certain episodes — those amongst the Royalists for example — were essentially ironic. The audience was induced to mock at the illusions and blatant errors of judgment shown by many members of the royal entourage. The foppish indifference to Napoleon seemed outrageous in view of the nature of Napoleon's power. The Carthaginian market place scene begins at the level of reality as the women and boys offer their produce for sale. But reality is soon mingled with horror. By putting slave traders side by side with the market women Grabbe seems to aim deliberately to shock us at the heartlessness of the Carthaginian world. Human beings and produce are equally for sale. The scene of the young men idly examining the female slaves, themselves bitterly weeping at the humiliation, belongs to this cruel reality perhaps, as does the slave dealer's salesman attitude when he asks the young men to feel the velvet softness of the girls' skins. But more than this, the speeches of the slave dealer move from the horrifying to a form of self-parody as he develops his sales pitch that these are daughters of royal parentage from Gambia going cheap. His final bellowing cry "Wohlfeile Königstöchter" expresses so bluntly what it is he is selling that it seems to become a kind of ironic commentary on his own activity. However precious or highly valued things may be in their own right, here they are for sale at bargain prices. As the scene proceeds it continues to border on the verge of comic distortion. The reaction of the people to the news that comes simultaneously of victory at Cannae and the arrival of the Ethiopian caravan — their indifference to Hannibal and excitement at the rarities of the east — all too obviously betrays

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Grabbe's antagonism. The scene closes with a curious ironic solemnity as the sheik who is leader of the caravan prays that the stars be guides to the citizens of Carthage as they were to his own troupe in their journey across the desert. The distortion of reality suggested in this scene becomes clearer in the next. The three rulers of Carthage, Hanno, Melkir and Gisgon, meet to make a decision which is important for the furthering of the action. In view of Hannibal's success they devise a plan whereby he is to be given support, but only nominally for the sake of appearance. Soldiers will be sent to his help, but not too many and of the worst quality. The speeches are brief, the decision seems to follow rapidly out of the discussion, yet the scene has an air of the unreal and fantastic. The three rulers live in a world of frightening insecurity. While together they plan to control Hannibal and manipulate his power in relation to the dangers from Rome, each is plotting separately against the others. Hanno's palace where they meet, is honeycombed with hidden wires, concealed traps and secret vaults. By pressing on a hidden spring he has the messenger from Cannae who is chained in the vault below, killed or buried alive on the instant. Gisgon pretends to be afraid of this demonstration of power but claims in an aside to have his own house even better undermined. It is notable, moreover, that many of the speeches seem not so much directed towards action as to form a commentary by the participants on their own position. Gisgon's speeches in particular are either at cross purposes with his fellow rulers and reveal his ironic reserve towards their plans, or else take the form of secret asides. He refers to "diesen beiden Ziegenböcken mir widerlich" or asserts: "Wird man bei diesen Zweien nicht schlecht, hat man ein steinernes Herz." But Hanno and Melkir too are conscious of themselves, aware that they are deliberately cold and hard. MELKIR: D u lächelst, Hanno? — Was ist? HANNO: Man sollte nicht lächeln. MELKIR: Und nicht weinen. Beides verrät. (III, 94-95)

Thus we have the feeling of self-conscious villains, an effect

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which is emphasized by the stage setting, the three men seated at a small round table, with burning candles in the middle. In itself the conflict for power between these men is perfectly understandable, but presented in this intensified form its total effect is grotesque. The same effect is immediately obtained when we meet them again at the beginning of Act 4. Melkir invites the others to drink wine that he has poisoned in advance, but they are too cautious and only pretend to sip. Melkir comments to himself: "Die Niederträchtigen! sie merken gar das Gift!" (III, 125). Only after this extravagant beginning do their plans develop to keep Hannibal's returning army and fleet outside the city walls. The final fate of Melkir is in keeping with this atmosphere. The citizens of Carthage, frightened at the advance of the Romans, sacrifice innocent children to their terrible god Moloch. The three rulers suggest the need for more important victims, each outrageously planning the sacrifice of the others until Gisgon triumphantly proves himself the most cunning and Melkir is exposed to the flames. It is against such bitterly caricatured figures that Hannibal is ranged. For all the narrowness and even absurdity of purpose that these men reveal, there is no question of their power. Their cunning and the indifference of the Carthaginian people destroy Hannibal. Only when Hannibal has fled does Gisgon find the courage and determination to resist the Romans and lament his part in the treachery and failure. Hannibal's final fate reveals the climax of the absurd. The scenes at the court of King Prusias in Bithynia where Hannibal takes refuge are openly satirical. The historical wanderings of Hannibal's later years, when he was forced to sell his services to any country that could make use of them, are limited in the drama to this final experience. Here he is reduced to the role of courtier. At Prusias's court everything depends on ceremonial. Prusias demands total submission to the forms and rituals of his kingship. In a bold anachronism he is even made to refer to the Byzantine conventions of the painter who is doing his portrait. At the same time the multisyllabic Greek names of

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the courtier Protovestiarios or the page Pantisaalbaderthilphicidis which Prusias twice rolls off his tongue with a sensuous pleasure in the mere sound, are a further reference to the Byzantine world. For Byzantium represented, especially to the 19th century, the quintessence of a society in which civilized forms had seemed to harden into the most stupefyingly elaborate and unchanging rituals. The character of Prusias himself is openly modelled on that of the dramatist Friedrich von Uechtritz. In a letter to Immermann in January 1835 Grabbe wrote: "Zama liegt nun schon hinter mir. Hannibal ist schon in Uechtritz'scher Gegend, wo er auch untergeht, furchtbar, denn in Bithynien findet er das kleine Ende im unermeßlichen Chaos des Gemeinen" (Wuk. VI, 88). A few days later he says: "Prusias ist Uechtritz (so wie er in Berlin war) worden, und ich darf Uechtritz nicht mehr aufund besuchen" (Wuk. VI, 89). Uechtritz had been a fellow student in Berlin and had belonged in the literary circles with Karl Köchy and Heinrich Heine. He soon began to establish some fame as a dramatist and remains in literary history as a minor figure among the 19th century epigones of the classic age. Grabbe's antipathy had been of long standing. In a letter of May 1827 to Kettembeil he wrote apropos Uechtritz's tragedy Alexander und Darius: "Die Sonne muß eine Brille aufsetzen, wenn sie im Uechtritz eine Spur von Genialität erblicken will", and concludes: "Wie kann ich in arte existieren, wenn ein Uechtritz Beifall findet?" (Wuk. V, 272). Uechtritz had moved to Düsseldorf and Grabbe, suppressing his dislike, had thought of working in cooperation with him and Immermann (Cf. Wuk. VI, 54). But his antagonism seems to have been soon renewed. Uechtritz was to remain a deadly enemy of Grabbe's as his reports of his later conversations with Friedrich Hebbel show. By thus introducing a personal and contemporary element into the final scenes Hannibal's fate was made relevant to the present. His defeat opens the gates to the triumph of mediocrity and futility. At the close of Napoleon, Blücher recognizes the possibility that the future would not be worthy of the spirit of sacrifice shown by the Prussian and British troops. Here the

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scenes in Bithynia likewise conjure up a picture of Grabbe's contemporary world. Prusias too is a playwright and his courtiers are familiar with these "fruits of his leisure hours". But his plays like his royal actions seem to be concerned with appearance, the decorous panoply of convention, rather than life. Prusias insists on his dignity and honor, but faced with the blunt demands of the Roman embassy that his guest and friend Hannibal be handed over, he yields rather than face the reality of Roman power and runs away to a stag hunt. Hannibal's suicide to avoid becoming a prisoner of the Romans is the final stage in his tragic fortune. But the drama's end emphasizes the triumph of futility. The last moments of the play belong to Prusias. He ignores the Roman ambassador's anger and threats at Hannibal's suicide; he is as unable as were the Carthaginian merchants to recognize forces not immediately threatening. He is concerned instead only with the outward demonstration of his stature and grace. In Napoleon Jouve found it difficult in seeing even the Emperor on the Field of Mars to distinguish between the actor and the true man, to separate theatre princesses from real ones. Prusias now comes to model his behavior on theatre tragedians: "Jetzt ist der Moment in das Leben getreten, wo es das zu tun gilt, was ich in mancher Tragödie ahnungsvoll hingeschrieben: edel und königlich sein gegen die Toten!" (III, 154). Consciously solemn, aware of his audience, he places his own red cloak over the body of Hannibal, "just as did Alexander with Darius" (a final parting reference to Uechtritz's drama), and even condescends to bend down and adjust the folds. The world ends in play acting and pretense. Many critics have found these last Hannibal scenes to be a disturbance against the mood of the play, but as we have seen, the tone of the Prusias episodes is not out of keeping with the atmosphere in Carthage itself. The grotesque lack of feeling shown by the Carthaginian rulers and the comfortable selfishness of the people had been as grossly out of place as the gesturing of Prusias. Both the merchant world and the aristocratic traditionalism of court life are made ridiculous, for

