# 12. Theater and Criticism

The subject of "theater criticism" is not a pleasant one. It is least of all edifying for the theater professionals themselves. What can't be found under the heading "theater" in our newspapers and journals? Perhaps nowhere is dilettantism more rampant than in this field.

And the worst is the criticism of dramatic performances and the art of acting. The situation is better when it comes to opera criticism. When it comes to musical performances, ignorance and lack of knowledge are basically easy to prove. If you read five lines from a music critic, you will be able to judge whether you are dealing with an expert or a dilettante. But in the course of the last few decades, conditions in this field have also deteriorated considerably. Those who belong to Wagner's artistic circle cannot be absolved of the fact that they have contributed enormously to this deterioration. In the days before the critics of the Wagner school came on the scene, it was a requirement for the music critic to speak about the musical quality of a performance from a professional point of view. He had to know what was possible within the art he was criticizing. He had to speak of the architectonics of the musical work of art. He had to interpret the perception of the ear, and the musical imagination demanded its rights. The Wagner critics began to speak in a completely different key. One hardly read anything about music and musical imagination in their comments. Instead, they talked all the more about all kinds of mysterious states of mind and dark mystical truths or even natural phenomena that were supposed to be expressed in this or that piece of music. Tremendous mischief was and is being done. The most brilliant illustration of this nonsense is Hanslick's fine little book "Vom MusikalischSchönen". A music critic who rejects this booklet cannot be taken seriously. For one can be convinced that he will not speak of music at all in his reviews. He will tell us what is "expressed" in this or that passage of a musical work; but he will owe us everything about the architectonics of a sound work, which is exhausted within what the ear and the sound imagination perceive.

A setback in this area is already clearly audible today. Wagner critics are already being rejected by sensible musicians.

The situation is different with dramatic criticism. Here, dilettantism is more difficult to recognize. There are few people who know where the boundary between dilettantism and connoisseurship lies. Connoisseurship can only be attributed to those who base their judgment on the purely artistic qualities of a work. A drama must be constructed according to the same strictly artistic laws as a symphony.

The matter is confused, however, by the subject matter of dramatic art. This material only concerns the critic to the extent that he has to decide whether or not any reproach is at all suitable for dramatic treatment. This question does not apply to music. For it is entirely form. It has no material. And the injustice of Wagner critics lies precisely in the fact that they want to impose a material on the music by force.

In drama, however, material is not considered in any other way than that just indicated. If further judgment is made about the material, then such a judgment is inartistic. Inartistic are the questions as to whether a material is in itself significant or insignificant, beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral and so on. These things are none of the critic's business. As soon as a material provides what is necessary for dramatic treatment, the critic only has to ask himself whether the artist has brought out what lies in the material, and then how he has treated the material. He must be indifferent to the what of the drama, what matters to him is the how. How the poet introduces the conflict, how he intertwines the threads, how he brings an event to a close, that is what must be discussed.

But unfortunately there is so little mention of this in our theater criticism. The material interest is always in the foreground. And the material interest is the inartistic one in this respect. Imagine transferring the spirit of our drama criticism to the criticism of painting. We would hear whether a depicted landscape is lovely or hideous, beautiful or ugly, attractive or repulsive, whether a person portrayed by the artist is charming or hideous, and so on. But we would hear nothing about whether the painter has succeeded in bringing the picture and background into the right relationship, whether he has created harmony of color or not. We would hear about all the things that are of no concern to us in a painting; but we could glean nothing of the specific painterly aspect from a critique aimed purely at the material.

A great advance in dramatic criticism will lie in the fact that we demand the same connoisseurship from it as we do from the assessment of the visual arts.

Hindering this progress, however, is our theater audience. Who is aware of the purely artistic qualities of a drama? Who demands an assessment of these qualities from the critic? Everything depends on the material - after all, everything presses for the material! And Schiller spoke in vain: The true artistic secret of the master lies in the destruction of the material by the form. Goethe put the same sentiment into the words of "Faust": Consider the what, consider more the how.

With regard to drama, we are stuck in a barbaric taste.

And the art of acting? It is the poor relation of criticism. The wise judges know the least about it. Not even the most elementary things are clear here.

The fact that two actors have to play a role in completely different ways is usually not taken into account. The actor unites three persons in himself when he plays. The first is his everyday human personality, his figure, his face, his nose, his voice and so on; the second is the personality that the poet gives him to play, the Posa, the Hamlet, the Othello and so on. The third is not visible. It stands above both. It uses the first as an instrument to embody the second. And since there are no two people of the same build, no two actors can play a role in the same way. The actor has to create a compromise between the person portrayed by the poet and his own natural constitution.

Only a critic who asks himself whether the actor has succeeded in making that compromise can be considered. Everything else that is written about the art of acting is empty chatter.

Criticism of drama and the art of acting is often judged from too low a point of view. Basically, people think: anyone can write about these things. And indeed, "anyone" writes about it. Precisely because judgment based on purely material considerations is so tempting here, the standards should be set particularly high. We should demand connoisseurship, because connoisseurship is so difficult to distinguish from charlatanry.

But the audience is happy to accept a few pointed remarks about a drama or an acting performance. Claims are taken at face value here whose analogs would simply be laughed at in another field of art. A nicely written feuilleton counts for more than a competent judgment of art. And if the feature writer is even funny! Then nobody cares about his connoisseurship.

It will be difficult to bring about better conditions in this area. But they must be brought about for the benefit of the dramatic and acting arts.