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  PROPHETS OF DISSENT




  BOOKS BY OTTO HELLER

  HENRIK IBSEN: PLAYS AND PROBLEMS

  STUDIES IN MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

  LESSING'S "MINNA VON BARNHELM"
  in English




  Prophets of Dissent: Essays
  on Maeterlinck, Strindberg,
  Nietzsche and Tolstoy

  by
  Otto Heller

  Professor of Modern European Literature
  in Washington University (St. Louis)


  Is there a thing in this world that can be separated from
  the inconceivable?

  Maeterlinck, "Our Eternity"


  New York
  Mcmxviii
  Alfred A Knopf




  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
  ALFRED A. KNOPF

  PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




  To
  HELLEN SEARS
  staunchest of friends




Preface


The collocation of authors so widely at variance in their moral and
artistic aims as are those assembled in this little book may be defended
by the safe and simple argument that all of these authors have exerted,
each in his own way, an influence of singular range and potency. By
fairly general consent they are the foremost literary expositors of
important modern tendencies. It is, therefore, of no consequence whether
or not their ways of thinking fit into our particular frame of mind;
what really matters is that in this small group of writers more clearly
perhaps than in any other similarly restricted group the basic issues of
the modern struggle for social transformation appear to be clearly and
sharply joined. That in viewing them as indicators of contrarious ideal
currents due allowance must be made for peculiarities of temperament,
both individual and racial, and, correspondingly, for the purely
"personal equation" in their spiritual attitudes, does not detract to
any material degree from their generic significance.

In any case, there are those of us who in the vortical change of the
social order through which we are whirling, feel a desire to orient
ourselves through an objective interest in letters among the embattled
purposes and policies which are now gripped in a final test of strength.
In a crisis that makes the very foundations of civilization quake, and
at a moment when the salvation of human liberty seems to depend upon the
success of a united stand of all the modern forces of life against the
destructive impact of the most primitive and savage of all the
instincts, would it not be absurdly pedantic for a critical student of
literature to resort to any artificial selection and co-ordination of
his material in order to please the prudes and the pedagogues? And is it
not natural to seek that material among the largest literary apparitions
of the age?

It is my opinion, then, that the four great authors discussed in the
following pages stand, respectively, for the determining strains in a
great upsetting movement, and that in the aggregate they bring to view
the composite mental and moral impulsion of the times. Through such
forceful articulations of current movements the more percipient class of
readers have for a long time been enabled to foresense, in a manner, the
colossal reconstruction of society which needs must follow this
monstrous, but presumably final, clash between the irreconcilable
elements in the contrasted principles of right and might, the masses and
the monarchs.

However, the gathering together of Maeterlinck, Nietzsche, Strindberg,
and Tolstoy under the hospitality of a common book-cover permits of a
supplementary explanation on the ground of a certain fundamental
likeness far stronger than their only too obvious diversities. They are,
one and all, radicals in thought, and, with differing strength of
intention, reformers of society, inasmuch as their speculations and
aspirations are relevant to practical problems of living. And yet what
gives them such a durable hold on our attention is not their particular
apostolate, but the fact that their artistic impulses ascend from the
subliminal regions of the inner life, and that their work somehow brings
one into touch with the hidden springs of human action and human fate.
This means, in effect, that all of them are mystics by original cast of
mind and that notwithstanding any difference, however apparently
violent, of views and theories, they follow the same introspective path
towards the recognition and interpretation of the law of life. From
widely separated ethical premises they thus arrive at an essentially
uniform appraisal of personal happiness as a function of living.

To those readers who are not disposed to grant the validity of the
explanations I have offered, perhaps equality of rank in artistic
importance may seem a sufficient criterion for the association of
authors, and, apart from all sociologic and philosophic considerations,
they may be willing to accept my somewhat arbitrary selection on this
single count.

    O. H.

April, 1918.




CONTENTS


                                                     PAGE

    I Maurice Maeterlinck: a study in Mysticism         3

   II August Strindberg: a study in Eccentricity       71

  III Friedrich Nietzsche: a study in Exaltation      109

   IV Leo Tolstoy: a study in Revivalism              161




I

THE MYSTICISM OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK


Under the terrific atmospheric pressure that has been torturing the
civilization of the entire world since the outbreak of the greatest of
wars, contemporary literature of the major cast appears to have gone
into decline. Even the comparatively few writers recognized as
possessing talents of the first magnitude have given way to that
pressure and have shrunk to minor size, so that it may be seriously
questioned, to say the least, whether during the past forty months or so
a single literary work of outstanding and sustained grandeur has been
achieved anywhere. That the effect of the universal embattlement upon
the art of letters should be, in the main, extremely depressing, is
quite natural; but the conspicuous loss of breadth and poise in writers
of the first order seems less in accordance with necessity,--at least
one might expect a very superior author to rise above that necessity. In
any case it is very surprising that it should be a Belgian whose
literary personality is almost unique in having remained exempt from the
general abridgment of spiritual stature.

It is true that Maurice Maeterlinck, the most eminent literary figure in
his sadly stricken country and of unsurpassed standing among the
contemporary masters of French letters, has, since the great
catastrophe, won no new laurels as a dramatist; and that in the other
field cultivated by him, that of the essay, his productiveness has been
anything but prolific. But in his case one is inclined to interpret
reticence as an eloquent proof of a singularly heroic firmness of
character at a time when on both sides of the great divide which now
separates the peoples, the cosmopolitan trend of human advance has come
to a temporary halt, and the nations have relapsed from their
laboriously attained degree of world-citizenship into the homelier, but
more immediately virtuous, state of traditional patriotism.

It is a military necessity as