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both fail to see the realities of power and life in which Hannibal is involved. The Roman world is different. In contrast to the extravagant manoeuverings of the Carthaginian triumvirs in the first act, the following scene in the Roman senate shows a calm and deliberate acceptance of tasks to be done and a disciplined will to act. Decisions are made in an ordered fashion within the traditional forms of the constitution. Cato calms momentary fears and becomes the spokesman for Roman defiance as, with Hannibal at the gates, plans are made for a counter attack on the Carthaginian possessions in Spain. Of the Roman leaders only Fabius Maximus is presented in a mocking light. Hannibal's open contempt for Fabius (cf. III, 1) might have been the natural one-sided expression of his anger against this general who has followed him across the breadth of Italy without bringing his army to battle. But the scene that follows proves his comments on Fabius' indecision, rationalized under the name of prudence, to be all too justified. Hannibal, caught in a narrow defile near Casilinum, manages his escape by his famous device of tying burning stakes to the horns of his oxen and driving them in advance of troops. When we see Fabius himself, his response seems at first the natural reaction of a cautious general, weighing the situation from his own point of view. But as the scene develops and Fabius fails more and more to understand what is happening Grabbe seems to lose his objectivity and to show in Fabius the absurd weakling that Hannibal had described, all too easily bluffed and unwilling to risk his army. For the rest, however, the Romans reveal a stern discipline that is reflected in the two Scipios. In these generals, above all in Scipio the Younger, Grabbe provides a counterforce rising as Hannibal's fortune falls. This role corresponds to that extent to those of Blücher and Wellington who more and more dominate the scene as Napoleon faces defeat. "Nichts mir fataler als Schauspiele, wo alles sich um einen Götzen dreht", he wrote to Immermann (Wuk. VI, 63). Here are the opponents worthy to destroy the great hero. In the meeting between Hannibal and the younger Scipio before the

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battle of Zama which formed a natural climax to the action, Hannibal was even to "blink a little at the Roman's steel shield", according to Grabbe's plans. But the Roman leaders are in no sense idealized representatives of their cause. Emphasis, on the contrary, is laid on the savage cruelty with which they wage war. The Scipios recognize all too clearly the contrast between the civilized attractions of Rome and the brutal world of war and slavery on which they are founded. As the younger Scipio explains, wars are fought until one side is destroyed or enslaved. Half a peace only gives time to the enemy to strengthen himself and strike again (Cf. Ill, 104). A companion in the Scipio scenes, both at the destruction of Numantia and before the battle of Zama, is the playwright Terence. This is another of Grabbe's anachronisms, for while Terence, whose dates are 195-159 B.C., was a companion of Scipio Africanus minor, he was not born at the time of the battle of Zama and had died years before Carthage's final destruction. An association may have been made with the historian Polybius, an acquaintance of Terence's, whose work served as one of Grabbe's sources and who accompanied the younger Scipio in his campaigns and was present at the destruction of Carthage. Terence's role is that of the civilized observer at the horrors of battle. His presence on the stage makes clear what war really means; he is sickened and stunned by the misery. The opening scene of the second act gives him a long monologue. He is seen alone on the stage amidst the glowing, steaming ruins of Numantia, lamenting the terrors of the fight that has passed. "Entsetzlicher Abend! furchtbare Nacht! Scipionen, ihr Ungetüme, wie habt ihr euch entschleiert! Dieser jüngere Scipio, der so hold lächeln konnte, las ich ihm in seinem Ruhezimmer eins meiner Stücke vor — Was war er vor vier Stunden? Sturm, Mord, Feuer, sein Antlitz eine arbeitende Waffenschmiede! Mich kannt er nicht mehr. 'Jetzt ists nicht Zeit! s' ist grad was Wichtigeres zu tun!'" (III, 103). When the Scipios appear they see Terence warming himself at the fires in the city's ruins and the younger Scipio suggests it is material for a comedy, a jest with a great background. Terence finds

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they have created matter so tragically that he is too weak to transform it into a comedy. Scipio the older replies laconically to the one-time slave, now a free man. "Eh, Freigelassener, was tragisch ist, ist auch lustig, und umgekehrt. Hab ich doch oft in Tragödien gelacht, und bin in Komödien fast gerührt worden" (III, 104). We have seen how the grotesquely comic episodes of Grabbe's play, notably at the court of King Prusias, have accentuated the tragic downfall of Hannibal. We laugh but might find it better to cry. The simpler divisions of literary genres no longer apply. The comedy of life reveals its tragically brutal undertones. But the Scipios accept and even rejoice in the cruel demands of existence. They regard Terence with mild contempt for seeming to believe that reality would correspond to his happy world of comedies. Scipio the younger lets him talk. "Poets burst if they have to keep their wisdom to themselves." But he and his brother see the real forces which Terence ignores and which Prusias and the merchants of Carthage had failed to recognize — the blatant reality of power, the savage impulses at the roots of human actions and desires. Terence sees the captured enemy made into slaves and chained and flogged with leaden whips when they resist; he hears Scipio order families to be deliberately separated so that there may be less chance of conspiracy, he sees the troops of the Roman allies used without bad conscience to the point of exhaustion so that Roman lives may be saved. To the end he remains horrified. But he also remains the submissive follower, jealous of Scipio's new interests and jealous particularly of the savage bardic poet, the son of Ullo, who combines love of battle with love of verse, and with whom Scipio seems to talk and joke more freely than he ever did with Terence himself. Ironically, when we learn at the end from the report of Hannibal's faithful companion Turnu of the final destruction of Carthage and how the burning city is reflected in the breast plate of the younger Scipio, we hear also that the Roman leader has shed a tear and quoted verses from Homer on the fall of Troy which Terence has faithfully copied into his wax

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tablet. Hannibal sees that Carthage is to be made into a Homeric reminiscence. It seems that the brutal horrors of war take on romantic coloring through the poet's eloquence. Writers are to celebrate in their histories and verses heroes whose deeds they were in reality unable to stomach. The emphasis on cruelty persists throughout the play. Always its object seems less to arouse our pity than to emphasize the terrors of reality as a shock to our own softer, protected views. This is to be felt already in the market place scenes in Carthage when we are shown the cynical brutality of the slave trade. And in the following Carthage scenes a similarly cruel tone prevails. For all the merchant spirit of the city and the emphasis on trade, profit, comforts, there is no suggestion of those humanitarian attitudes so often associated with the triumphs of a middle class, commercial world. On the contrary, there is a stifled fear among the Carthaginians which finds its outlet in the worship of Moloch. Side by side with the love of comforts and luxuries is a savage religion, the belief in a terrifying god whom the people feel compelled to placate. In the moments of terror after Hannibal's defeat outside the gates of Carthage there is a fearful scene before the giant bronze statue of Moloch where the priests choose innocent children to be burned alive in sacrifice to the monster. Later, as the triumvirs dispute among themselves as to which of them will be sacrificed, the mood of this scene changes into a kind of grotesque farce, yet it is a comedy played against a background of horror. Only in Hannibal's case is the cruelty understressed. Historically, emphasis is laid (mostly, of course, by Roman historians) on the sufferings inflicted by Hannibal's armies during their campaigns. It seems inevitable that an army of mercenaries as his was, marching and countermarching through Italy, always in the background aware of Fabius's presence, would have been forced to acts of constant devastation and destruction. Grabbe shows the sharpness and ruthlessness of Hannibal's decisions. The scouts who lead his army into the wrong pass are at once crucified; the admiral who has deliberately lingered too long in bringing reinforcements is nailed to the

