the magic ring which makes him visible to Rhodope, is linked to so mechanical a device as to weaken Hebbel's point.

VI

The Nibelungen (1862) and the Demetrius-fragment may be omitted here, although or rather because they put Hebbel's idea of tragic guilt more successfully into relief than any of his previous plays. 22 We must not forget, however, how strongly Hebbel was indebted for his success to the literary models on which he based his two last dramas.

I recapitulate. Our criticism may be put into a nutshell by saying that Hebbel's inadequate distinction between moral and so-called tragic guilt is mainly due to his disregard for the line of demarcation between the incommensurable realms of the spirit: thought or reasoning, and sentiment or emotion.23 For this μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος I find the explanation in Hebbel's pronounced idiosyncracy. His constitutional peculiarities of character were constantly leading him into conflicts with the surrounding world, without convincing him that one side must be wrong if the other side was right.24 This insight found expression in Hebbel's dramatic vision of equally justified, though colliding, systems of values, whose adherents force each other into tragic conflicts and thereby into tragic guilt-no matter how clear their conscience be.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, Hebbel does not rest satisfied here, but soon tries the impossible, to rationalize his purely emotional predilections and aversions,25 endowing his

22 Cf. T. Poppe, loc. cit., V, 35: "Vielleicht wäre die Demetriustragödie ein Beispiel reinster Form für diesen tragischen Typus geworden." For similar praise cf. T. M. Campbell, The Life and Works of Friedrich Hebbel (Boston, 1919), p. 225, and G. Witkowski, The German Drama of the 19th Century, translation by L. E. Horning (New York, 1909), p. 90.

23 For a modern exposition of this age-old problem consult W. Freytag, Die methodischen Probleme der Pädagogik (Leipzig, 1924), p. 161 ff.

24 Cf. C. v. Klenze's edition of Agnes Bernauer2 (Oxford University Press, 1925), p. xx f. A curious account of H.'s "oddities" will be found in L. Lewin, Friedrich Hebbel, Beitrag zu einem Psychogramm, “Hebbelforschungen," VI (Berlin, 1913), particularly pp. 67 f. 71 f. 109 f. 139, and throughout P. Bastier, L'Ésotérisme de Hebbel (Paris, 1910).

25 Cf. Tagebücher, I, 289: "Es wird mir immer klarer, daß das Denken nicht, wie ich früher glaubte, eine allgemeine Gabe ist, sondern ein ganz besonderes Talent.

favored dramatic protagonists with a biased casuistry of his own. In this way, then, Hebbel's emotional diathesis may account for his start in the right direction as well as for his relative failure clearly to differentiate between moral and tragic guilt.

All of which implies no disparagement of Hebbel's genius. If Hebbel does not quite measure up to his self-proclaimed standard, it is not on account of incompetency, but because his ideal was too exacting-too high to be fully realized within the miserly span of life accorded him by fate. For the serious student of substantial tragedy Hebbel's dramatic quest will never lose its fascination.26

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Ich selbst besitze dieses Talent nicht." This frank self-criticism is more to the point than A. Scheunert's Der Pantragismus, “Beiträge zur Ästhetik," herausg. von Th. Lipps u. R. M. Werner, Hamburg und Leipzig, 1903, according to which, S. 216, through Hebbel, “unserm Gefühl Wege vorgeschrieben werden, auf die es sich nicht zwingen läßt, die es nicht willig betritt, wenn auch der Verstand sie gehen kann.” 2 Cf. A. Grote, Hebbels Schatten (Leipzig, 1911), p. 13 ff., criticism of Eulenberg's "Hütet Euch vor Hebbel."

ERNST BARLACH AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD

BY EDWARD FRANKLIN HAUCH

ALMOST every treatment of ultra-modern developments in

the fields of German literature and art begins by reminding us that there is manifest in these things a striking departure from materialistic naturalism and a determined concentration upon the deeper spiritual values back of the material. I begin with the same reminder because, if this is true of anyone, it is emphatically true of Ernst Barlach. Not quite so common, but common enough, it is to hold the war responsible for all this. We cannot blame the war alone for the present frenzied revaluation of old values on the part of the newer writers and some of the older ones, this search for the essence, Man, behind the complex phenomenon, Mankind. The war and the despair that accompanied the national breakdown only intensified a renewed search for Man and God, the beginnings of which are already evident enough in pre-war German intellectualism.

