The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In Vienna, the Burgtheater crisis has been a daily issue for weeks. By the time these lines appear, it may already have found its solution. But how this solution turns out is not the really interesting thing. Something quite different must excite those who take an interest in the development of the theater. For if, as it seems at the moment, Paul Schlenther replaces the previous director of the Burgtheater, Max Burckhard, there can be no question of artistic considerations having played any part in the solution to this question. And that is the sad thing, that things that should only be decided from the point of view of artistic interest are being made dependent on sympathies and antipathies that have nothing to do with art.

When Dr. Max Burckhard took office, no one with understanding could stand up for him. Of all the candidates considered at the time, he must have seemed the least suitable. One could have no other opinion than that he had no relation to either dramatic literature or practical theater. And the first steps he took as director could only confirm such an opinion. He showed himself to be a dilettante in every respect. The roles he cast were almost unbelievable.

The old master of Viennese theater criticism, Ludwig Speidel, rarely used such harsh words of condemnation as he did towards Burckhard's management. As often as he made himself heard in the pages of the "Neue Freie Presse", one could read a bitter dismissal of the new director. But the improbable happened: Ludwig Speidel converted to Max Burckhard. This marked the course of Burckhard's development during his directorship. He has turned the antipathy of knowledgeable people into sympathy. Today, art connoisseurs are his friends and supporters. He has proven that the office gives the mind. He has settled into art. So much so that such a fine connoisseur of the theater as Paul Schlenther can hardly do anything other than continue to lead the Hofbühne in the way Burckhard did. When Schlenther takes Burckhard's place, all that will have happened is that a personality who has become unpopular will have been replaced by a temporarily popular one. The artistic achievements of the Vienna Burgtheater can hardly be given a new character by Paul Schlenther. Indeed, it must even be considered a stroke of luck if the previous director is replaced by the Berlin critic. It could just as well have been that the clique hostile to Burckhard had once again appointed some dilettante to the important post; and it is doubtful that the stroke of luck would have happened a second time, that the dilettante would have become an important expert in a relatively short time.

There are people of whom one can say: they can do whatever they want. Burckhard seems to be one of them. But these people are quite rare. If you have one, you should hold on to him and give him the opportunity to develop his strengths. Instead, Burckhard is torn from his position at the very moment when he begins to show off his unique personality to the full.

It is a well-known fact that Burckhard had to fight for seven years against cliques of actors who were hostile to him, but who were so influential that they could cause the director immense difficulties. Burckhard fought these cliques with energy and achieved many excellent things against their will. If he was not victorious in the end, it can hardly be assumed that a new man will fight the battle with more luck.

The task of the Burg director today is to adapt this unique art institution to the new circumstances. The public will be just as happy with the new forms of drama as with the new forms of acting if they realize that the reform is based on artistic intentions. The public is much less conservative in artistic matters than the so-called "authoritative circles". The public has been forced to understand Arnold Böcklin! Those who only a few years ago would shrug their shoulders as they walked past Böcklin's Pieta now stand before it in adoration, as they always did before the Sistine Madonna. The audience of the Burgtheater will easily be won over to show as much interest in modern art as in the old. Max Burckhard has worked on this development of taste with skill and insight. He should not have been disturbed in his work.

The subject of "theater criticism" is not a pleasant one. It is least of all edifying for the theater professionals themselves. What can't be found under the heading "theater" in our newspapers and journals? Perhaps nowhere is dilettantism more rampant than in this field.

And the worst is the criticism of dramatic performances and the art of acting. The situation is better when it comes to opera criticism. When it comes to musical performances, ignorance and lack of knowledge are basically easy to prove. If you read five lines from a music critic, you will be able to judge whether you are dealing with an expert or a dilettante. But in the course of the last few decades, conditions in this field have also deteriorated considerably. Those who belong to Wagner's artistic circle cannot be absolved of the fact that they have contributed enormously to this deterioration. In the days before the critics of the Wagner school came on the scene, it was a requirement for the music critic to speak about the musical quality of a performance from a professional point of view. He had to know what was possible within the art he was criticizing. He had to speak of the architectonics of the musical work of art. He had to interpret the perception of the ear, and the musical imagination demanded its rights. The Wagner critics began to speak in a completely different key. One hardly read anything about music and musical imagination in their comments. Instead, they talked all the more about all kinds of mysterious states of mind and dark mystical truths or even natural phenomena that were supposed to be expressed in this or that piece of music. Tremendous mischief was and is being done. The most brilliant illustration of this nonsense is Hanslick's fine little book "Vom MusikalischSchönen". A music critic who rejects this booklet cannot be taken seriously. For one can be convinced that he will not speak of music at all in his reviews. He will tell us what is "expressed" in this or that passage of a musical work; but he will owe us everything about the architectonics of a sound work, which is exhausted within what the ear and the sound imagination perceive.

A setback in this area is already clearly audible today. Wagner critics are already being rejected by sensible musicians.

The situation is different with dramatic criticism. Here, dilettantism is more difficult to recognize. There are few people who know where the boundary between dilettantism and connoisseurship lies. Connoisseurship can only be attributed to those who base their judgment on the purely artistic qualities of a work. A drama must be constructed according to the same strictly artistic laws as a symphony.

The matter is confused, however, by the subject matter of dramatic art. This material only concerns the critic to the extent that he has to decide whether or not any reproach is at all suitable for dramatic treatment. This question does not apply to music. For it is entirely form. It has no material. And the injustice of Wagner critics lies precisely in the fact that they want to impose a material on the music by force.

In drama, however, material is not considered in any other way than that just indicated. If further judgment is made about the material, then such a judgment is inartistic. Inartistic are the questions as to whether a material is in itself significant or insignificant, beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral and so on. These things are none of the critic's business. As soon as a material provides what is necessary for dramatic treatment, the critic only has to ask himself whether the artist has brought out what lies in the material, and then how he has treated the material. He must be indifferent to the what of the drama, what matters to him is the how. How the poet introduces the conflict, how he intertwines the threads, how he brings an event to a close, that is what must be discussed.

But unfortunately there is so little mention of this in our theater criticism. The material interest is always in the foreground. And the material interest is the inartistic one in this respect. Imagine transferring the spirit of our drama criticism to the criticism of painting. We would hear whether a depicted landscape is lovely or hideous, beautiful or ugly, attractive or repulsive, whether a person portrayed by the artist is charming or hideous, and so on. But we would hear nothing about whether the painter has succeeded in bringing the picture and background into the right relationship, whether he has created harmony of color or not. We would hear about all the things that are of no concern to us in a painting; but we could glean nothing of the specific painterly aspect from a critique aimed purely at the material.

A great advance in dramatic criticism will lie in the fact that we demand the same connoisseurship from it as we do from the assessment of the visual arts.

Hindering this progress, however, is our theater audience. Who is aware of the purely artistic qualities of a drama? Who demands an assessment of these qualities from the critic? Everything depends on the material - after all, everything presses for the material! And Schiller spoke in vain: The true artistic secret of the master lies in the destruction of the material by the form. Goethe put the same sentiment into the words of "Faust": Consider the what, consider more the how.