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masthead of his flagship. But towards the people of Italy Hannibal is not a destructive figure. Two episodes, which are not strictly necessary and therefore conspicuous in this tightly controlled play, emphasize this. A scene where the wine makers celebrate the harvesting of the wine grapes allows Hannibal a rare chance to relax and to express his love of the country, the quickening of spirit he feels at the freshness of the air and the purity of the light. Moments in Capua show the citizens breathing freely when Hannibal departs only at once to fall again under the fierce control of their previous despots. A few scenes later Hannibal's decision to return rounds off this episode; the slaves revolt, the despot is destroyed, the aristocrats of the town themselves enchained. The episode, as Bottger has emphasized again, seems to have a contemporary reference. The peoples of Europe, rejoicing at the fall of Napoleon find themselves once more the victims of their old oppressors, autocrats who have returned to power. But this is to recognize Hannibal as a refreshing spirit. Whatever his purpose of conquest, he brings like Napoleon new hopes and a new impulse to life. In a scene in Carthage before the battle of Zama the patriarch of the family of the Barcas expresses his fear that the great hero Hannibal is nothing but an unfeeling warrior. His great-niece Alitta insists with evident justification that great deeds like Hannibal's have deeper and richer roots. The greatness of Hannibal as a military leader is impressively revealed in the play. But the question imposes itself on us what he brings to the world and what if anything he represents. He alone of the national leaders is sympathetically portrayed. Bliicher and Wellington express the valiant spirit of their own peoples, but the Scipios are altogether darker figures, arrogant, cruel and destructive. Yet Hannibal too offers nothing but war. We feel he is impelled into battle not by principle or patriotism so much as by the driving spirit which makes him assert himself against the world. In fighting the war, however, he learns to see clearly the realities of life. In the teeth of disappointment and failure nothing prevents the clarity of his judgments or

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the calmness of his determination. He knows, what his countrymen refuse to acknowledge, that the entity of Rome makes this a war of survival, that Rome can allow no power to arise that will be a rival to herself. This clarity of vision and will to resist sustains us and it is perhaps the light in which Grabbe saw his own role as a dramatist, amidst the illusions and false dreams of his contemporaries. Hannibal's cause itself is more than dubious. Here there is no sense of a noble purpose failed, any more than the question arises of moral guilt and tragic retribution. Yet the portrayal of the hero in defeat, "told without pathos and fine speeches", as Grabbe claimed, is deeply moving. As he appears here, Hannibal is a bleak sobering figure. The days of his youthful brilliance when he had startled Rome by his fantastic march across the Alps are gone. Now when his cousin Hasdrubal attempts to repeat the coup he remembers most the horrors of the journey, the bitter cold and his desperate losses. An ascetic, going without women and drink, half-blinded with the loss of one eye, his hair white, his brow deeply furrowed, he seems an old man tortured by his experiences. His words are few, his conversation, like his military commands, reduced to the minimum. Only in moments of tension are his feelings revealed. When the action lingers, as it does when Hannibal takes leave of Italy after the 17 years in which he has sought to conquer Rome, then the very restraint of emotional expression adds power to the scene. We feel the bitterness and longing thrusting their way through into words. Our feelings are stirred by the depth of his grief and the greatness of his resistance. Confronted before Zama by the young and overbearing Scipio, contrasted in our eyes with the grotesqueries of the Carthaginian triumvirs, and exposed at the last to the futile absurdities of the Prusias court, Hannibal retains the dignity and value of man against the tragicomic progression of fate.

XI "DAS THEATER IN DÜSSELDORF"; DER CID, DIE HERMANNSSCHLACHT

One of the advantages of Grabbe's move to Düsseldorf was the possibility of closer contact with the theatre. In Detmold his relations with the Pichler company at the "Hoftheater" had always been those of an outsider. His early negative criticism of the actors and productions aroused the anger of the troupe and at one time in 1828 the actors took their revenge and seriously annoyed their critic when the younger Pichler, son of the director, played the role of a somewhat futile poet in a Grabbe mask. Even during the period of Grabbe's moderate success when Don Juan und Faust was performed in the Detmold theatre, relationships remained cool and Grabbe was never taken into the inner councils and plans of the company. In Düsseldorf, Immermann had worked energetically as director of the city playhouse to develop a new and ambitious theatrical and operatic company. The idea of a national theatre, which had been much debated in Germany since the days of Lessing's attachment as critic to the Hamburg theatre in 1767 and had been stirred again by the ambitions of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, was revived once more in the 1830's when many cities made plans to establish centers of serious drama and opera. Immermann in this middle-sized Rhineland town had vastly raised the standards of performance and begun to create a first rate theatre where interesting works from many countries could be performed. Grabbe, somewhat against his usual nature, was careful not to presume any right to participate. In his letters to Immermann he expressed his admiration for the enormous work done and tentatively offered his help, whether in guidance

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of the rehearsals or as a publicist in spreading recognition of the theatre. There is no doubt from Grabbe's interests how much he would have liked to take part in the rehearsing and production of the plays but here Immermann allowed him no scope whatever. Instead he encouraged Grabbe's plans to write on the objectives and achievements of the theatre and provided him with considerable background material. The result was an essay on "The Theatre in Düsseldorf", "mit Rückblicken auf die übrige deutsche Schaubühne", to which were attached reviews of particular plays, some by Grabbe, some not. The essay is interesting but uncertain in tone. Grabbe wanted to repay Immermann for the help and kindness he had received and was eager to do his best. He submitted his writings to his friend and adopted many changes and suggestions which Immermann thought might make the essay more effective. But Grabbe found it difficult to explain and elaborate on the intentions of others; he was at his liveliest when free to indulge in blame and censure. It is a temptation to consider the essay shallow and hypocritical, yet it is clear that Grabbe appreciated the great cooperative effort needed for a good theatrical production, he wanted to encourage the participants and also arouse interest. Where in earlier reviews of Detmold productions he had judged from the outside, feeling it his duty, as he wrote to Kettembeil, to prick and frighten both actors and directors into better work (cf. Wuk. V, 289), his object here is to justify and encourage. His judgments remain cool and objective but also sympathetic. In the reviews particularly he shows flashes of brilliant insight into dramatic motives. Later when he had broken relations with Immermann Grabbe wrote further reviews which are more critical and antagonistic. Then he freely yielded to moods and impressions, finding a new outlet to express his anger at the inevitable triumph of the mediocre, but these attacks do not detract from his earlier efforts and emphasize rather the sadness of Grabbe's isolation from any cooperative work. Interesting among the many plans of this time are Grabbe's attempts at a translation of Hamlet in the so-called first quarto

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which had been discovered in 1825. Several letters to Immermann refer to this work which he suggests was an occupation for his leisure hours instead of company. The first scene and the beginning of the second were sent to Immermann in January 1835 with the suggestion that the two of them might work together and include the translation in Immermann's collected works, but nothing further came of it (Wuk. VI, 86). Another letter suggests several alternative parodied translations of the final lines from Romeo and Juliet, in themselves not quite accurately quoted. "And never was a greater woe/Than that of Juliet and her Romeo." Some of the versions are in the manner of Wieland and other translators but all suggest a mockery, perhaps of the original lines, but particularly of the problem of translating rhyming verse (cf. Wuk. VI, 79-80). Another work of his spare time which he managed to develop further was the parody of an operatic text, Der Cid. As Grabbe moved away from Immermann's influence and gradually returned to a bohemian life he became a closer and closer companion of the dissolute and disillusioned composer Norbert Burgmiiller. This sketch, mostly written in May 1835, was intended as a libretto for Burgmiiller, although there is no evidence that the latter attempted to set it to music. It was Grabbe's last attempt at comedy, although plans for an Eulenspiegel still recur, and shows once more his love of broad and farcical humor. The action is a burlesque development of Corneille's famous tragedy and presents the hero returning again and again to battle with the Moors but in each victory and act of heroism still unable to overcome the memory in his beloved that it was he who had killed her father. The absurdity of the verse alone makes the heroic plot ridiculous. The rhyming couplets which Grabbe had parodied in his Romeo and Juliet translations here achieve a peak of insipidity. When the heroine rejects the hero once more, the soldiers comment in chorus: Herr, warte bis sie wird verniinftig, 1st sie's nicht heut, wird sie es kiinftig. (II, 525) The plot itself is constantly interrupted in the usual Grabbe

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comic manner. The singers quarrel, Burgmüller himself tries to keep order, a well-known critic of the day, Ludwig Reilstab, is present in person, commenting on the scenes and the singing, ever eager to spot evidence of plagiarism or reminiscence or criticize a wrong note. He even learnedly compares the type of play which allows such interruptions with the works of Ben Jonson or Ludwig Tieck. Other contemporary figures appear; the poet Platen comments on the effect and significance of the rhymes, while Friedrich von Raumer, Grabbe's old professor from Berlin whose book on the Hohenstaufen had been the source of Grabbe's own dramas, has to defend himself, very incompetently, against the charge that he has not always read the sources he cites so readily. Attacks on the Jews, which also occur in one or two other Grabbe works, and which include here a somewhat witless attack on Felix Mendelssohn, the musical director of the city of Düsseldorf at the time, are less agreeable. The title page describes the work as a grand opera in two to five acts and the scenes, which are numbered consecutively, may presumably be contracted or expanded to fit accordingly. One of them is so clearly an afterthought that it is numbered 8b. Grabbe's object obviously is to make fun of the frequently ridiculous opera plots. Many allusions to popular operatic episodes occur from Rossini, Weber, Auber and others, but it may also be that Grabbe is mocking himself, for the battle scenes in particular remind us of the extravagant demands he makes in his own serious work. The existence of vast armies on the stage, the hero's military coup in forming his men into a wedge aimed like an arrow at the enemy's center, the proposals as to how the theatre should deal with the enormous number of roles, suggest a parody of Grabbe's own decisive military moments. As it stands, the play remains a sketch. Although the plot is carried through to the end, the jokes become repetitive and the effect little more than of an improvisation. Indeed, some of the comic suggestions in the stage directions have the effect of private jokes aimed at Burgmüller and are really not trans-

