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THE AWAKENING OF SPRING




      BOOKS BY FRANK WEDEKIND

      _Published by_ BROWN BROTHERS


      THE AWAKENING OF SPRING.
      A Tragedy of Childhood
      Net, $1.25. By mail, $1.35

      SUCH IS LIFE. A Play in Five Acts
      Net, $1.25. By mail, $1.34

      RABBI EZRA AND THE VICTIM.
      Two Stories
      Net, 25c. By mail, 29c

      THE GRISLEY SUITOR. A Story
      Net, 25c. By mail, 29c.




      The Awakening of Spring


      A TRAGEDY OF CHILDHOOD
      BY
      FRANK WEDEKIND

      _Translated from the German by Francis J. Ziegler_

      THIRD EDITION

      PHILADELPHIA
      BROWN BROTHERS
      1912

      _Copyright, 1910_
      BY
      BROWN BROTHERS




A PROEM FOR PRUDES


That it is a fatal error to bring up children, either boys or girls,
in ignorance of their sexual nature is the thesis of Frank Wedekind's
drama aEurooeFrA1/4hlings Erwachen.aEuro From its title one might suppose it a
peaceful little idyl of the youth of the year. No idea a could be
more mistaken. It is a tragedy of frightful import, and its action is
concerned with the development of natural instincts in the adolescent
of both sexes.

The playwright has attacked his theme with European frankness; but of
plot, in the usual acceptance of the term, there is little. Instead
of the coherent drama of conventional type, Wedekind has given us a
series of loosely connected scenes illuminative of character--scenes
which surely have profound significance for all occupied in the
training of the young. He sets before us a group of school children,
lads and lassies just past the age of puberty, and shows logically
that death and degradation may be their lot as the outcome of
parental reticence. They are not vicious children, but little ones
such as we meet every day, imaginative beings living in a world of
youthful ideals and speculating about the mysteries which surround
them. Wendla, sent to her grave by the abortive administered with the
connivance of her affectionate but mistaken mother, is a most lovable
creature, while Melchior, the father of her unborn child, is a high
type of boy whose downfall is due to a philosophic temperament, which
leads him to inquire into the nature of life and to impart his
knowledge to others; a temperament which, under proper guidance,
would make him a useful, intelligent man. It is Melchior's very
excellence of character which proves his undoing. That he should be
imprisoned as a moral degenerate only serves to illustrate the
stupidity of his parents and teachers. As for the suicide of Moritz,
the imaginative youth who kills himself because he has failed in his
examinations, that is another crime for which the dramatist makes
false educational methods responsible.

A grim vein of humor is exhibited now and then, as when we are
introduced to the conference room in which the members of a gymnasium
faculty, met to consider the regulation of their pupils' morals, sit
beneath the portraits of Pestalozzi and J. J. Rousseau disputing with
considerable acrimony about the opening and shutting of a window. The
exchange of unpleasant personalities is interrupted only by the
entrance of the accused student, to whose defense the faculty refuses
to listen, having marked the boy for expulsion prior to the formal
farce of his trial.

Wedekind has been accused of depicting his adults as too ignorant and
too indifferent to the needs of the younger generation. But most of
us will have to admit that the majority of his scenes and characters
seem very true to life.

aEurooeFrA1/4hlings ErwachenaEuro may not be pleasant reading exactly, but there
is no forgetting it after one has perused it; there is an elemental
strength about it which grips the intellect. As a play it stands
unique in the annals of dramatic art. That it has succeeded in
attracting much attention abroad is shown by the fact that this drama
in book form has gone through twenty-six editions in its original
version and has been translated into several European tongues,
Russian included, while stage performances of the work have been
given in France as well as in Germany.

The Teutonic grimness of the work puzzled the Parisians, who are not
used to having philosophy thrust at them over the footlights; but in
Germany aEurooeFrA1/4hlings ErwachenaEuro proved much more successful. In Berlin,
indeed, it has become part of the regular stock of plays acted at
aEurooeDas Neue Theater,aEuro where it is said to be certain of drawing a
crowded audience. That the play is radically different from anything
given on the American stage is undoubtedly true. It must be
remembered, however, that the Continental European playwright regards
the stage as a medium of instruction, as well as a place of
amusement. The dictum of the Swedish dramatist, August Strindberg,
that the playwright should be a lay priest preaching on vital topics
of the day in a way to make them intelligible to mediocre intellects,
is not appreciated in this country as it should be; but once admit
the kinship of dramatist and priest, and the position taken by
Wedekind in writing aEurooeFrA1/4hlings ErwachenaEuro becomes self-evident. There
should be no question concerning the importance of his topic, nor
should it be forgotten that the evident lesson he seeks to inculcate
is one now preached by numerous ethical teachers. In order to
estimate the relationship of this play toward modern thought in
Germany, it must be understood that Wedekind's tragedy is merely one
of the documents in a paper war which has resulted at last in having
the physiology of sex taught in many German schools. The fact that
Wedekind's dialogue is frank to a remarkable degree only makes his
preachment more effective: aEurooeOne does not cure the pest with attar of
roses,aEuro as St. Augustine remarked.