With regard to drama, we are stuck in a barbaric taste.

And the art of acting? It is the poor relation of criticism. The wise judges know the least about it. Not even the most elementary things are clear here.

The fact that two actors have to play a role in completely different ways is usually not taken into account. The actor unites three persons in himself when he plays. The first is his everyday human personality, his figure, his face, his nose, his voice and so on; the second is the personality that the poet gives him to play, the Posa, the Hamlet, the Othello and so on. The third is not visible. It stands above both. It uses the first as an instrument to embody the second. And since there are no two people of the same build, no two actors can play a role in the same way. The actor has to create a compromise between the person portrayed by the poet and his own natural constitution.

Only a critic who asks himself whether the actor has succeeded in making that compromise can be considered. Everything else that is written about the art of acting is empty chatter.

Criticism of drama and the art of acting is often judged from too low a point of view. Basically, people think: anyone can write about these things. And indeed, "anyone" writes about it. Precisely because judgment based on purely material considerations is so tempting here, the standards should be set particularly high. We should demand connoisseurship, because connoisseurship is so difficult to distinguish from charlatanry.

But the audience is happy to accept a few pointed remarks about a drama or an acting performance. Claims are taken at face value here whose analogs would simply be laughed at in another field of art. A nicely written feuilleton counts for more than a competent judgment of art. And if the feature writer is even funny! Then nobody cares about his connoisseurship.

It will be difficult to bring about better conditions in this area. But they must be brought about for the benefit of the dramatic and acting arts.

In hardly any other art does the insignificant play such an important role as in acting. Whether an actor moves these or those facial muscles on a certain occasion, whether he moves his right hand or not: that comes into consideration. A whole scene can be disrupted by one bad hand movement by this or that actor.

Unfortunately, we are not so advanced in our acting that we notice a single bad hand movement or an incorrect contraction of a facial muscle. We usually need a whole actor who "spoils everything" to realize how necessary it is for the stage artist to meet the poet in order to bring the latter's intentions to full fruition on stage.

For the theater audience, the actor is the personality who brings the poet's intentions to their true realization.

Therefore it seems to me quite superfluous to talk about whether the art of acting is an art of the first or second rank. Differences in rank are very important in ethical terms; in the field of art they are irrelevant. For in art everything is necessary, even the seemingly trivial. The work of art must be perfect down to the last detail if it is to satisfy the strict demand for a style that is complete in itself. Nothing should disturb the harmony of the whole as an extraneous element. An actor who plays a role one degree more banal than it is meant to be can spoil a great drama.

I seem indifferent to the question of the rank that acting occupies in the ladder of the arts. What is important to me, however, is the problem: how can drama do justice to the tasks set for it by the poets.

Everything revolves around this: does acting have an independent significance alongside drama or not?

I believe that it definitely has such an independent significance. The work of a stage artist is only finished when it is brought to the real stage with the means of dramatic art.

The proof of this is very simple. way. In Shakespeare's time, Hamlet certainly had to be played differently than it is today, using the means of the dramatic art of the time.

We may not play Hamlet any better than it was played in Shakespeare's time, but we play it differently. But if we played it today the way Shakespeare had it played, we would be playing it badly.

But if one has different means of realizing a thing, and one time's realization can be good, the other time bad: the means have an independent meaning.

The art of acting is a means, but a means of independent significance.

How X plays Posa, and that he plays it differently from Y, is what matters.

What is expressed in the personality of Posa is certainly one and the same for all times. How it should be expressed through the art of acting changes from decade to decade.

Therefore we should not speak of the insignificant in the art of acting. Rather, we should think about what is important in this art. It is ridiculous to call the art of acting a reproductive art. Drama is for the true actor what reality, nature, is for the playwright. As productive as the dramatist is towards nature, so productive is the actor towards drama. He elevates the drama into a new, special artistic sphere. If the drama is a piece of nature, seen through the temperament of the playwright, then the performed stage work is a drama, seen through the temperament of the director and the actors.

If we do not want to willfully lower the status of dramatic art, we must accept it as an independent art and reflect on its peculiar technical means, then it will present itself to us as an independent art that is similar to the other arts.

When we have realized this, we will think less about its subordinate rank; . we will be fairer towards it.

The art of acting needs such justice. For today it is often regarded as the stepchild of the arts.

This prejudice is particularly widespread among producing playwrights. It must be overcome.

And it will be overcome the moment we are clear about the relationship between acting and dramatic poetry.

We lack a real technique of dramatic art. It must first be present. Then both poets and actors will recognize it. And then both categories of artists will understand each other.

At present, such an understanding is lacking.

I'll let others judge the artistic value of "Bürgermeisterwahl" and "Katherl". I can't bring myself to list the reservations I have about these two plays here, given the impression I got of their author's personality. I would feel like a petty grumbler if I wanted to judge Max Burckhard's individual performances for their weaknesses, as I have seen the extent of what this man wants and how much energy he has at his disposal to enforce his will. You only need to have listened to him for an hour to appreciate the simple, grand style in which he lives and works.

The first thing that strikes you about him is his unbiased view of the things that interest him. And his horizons are broad. He is at home in broad areas of art, science, public education, the administration of justice and economics. He sees clearly and confidently everywhere. He sees the big picture. And he says what he has to say about things with the most ruthless candor. Such openness is one of the greatest rarities in our time. Up to now, Burckhard has been in positions that are not conducive to unreserved openness. None of these positions has apparently been able to divert him from the clear, straight path that his character and talent have marked out for him.

He has a keen eye for the damage of our time, both large and small, and a sound judgment of what can be done to improve it. Indulging in unattainable ideals, setting up nebulous utopias seems alien to him; but he knows how to indicate what is achievable. He has written a pamphlet entitled "On the reform of legal studies", which proves what I am saying on every page. In another essay, he purposefully judged the position of art within the social organism.

Burckhard will utilize every position he occupies, every task that circumstances present him with, in a way that corresponds to his nature. Whether he is the director of the Burgtheater, whether he is a councillor at some court, whether he lectures at a university: he will always work to ensure that social development is taken in a direction that he considers promising for the future. Every office he holds, every play he writes, will only be an opportunity for him to assert himself. The man in him will always be greater than any office, any individual achievement. He will imprint his essence on everything.

We need such personalities. It does not detract from their importance that they appear to be dilettantes in some of the things they accomplish. We have enough people who are characterized by their profession. There are few personalities whose individuality transcends any external imprint. Burckhard is one.

His appearance alone is symbolic. It is not appropriate for a Burgtheater director to wear a "Stößer", a top hat like those worn by Viennese hackney carriage drivers. Burckhard managed the Burgtheater for seven years with such a "Stößer" on his head. He must have found that it suited him; and what did it matter to him that it was not suitable for a Burgtheater director. And so he is in all things. If they make him - as they say - a court councillor, he will also do some things that are not suitable for a court councillor; but he will do what is suitable for Max Burckhard.

An almost naïve sense of truth is characteristic of Burckhard. That any position imposes considerations on people - that cowardly social excuse of so many weaklings - seems to be an idea that has never passed through Burckhard's mind. Everything he says and does is honest and genuine. The concept of posturing has never been invented for him.