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ferrable to a performance. However, a production of the whole seems quite possible. The play would have to be developed in accordance with the requirements of the music, but the basis is provided for a musical parody of the operatic conventions of the time. The composer would, of course, have to share Grabbe's unsentimental sense of farce. The major work, however, which was to serve as a companion during the last melancholy period of Grabbe's life was Die Hermannsschlacht. The first reference to a drama on this theme comes in a letter to his wife of January 1835 but it was not until the Spring that he began work seriously. From then until July 1836 the play remained the center of his ambition and drive. Although in his letters Grabbe more than once claimed the work was finished, he came back to it again and again, constantly rewriting. Even back in Detmold when his intellectual and physical powers had certainly deteriorated and, according to Ziegler, he no longer had the patience or peace of mind for reading or other protracted activity, he continued his revisions. Alfred Bergmann has in the new edition reproduced an astonishing number of fragments and variant readings, skillfully reconstructing from an accumulation of barely legible handwritten notes various alternative preliminary forms to put beside the final printed version. In general the plan and structure of the play remain stable. Grabbe is concerned with individual scenes, struggling to provide variety and keep the dramatic effect alive. This collection of variations is of interest for understanding Grabbe's method of writing, which he probably also adopted to some extent in earlier plays, particularly Hannibal. With the abandonment of a firmly controlled, carefully structured drama in which the action was symbolically concentrated, Grabbe felt free to elaborate individual scenes and motifs without too great consideration for the total work. It seems evident that he worked on particular scenes or pieces of dialogue as the mood took him. The task of fitting together came later. From the beginning Grabbe abandoned a normal division into acts. The play is divided instead into an introit or "Ein-

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gang" of seven fairly short scenes, followed by the three days and nights of battle, with an epilogue in Rome. The opening scenes show us the atmosphere of Germany on the verge of revolt. Even the seasoned Roman veterans are disheartened by the cold and damp; they complain miserably of the thick forests and endless hills and swampy river valleys where there are no roads and scarcely even beaten tracks for them to follow. The Germans are seen resentful of the Romans, suffering under the contempt of their conquerors, but still full of confidence, content in their own life and in the feeling that in this country they are at home. When Hermann returns from an expedition in which he has assembled vast numbers of men from many different tribes, ostensibly to assist the Romans in their further advance into still unconquered parts of Germany, but in reality to surround and engulf the Roman legions, the situation is established for the battle to begin. These first scenes are the best in the play. Grabbe's gift for creating mood and atmosphere once more comes to the fore, even in this primitive setting. As so often in Grabbe, the focus is first put on the enemy. The Romans are seen on the march. Characteristically, Grabbe shocks us at the beginning with brutal realities. A Roman soldier, unable to march on, refuses to obey orders and, in accordance with regulations, is flogged to death by his comrades. The cruel horrors of war thus confront us. Interest then moves to the German guide who leads the confused Roman troops round and round in the trackless woods and the next scenes develop the relationship between the Romans and their conquered subjects. Hermann's wife Thusnelda presides over a midday meal for the workers and adherents of their house. A simple homely atmosphere is revealed in which the Roman general Varus is ill at ease. Another scene shows us a Roman court and the casual contempt that the Romans feel for the barbarians whose petty claims and legal disputes they settle with ironic indifference. Underlying each of the early scenes is a feeling of excitement that the moment of decision is at hand. As the Romans march out further into the forest, guided by Hermann into his care-

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fully prepared ambush, the tension rises. But the scenes of fighting fail to maintain excitement at this level. The protracted battle takes up almost all the rest of the action, but the climax is reached too soon and the issue is never in doubt. Already on the first night the Roman leader Varus sees that they must all die. Grabbe makes every effort to vary effects, moving from camp to camp, showing the soldiers and the leaders, but after a while our interest dwindles. We are grateful for the moments of rest at night when more normal human contacts and relationships can be renewed. To convey the effect of battle Grabbe abandons any idea of a static stage setting. Vast armies of men are shown, struggling to find a path through the valleys or concealed among the shrubbery of the hills. When the fighting begins, concentration of attention shifts back and forth from the manoeuverings of whole bodies of troops to the actions of individual soldiers and the plans of the commanders. Yet, as in his earlier plays, each must be given equal importance; to keep the battle in the background would be to give a completely false emphasis, while the progress of the fighting has to be seen through individual eyes. Thus the scene moves as the battle requires. Grabbe gives only brief stage directions to indicate often enormous movements of events, leaving it to the imagination of the reader or the producer how the scene might be managed. A whole day's fighting with its many moods and changes of tone is compressed into one scene of a few pages. The scope of the action is epic but the individual episodes, as always in Grabbe, intensely dramatic. Descriptions or long narrated accounts are avoided; always the action is concentrated in the present, shown to be happening before our eyes. But for all the variety of movement, neither the course of battle nor the presentation of character absorbs our interest. In Napoleon when the final acts revolve around the battle of Waterloo we are shown the variety of men involved and the effect of war on them. Here both the extent of the human response to battle and the scope of the fighting itself are far more limited. Only two real characters emerge from the chaos of voices, the opposing commanders Hermann and Varus, and for them too the in-

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evitable course of the battle brings out only a limited reaction. Hermann remains the cautious but triumphant leader closely tied to his men, Varus is always the same, lonely, desperate, courageous, confronted with disaster. The limitations of this situation may explain Grabbe's constant revisions. It is interesting to note that when he finally finished the work in July he wrote despondently to Petri: I shall never again scrawl out another genre and battle piece. What enormous trouble it was to bring in variety and maintain general interest! What have I not had to press into Hermann in the way of jokes, nature descriptions, sentimentalities etc., in order to make it as readable as possible. (Wuk. VI, 179) The story of the Hermann battle had been one of the great outlets of German patriotism since the 16th century when the manuscripts of Tacitus's Annals in which Arminius's victor}' was most elaborately described, had been discovered. The Humanist Ulrich von Hutten was the first to use this theme in his dialogue on Arminius in 1520 and since then innumerable writers, among them J. E. Schlegel, Klopstock, Heinrich von Kleist, Baron de la Motte Fouque, have turned to this material, into which German ambitions for unity or a national revival of spirit could be directed. Grabbe's attacks on the narrow-minded German world as well as on the futility of the contemporary literary scene are so bitter that we tend to forget the pride in Germany which often appears in his works, in the Hohenstaufen, for example, or in the portrait of Faust or of the Prussians in Napoleon. Patriotic feeling resounds here as it does in the works of his predecessors but it is a patriotism mingled with a particular local sentiment. Scholars have established that the site of the battle was in the Teutoburger Wald very close to Detmold. Grabbe's first reference to the play, in a letter to his wife, makes it clear how intimately and personally he felt attached to this countryside in the heart of Germany where the decisive victory had taken place. Here all the valleys, all the greenery, all the streams, all the peculiarities of the inhabitants of the Lippe countryside, the best of memories

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from my . . . childhood and youth are to rustle, stir and flourish. (Wuk. VI, 76) His wife's father, Christian Gottlob Clostermeier, who had been Grabbe's early patron and friend, had published a study: Where Hermann defeated Varus in which he argued learnedly from Roman sources and his knowledge of the countryside, the particular valleys and hills in which the battle had been fought. Grabbe planned to use this, refreshing the memory of the book, as he also said to his wife, "with the flowers of poetry". Attempts have been made to see the movements of Grabbe's battle as a dramatic version of Clostermeier's account. Whether this is legitimate or not, the play certainly stresses local place names, giving very specific locations to the hilltops, rivers and camps, and even putting the scene of the arbitrary Roman court into Detmold itself. While avoiding dialect, he introduces a sprinkling of deeply rooted local words, "Kotten" for a small farm or "Einlieger" for peasants who carry out farming without horses, only with oxen, to give the effect of local tradition. Above all, the character of the Germanic tribesmen emphasizes their local origins. Grabbe makes his heroes into Lippe peasants with the virtues and weaknesses of their homeland. Simple, narrow-minded and prejudiced, they are also solid, brave and loyal, deeply attached to the hard and, for southerners like the Romans at least, inhospitable land in which they live. Such a realistic picture gave a new turn to the treatment of the theme. Earlier writers had sought to idealize and give universal qualities to the national heroes. J. E. Schlegel, and more particularly Klopstock, give epic power to their semi-mythical characters, recalling in their deeds something of the achievements of the primitive heroes of the Nibelungenlied. Kleist, whose play written in 1808 Grabbe consulted but which he found very different in purpose from his own (cf. Wuk. VI, 117), aims to invoke and celebrate German national unity in the battle against Napoleon, glorifying in Hermann and his followers the spirit of freedom in Prussia and scorning in his villain Marbod the Austrian alliance with the French. Grabbe's play seems at first to avoid contemporary reference. Yet inevitably the mate-