Among the newer German dramatists, Franz Werfel is probably the man of greatest achievement to the present and of the greatest promise. Over against his profoundly poetic brooding stands the prolific brilliance of Georg Kaiser much as the groping genius of Gerhart Hauptmann stood over against the ready talent of Hermann Sudermann some thirty years or so ago. Of the three-Kaiser, Werfel, and Barlach-Kaiser is nearest the average understanding. Werfel demands sustained meditation. Moving in a realm of psychic experience hard to formulate in words, he carefully avoids the pitfalls of an easy allegory and reveals himself only to those who have the endurance to wrestle earnestly with his subtle and often rather complex symbolism. Barlach, no less gifted in the projection of symbolic concepts, delving even deeper, if that is possible, into the mysteries of the subconscious, demands an even greater and more patient concentration.

Barlach began artistic self-expression as a sculptor. His dramatic work reflects that which is most distinctly character

istic of some of the newer tendencies in the plastic arts: the form is often enough crude and harsh as though flung off with disdainful scorn; the emotional and spiritual effect, on closer study, is often all but overwhelming; what is merely conventional and incidental is rudely suppressed, and the essence of the idea of which the work is a materialization is set up in bold relief, by no means always without exaggeration and caricature. The wood-cuts by Barlach's own hand accentuate the unceremonious expressiveness of the printed texts they accompany. If beauty is the goal of ultra-modern artists, it is a beauty that departs somewhat from the traditional canons.

I do not pretend for a moment to have fathomed Barlach's work and found bottom everywhere. As a matter of fact, if at all, I have found it only here and there. One stumbles desperately on through long stretches of these fog-laden mazes until suddenly the fog parts for a moment upon vistas of an overwhelming clarity, and then the weird night with its haunting fascination closes in again. It is this strange fascination and these unexpected flashes that tantalize the much enduring reader to keep on staggering through to the end.

Ernst Barlach was past forty when he began writing dramas. The first one, Der tote Tag, 1912, has no affinities whatever to the older romantic or naturalistic traditions. It anticipates to a striking degree the manner and the outlook of the youngest generation of present day writers. The household depicted in it is the household of the mind. The mother in it is depicted as that which produces, induces and cherishes our material wellbeing and ordered domesticity. In the treatment of this symbol Barlach departs sharply from the conventional glorification of this source of common joys. She is of the earth and fights the father-heritage, the vision and the dream, in the aspirations of the son. She is the enemy of high, spiritual enterprise. She has no use for a hero-son. "Is the son a hero because he sees more than his mother?" she asks. “Let the gods help this world, for their mothers are not human beings."

Out of the cellar of the subconscious in this household of the mind there rise into fellowship in it the gnomes Besenbein

and Steißbart, half-tamed to lowly and materially useful purposes. To the mother, life is fulfilled when such ends have been achieved. Steißbart, the brainier of the two, is invisible to the mother; she can only sense his presence and can hear his voice; she can feel him, but she cannot see him. The son can see him and comprehends to a certain degree the nature of this reasoning intelligence. Kule (symbol of the father?), after long wanderings, his vision lost, his staff his only guide, returns to this household, from which, as we are led to infer, he had long ago departed. In his wanderings his feet have encountered only dust and stones; he bears within him the sorrow of the world. How did he come to lose his vision? Speaking to the son, he says:

"But perhaps in many things you are more blind than I. Behold, my eyes, they were two spiders; they sat in the web of their sockets and caught up the visions of the world they encountered, caught them up and savored their sweetness and their joy. But the more of them there came, the more of them there were that were juicy with bitterness and fat with horror, and at last my eyes endured such bitternesses no longer. They spun shut the entrances, sat within, preferred to starve, and died. How can I say in words what has blinded my eyes?

But listen! When I lie at night, and the cushions of darkness weigh upon me, then there bursts about me a ringing light, visible to my eyes, audible to my ears. And then there stand about my couch the beautiful forms of a better future, lifeless as yet, but of a marvelous beauty, still sleeping but he who would awaken them, he would create for the world a better face. What a hero he would be who could do that!"

At the gate before the house stands the magic steed Herzhorn, with hoofs like eyes, waiting to bear the son away in swiftwinged pursuit of his aspirations. But in his sleep the son cannot wholly cast off the nightmare of atavistic inhibitions. The mother, unwilling that the son should ride forth into the world only to return on foot, leaning blind and broken on his staff, kills the magic steed. The gnome Besenbein (Broomfoot!), in order that the deed may be concealed and forgotten, drags the carcass into the cellar, that cavern of the subconscious, where such things lie buried but never quite annihilated.

The son awakens, but the day is dead; he cannot raise