And all the qualities I have described in him, he carries off with the kind of coziness that is native to Vienna. You literally have to force yourself to talk about them, because they come across to us with the most perfect naturalness. I don't think Burckhard can ever understand why people talk so much about his merits. He will hardly consider himself much more than a decent man. He doesn't hate the damage he castigates. It is basically a harmless irony with which he speaks of them. He treats people in such a way that they do not actually appear as villains, but merely as fools, as cowards, as imbeciles. He tells people that they are a "bagasche", but in a tone that also makes them understand: it's not your fault. He'll say the strongest things in the warmest, kindest way.

Burckhard really is above the things he deals with. In cases where a lesser mind would speak with fanatical fury, he speaks with a superior smile. I don't think he holds it against the people who forced him out of the Burgtheater, because he understands them... He knows that they could not do otherwise, and he has his proper judgment about this ability... He doesn't ask anyone to be more clever than he is.

I am of the opinion that it is precisely this peculiarity of Burckhard's that makes him appear to be a man whose work will be profound. He does not expect the impossible of things and people; that is why he will achieve what he wants. It is a pleasure to hear him speak of what he intends to do. Even if he only half succeeds in some things, or fails in others, it is all the same. He is so important that failure is out of the question for him. And when an Austrian (Alexander von Weilen in the "Zukunft" of January 8 [1898]) says: "Give him a large sphere of activity worthy of him, which will fill him completely", I would like to reply: put him where you want; he will always be what he must be: Max Burckhard. And that is enough.

In the first February issue of "Kunstwart", the Berlin theater critic Julius Hart publishes a sharp attack on the theater. A man who writes several times a week about theater performances and whose reviews are a pleasure to read because they bear witness to a not insignificant judgment of art, makes the following statement: "So in the first rush of impressions, I easily fall back into sweet youthful idylls and take the theater seriously - terribly seriously and fantasize about all the high and beautiful things to which it should be called. But why should it? With the same right with which I demand of this general showplace that it be a temple of art, I can also demand of a Berlin ballroom and dance hall that it educate the female and male youth to morality and church attendance. But it doesn't. It laughs at me." If the excesses of the theater were spoken of in this way, one could bear it. But Julius Hart, the theater critic, goes on to say that dramatic art and theater must have absolutely nothing to do with each other, because theater, by its very nature, can never serve a real artistic need. "Aesthetic education will always be as low as it is today if we do not fully understand that the stage and art have nothing at all to do with each other, that a play and a drama are two very different things."

It seems almost unbelievable, but there are sentences like the following in the essay: "Unfortunately, our entire dramaturgy is based on the fact that it simply demands from dramatic poetry the very external factors that are decisive in the theater and can lead to laws for the play, but which, like every true work of art, wants to be conceived as an organism, as a living thing flowing out of inner necessities."

Two things are possible, I thought as I read Hart's essay. Either Hart expresses himself sharply in a fit of exasperation at the damage done to the theater and only condemns the theater when it degenerates to such an extent that everything depends on the effect, that the poet who wants to write for the theater is no longer forced to look at the shape of the inner processes, but must ask himself how this or that works? Or does he really mean - which is indeed what it says - "I can approve, recognize and accept the theater as long as I don't regard it as an art institution ... What does stage effect writing have to do with poetry? Theater! Let's finally stop talking about it like an art institution."

On closer consideration, however, I must disregard the first case. Julius Hart is too clever a man to say things that would be on a par with the assertion: Because novelistic poetry can descend to shallow colportage literature, it has nothing to do with art.

But if Julius Hart is really of the opinion that the theater in its essence has nothing to do with art, because the demands of the stage contradict the demands of dramatic poetry, I must say that such a judgment seems to me to betray a complete lack of understanding not only of the nature of the theater, but of the nature of all art.

I must utter trivialities if I am to refute this grotesque judgment. Whoever speaks of a contradiction between the demands of the stage and the inner dramatic necessity could just as well say: the architect should not build houses, but only draw them as they arise as an organism from within himself, because the demands that must be fulfilled when building a house have nothing to do with the inner artistic necessity of his inner sense of form. An architectural work of art is only perfect if the artist already imagines it in such a way that there is harmony between the formations of his sense of form and between the demands that must be made on a real building. A drama will only be perfect if all the elements which make a representation on the stage possible are included in the structure which the poet lets flow out of his personality as a living thing through inner necessity. Embodiment by real people and with the help of stage props must be a contributing factor in the playwright's creative imagination. He must shape his drama in such a way that he sees it in front of him in an ideal performance. Not only the inner necessity of the dramatic development, but also the stage set foreseen in the imagination belongs to the playwright's conception. The stage is simply one of the means with which the playwright works. And a drama that is not suitable for the stage is like a picture that is not painted but merely described.

I was only speaking in commonplaces. I feel like a schoolmaster who digs out the sentences of an elementary book. But when assertions such as those in Hart's essay are put into the world, one is unfortunately forced to do something like that.

Mr. Th. Vischer also understood something of the nature of the arts; and in his lectures on "Beauty and Art" I read the sentence: "You have a beautiful complete combination of arts in the theater. There the architect provides the space, the painter the decoration. The poet writes the text of the drama. The actors bring the characters and scenes he has invented to life." Vischer also knows: "The poet must be at the head of this alliance; his art must prevail." But it is a long way from the assertion that poetry must prevail to Hart's statement: "But what does this stage effect writing have to do with poetry? Theater! Let's finally stop talking about it like an art institution." No one who understands the nature of the arts and their means can take this path.

And now that I have written all this down, I would like to consider a third explanation for Hart's failure against the 'theater. I simply do not believe that Julius Hart can misunderstand the nature of the theater in the way his essay seems to. I hold him in much too high esteem to believe that. That's why I assume that the whole essay is not meant seriously. It is meant ironically. The author actually wants to show how important the theater is for dramatic art and therefore explains how nonsensical the views of those who claim the opposite are. As if someone were to say: canvas, paint and brushes have nothing to do with painting; they only distort and corrupt the pure work of art that flows from the painter's soul with inner necessity. "But what does all this colorfulness have to do with the art of painting? Pictures! Let's finally stop talking about them like works of art."

In these papers, the value of the theater as an art institution was repeatedly mentioned. I would never have agreed to found the "Dramaturgische Blätter" if I had not been convinced of the high mission of the theater. Today, however, we no longer regard the "Schaubühne" as a "moral institution", as Schiller did in his younger years. But all the more as an artistic institution. I am of the opinion that no art can pursue moral goals. That's why I don't demand this of the theater. But I consider the performances of the theater to be the ones that can most easily gain a hearing and interest. A sense of art and taste can be awakened in the widest circles from the stage. What we do to elevate the theater is done to elevate art. What we say against the theater harms art. I will accommodate any reasonable plan to improve our theater conditions.

I don't even want to join in the voices against the calculation of the "effect". It is often necessary to be ungentlemanly. Even Shakespeare did not disdain to take the practical demands of the stage into consideration.

Shakespeare demonstrably arranged the first scenes of his plays in such a way that those who arrive late can understand the course of events. And quite sensible people have maintained that the dramatist in this playwright was so great because he was a great actor.

