69. “A Girl's Dream”

Comedy in three acts by Max Bernstein
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

A noble spirit with honest artistic aspirations has revived the fine comedy idea of Moreto, Calderon's contemporary. The girl who is called to rule a nation and who wants to establish a realm of virtue in place of the realm of evil passions forms the center of Moreto's "Donna Diana". Such a girl is also the subject of Max Bernstein's "Girl's Dream". In both plays, the natural instincts within the girl's soul triumph over the notions of virtue caused by a false education, which are conceived as coldness in the face of the passion of love. The girl wants to remain a virgin, but in the end she sails into the sea of love with fervor. With all the means of a refined dramatic technician, Moreto lays his problem bare and develops it with the compelling necessity and with all the criss-crossing and cross-curves that are characteristic of nature when it brings forth one of its creatures and allows it to grow. Max Bernstein intelligently constructs his drama with the transparent clarity of the clairvoyant, all too clairvoyant psychologist. With him, imagination always lags a few steps behind reason. Bernstein knows all the details of the girl's soul. He is a psychologist. However, he is not a completely unbiased observer of the individual being, which defies any general formula, but a dogmatist who has formed certain general concepts and gives them form. The feelings Bernstein puts into his Leonor of Aragon are abstract, general thoughts about the girl's heart. We have before us a general concept, not a living individuality. You don't understand why this individual case has to be the way it is. During the performance I could not escape the feeling that there is no compelling necessity in all these events. It is all arbitrary. And the verses are also arbitrary. Nowhere could I feel that verse is the natural way in which the poet must express himself.

What the poet lacks in the art of individualization is replaced by the leading actors in the performance of the Deutsches Theater. Agnes Sorma brings the abstract idea of the Princess of Aragon to life so perfectly that we truly believe we have an individual being before us. And Josef Kainz speaks Bernstein's verses in such a way that we forget their unnaturalness. Guido Thielscher plays a master of ceremonies as a small masterpiece of acting art.