Conditions in this country are not so very different from those
depicted in this play, and evidence is not lacking that gradually,
very gradually, we are beginning to realize that ignorance and
innocence are not synonymous; that an evil is not palliated by
ignoring its existence; the Podsnappian wave of the hand has not
disappeared entirely, but it is not quite as fashionable as of yore.
All things considered, the moment seems appropriate for the
publication, of aEurooeFrA1/4hlings ErwachenaEuro in an English version. The
translation given in this volume follows the German original as
closely as the translator can reconcile the nature of the two
languages.

Considered as a work of literature, aEurooeFrA1/4hlings ErwachenaEuro is
remarkable as one of the few realistic studies of adolescence. Its
deceptive simplicity is the hall mark of that supreme literary
ability which knows how to conceal art by art. Dealing with
adolescence, an unformed period of human life, it is necessarily
without the climaxes we expect in dramas in which the characters are
adult, and the gruesome scene in the churchyard with which the play
closes--a scene with such peculiar symbolism could spring only from a
Teutonic imagination--leaves much unended.

It is interesting to note, by the way, that Wedekind himself appears
as the Masked Man when aEurooeFrA1/4hlings ErwachenaEuro is given in Berlin, a
fact which gives this scene somewhat the nature of a _parabasis_.

Frank Wedekind's name is just beginning to be heard in America. In
Germany he has been recognized for some time as one of the leaders in
the new art of the theatre. Naturally enough, his plays are too
outspoken in their realism to appeal to all his fellow-countrymen.
But, if certain Germans reject this mental pabulum, others become
intoxicated by it, and, waxing enthusiastic with a flow of language
almost bacchic, hail Wedekind as the forerunner of a new drama--as a
power destined to infuse fresh strength into the German stage. aEurooeWith
this drink in its body,aEuro writes one admirer, aEurooethe public will never
more endure lyrical lemonade, nor the dregs of dramatic penury.aEuro

Again, these enthusiasts compare Wedekind's work to that of the
pre-Shakesperian dramatists, or even to that of the Bard of Avon
himself, both of which comparisons are difficult to grasp by an
English-speaking student of the British drama.

Wedekind, it is true, has a habit of using the news of the day as
material for plays, just as the old English dramatists did when they
wrote aEurooedomestic tragedies.aEuro He has a fondness, moreover, for gruesome
situations such as we can imagine appealing to the melancholy genius
of Webster; but of the childlike simplicity which marks much of the
Elizabethan drama there is not a particle.

Certainly there is no trace of the gentle romanticism which one finds
in some of the other modern German realists. Gerhart Hauptmann can
turn from the grim task of dramatizing starvation, as he does in aEurooeDie
Weber,aEuro to indulge in the naA-ve Christian symbolism of aEurooeHannele,aEuro or
the mythological poetry of aEurooeDie Versunkene Glocke.aEuro Even the
iconoclast Strindberg writes romantically at times, and gives us
something resembling Maeterlinck; but when Wedekind departs from pure
realism his fancy creates a Gothic nightmare of horrors, peopled with
such terrifying creatures as the headless suicide wandering amid the
graves.

Wedekind's kinship to the dramatists of the aEurooedomestic tragediesaEuro is
shown clearly in the tragedy aEurooeMusik,aEuro which deals with a phase of
music study only too common in Germany. It is asserted that of the
thousands of students of music in that country not one in a hundred
amounts to anything artistically, while of those who master their art
not one in a thousand is capable of profiting financially by it. It
is this condition of affairs which gives additional importance to
this recent work of Wedekind.

aEurooeMusikaEuro is described by the author as a depiction of morals in four
pictures (aEurooeSittengemA¤lde in vier BildernaEuro), to each of which he has
given a separate title, a method which enables him to indulge in his
trick of applying a pretty, inoffensive name to a tragic subject, as
he does in picture two of this series, which he calls aEurooeBehind Swedish
Curtains,aEuro and which represents the interior of a jail. The curtains
to which the playwright refers are the iron bars of the prison.

The central character in aEurooeMusik,aEuro Klara Huhnerwadel, is a neurotic
girl, whose mad love for her singing teacher has entangled her in the
meshes of the legal net drawn to catch Madame Fischer, a notorious
character in real life, who actively engaged the attention of the
German police authorities not long ago. At the instigation of her
lover, Josef Reissner, and with money supplied by Else Reissner,
Josef's wife, Klara flees to Antwerp, only to find existence
insupportable there, and to return to a life in jail which drives her
to the edge of insanity. Released from imprisonment, she continues
her relationship with her teacher until their association becomes
public scandal, and then takes refuge in the country, intending to
dev