It will always remain true that a drama that is not suitable for the stage is incomplete. The poet who can only create book dramas is like the painter without hands.

Instead of thundering against the theater, one should rather make suggestions on how to elevate this artistic medium. The lively, sensual embodiment on stage is something quite different from the solitary reading of a book. This is ignored by those who think little of the theater. I don't have a good opinion of those playwrights who can't write plays that are suitable for the stage. A drama must be performable. And the one that is not is bad. A symphony that cannot be heard is also bad. Book dramas are not things.

I know that the best poets have defended the book drama. But that is not the point. The poet may once feel the need to express himself through the means of drama, even if he does not have the talent to present himself in scenic images. Hamerling was a poet of whom I would like to say this. His dramas cannot be performed. That does not detract from his importance. But you have to consider him a bad playwright for that reason.

A good drama will always cry out for the stage.

Disdain for the stage always seems to me to be the sign of a spiritualization of art. But the spiritualization of art is its death. The more sensual art appears, the more it corresponds to its essence. Only periods of artistic decline will place the main emphasis on the nonsensical.

A few years ago, Hermann Bahr asked a number of actors about their art. They told him many interesting things about the old and the new stage style, they spoke about their position as poets and about the rehearsal of their roles. All this can be read in Bahr's book "Studien zur Kritik der Moderne". The most significant are the words spoken by Flavio Andò, Duse's brilliant partner: "First of all, I don't pay any attention to the text and I don't pay any particular attention to my role. First I have to explain the whole work to myself. First I have to feel the poetry - that is, in what stratum of society, among what people, in what mood the whole thing is set. Then the individual characters slowly emerge, as each one is from his parents, from his upbringing, from his destiny. When I finally have him, quite clearly, so that I can see every gesture and hear every sound, then I try to transform myself into him, to put aside my own nature and take on his. Tireless observation must help me to do this. I am always observing. I observe my colleagues, I observe you, I observe the waiter there. This is how I gather the means of expression. The text is then the least of it. It comes very last, often only at the rehearsal."

It would hardly be wrong to believe that these sentences characterize not only Andò's own style, but also that of Duse. The creation of a role out of the whole of a play must be asserted as a decisive requirement of the art of acting. It stands in contradiction to the usual task that actors seem to set themselves. They only play the individual role that they have in mind in some way, without regard to the whole poem.

An excellent example of this latter kind of acting is Zacconi. One need only convert Andò's sentences into their opposite, and one will characterize Zacconi. Anyone who can accept the fact that an actor, without regard to the content of the whole poem, plays a role to the highest technical perfection, as he made it up, but as the poet never imagined it, may admire Zacconi.

Andò said to Bahr in the aforementioned conversation: "Nature is our only law. That distinguishes us from the French, who always work with a traditional mechanism. As far as I could see, they have extraordinary artists, but it is always tradition, the beautiful line, the mechanism. Sometimes nature breaks through for a moment, but then the sought-after beauty and the artificial arrangement come right back."

This mechanism does not ask for the individual character of a personality in a piece, but has certain templates into which it forces everything. These templates more or less approximate the individual characters that the poets draw. There is a person with a hundred special qualities who commits an intrigue. The actor simply lets the hundred special qualities fall by the wayside and plays the conventional schemer. There are traditional rules for how to play the schemer.

This kind of acting according to the template is unfortunately much more common than you might think. Naturalism transferred to the stage has done a great deal to overcome it. Under its influence it has been recognized that there are no two identical human individuals, and that it is therefore impossible to reduce all the characters to be portrayed on stage to five or six typical figures. Naturalism has made it so that people enjoy going to the theater again because they don't see the same general schemes, the villain, the bon vivant, the comic old woman and so on in different plays every time, but because individual characters are embodied again.

But the actors who play in this way are not yet very numerous. A lot of the actors seem boring when we see them for the fifth or sixth time. We know exactly how they are going to do something, because we know the whole inventory of their postures, gestures and so on. They know nothing about the fact that one makes a declaration of love in this way and the other in that. They make the declaration of love - the theatrical declaration of love - in all cases.

The thing can go so far that you can't tell the difference between two actors who speak the same scene one after the other behind a curtain. At most, one does it quantitatively a little better, the other a little worse; qualitatively there is often not the slightest noticeable difference. The people change, the template remains.

All this has been discussed several times in recent years. The need to point out the existing shortcomings arose from changing tastes in the dramatic field. The time is not far behind us when stage plays dominated the theater, in which the characters were not characterized according to life, but according to the traditional acting templates. In the plays, too, one naïve girl looked desperately like the other. It was not a naïve girl who was portrayed, but "the naïve". Today we are happy to have reached the point where we disregard those who make plays in this way as playwrights. Even among theatergoers, who are still only looking for a few hours of comfortable, trivial entertainment, there are enough people who share this disdain. Today, poets are expected to base their creations on life, to deliver a piece of real life in each of them. Behind these demands on playwrights, the other demands for actors who do not want to play according to tradition, according to mechanism, could not be left behind. Today we have enough stage works that cannot be performed according to the old theatrical rules. If they are forced to be, then their best is lost.

I don't believe that the eternal principles of beautiful lines that transcend the everyday have to be lost by playing individualities.

Andò also said the right thing about this to Hermann Bahr: "I am asking a lot about beauty. But not for a conventional beauty that comes from the school - but for my individual beauty, which I carry within myself, as my own aesthetics give it to me. But this does not contradict the truth. Just as little as the self-evident concessions to the 'optique du théâtre'."

We no longer want to buy beauty on stage by faking life. We know that beauty does not lie outside, but within the realm of reality.

What does Andò call his individual beauty? What does he mean by the conventional beauty that comes from school? There is a way of presenting the qualities of the human personality in such a way that its essence is more externalized than is the case in everyday life. In the realm of everyday life, the essence is not completely absorbed in the qualities. There always remains a residue which we have to guess at, to discover. This residue must disappear if the personality is to reveal its beauty. It must, as it were, turn its essence outwards. But it is precisely its essence that it turns outwards. That is why the beauty is its own. The situation is different with conventional beauty. Here the personality does not externalize anything that it has within itself, but denies this essence and modifies its qualities in such a way that they are similar to the qualities of an imaginary being. The personality gives itself up in order to conform to a general norm.

Beauty cannot be imprinted on the personality from the outside; it must be developed from within. If there are not enough germs in a personality to produce the desirable effect of beauty, it will be deficient. However, if a person puts on an outward cloak of beauty, he or she will not usually appear flawed - if the thing is otherwise well done - but will not be able to rightly reject the label "caricature".