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rial brings associations with the present. When for example Hermann, at a time when he still claims to accept Roman values, criticizes the clumsy imitations of sophisticated foreign customs unsuited to Germany, it is difficult to avoid feeling an allusion to the influence of foreign, and particularly French, manners on present day German customs, or at least being reminded of the long tradition of patriotic resistance in Germany to over-civilized conventions. The ever pressing question of national unity also raises its head. Hermann suggests that the association of almost all the German tribes, united in battle against the common enemy, should be continued in peace and a common leader created. The other rulers are at once suspicious that he plans to become master of them all, so that Grabbe even leads Hermann to assert that they will have to reckon in periods of a thousand years before unity will be achieved. The issue of national unity, however, once raised, is immediately let drop. Hermann makes no speeches to conjure up national pride. When he meets with resistance, he resigns himself at once to the inevitable. In the same way, when he sees that the name Germany means nothing to the ordinary people who fight for little things that they can see and feel, he immediately adopts their standards and limits his appeal to their own private sense of injustice. Kleist's drama shows a bitter antagonism in his portrait of Marbod to those Germans who fail to take sides for their country. Grabbe's Hermann is far more understanding; he ascribes Marbod's failure to envy, but the play does not condemn him further. We feel Marbod has simply failed to see the significance of the moment. Yet if Grabbe does not seek to revive national causes, the strength of his feeling for Germany may be seen in the portrait of Hermann himself and the ties that bind him to his countrymen. Hermann is a very interesting but in some ways ambiguous figure. Many convincing moments in which he appears impress themselves upon us. We admire him when he is carried away by the enthusiasm of battle into acts of courage and daring. We understand the moments of doubt when he can hardly believe that so overwhelming an enemy as the Romans are

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really now at his mercy. His loyalty to Germany is also very well established. He has during his years in Rome adopted the clothes and much of the manners of the Romans. He is able to talk freely with them and understand their ways of thinking. Yet his heart remains with Germany. When he hears the Roman plans, his indignation rises at the casual disregard they show for his own people. But in the ties with his Germanic tribesmen there are elements which go beyond normal realism. From the beginning emphasis is placed on the implicit trust of the tribesmen in their leader. Even though Thusnelda shows some doubt in her husband's loyalty in the face of his continued friendliness to the Romans, this is not echoed by his followers. Any suggestion of skepticism is overruled. In the battle there develops at times an almost idyllic relationship between the leader and his followers, an intimate sense of loyalty which totally binds Hermann with his people. When a messenger arrives with news of the gathering tribes, Hermann gives him his hand in greeting. "Who is happier than I?" cries the messenger. Hermann replies: "Perhaps a prince who is served by such men." This sense of unity is contrasted with the situation of the Romans who can maintain their army only by the strictest discipline. Their leaders are isolated. When Eggius, commander of the 19th legion, commits suicide, Varus is left alone, for his only real contacts are with men educated like himself, not with the disciplined legionaires. A further contrast may be seen if we compare the situation with Hannibal. Hannibal was also directed by deep patriotism but a patriotism that turned sour at the indifference and incomprehension of his own countrymen. Hermann feels he could not live apart from his people. "Welch ein Dummbart war ich, wollt ich was sein ohne mein Volk?" (Ill, 346). Perhaps the very reason that he is not willing to press further for German unity is that he does not wish to go beyond the extent of his people's ambitions, finding contentment in his contact with them. It may be that the play echoes here those touches of romantic longing felt in Friedrich Barbarossa for a simpler age, the mythical unity of feeling between a ruler and his people, the

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sense in which even a great man belongs in the whole. But if so, this ideal has not been fully achieved. The expression of comradeship and unity has a certain hollow and rhetorical air. Hermann's association with his people is not translated into action. He is forced to explain his thoughts and actions in constant asides. There is no one to whom he can turn. His wife Thusnelda, who might have shared the burden of his task, adopts herself a semi-mythological pose of the woman waiting at home to greet the hero's return. Thus instead of unity we get a sense of separation; the great hero plans his moves and controls his thoughts, but always stands apart, disturbingly alone, contained within himself. Critics have pointed to this weakness, suggesting as a reason, for this and other failings, the deterioration of Grabbe's powers as his health grew worse. It is true that we are left with a certain confusion of effect. But in part criticism of the portrait of Hermann may arise from a tendency to make the wrong demands on the play. Grabbe is not concerned to show a moral conflict. He does not attempt, for example, as Kleist does, to develop at length Hermann's general standpoint and outlook in contrast with those of his allies and friends. Nor did he want to develop the problematic situation of his hero. A tragic conflict lies at hand for Hermann who longs for unity with his fellow Germans but is inevitably bound to Rome by his education and intellectual values. It is noteable how often, and even in his very last speech, Hermann's thoughts go back to the question how the Romans will act and feel. Loyalty to his own people is more than sufficient in battle, but afterwards, when any road back to Rome is closed, loyalty may not be enough, and the obvious escape from his dilemma would lie in the temptations of power and the posibilities of further actions. The question of Hermann's future is very much involved in certain treatments of the story, although from a different point of view, but Grabbe has specifically left this problem outside the scope of his work. He does not wish to show us here, any more than he did in his earlier historical dramas, the moral conflict or spiritual crisis of his hero. He intends only to re-

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create a particular historical moment, to show the nature of the elements that underlay this decisive battle. Just as in Napoleon or Hannibal we see the hero only in relation to the multiple character of events. It must be pointed out, however, that the very nature of the material necessarily affects its treatment. The action here has a legendary quality inherent in it. Hermann's emotional contact with his people is a fundamental part of the story. In presenting the Germanic tribesmen as Westfalian peasants Grabbe gives a surprising realism to the traditional theme but its realism takes into account the irrational nature of events. We have seen to what extent the German victory arises out of the countryside. The people living in Lippe in Grabbe's time preserve the qualities of their predecessors and Hermann too, for all his separation from the peasant life of the people, still embodies the spirit of the country. This semi-mythical element is, however, contained within Grabbe's greater purpose of reproducing objectively the forces of history. Thus for all the patriotic emphasis, the Romans are presented sympathetically enough. The values of the Roman world are given recognition. Although Hermann adopts an ironic tone towards him, we see in Varus the spokesman of a civilized and cultured world and we understand even amongst the ordinary Romans the reasons for their sense of superiority. In the battle stress is laid on the courage and discipline of the troops and in particular our feelings are aroused for Varus. We go back sympathetically with him as he deliberately conjures up thoughts of his earlier days in Syria and the joys and comforts of the Mediterranean world. We are also shown the pride and courage with which he faces disgrace and defeat. Above all, Grabbe's objectivity is shown in the final scene. With the battle over we are taken back in the epilogue to the death bed of Augustus Caesar. Once again, even at this moment of the play, Grabbe lingers to create something of the atmosphere of the Roman court. The suspicion that Livia has poisoned her husband for the sake of her son is raised and discussed before the Emperor wakes from his sleep. The news of the

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destruction of the three legions is brought to him. He fears the danger from the north and associates it with other strange threatening rumors — the news of the birth of Christ and the prophecy of a new faith that will threaten the old empire. This scene, as Schneider and others have pointed out, must not be interpreted in any kind of Hegelian sense, as suggesting a new era in the advancement of humanity. Nor may we compare it with the final scene of Friedrich Hebbel's Herodes und Mariamne where the news of Christ's birth is similarly introduced. There the birth of Christ seems to suggest a new scale of values, a deeper sense of human dignity which contrasts with the crude selfishness of the past. In Grabbe's play the Germanic world is not associated with Christ to suggest any new standard of life which might counter the depravity of corruption of Rome. Grabbe's purpose seems to be rather to widen the scope of events, to show in a greater context the significance of Hermann's victory. The birth of Christ, the death of Augustus Caesar, the German triumph, combine to form a decisive stage in the course of human events. Rome's power was to last many years but now the possibility of its decline had made itself announced.

