55. Max Halbe

Max Halbe has followed up his love idyll "Jugend" with three dramatic creations: the joke play "Der Amerikafahrer", the comedy "Lebenswende" and now "Mutter Erde". Something highly peculiar becomes apparent when one follows the development of Halbe's work. There is no doubt that each of his achievements is more mature, better than the one before. And yet none of them is as unclouded, pure and highly enjoyable as "Jugend". The scenes between the good Hans Hartwich and the graceful Ännchen do not warm us as devotedly as Halbe's other dramas. And even if the poet repeatedly succeeds in drawing human types who, like the two priests in "Jugend", make us wonder: where have we seen these people before; the effect he had with his "Liebesdrama" is not renewed.

One wonders when one sits down and thinks about the impression that "Youth" makes. It cannot be understood at all. You have to be satisfied even without concepts. For a dramatic action of such unreasonableness cannot easily be found a second time. An imbecile ensures the continuation of the constantly stagnating plot; the same imbecile brings about the conflicts and the catastrophe. This imbecile plays the role of fate in the drama. You have to switch off your mind if you want to enjoy the wonderful love scenes, if you want to take in the meaningful moods. And Halbe is the magician who forces us to switch off our minds. He puts our thinking power into a healthy sleep and we become all heart, all feeling. We feel nothing of the dramatic flaws of Idylis.

You have to be a great poet if you can allow yourself the kind of mistakes that "Youth" has, because you have to make hair-raising nonsense invisible through incomparable merits. Halbe has succeeded in this. And why did he succeed? Because he allowed the uniqueness of his talent to run free and unfettered in the field in which it is at home and did not overstep the boundaries of this field. In "Jugend", Halbe refrained from basing the progress of the plot on any inner necessity. And in doing so, he has made his fortune. The spectator says to himself, when his mind awakens against his will during the enjoyment: nonsense prevails in the progress of the plot; but he is sincere: he is not pretending to make sense.

You can only play such a magic game with the audience once. Halbe told himself that. He no longer wanted to do without the inner necessity in the progress of the dramatic action. He wanted to portray conflicts arising from human characters, from the cultural currents of the time and from the circumstances in which people live. I now believe that Halbe's powers of observation have failed him in this field. I have every confidence in his ability, but not in his powers of perception. He would depict the deepest social conflicts with the same ease with which he paints moods if it were only a matter of skill. But he does not see through these conflicts when they play out in reality; he does not know the moving forces. Therefore he constructs them arbitrarily and presents us with impossibilities every moment. The true dramatist lets one fact follow the other because he has recognized the natural connection between the two. Halbe does not recognize this connection. That is why he constructs one for himself. And how he constructs it is decided by his sympathies and antipathies. Paul Warkentin (in "Mother Earth") transforms himself from an enthusiast for women's rights into a worshipper of natural beauty and immediate female charms not because he is driven by an inner necessity, but because the poet's sympathies for unadulterated nature have led him to give the matter this twist.

And as little as the dramatic conflicts are, so little are the dramatic characters Halbe's element. He masterfully portrays what passive natures and average people feel. He sees them down to the marrow of their bones. What drives the active, the exceptional natures escapes him. He does not see what lies at the bottom of these people's souls. He is interested in individual characteristics of these natures. In the technician Weyland ("Lebenswende"), he has depicted the ruthless rigidity which, without looking to the right or left, sets off towards a goal. Halbe does not seek to explore further how the whole person must be constituted so that such a hankerdz can play an outstanding role in him. To cite another example, it is downright puzzling why the noble-minded, self-sacrificing, devoted Olga appears in "Lebenswende" with such tomboyish manners. Of course, it does not occur to me to claim that such character traits are incompatible. But we must understand why they are united in one person. In Halbe's case I understand nothing more than that he likes the one as well as the other, and that it is agreeable to him when he encounters both together. The effect of a drama depends on whether the spectator feels that the poet is superior to him at every moment, or whether he believes himself superior to the poet. The poet is always superior to us if we say to ourselves at every step the plot takes forward: it was bound to happen this way, we just weren't clever enough to know it beforehand. We are superior to the poet when we say to ourselves: no, it can't happen like this, it's against the possible. In this case, we feel that we know better than the poet. And that is bad for him.

The great playwright is like the discoverer of natural laws. We didn't know what either of them was telling us beforehand, but it makes sense to us as soon as we hear it. What the bad playwright presents to us seems to us like the speeches of a man who tells us about miracles. We go back to business as usual about him.

In "Jugend", Halbe renounced being a playwright. Today he wants to be. Four years ago he only let his merits work; now he disturbs their effect by also wanting to achieve what he cannot. The nonsense that drives the development forward does not distract us from the atmospheric images in the parsonage; but the progress of the plot in "Mother Earth" does, which we do not understand because it is arbitrarily constructed. We can tolerate the obvious nonsense; the lack of regularity spoils everything.

Emerson says: "The poet is devoted to the thoughts and laws that know their own way, and guided by them, he rises from interest in their meaning and significance, and from the role of an observer to the role of a creator." Halbe plays the role of creator too early. He should enjoy the role of observer for longer. He seems to lack the patience for this. The magic that the poet exerts on us is based on the fact that his creations have an effect on us like the products of nature, that we say to them: there is necessity, there is divine power. What must happen because nature wills it, the poet should show us; but not what he clings to with his inclinations. What must triumph by its natural power, he should let triumph; but not that which he 'would like to see triumph. Emerson's comparison of the poet with the dreamer is delightful: "This reminds me that we all possess a key to the wonder of the poet, that the stupidest fool has experiences of his own which can explain Shakespeare to him - namely dreams. In dreams we are perfect poets, we create the characters of the drama, we give them appropriate figures, faces and clothes. They are perfect in their organs, postures and gestures; moreover, they speak according to their own character, not ours - they speak to us, and we listen with astonishment to what they tell us." Halbe does not allow those of his characters who have a trait that particularly interests him to speak according to their character. Then he turns them all so that we can see whether he admires or detests this trait. We constantly see the poet on stage alongside the characters.