An excellent contribution to the history of German dramaturgy was recently made by Heinrich Bischoff. (Ludwig Tieck als Dramaturg. Bruxelles, Office de publicite). Tieck's relationship to dramatic literature and the theater requires an objective appraisal. Bischoff has summarized the reasons for this well in his introductory chapter. "I do not know," wrote Loebell to Tieck's biographer R. Köpke in 1854, "whether there is a second example in the whole of literature of a hatred against an author that so dominates the criticism than against L. Tieck. - For example, the Low German word "Schrullen", which otherwise hardly occurs in the written language, has been found for Tieck's critical opinions. The Bremen-Lower Saxon dictionary explains Schrulle as "an attack of nonsense, evil, foolish mood. And G.Schlesier accuses Tieck in the "Allgemeine Theater-Revue, (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1st year, S.3 f.), he has broken the German theater, blocked its path and its development, misled the poets and actors and cheated them of a happy development of their talent". Tieck's critical masterpiece, the "Dramaturgische Blätter, would like to banish Schlesier for a few hundred years; there is poison on every page of it."

Bischoff cites a variety of reasons for this unprecedented underestimation of Tieck. Tieck was regarded as the head of the Romantic school. This is why opponents of this literary movement hated him from the outset. Personal envy was also a factor among his contemporaries. "We know for certain that Tieck fought a hard battle in Dresden, where he developed his main dramaturgical activity, against a small-minded, ill-intentioned party that envied his intellectual superiority. The Young Germans, Heine, Laube, Gutzkow, to whom Tieck was opposed in a series of his novellas: Reise ins Blaue, Wassermensch, Eigensinn und Laune, Vogelscheuche, Liebeswerben, were also ill-disposed towards him."

In more recent times, finally, little effort has been made to study Tieck's dramaturgical writings. The judgment of his contemporaries and immediate successors is taken without much scrutiny. "A striking example is provided by the recently published work by E. Wolff, "Geschichte der deutschen Literatur in der Gegenwarv. In his overview of the history of German dramaturgy, Wolff not only makes no mention of Tieck, but also ascribes to O. Ludwig's "Shakespeare-Studien" the merit that is due to Tieck's "Dramaturgische Blätter". The "clarifying reckoning with Schiller was carried out by Tieck almost half a century before O. Ludwig. The conclusion reached by O. Ludwig that true historical tragedy must return from Schiller to Shakespeare is, so to speak, the pivotal point of Tieck's dramaturgical writings. Just as Lessing settled accounts with the French, Tieck settled accounts with Schiller, with full recognition of his talent and merits, and, like Lessing, pointed to Shakespeare. This is why it is not Ludwig's "Shakespeare-Studien" but Tieck's "Dramaturgische Blätter" that stand out as a landmark in the history of German dramaturgy."

The fact that he did not present his views in a closed system, but rather occasionally, has also contributed greatly to Tieck's misunderstanding. They can be found scattered throughout his various writings. Bischoff gives an overview of the writings that come into consideration: (a) the preliminary reports to his poetic works, (b) the conversations about art and literature in "Phantasus", (c) the satirical outbursts in the fairy tale comedies and Schwänken, especially in "Zerbino" and "Puss in Boots", d) the "Unterhaltungen mit Tieck" contained in the second volume of Köpke's biography, e) as the main source the "Kritische Schriften", which Tieck published in four volumes with Brockhaus in Leipzig from 1848-1852, f) the "Nachgelassene Schriften" published by Köpke can be considered as an appendix.

Ludwig Tieck was not fond of aesthetic studies. He was of the opinion that theory could never be used to make the fine distinctions that come into consideration in art. One must theoretically exaggerate the truth in some direction in order to arrive at a precise definition. That is why such theories remain stuck in half-truth, if they do not have to resort to the completely untrue.

Bischoff proves himself to be a good psychologist by establishing the difference between Tieck the dramatist and Tieck the dramatist. Anyone who overlooks this must underestimate Tieck. In Tieck's dramas an unclear fantasy prevails; nowhere does the poet know how to restrain the creations of the imagination by critical reason; there is little to be found of orderly composition, and yet Tieck, the dramaturge, demands artistic deception from the drama first and foremost. This can never be achieved with such an overgrowth of fantasy as prevails in his own dramas. Tieck the dramatist demands an image of life; Tieck the playwright gives a fantastic play. Furthermore, Tieck, the dramatist, seeks his material in the Middle Ages; at the same time, as a dramatist, he demands the immediate presence of the action. As a critic, Tieck frowned upon mood-painting in drama; as a poet, he inserted ottavas, tercinas, stanzas and canzonas into his dramas, which serve nothing but to lyrically paint the mood.

In his "Karl von Berneck", Tieck drew the true archetype of a gruesome tragedy of fate; yet as a critic he condemns this dramatic genre in the harshest terms.

Bischoff explains this dichotomy in Tieck's personality in a plausible way. One must distinguish between two periods in his work: a Romantic period, which lasts until around 1820, and a period which is characterized by a turning away from all Romanticism and a return to a more realistic view of the world. The dramas belong to the first period, the dramaturgical studies fall into the time after the change in his basic aesthetic convictions. "Tieck concludes his Romantic production with "Fortunat" before turning to modern life in his novellas, a long series of which he began in 1820, and depicting it in a predominantly realistic manner." "The sharp contrast between his dramatic and dramaturgical production is thus explained by a complete change in his aesthetic views; his dramaturgical activity only began when his dramatic work was finished."

Tieck's "Letters on Shakespeare" were published in 1810. At this time, the views of the Romantics were also his own. But over time, he turned away from these views completely. He expressed this clearly to Köpke: "They wanted to make me the head of a so-called Romantic school. Nothing has been further from my mind than that, just as everything in my entire life has been party-oriented. Nevertheless, people never stopped writing and speaking against me in this way, but only because they didn't know me. If I were asked to give a definition of the romantic, I would not be able to do so. I don't know how to make a distinction between poetic and romantic." "The word romantic, which one hears used so often, and often in such a wrong way, has done a lot of harm. It has always annoyed me when I have heard people talk about romantic poetry as a special genre. People want to contrast it with classical poetry and use it to describe a contrast. But poetry is and remains first and foremost poetry, it will always and everywhere have to be the same, whether you call it classical or romantic." - For Tieck, the greatest, the typical dramatist is Shakespeare. At first, this enthusiasm for Shakespeare may well have been of romantic origin. But in his mature years he reproaches Romantic Shakespeare criticism for detaching Shakespeare from the general course of development of his time and presenting him as a miracle that had fallen from the sky. Nevertheless, there is no great difference between Tieck's view of Shakespeare and that of Schlegel. It is not his opposition to Romanticism that is particularly clear. Rather, this is the case with his judgment of Calderon. Tieck sees Calderon's powerful influence on German drama as a pernicious one: "Soon Calderon had become our nation's favorite poet without further criticism. The accidental, the strange, the conventional, which his time imposed on him, or which he elevated to artificiality, was not only equated with the essential, the great dramatic in his works, but often preferred to the truly poetic. People forgot for a long time what they had recently admired in both Germans and Englishmen, and, however unequal the two poets might be, Calderon and Shakespeare were probably regarded as twin brothers; and others, still more enthusiastic, thought that Calderon began to speak where Shakespeare left off, or performed those difficult tasks in a grand manner which the colder Northerner did not feel equal to; even Goethe and even Schiller took a back seat to the drunks at that time, those intoxicated people who truly and seriously believed that true salvation for poetry could only come from the Spaniards and especially from Calderon. "

The critic Tieck detested most was the German tragedy of fate. He turned against the blind, demonic fear of fate, which played such a large role in the world view of Romanticism, in the sharpest way and with biting derision, although the same power plays a terrible role in his youthful dramas. "Karl von Berneck" is, as far as I know, the first time an attempt has been made to introduce fate in this way. A ghost who is to be redeemed by the fulfillment of a strange oracle, an old guilt of the house that must be purged by a new crime, which appears at the end of the play as love and innocence, a virgin whose tender heart forgives even the murderer, the ghost of an unforgiving mother, everything in love and hate, except for a sword itself that has already been used for a crime, must serve a higher purpose without it being able to be changed, without the characters knowing it. I realized even then how different this fate was from that of Greek tragedy, but I deliberately wanted to substitute the ghostly for the spiritual". He later condemned such dramatization: "Instead of debts and financial hardship, a crime, kidnapping, adultery, murder, blood; instead of the uncle, stern father, strange old man or general, heaven itself, which is even more stubborn than those family characters and cruel to boot, because it knows no other development than fear of death and burial."