CONCLUSION

The exact causes of Grabbe's early death remain uncertain. In the registry of deaths for the Detmold municipality the cause is listed as "Auszehrung", that is, "consumption" or "progressive debilitation". Eduard Duller, presumably depending on information from the widow, ascribes death to "tuberculosis of the stomach", while Karl Ziegler speaks of spinal tuberculosis, "eine förmliche Rückenmarkschwindsucht". As has been shown by Erich Ebstein in his study of Grabbe's illness,1 this diagnosis of Ziegler's had at the time become an almost popular concept for diseases without specific character or any sure pathological or anatomical basis. Death came through some form of wasting disease but the question lies open whether the cause behind this lay in the excesses of Grabbe's life, and particularly his alcoholism, or whether, as Ebstein argues, he was also the victim of syphillis. The possibility of a syphillitic infection has been accepted for some time as reasonably likely by students of Grabbe. In part the suggestion is based on the reminiscences of Karl Köchy, a friend from Grabbe's Berlin days, who asserted this in conversations he had as an old man with the early Grabbe scholar, Eduard Grisebach.2 Nothing conclusive, however, has been discovered and the evidence one way or the other seems insufficient. It is, of course, true that the disease can lie dormant for a long time, but the biographical studies of Alfred Bergmann, particularly as revealed in his article: "War Erich Ebstein, Chr. D. Crabbes Krankheit. Eine medizinisch-literarische Studie (Munich, 1906). 2 Cf. Ebstein, op. cit., pp. 28 f.

1

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Grabbe syphillitisch?" 3 have shown the inadequacy of some of Ebsteins arguments and the lack of supporting evidence. Bergmann has brought to light many interesting documents and among other things he quotes an application for life insurance which Grabbe made in 1833 after his marriage. Neither the report of Grabbe's own physician Dr. Piderit nor that of the doctor assigned by the insurance company raises any suspicion of hidden diseases. The application was turned down, but the reason given by the insurance company's doctor is simply that, in view of Grabbe's way of life, he had no great trust in the poet's state of health or prospects of a long life. "Denn die Muse, der er sein Leben geweiht habe, sei keine beglückende oder das Leben erheiternde, sondern eher eine Furie ähnlich." 4 Whatever the specific cause of death, Grabbe's life was cut short when he was only 34, an age when he had scarcely reached maturity and when many writers would be about to begin their most serious work. Yet it is difficult to know what literary road was open to him. In the last year or two of his life a growing interest in his work had been shown by the adherents of Jungdeutschland. Some evidence of their realistic influence may be felt in Die Hermannsschlacht. Grabbe had been in friendly correspondence with Karl Gutzkow and Ludolf Wienbarg and had hoped to contribute to a new journal, Deutsche Revue, which they were planning. Ferdinand Freiligrath, another follower of this new literary and political movement and a younger fellow citizen of Detmold, became a great admirer of Grabbe's and wrote a very touching and deeply felt poem when he heard the news of Grabbe's death: . . durch die Mitwelt geht Einsam mit flammender Stirne der Poet; Das Mal der Dichtung ist ein Kainstempel! Es flieht und richtet nüchtern ihn die Welt!' 5 3 In Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik XVIII (1932), pp. 507-521. 4 Cited by Bergmann, p. 521. 5 "Bei Grabbes Tod" (1836). In Freiligraths Werke, ed. Paul Zaunert (Leipzig and Vienna, 1912), I, 177-178.

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Grabbe shared with "Young Germany" a total distaste for the atmosphere of the Biedermeier and the bourgeois retreat into homely, domestic comforts which set so much of the cultural tone in the 1820's and 1830's. It is also clear that, while his writings are seldom politically partisan, he felt little but contempt for the arrogance and presumption of the aristocracy after the Restoration and despised the limitations of the censorship. Although he was not interested, as Büchner was, in social revolution, and his theoretical sympathies may even have been royalist, his attitude to individuals was essentially democratic. It is noteable how indifferent the characters in his dramas are to all distinctions of rank and class. Like his older French contemporary Stendhal, Grabbe seems in this very much the product of the post-Napoleon era. But while he was thus in sympathy with much that ]ungdeutschland longed for, Grabbe's nature was too isolated, too rebellious and contradictory for any long or close assocation with such a political movement. This feeling of isolation and rebellion was not simply a personal trait of character. It was founded in his bitter sense of disillusion. Grabbe made many friends and many held to him throughout his life. But none profoundly understood his central experience. Underlying all his plays there is, as we have found, a dreadful echo of emptiness, an awareness of the desperate instability of man who has no assurance of standards and beliefs in a world devoid of all meaning. This sense of disenchantment and even of horror at the human fate separates Grabbe from the political hopes of Jungdeutschland as much as it does from the optimistic faith of his Romantic predecessors. In an interesting passage in his Memoirs when he discusses Grabbe as he had known him in University days at Berlin, Heinrich Heine makes a judgment which may serve as a model of the admiration of one artist for another but which at the same time reveals the failure of Grabbe's contemporaries to understand the problem of his work. . . . ich will hier nur bemerken, daß besagter Dietrich Grabbe einer der größten deutschen Dichter war und von allen unseren dramati-

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sehen Dichtern wohl als derjenige genannt werden darf, der die meiste Verwandtschaft mit Shakespeare hat. E r mag weniger Saiten auf seiner Leier haben als andere, die dadurch ihn vielleicht überragen, aber die Saiten, die er besitzt, haben einen Klang, der nur bei dem großen Briten gefunden wird. E r hat dieselben Plötzlichkeiten, dieselben Naturlaute, womit uns Shakespeare erschreckt, erschüttert, entzückt. Aber alle seine Vorzüge sind verdunkelt durch eine Geschmacklosigkeit, einen Zynismus und eine Ausgelassenheit, die das Tollste und Abscheulichste überbieten, das je ein Gehirn zu Tage gefördert. Es ist aber nicht Krankheit, etwa Fieber oder Blödsinn, was dergleichen hervorbrachte, sondern eine geistige Intoxikation des Genies. Wie Plato den Diogenes sehr treffend einen wahnsinnigen Sokrates nannte, so könnte man unsern Grabbe leider mit doppeltem Recht einen betrunkenen Shakespeare nennen. 8

This comparison with Shakespeare is not totally out of place. Again and again in Grabbe we are aware of the richness of his genius and the potentialities that were never totally fulfilled. In his gift for the creation of character and scene, in the range of emotions, in his ability to impose on to history the vitality of the human struggle, Grabbe seems rightly to stand comparison with Shakespeare himself. It is also true that his work all too often ends in disappointment. Even today, when the mood of the time might lend itself to understand and sympathize with the nature of Grabbe's experience, his plays remain widely unknown to the reading public and, although in Germany the historical traditions of the national drama are kept very much alive on the stage, Grabbe's drama finds there only a very tentative and uncertain place. We cannot, however, so easily ascribe Grabbe's failures to weaknesses of character or temperament, the excesses of fever or madness or what Heine calls the "spiritual intoxication of genius". For all the eccentricities of Grabbe's character we see in fact in his life much evidence of determination and endurance. The prejudices of contemporaries and later critics against his licentious life, which Heine also reflects, are largely irrelevant. He was totally serious in his devotion to his work and altogether conscious of the problem ® Heinrich Heines Memoiren. Nach seinen Werken, Briefen und Gesprächen, ed. Gustav Karpeles (Berlin, 1888), pp. 121-122.

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he faced. The causes of failure lay in his time. Grabbe's vision of the world shocked and baffled his contemporaries as it did the 19th century as a whole. He in turn responded with contempt for those who seemed to find their way all too easily to success. If Grabbe's work tends at times to wander without direction, the cause lies in his inability to accept the carefully structured dramatic form that the German theatre of Goethe and Schiller had constructed on the basis of French classicism. The lapses of taste, the excesses of the action and the uncertainty of the language are the reflection of a world of disorder experienced without any clear central focus and point of control. Whereas even Heinrich von Kleist is able to present the world in terms of a tragic conflict, let us say between idea and reality, between feeling and experience, and in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg at least, suggests a potential resolution, Grabbe is not able to formulate his experience into any kind of tragic sequence. Only in his earliest drama Herzog Theodor von Gothland do we find anything of a traditional tragic development, but already here we are aware of a desperately poignant crisis of faith so overwhelming that it threatens to shatter all dramatic form and control. In examining Grabbe's work we have seen how the problem of imposing a pattern on the chaos of his experienced world has provided a central key to understanding. We have followed Grabbe's constant experimental search for an adequate means of expression. Possibly, for all the interesting qualities of his later work, he was most successful earlier when he openly adopted remote and eccentric dramatic forms as in Scherz,

Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung and Don Juan und Faust. Even here, as we have seen, he was partly dependent on accepted modes and conventions. Scherz has its roots in Romantic comedy and reflects the influence of Ludwig Tieck, Don Juan und Faust is in part a recreation of much developed themes. But in the extravagances and vitality of the comedy Grabbe achieved a strikingly original manner whereby he was able to express without pathos his own vision of a disordered world.

