127. “Schluck and Jau”

Play on jokes and rants with five interruptions by Gerhart Hauptmann
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

"Schluck und Jau." This much-disputed "Spiel zu Scherz und Schimpf" by Gerhart Hauptmann, which has just been published by S.Fischers Verlag (Berlin) and performed at the Deutsches Theater, will be discussed in the next issue of this magazine. Our judgment differs so much from what has been heard so far, pro and con, that we can only hope to be heard when the agitated tempers have calmed down somewhat.

"And do not take this coarse little piece for more than an unconcerned whim child," says the prologue speaker, who is "a hunter with the hip horn, through a divided curtain of green cloth, as it were, in front of the hunting party, to whom, as is assumed, the following piece is played in the banqueting hall of a hunting lodge." I believe that such a clear expression of his intentions must be respected in a poet. One would be wrong to expect a profound philosophy of life from a play written for the above purpose. What poet would waste such a philosophy if he thought of a "hunting party" as spectators and, moreover, had his prologue speaker address them thus: "Let it please you, dear hunters, that sometimes this curtain opens and reveals something to you - and then closes. Let your eyes glide over it, if you do not prefer to look into the cup." As a spectator, I am therefore entitled to put my own brain aside for once and to insert that of a member of a princely hunting party into my cranial cavity. I have the interests, thoughts and opinions of Prince Jon Rand, and it is very well calculated for my understanding when Karl, my "thinking" comrade, shares his philosophy of life with me. Jau, the drunkard, has been awakened from his intoxication in a princely bed; he has been dressed in princely clothes and then told that he is a prince and not a walking rascal. Charles undertakes this maneuver to amuse his prince. He then instructs him:

"Take this dress off him, this colorful embroidered one,
So he slips into the rags again,
Which now tied into a small bundle
The castellan keeps. Dress remains dress after all! His is a little more flimsy,
But just and fitted to his body.
And since it is from the same witness
Like dreams - his as good as ours, Jon!
And we are no closer to the things that surround us here
Are no closer than dreams, and
No closer than the stranger Jau -
So he rescues from our junk heaven
Much less than we into his realm
Of lowliness. How? What, are we more
? More than naked sparrows? More than this Jau? I do not think so! What we really are,
Is little more than what it really is -:
And our best happiness is soap bubbles.
We form them with our heart's breath
And swarm after them in the blue air,
Until they burst: and so does he.
He will be free in the future as before,
To pursue such eternal arts."

The ancient wisdom that the differences between people are based only on appearances, that something completely new is revealed to us as the essence of man when we awaken from the dream of life for a while, something that is in every man, be he prince or beggar - this not exactly profound but nevertheless true wisdom is presented here as it fits into the brain of a man like Karl. And the type of person who takes such things, which others have long since relegated to the category of the most banal matters of course, seriously and expresses them with importance, is wonderfully met. We know him, the count, who recites a few trivialities from a catechism on Indian philosophy with an expression as if he had gone to school with Buddha himself. This philosophizing salon hero of Gerhart Hauptmann's is excellently designed. Nietzscheanism has also found such philosophizing counts today. I knew one myself who always carried around the small edition of "Zarathustra" in a cute little booklet in his trouser pockets. In the other pocket, the count's thinker carried an equally well-equipped small edition of the Bible. He seemed to be of the opinion that the teachings of the "Book of Books" could be perfectly confirmed by the sayings of Zarathustra and that Nietzsche was only mistaken if he thought he was an anti-Christian philosopher. Why should it not give Karl, who is the child of such a mind, a terrible pleasure to make it clear to his comrade that it is only the veil of Maya that lets us find a difference between beggar and king, and that a beggar, if he is only put in the position of being king for a day, will play his part just as well as the born prince?

Hauptmann, however, seems to lack the humor that would be necessary to pull off the whole farce. He is a contemplative nature. He lays souls bare in a wonderful way. The two ragamuffins Schluck and Jau, with their riff-raff philosophy and servile lifestyle, are wonderfully drawn. Hauptmann's psychological subtlety is evident in every stroke with which he characterizes these two types. As a result, the beginning and end of the play are excellently done: the scene that shows us the two drunken rags on the green plan in front of the castle, and the other, at the end, that shows them after they have passed their adventures in the castle and have been thrown back onto the street.

The situation is different with what lies in between. This is where a dramatic cartoonist should have developed his art. Hauptmann's talent fails in this area. The irresistible comedy, which alone would be appropriate here, is probably not his thing. The actual farce therefore appears dull and colorless. Shakespearean style was the aim. But it is only half achieved everywhere. This also indicates what seems to be questionable about this play. It does not reveal any of its character. One is reminded of so much without feeling fully compensated by what is new in invention and treatment. We would have preferred less Shakespeare and more Hauptmann.

I apologize that I did not quite succeed in engaging a princely hunting party brain, but that my own asserted itself so obtrusively.