The contrast between Tieck, the dramatist, and Tieck, the playwright, becomes clear in Tieck's harsh condemnation of the dramas of the mature Schiller. It seems like a mockery of his own production when Tieck bitterly rebukes the workings of fate in the "Bride of Messina". For Schiller attempted to give the dark rule of fate a semblance of necessity; while Tieck himself, in his "Abschied" and "Karl von Berneck", grants it a desolate reign in the form of chance.

Tieck's rejection of the Romantic as opposed to the natural, the human, is expressed most harshly in his criticism of Schiller's and Goethe's anticizing tendencies. He is generally an enemy of humanism, which carries ancient education and views into modern life. He believed that art could only flourish if it drew its content from the soil of the national. In "Goethe and his time" he speaks out against humanism: "It would be desirable that a mind as brilliant as Rousseau's or Fichte's should show, with the same sharp, perhaps even sharper one-sidedness than they wrote about the closed commercial state and the harm of the sciences, what a disadvantage knowledge of the ancients has brought us. How everything that was still remembered has sunk into contempt, how all new, good and correct endeavors have been inhibited, how the peculiar, patriotic has often been destroyed by a wrong worship and half-understanding of the ancients." And in his dramatic fairy tale "The Life and Deeds of Little Thomas, Called Thumbelina", he mocks by ironically depicting objects borrowed from folk tales, for example the seven-league boots, in an antique light: "Believe me, I can see from these boots that they have come down to us from ancient Greece; no, no, no modern artist does such work, so secure, simple, noble in cut, such engravings! Oh, this is a work by Phidias, I won't let that be taken away from me. Just look at it, when I place one of them like this, how completely sublime, sculptural, in quiet grandeur, no excess, no flourish, no Gothic addition, nothing of that romantic mixture of our days, where sole, leather, flaps, folds, tufts, jizz, everything must contribute to produce variety, splendor, a dazzling being that has nothing ideal; the leather should shine, the sole should creak, miserable rhyming being, this consonance in appearance; . .I have modeled myself after the ancients, they will not let us fall in any of our endeavors." Tieck has the court cobbler Zahn say this.

The modern world and modern life are fundamentally different from those of the Greeks, Tieck believes. This is why he condemns the dragging of ancient ways into modern drama, as demanded by Goethe, Schiller and the two Schlegels. Tieck also valued above all that which approached the modern in its presentation and conception, such as the dramas of Euripides, while the Graecomans were more attracted to Sophocles and Aeschylus, in which the specifically Greek is expressed more purely. The praise that Goethe and Schiller bestowed on Aristotle was thoroughly repugnant to Tieck. He sees a fundamental difference between the living conditions of Greek and German drama. For the Greeks, it was the shaping of the fable, the plots that mattered; for the moderns, the main thing is the development of the characters. "The newer drama is obviously essentially different from the old; it has lowered the tone, motives, character sketches, the contingencies of life are more prominent, the emotional forces and moods develop more clearly, the composition is richer and more varied, and the relationship to public life, the constitution, religion and the people is either silenced or stands in a completely different relationship to the work itself. The meaning of life, its aberrations, the individual, the strange, have been given more prominence; and those authors who have sometimes tried to strike the round, full tone of the old tragedy have almost always lapsed into bombast and the tone of Seneca."

Tieck contrasts the modern character drama with the old situation drama. At the center of his dramaturgical explanations is the idea that modern drama has the task of cultivating characterization and realism. He therefore turns against Schiller's idealism and never tires of opposing it with Shakespearean realism.

Consistent with these statements are Tieck's following comments on Goethe: "I admired Goethe immensely in his youthful poems and still admire him; I have spoken and written so much in his praise that, when I now hear so many uncalled-for panegyrists, I could still be tempted in my old age to write a book against Goethe for a change. For there can be no mistake about the fact that he, too, has his weaknesses, which posterity will certainly recognize." "We must never concede," is another statement, "that Goethe later stood higher in his enthusiasm, poetic power and opinion than in his youth... His striving for the many-sided has fragmented his powers, his consciously looking around has caused him doubt and at times removed his enthusiasm."

In contrast, Tieck emphasizes the stamp of the German spirit and the truly modern character in the dramas of the Sturm und Dränger. His judgment of Heinrich von Kleist gives us a good insight into Tieck's view. His deep penetration into the characters portrayed and his truthful realism cannot be emphasized often enough. His comments on the "Prince of Homburg" are particularly characteristic. He rebuked the public, who had become accustomed to seeing all heroes drawn according to a certain template. The general concept of a hero has clouded the view that an individual heroic figure can also be like the Prince of Homburg. According to this general concept, a hero should above all despise death and hold life in low esteem. But Kleist once drew a hero whose fear of death is understandable from the nature of his soul.

Bischoff correctly describes Tieck's relationship with Lessing. This relationship also illustrates Tieck's attitude towards naturalism. Lessing, according to Tieck, had turned with zeal against the eccentricity and silliness of conventional idealism. But he fell into the error of wanting to depict nature as such. In this way, he became the inventor and creator of domestic, natural, sensitive, petty and thoroughly untheatrical theater. For Tieck, despite his realistic creed, never wanted to see mere naturalness on the stage, but rather a deepened naturalness recognized in its essence. This is why Kleist's characters, who reveal their souls, seemed more dramatic to him than Lessing's characters, who are assembled from individual observations.

One result of Tieck's views on drama is his comments on the art of acting. In the great battle between the Hamburg and Weimar schools, he took the side of those who defended and practised the former. He did not want declamation, but character portrayal, not the beautiful, but the meaningful. He is said to have spoken harshly against Goethe's view of the art of acting. He probably made derisive remarks about the rules as defended by the Weimar poet and theater director: that everything should be beautifully portrayed, that the spectator's eye should be stimulated by graceful groupings and attitudes, or that the actor should first consider not working out the natural, but presenting it ideally. In this respect Tieck is much closer to modern views than Goethe. He had no understanding of the fact that the actor must always turn three quarters of his face towards the audience, never play in profile, nor turn his back to the spectators. Tieck called such acting artificial declamation and false emphasis. In contrast, he praises Schröder: "It is simplicity and truth that characterized Schröder, that he did not adopt a captivating manner, never rose and fell in tones in declamation without necessity, never pursued the effect merely to excite it, never struck up that singing lament in pain or emotion, but always led the natural speech through correct nuances and never abandoned it."