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The total discrepancy between the values which we dream of and the desperate reality of human fate and human experience here is accepted unemotionally and ironically as an inevitable fact of the world we know. The nihilistic undertone is countered by the author's youthful good spirits and irrational joy of life. In Don Juan und Faust Grabbe found a means to express openly the extent and intensity of human desires and ambitions. The idea of putting two such superhuman heroes into one play seems like a characteristic Grabbe extravagance yet he was able legitimately to limit and control the material. Since the ultimate meaning of the action had to remain symbolic, he was able to bring the specific and restricted sequence of events into a simplified but acceptable pattern. When he turned to the history drama Grabbe was not able openly and directly to present his sense of spiritual crisis. The plays reflect and partly reproduce the neutral colors of history itself. But the mood and spirit of these plays is only comprehensible if we understand the current of disillusion that runs through them. Earlier critics were inevitably misled when they attempted to interpret these later dramas in relation to the idealist works of the many Schiller epigones or later in comparison with the pseudo-classical patriotic histories of Ernst von Wildenbruch. These plays are centered in the presentation of great deeds and great men, but the greatness of the heroes lies in their vitality of mind, not in the moral or spiritual purposes to which they are devoted. The heroes represent no cause or moral position. They are carried only by their own irresistible drive to power. Thus no central moral conflicts emerge in the dramas. There is no connecting link between moral failure and physical collapse, no suggestion of guilt and redemption or of crime and tragic atonement. Grabbe organizes events into a dramatic pattern but only in order to impose some kind of structure on the inevitable confusion of historical events. It is for this reason that Friedrich Hebbel in one of his diaries condemns Grabbe's dramas as trivial and lacking in meaning. He argues that Grabbe seeks to "destroy the idea by the phenomenon", with the result that

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he moves, "like the wind which is the creator of the changing clouds", entirely in empty space.7 But precisely here lay the distinction. Grabbe was not able to accept a dominating idea behind the multiplicity of human events. When he speaks as he does on occasion of expressing "the spirit of history" he means only that he is not tied to precise accuracy in reproducing historical events. He aims to penetrate history with his own vision but only in order to reveal the disorder and confusion, as well as the strengths and weaknesses, of human aims. In the two Hohenstaufen dramas Grabbe attempted to encompass this incoherent and many sided world within a largely traditional form. He wanted to attract his audience by the pageantry and color of the medieval scene. He makes use of the traditional iambic pentameter and injects into his language and imagery a heroic tone and patriotic flourish that might appeal to his time. Even in the structure of the plays which are carefully divided into 5 acts and can be more or less satisfactorily analyzed in terms of a normal exposition, climax and dénouement, he seems to impose an orthodox order on to events. In Friedrich Barbarossa the conflicts of the Emperor with the Pope and with the Welf particularist leader Heinrich the Lion provide the central material of the play. Barbarossa's attempt to create an imperial authority provides a subject matter under which events covering many years can be controlled. Yet already here, as our study showed, many elements suggest the arbitrariness of the dramatic order. On the one hand individual scenes suggest the real incoherence of the many sided world. The whole significance of the action is not encompassed within the imperial conflict. The multiple ambitions and valuations of men cannot so easily be incorporated within a single theme. As a result the very stress on this central conflict seems like an artificial imposition of the author's. At the same time the picture of the medieval ruler takes on a curiously Romantic coloring. Grabbe indulges the possibilities of an earlier age where men carried in themselves the self-assurance that imposes See Friedrich Hebbel, Sämtliche Werke, ed. R. M. Werner (Berlin, 1905). Tagebücher, vol. 3, pp. 120-121. Entry No. 3795.

7

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meaning on life. Barbarossa's world is composed of pageantry and ritual. Scenes which seem at first extraneous or merely spectacle have their importance in showing how Barbarossa fills the everyday incidents of life with meaning and value. Surrounded though he is by enemies, Barbarossa moves in a world of assurance that depends in the end not so much on faith in God as faith in the significance of his own life and experience. Yet the scenes which reveal this also take away from the central conflict. They remain unincorporated within the forward movement of the whole. This medieval vision of faith remained an isolated stage in Grabbe's work. Already in Heinrich VI he returns to the hero as skeptic. Heinrich shares with Barbarossa a naive vitality and power of command, but he is not supported by the same satisfying inner assurance. In spirit he is closer to the earlier heroes, Faust and Don Juan. He represents no dream of royalty that goes beyond his own personal ambitions. Indeed he is led to foster his ambitions out of a sense of inner dismay. He looks anxiously for new world to conquer, for any kind of action adequate to satisfy his own dreams. History, moreover, provided in Heinrich's life no central conflict which Grabbe could develop as he did for Barbarossa. The action thus becomes much more obviously episodic. The series of incidents which compose the play do not make up a necessary dramatic whole. The arbitrary conclusion emphasizes this lack of coherence. Grabbe follows history in showing Heinrich's sudden unexpected death at a period of triumph. This death has no moral relation to Heinrich's life and carries certainly no implication of guilt and redemption. In the suddenness of the heart attack, for which Grabbe scarcely prepares us, our normal expectations are shattered. Grabbe's intentions here seem deliberately provocative. We are left overwhelmed, and the whole sequence of Heinrich's life becomes in retrospect arbitrary and apparently purposeless. In the Hohenstaufen plays and especially Heinrich VI the contrast between Grabbe's novelty of purpose and orthodoxy of structure leaves us uncertain in our reactions. For all their

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interesting qualities these plays remain dramatically ambiguous. But in the later histories Grabbe boldly broke new ground. Napoleon oder Die Hundert Tage reveals an essentially new dramatic plan. Here the action of the play is dictated by historical events. Any trace of an earlier Schillerian attempt to use history to give dignity and value to moral issues now disappears. Grabbe's aim now is to show the reality of the forces that determine history. He follows through the 100 days of Napoleon's final bid for power to illuminate the emotions and motives behind events. We are taken from scene to scene, introduced each time into new groups who are presented at length in their own characteristic atmosphere. Even the hero is now seen within the limits of history. Napoleon is imagined in the early scenes as a savior coming to restore life and meaning to a dying age, but as the drama continues his place becomes more and more uncertain. Even this genius of action shows characteristics of the play-actor developing his role. Like the historical Napoleon, Grabbe's hero has many ambiguous qualities. Is he the master of events or, as Grabbe once suggested in a letter, only the "flag at the masthead of the revolution?" (Wuk. V, 346). In the final battle scenes his gifts have not deserted him but he has become only one military leader among many. The weight of history has now moved to his enemies Wellington and Bliicher. A drama of this kind has no necessary beginning, middle and end. A period of time is nicely rounded off for the historian by the defeat at Waterloo, but, as the play stresses, "with each end there is a new beginning" (II, 398). Recurrent motifs of the play emphasize the cyclical nature of human events. We have seen only a few turns made by the carrousel of time. With such a drama judgments cannot be made only in terms of the dramatic whole. Individual scenes take on greater dramatic importance. They carry their own center of gravity and cannot be interpreted only as stages moving towards the tragic outcome. Grabbe's techniques themselves are intensely dramatic. It is characteristic of his work that he always externalizes, sacrificing verisimilitude often in order to reveal events

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directly in front of our eyes. Yet the action as a whole takes on epic proportions. Inevitably the play has to be related to the new objectives of Brecht's "epic theatre". For in Grabbe as in Brecht we are not totally involved in the dramatic sequence. There is no central figures or figure with whom we may unconsciously identify. In the end we are left outside, awed observers reflecting on what we have seen. In Hannibal a central theme returns. The betrayal of the leader by his own people at home provides an emotional center to the variegations of the action. But once again the world reveals a choatic clash of contending forces. Here the action moves in leaps, through rapidly shifting scenes that reflect in transient episodes the vast sweep of events. A grotesque light is thrown on the human scene and the brutal desperation of man's endeavors. The disillusion that lay under the surface in the earlier history dramas, coming to appear only indirectly through the absence of valid human purposes, now comes into the open. The objective reflection of history is penetrated with the sense of tragic betrayal. If Napoleon seemed like a forerunner of the epic theatre, Hannibal points to other features of contemporary drama, above all to expressionism and the theatre of the absurd. In his use of leaping techniques, rapidity of movement and sharply illuminated episodes, Grabbe challenges as does expressionism our normal sense of a clearly structured and ordered world. At the same time his use of deliberate distortions and grotesque associations, overlying a melancholy sense of futility, emphasizes the absurdity of the human condition and the total limitations of our rational control. The absence in Grabbe's work of a clear symbolic structure may well be a source of appeal to us. A classical tragedy with its implicit pattern of human fate may seem too arbitrary and to leave too much out. We too share Grabbe's skepticism and are glad to see the world in its ambiguity, fragmented, manysided, lacking any center. Grabbe's work must be judged in relation to a rebellious tradition that may be traced back to the "Sturm und Drang", and especially to Lenz, and which continues through Biichner and Wedekind to Diirrenmatt and in-

