122. “Josephine”

Play in four acts by Hermann Bahr
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

Bonaparte is madly in love with the beautiful Josephine Beauharnais - so much so that he wants to do nothing all day but make out with the sweet woman. But she wants to cheat on him with Barras. So she sends him away from Paris to the army. While the storm of battle rages all around him, he thinks of nothing but his Josephine. If she writes to him too seldom or if her letters are too short, he gets angry, throws himself into the fray and wins one of his brilliant victories. Thus, through no fault of his own, he becomes a hero. The French make him consul. Now he thinks a little about what is right for a great man. It's not right for him to spend the whole day making love. So he neglects good Josephine, to whom he owes his fame. But it is also a good idea for him to acquire "decent manners". So he calls in the actor Talma to teach him. This is how the infatuated little Bonaparte became the great Napoleon. There are undoubtedly two people who represent this point of view; one is the soldier who accompanies Napoleon on his campaigns to shine his boots, the other is the Viennese poet Hermann Bahr. Both have the attitude that one usually wants to hit with the sentence: "There is no greatness for the valet de chambre." With the above few sentences we have reproduced the content of a "drama" by Hermann Bahr, which was performed at the Lessing Theater on 9 December. A long time ago, it had already been performed in Vienna on the stage that sometimes means the world. I suspect that the "poet" was laughed at at the time. For he felt compelled to write the following "salvation of honor" of his "drama": "It has been said that I wanted to mock Bonaparte in my "Josephine". Some have praised it, many have been annoyed by it; but no one has doubted that the purpose of the play was to make a hero ridiculous and small. It was strange for me to hear that, because I would never have thought of it, but I wanted to show what life is about an undoubtedly great person."

"Of course, this will only be expressed through the whole. Josephine is the first play of a trilogy..., the beginning man ... still believes that he is in the world for himself, to represent himself. He does not yet know that he can mean nothing for himself, but is only to take part in the great action of the eternal comedy. No, he wants to live his own life. The first act of our life is about how he is taught to do this and how he has to learn to move to the beat of fate. Here the young man wrestles with fate. He does not want to renounce himself, he resists, he wants to determine himself and his life. He does not want to serve. He has his own plans for himself, and he wants to follow them. But he must experience that fate is stronger. Whoever has reached this point, whoever has learned to obey fate, whoever no longer resists, enters the second act, the melancholy, cheerful play of the man. The man knows that it is not for man to determine his life. He knows that he is subject to a great power which he cannot resist. He knows that we are instruments with which inscrutable works are created according to inscrutable plans. No one can ever guess what his actions mean. We feel that a tremendous purpose rules our existence, but we are not allowed to see it. There is nothing for us but to obey.... At last, in the third act of life, man has become free from fate. He has played his part, now he steps down from the stage, the great director dismisses him... the essence of the old man is that he has become free and now, having cast off his part, he may finally live for himself... Fate needs a tyrant and takes a troubadour. How small are our wishes, how great is fate! This is what I wanted to portray: in "Josephine, how the unknown power captures him, sends the dreamer to war and lets the poet become a hero, even if he resists and wants nothing to do with his heroism; in the second part, his love for Walewska, how he has become a man who has surrendered to fate and knows that we must serve, and obediently performs his incomprehensible role. ... in the third part, on the island, how he has played out and become free of fate, how he is finally allowed to live according to himself, and how the emperor and hero falls from him and he becomes a Corsican enthusiast again, gazing out with wild dreams...".

It's funny how the world is reflected in this poet's head. The man who wants to be free to make love to Josephine, but whom fate makes unfree, a man who shakes up the peoples of Europe from West to East because he must "serve, obey", and who finally becomes "free" when he spends his last days imprisoned on a lonely little island!!!! The valet's attitude must turn grotesque somersaults if it is to become philosophy. It is a pity that Hermann Bahr did not become a natural historian. I imagine a natural history written by him according to the recipe of his Napoleon-Fate-Wisdom would be quite nice. It could read, for example: "The lion is the most good-natured animal. When he is ravenously hungry and encounters a wanderer in the desert, he lies down and begs the man to "eat me up so that I may be relieved of my hunger"... And in another passage you could read: "The odeur producers have long searched for a plant that is particularly fragrant - they finally found it in the devil's filth." - -