Tieck is said to have been a captivating reader. He proved precisely how highly he valued a stylistically perfect form of speech despite his demand for naturalness.

In general, Tieck's aspirations should not be confused with demands for a complete stripping away of everything that the stage demands by its very nature. He had a keen sense of the possibilities of the theater. Characteristic is what he says about the decorations: "Why should the stage not be decorated where it suits, amuse with dress and dance? Why should a thunderstorm not be represented naturally? There is only talk of this not becoming the main thing and displacing the poet and actor." The ideal that Tieck had in mind for the stage was a middle ground between the old English stage with its lack of ornamentation and the modern development of all kinds of refined means, which only blunt the receptivity for the actual poetry. In 1843, he staged Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with the help of the three-storey Mystery Stage, because this arrangement avoids the countless transformations that destroy all coherence and destroy a sensation that was just in the making.

Devrient, the author of the "History of German Dramatic Art", was the most enthusiastic in his recognition of Tieck's services to German dramaturgy. While working on this work, on March 24, 1847, Devrient wrote to Tieck: "The History of German Dramatic Art, which I have undertaken to edit, brings everything I have ever heard from you about the nature of our art back to my mind, the further and deeper I research, and makes so much that I otherwise doubted become a complete conviction. I feel more and more in agreement with what you have said here and there in your works about the development of the German stage - unfortunately it is far too little for my needs - so that I have come to recognize your views as the most infallible."

As much as the art of acting, the art of the reciter is also in a bad way. We perceive essentially the same deficiencies in both. Here, as there, it is mostly the effort of the reproducer to "make something" out of the work of art, i.e. to subordinate the poet to himself and the pursuit of success. In the case of the actor this deficiency is understandable to us, for we must admit that even where a drama can dispense with the sharp accentuation by the actor, the coarse-minded audience likes to give a strong success to the actor who puts on the lights. That we encounter the same deficiency in the art of performance is less understandable to us and also seems less excusable. Less excusable because here the pitfalls do not exist which make the task of the reproducer more difficult in drama and in its scenic representation. Less understandable because we are inclined to assume that this art, which is more shameful in all its reproaches and in its task, only attracts disciples to its path who are sufficiently capable of renunciation and have an excellent understanding of its simplicity and delicacy. But practical experience shows us that very few performers have understood that mastery is bound up with artistic modesty. They are mostly still professionally bound to the art of acting with its completely different tasks, they are not always its most subtle representatives and drag their ways of expression and even their shortcomings into the new art as a crime. It is embarrassing and horrifying how they often present us with works that are outstanding in their simplicity and delicate mood, dramatically pointed and materialized or even supported by strong gestures. If a work of art was once really granted the opportunity to appear in this lively manner, to reveal itself to a wider circle, which could perhaps be brought into a relationship with art at this moment, its soul was now strangled with rough hands, beaten to death with knuckles. This manner of performance does not contribute to the establishment of lively, fruitful relations between art and the people, for which both parts are crying out eagerly. Experience tells us that the actor who cannot detach himself sufficiently from the stage devices is the worst interpreter for poems that do not set mimic tasks. I was blessed with indelible impressions through their performance by people who did not pursue this interpretation professionally, subtle imitators or self-creative natures, who sometimes possessed only modest vocal means, insufficient modulation ability and no trained technique, of whom one could well say that they were not "above their task". One sensed that they were still gripped by the mood of the work of art in the lamplight. With a simple, noble, natural and human tone, they performed the parts which thus found their only proper expression, but to which others gave an emphatic characterization. How completely different were the smaller movements that stood out against this calm background, how moving a gentle allusion could be, and what an unheard-of, upwardly swirling intensification this handling of the pathos allowed! Ah, here it was also proved with such infallible certainty that it was not false pain that poet and rhapsode put into their language. The rhapsodist must have been able to laugh heartily and weep bitterly in life, he must have saved his naivety into manhood, he must not have had to arouse too much professional laughter and weeping; the work of art must be his experience, he must be able to weep, tremble and thunder without whining or rumbling, then we willingly follow him to the most unfamiliar places, to the islands of the blissful or to the horrors of the Orcus. Such participation can hardly be expected from a professional interpreter; hurled from one sensation to another, they finally blunt him; it would also take overly strong natures not to be consumed by such unmitigated participation. Only brilliant actors, whose universal spirit makes it easy for them to leave the specific sphere of their profession, simple, amiable mimes, who have their core of humanity together in such a way that a professional marasmus cannot penetrate: these also show themselves suitable to bring a work of art to bear. Every rhapsodist can learn an infinite amount from them. For there are brittle works of art that let our senses pass by unheated, and where it takes an experienced penetrator into the depths to reveal a significant life to us. A single such opportunity has perhaps helped us to be able to face every work of art we encounter with a broader receptivity. There have been poets who first needed such an 'apostle' to gain recognition and thus the conditions for further creation.

Lyric poetry and the finer prose poetry lead an unnoticed existence, and so their creators lack a flashing, higher alluring goal. It is not true that the poet does not need recognition. The talk of "art as an end in itself" is a nonsensical nonsense that should be discarded with the penny-ante, and in general the assertion that poetry can dispense with the more lively mode of expression given by the performance is a nonsensical one. There are few among the people whose imagination would be hurt by the recital; with most people, on the other hand, a sensual devotion to the work of art is made possible in the first place, and form and content come to life for them. Above all, at least on this ground there is a chance for the poet to unite with the people. Every such contact helps the poet from his poverty of blood. For the inbreeding among the intellectually and emotionally creative is pitiful and cannot be attributed in all cases to disgust at our cultural conditions. Every contact will also have a life-giving effect on their future artistic expressions.

Art demands opportunities to express itself vividly through mediating organs. It seems to me that the work for art must become more widespread. Cenralization absorbs forces without bringing them to bear on the outside; the work of the individual in his circle will create a more sensitive audience. We need more rhapsodists, but we also need better rhapsodists than we generally have today. The opportunities to work and to work nobly in the sense of my demands will increase in the way I have indicated. It will provide us with rhapsodes who have the power to captivate a festively assembled people. This path will bring good things for the receiving people, for the artists and for the arts. Healthier interactions will be established.

I myself feel clearly enough that my last sentences are on the field of "ifs and buts". There is no need to pin me down on this. But I think I did my bit when I spoke openly about the misery we all feel. We want a rhapsodic art, a great one if it can be, for the festive needs of our souls, but at any hour we also like a more modest one, if only it is noble and simple. Whether grand or modest: out with the antics!

Some readers may not want to accept the question addressed in the above essay as a dramaturgical one. Nevertheless, I believe that the matter is raised here in the right place. As things stand today, the art of performance can only be dealt with in connection with the art of acting. The orientation about this art, which is so neglected today, requires above all else the solution of the task: How does the art of performance relate to the art of acting? The latter has countless means at its disposal which the performer must do without. One must realize that a full artistic effect can only be achieved in mere performance if the mimic is replaced by something else.