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numerable other modern figures. The attempts of recent critics, following Brecht, to elaborate a "non-Aristotelian" poetics, enable us to do more justice to the qualities of these works. Being thus freed from making the wrong demands, we are able to recognize the effectiveness of Grabbe's achievement. Appreciation can be paid to the magnificence of the individual scenes without insistence on requirements that are no longer valid concerning the dramatic whole. We may understand his new use of language, the importance of which he was very aware,8 as well as his masterly control of new sources of dramatic tension and excitement. He struggled desperately to achieve his own new forms. The constant rewriting of his later plays, of Hannibal, and even more of Die Hermansschlacht, bears witness to the total seriousness of his effort. Earlier critics who saw here the breakdown of Grabbe's powers and a significant lapse in confidence, failed to recognize the enormous novelty of his purposes. Possibly we may see that even in Hannibal and Napoleon Grabbe was working in a wrong tradition. It might be wished that, like Büchner in Woyzeck, he had broken free from the demands of a drama of world history, but it is within this genre that he worked and in it he brought to light tremendous new possibilities. Stress has been laid in this study on Grabbe's total disillusion in the inherited values of the Christian-idealist tradition. Yet at the same time we have recognized his constant urge to resist the nihilistic drives of his own thinking. In the course of his essay Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Friedrich Nietzsche, making one of his innumerable attempts to epitomize the situation of his time, wrote: . . . es mag sogar puritanische Fanatiker des Gewissens geben, welche lieber noch sich auf ein sicheres Nichts als auf ein ungewisses Etwas — sterben legen. Aber dies ist Nihilismus und Anzeichen einer verzweifelnden sterbensmüden Seele . . .9 Grabbe certainly found no comfort in nihilism and showed no This is emphasized in the discussion by Volker Klotz in Über geschlossene und offene Form im Drama (Munich, 1960), especially pp. 236-237. 9 Nietzsches Werke (Leipzig, Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1910), VII, 18. 8

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inclination to lie down on a "secure nothingness". He constantly sought to counter his despondent pessimism by an affirmation of human energy and vitality. Ever aware of a petty and futile world around him in which the commonplace and mediocre prosper, he struggled to believe in the existence of men of genuine greatness of passion and decision. This faith in the hero was maintained in the teeth of his own failure, his disastrous inability to control and master his own life. It was a conviction that led into terrible dilemmas. Again and again we have noted Grabbe's emphasis on the brutal strains in human nature. The frightening excesses of Gothland reoccur just as horribly in Marius und Sulla, where the two leaders indulge in vast scale massacres, and persist indeed throughout Grabbe's whole work. He seems deliberately to shock us by the contrast between our own humane predilections and the bitter cruelty exemplified by the man of power. Significant (though quite unhistorical) scenes in Hannibal may be called to mind where the poet Terence, the literate spokesman of a respectable civilization, reveals his horror at the cruelty of war and the open savagery of his one time pupil, Scipio the younger. Scipio revels in his own brutal decisions and mocks at the civilized trivialities which make up the subject of Terence's comedies. Terence, though shocked, cannot break free. He is overawed by the vital power of his master. Grabbe, like Nietzsche after him, was in himself a gentle, even rather ineffectual figure. The excesses of his life, the periodic outbursts of anger and indignation, only emphasize the inner weakness. Yet everything within him drove him to resist the pressure towards futility which he saw in the world around him. His heroes deny all protective illusions and assert themselves irresistibly against the world. There are times when Grabbe seems to linger in dreams of a simpler and more harmonious age. Don Juan and Faust feel that something in the present time has gone wrong, that being themselves the fragmented victims of a world that has lost its center, they can only dream of a previous harmony. In Friedrich Barbarossa Grabbe created a medieval world of faith in which the Emperor lives

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in the security of his God-given role. In the fairy tale comedy Aschenbrödel and more ironically in Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung he indulged the possibility of a world of happy endings where lovers find in each other the comfort to face the disorders of life. Even in Die Hermannsschlacht we see once more the hero buoyed up by his inner relation to his people. Yet each of these dreams fails to satisfy, and at other times Grabbe seems tempted by the attractions of pure defiance. More than once he broaches the possibility of superman. In Don Juan und Faust through the speculations of his heroes, in Heinrich VI and Marius und Sulla through direct action and decision, he suggest the hope of a life beyond normal human restrictions and all common values of good and evil. But there are times also, especially in Napoleon and Hannibal, as well as to a large extent in his comedies, when Grabbe faces the reality of an unheroic world and accepts the nature of the mass age that is upon us. These plays offer no obvious consolation. They bring no message and no program to us. Yet there is an element of confidence and hope. The heroes, touched by common human weakness, share a vital spirit which spurs them on. We recognize and rejoice in the energy with which they pursue the varied purposes of life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

References in the text to Grabbe's works are taken wherever possible from the new edition: Christian Dietrich Grabbe. Werke und Briefe. Historischkritische Gesamtausgabe, edited for the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen by Alfred Bergmann. 6 vols., Darmstadt, 1960 ff. Unfortunately this edition was still not complete by the time of publication and further references, primarily to Grabbe's letters and prose writings, are taken from the previously most complete edition: Grabhes Werke, ed. Spiridion Wukadinowic, 6 parts in 3 (Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, Stuttgart, Deutsches Verlagshaus Bong & Co., [1912]). For the sake of clarity references to this edition are indicated in the text by the prefix "Wuk". Below is given a selection of the principal studies on Grabbe, including some works of a broader scope which devote considerable space to Grabbe's writings. Adams, Paul, "Das Weltbild in Grabbes Herzog Theodor von Gothland", Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft, II (Freiburg i. Br., 1927), 103-135. Ancker, Ilse, Deutsche Faustdichtungen nach Goethe, Diss. Berlin, 1937. Becker, Hellmuth, Chr. D. Grabbes Drama "Napoleon oder die hundert Tage" (Leipzig, 1921). Behrens, Carl, En tysk Digter Christian Dietrich Grabbe. Hans Liv og Digtning (Copenhagen, 1903). Bergler, Edmund, Talleyrand, Napoleon, Stendhal, Grabbe - Psychoanalytisch-biographische Essays (Vienna, 1935). Bergmann, Alfred (ed.), Aschenbrödel. Erstausgabe der Urfassung, with postscript (Detmold, 1950). —, Christian Dietrich Grabbe. Chronik seines Lebens 1801-1836 (Detmold, 1954). — , (ed.), Christian Dietrich Grabbe. Ein Brevier, with introduction (Vienna, Munich, Basel, 1955). —, Christian Dietrich Grabbe. Sein Leben in Bildern (Leipzig, 1936). —, Die Glaubwürdigkeit der Zeugnisse für den Lebensgang und Charakter Christian Dietrich Grabbes (= Germanische Studien, 137, Berlin, 1933). —, Die Vorfahren Christian Dietrich Grabbes (Detmold, 1937).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

—,

265

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LITERATURE

1. Lloyd Warren Wedberg: The Theme of Loneliness in Theodor Storms Novellen. 1964. 166 pp. / 16.— 2. Werner Hoffmeister: Studien zur erlebten Rede bei Thomas Mann und Robert Musil. 1965. 173 pp. f 22 — 4. Valters Nollendorfs: Der Streit um den Urfaust. 1967. 310 pp. f 40.5. Jeffrey L. Sammons: The Nachtwachen von Bonaventura: A structural Interpretation. 1965. 128 pp. / 18.— 6. William Samelson: Gerhart Hermann Mostar: A Critical Profile. 1966. 274 pp. / 30.7. Roger L. Cole: The Ethical Foundations of Rudolf Binding's "Gentleman"-Concept. 1966. pp. 166. / 20.8. Michael M. Metzger: Lessing and the Language of Comedy. 1966. 247 pp. / 30.9. Josef Thanner: Die Stilistik Theodor Fontanes: Untersuchungen zur Erhellung des Begriffes "Realismus" in der Literatur. 1967. 160 pp. f 22.10. Albert R. Schmitt: Herder und Amerika. 1967.186 pp. / 28.11. Gerhardt E. Steinke: The Life and Work of Hugo Ball: Founder of Dadaism. 1967. 244 pp. f 26.-

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