77. “Johannes”

A tragedy by Hermann Sudermann
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

Yesterday, the play for which the Berlin authorities have made such an involuntary advertisement went on stage at the Deutsches Theater: Sudermann's "Johannes". It is not often that a theatrical event is awaited with such curiosity as yesterday's performance. After my first impression, I would like to be reserved in my judgment of the drama. Especially as the whole performance suffered from the influence of an indisposition of the main actor (Josef Kainz as Johannes). Only this much seems certain to me: the powerful, confident mastery of everything that is effective on stage, which we always admired in Sudermann, is also evident in this play. But the action remains stuck in the theatrical, in the outwardly scenic; the dramatic in the higher sense of the word is missing. There is no dramatic linking and development of events at all. I will come back to the play in the next issue, when I have read it and seen it again. Because I don't want to be unfair to Sudermann's latest achievement.

The story of John the Baptist is the prelude to the powerful drama that unfolds in the life of the founder of the Christian religion. We have no other interest in the personality of the Baptist than that of the immature herald of the one who was to come. "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand," said John to the Jews. He did not know what this kingdom of heaven would bring. He was never more than "the voice of a preacher in the wilderness", who prepared the way for the Lord and "made his paths straight". He was an instrument in the hand of God to prepare his children for the teacher of love. He did not yet understand anything of the Savior's mind. He had no idea that those who walk in guilt must be forgiven because love is more powerful than wrath. He did not foresee that Jesus would want to save sinners, he believed: "The axe is already laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, whatever tree does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." He thought of Jesus: "He has his shovel in his hand, he will sweep the floor and gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with everlasting fire." This is how a Jewish rabbi imagined the Redeemer.

The man who stammeringly proclaims what a dark premonition shows him in a false light is not a tragic personality. The meaning of the legend of John is that God's purposes are wise and that the Creator of the world uses his children as guides even where they do not know which paths they are taking. Next to this meaning, everything else we are told about John pales into insignificance. The fact that the Baptist was killed by the wrath of Herodias is a feature of the legend that we could do without. This death seems like a coincidence. It has no connection with what interests us about the figure of John.

Huß is a figure who lends himself to tragedy, not Johannes. The forerunner of a reformer only appears tragic if he comes too early and perishes because the time is not yet ripe for his goals. John, however, is himself immature for the goals he serves. He is therefore actually an uninteresting personality. As a human being, we are completely indifferent to him.

But it would be possible to turn John into a figure that arouses our interest. Whoever wants to do this must completely transform the personality of which legend and history speak. He must present us with a John who does not speak of the one who is to come, but who believes that he already has the good news; who is imbued with his mission as the Messiah. Such a John must be equipped with the awareness that he fulfills what the time expects. And then he must be confronted by the greater, the true fulfiller. John would now have to see that he was an erring man. This John would have to perish from self-knowledge. From the awareness of his immaturity. We would then be just against him, who is unjust against himself, because he is only a forerunner, not a fulfiller. We would say to ourselves that ripe fruit does not immediately fall from the tree.

Sudermann did not draw such a John. He has essentially dramatized the familiar figure of John. The necessary consequence is that his John depicts a series of episodes from the time of the Jewish people that precede the appearance of the Messiah. Successive events take place in the course of which the Rabbi John appears again and again. These events are depicted with the great art that we have long learned to appreciate in Sudermann. But what we should expect from the whole structure of the drama is missing. We cannot be more interested in the John of this drama than in the legendary John. He comes, talks, leaves, comes back, rejects Salome's lecherous courtship as a moral man and is finally beheaded. All this happens alongside many other things. There is no necessary connection between this other and John. There is nothing in the figure of the Baptist that pushes the one event towards the other. There is no dramatic tension.

All the people John encounters are more interesting than John himself.

Herodias, the sinner who has run away from her husband to marry his brother, Herod, is drawn with the most consummate mastery. Because she wants to rule, she has fled from the powerless Philip. Herod is weak and meek, but he is in a position that allows his wife to develop her nature as a ruler. A fine characterization is given in the words that the cynically proud woman hurls in Herod's face: "Do you take me for someone who comes to beg for a daily evening sacrifice of caresses? Look at me! Not the beloved, she is no more... Look at your mistress." And in the other: "What if you didn't hide the sinner from the people, but instead walked with her to the temple tomorrow with your head held high? Wouldn't it be a cheerful game if the high priest smiled at your brother's runaway wife with the same expression of the fatherly servant with which he once greeted the virtuous Mariamne (Herod's first, rejected wife)?"

Salome, the daughter of Herodias, is a small miracle of the dramatic art of individualization. She doesn't care what John preaches, she falls in love with the man. She woos him with all the strength of her awakening passion. And when he rejects her courtship, her love turns to raging hatred, so that she gladly makes her mother's will to corrupt the Baptist her own.

Herod himself, in his "cowardly weakness", is also excellently characterized. No less the individual types of the Jewish people. For me, Jehoshaphat, the cobbler who starves his wife and children to follow John, is a more interesting character than the Baptist himself. Eliakim, the wool merchant who always reads the law, and Pasur, the fruit merchant who regrets that he sells so little at the miserable Passover, are excellent characters. "He who trades in fruits and vegetables, neighbor, does not have it so easy to be a righteous man before the Lord. Your wool will last until Herod and his wife are gone."

Everything in this drama, apart from the main character, is significant and of great impact. The weakness with which John himself is shaped paralyzes everything.

Sudermann does allow John to express where his life would have to lead if it were to have a dramatic effect, but he has not shaped him in the sense of his words: "Truly, the time of my downfall has come, when enemies sing my praises and friends blaspheme me. What do you want from me? My end must be solitude and silence in it." That he must fall silent because someone greater is speaking must be John's tragic fate.

Sudermann's "Johannes" has been performed in various places in Germany. I have followed the reviews and reports on these performances. A curious fact emerges. The recording was the most different imaginable in the various places. It would now be interesting to collect the different voices. This could provide invaluable material for a staristics of taste. The "Dramaturgische Blätter" is the place to collect such material. I would therefore like to ask all those who are in a position to contribute to such a collection of material to do so. The information will then be processed accordingly here.