Our time seems little inclined to count the art of performance among the arts at all. This is understandable when one considers that the current trend is not to restrict artistic means, but to expand them. Wagnerian art wants to create a total work of art using all artistic means. Is it not a sign of the artistic poverty of the time that one tries to gather everything together in order to say what one wants to say? It seems much more artistic to increase the expressive capacity of a small range of means in such a way that one can reveal with them what nature has required a great effort to do. What nature has at its disposal to place a human being before us! How little the sculptor has. He must put into the little what nature achieves with its many.

In the same way, the speaker must be able to put into his speech what in natural speech only comes to life in combination with other things. The soul, which in natural speech is held back inside the chest, must flow out into the word. We must hear sensations when we have a performer before us. This is related to what we have to say about the style of speaking during a lecture. A speaker who speaks "naturally" is not an artist. The enhancement of linguistic expressiveness must be studied. In this area there will be things that are no less varied than the lessons of the art of singing. Today it is not even possible to distinguish the dilettante from the artist. Under such circumstances, it is only natural that the public "does not want to have anything recited to them", but believes that "it is more convenient to read things oneself". One must first learn to understand that this is just as accurate as saying: why do I need to see a painted landscape? I prefer to look at real nature. What interests us in a picture is not the landscape depicted, but the way in which lines and colors can be used to represent what nature achieves with infinite forces. The feeling for the how of the presentation should be awakened.

We will only have a proper receptivity for this how when we are familiar with the content of what is being presented. The material interest in the content has nothing to do with the interest in the lecture. The means of the performer lie in the organs of speech. And for the sake of the pleasure that speaking gives us, we must listen to such an artist.

When we are ready, the recitalist will relate to the stage artist as the concert singer relates to the opera singer. You only have to look at our aesthetics to know how far we are from a desirable goal in this area. That is why I believe that the above essay raises a burning question.

One of my essays also deals with Ludwig Tieck's art of recitation. I would like to say a few words about this subject, following on from the previous essay. There, the importance and artistic value of the lecture was emphasized. Tieck's example provides striking proof of this value. I would venture the assertion that Tieck was such an excellent theater director mainly because he was such an outstanding master of performance. Thus, as a performing artist, he was close to the theater in a field that is closely related to the art of acting. As has already been emphasized in these papers, the theater director should be a man of letters, either a dramatic poet or a critic. Only in this way is he able to bring the theater into the right relationship with literature. An actor or director as stage manager will always have the inclination to look at the plays from the point of view of how they work through the actor's art. Their literary value will be less important to him than the question of whether they contain good roles, whether they are theatrically effective and the like. As a writer or poet, however, the stage manager will find it very difficult to gain authority over practical theater people. The latter will be made considerably easier for him by the fact that he is able to exert an effect as a master of performance. This is proven by Tieck.

At the time when Tieck worked at the Dresden theater, his lectures were among the things that were considered artistic in the city. Just as visitors to Dresden went to the picture gallery, they also tried to gain access to such a lecture. As a result, the stage manager had a tremendously stimulating effect on the actors.

We know that Tieck was a master of characterization in his lectures. It is a pity that he did not leave us any remarks on this art. They would certainly be just as instructive as his statements on dramaturgy and acting. For we are almost entirely lacking a theory of the art of performance. In this, more than in any other field, the learner is left entirely to himself and to chance.

Not only for the actor, but for the widest circles of educated people, such a theory would be useful today. With the shape that our public life has taken, almost everyone is now in the position of having to speak in public more often. One would be inclined to do something for the training of the art of speech if one is forced to speak in public. But if you want to develop in this area, you have to go to a stage performer or a master speaker who only practises the art of public speaking with the stage in mind. However, the speaker should not be an actor. The elevation of the ordinary speech to a work of art is a rarity. We Germans are incredibly casual about it. For the most part, we completely lack a feeling for the beauty of speech and even more for characteristic speech. Our most eminent orators are not artists of speech. Do not believe that a speech delivered without any art can have the same effect as one that has been refined into a work of art.

Of course, all this has little to do with stagecraft. But it is also important for the latter. Anyone who has received some training in the art of speaking will be able to make a much more accurate judgment of an actor's performance than someone who knows nothing about this art. By far the majority of writers and journalists who write about the theater today are incapable of passing judgment on the art of speaking. This gives their judgments a dilettante quality. No one would have the right to write about a singer who has no knowledge of the art of singing. As far as acting is concerned, far lower demands are made. One is satisfied with general amateurish talk about artistic achievements in this field. People who understand whether a verse is spoken correctly or not are becoming increasingly rare.

Artistic speaking is often regarded today as misguided idealism. This could never have happened if people were more aware of the artistic training potential of language.

Our schools also place far too little emphasis on the cultivation of artistic speech. It is overlooked that careless, inartistic speech is just as repulsive to those who have the right sensibility for it as tasteless clothing. We are about to devote more attention to the arts and crafts than has hitherto been the case. We want to furnish homes not only in a functional way, but also in an artistic way. Speech is also a kind of handicraft. Here, too, nature must be elevated to culture.

We want to furnish homes in such a way that they are not only functional but also beautiful. Everything should point to the purpose of the home. But it should not be abstract and functional, it should not be sober. The purpose should appear in such a way that it points to the purpose in a beautiful way.

We would like to demand something similar from speech. First of all, it has the task of conveying the meaning of what is to be communicated. It should be made as suitable as possible for this purpose. 'But this task can be achieved in various ways. It can happen in such a way that no importance is attached to beauty and grace of expression. Then, however important the subject, the speech will appear sober, perhaps even tasteless. But it can also happen that the purposeful is achieved in a beautiful, graceful way.

Here the personal touch is expected to do an enormous amount. A speaker who expresses content in such a way that the intention to speak beautifully is noticeable will make little impression as a "beautiful speaker". But there is a degree of euphemism that corresponds exactly to the subject matter. If the speaker achieves this degree, the harmony between expression and content will be perceived in his speech - and will be perceived sympathetically.

However, only those who have a feeling for the beauty and style of speaking in general can develop this rhythm. This feeling must become an unconscious part of the speaker's personality. As soon as one notices the search in the speech, the sympathy of the listener is gone.

But in order to achieve this unconsciousness of feeling in relation to beautiful, stylized speech, an education in rhetoric must be sought. One must speak for a while for the sake of beautiful speech, then later one will also speak stylized if one does not consciously strive for it.

The German has the peculiarity of regarding such things as stylized speech as a trivial external matter. He is very wrong to do so. Here, more than in any other area, the saying applies: clothes make the man. We will never be converted to the view held by French orators that it doesn't matter what we say if we have only found out how we should speak. But we should attach more importance to this how than we are used to doing.

A speaker who knows how to speak, the words run after him. He draws the listener in. That is a sentence of experience. Why shouldn't we act according to this principle? We serve the content more if we help it through rhetoric than if we just say our little slogan to the exclusion of all rhetoric.

It is precisely because we want to give the content its validity that we should give it a sympathetic form. But we will only speak sympathetically if we have undergone training in the art of speaking.