Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1472

The interest that animates Shakespeare's great spirit lies within the limits of the world; for though prophecy and madness, dreams, presentiments, portents, fairies and goblins, ghosts, witches and sorcerers, form a magic element which color his creations at the fitting moment, yet those phantasms are by no means the chief components of his productions; it is the verities and experiences of his life that are the great basis upon which they rest, and that is why everything that proceeds from him appears so genuine and pithy. We perceive, therefore, that he belongs not so much to the modern world, which has been termed the romantic one, as to a naive world, since, though his significance really rests upon the present, he scarcely, even in his tenderest moments, touches the borders of longing, and then only at the outermost edge.

Nevertheless, more intimately examined, he is a decidedly modern poet, divided from the ancients by a tremendous gulf, not as regards outward form, which is not to be considered here at all, but as regards the inmost, the profoundest significance of his work.

I shall, in the first place, protect myself by saying that it is by no means my intention to adduce the following terminology as exhaustive or final; my attempt is, rather not so much to add a new contrast to those already familiar, as to point out that it is included in them. These contrasts are:

Antique Modern

Naive Sentimental

Pagan Christian

Heroic Romantic

Real Idealistic

Necessity Freedom

Sollen (Duty; shall; must; should). Wollen (Desire; inclination; would).

The greatest torments, as well as the most frequent, that beset man spring from the discordances in us all between duty and desire, between duty and performance (Vollbringen); and it is these discordances that so often embarrass man during his earthly course. The slightest confusion, arising from a trivial error which may be cleared up unexpectedly and without injury, gives rise to ridiculous situations. The greatest confusion, on the contrary, insoluble or unsolved, offers us the tragic elements.

Predominant in the ancient dramas is the discordance between duty and desire; in the modern, that between desire and performance. Let us, for the present, consider this decisive difference among the other contrasts, and see what can be done with it in both cases. Now this, now that side predominates, as I have remarked; but since duty and desire cannot be radically separated in man, both motives must be found simultaneously, even though the one should be predominant and the other subordinate. Duty is imposed upon man; "must" is a hard taskmaster; desire (das Wollen) man imposes upon himself; man's own will is his heaven. A persistent "should" is irksome; inability to perform is terrible; a persistent "would" is gratifying; and the possession of a firm will may yield solace even in case of incapacity to perform.

We may look at games of cards as a sort of poetic creation; they, too, consist of these two elements. The form of the game, combined with chance, takes the place of the "should" as the ancients recognized it under the name of fate; the "would," combined with the ability of the player, opposes it. Looked at in this way, I should call the game of whist ancient. The form of this game restricts chance, nay, the will itself; provided with partners and opponents, I must, with the cards dealt out to me, guide a long series of chances which there is no way of controlling. In the case of ombre and other like games, the contrary takes place. Here a great many doors are left open to will and daring; I can revoke the cards that fall to my share, can make them count in various ways, can discard half or all of them, can appeal from the decree of chance, nay, by an inverted course can reap the greatest advantage from the worst hand; and thus this class of games exactly resembles the modern method in thought and in poetic art.

Ancient tragedy is based upon an unavoidable "should," which is intensified and accelerated only by a counteracting "would." This is the point of all that is terrible in the oracles, the region where Oedipus reigns supreme. Sollen appears in a milder light as duty in Antigone. But all Sollen is despotic, whether it belongs to the domain of reason, as ethical and municipal laws, or to that of Nature, as the laws of creation, growth, dissolution, of life and death. We shudder at all this, without reflecting that it is intended for the general good. Wollen, on the contrary, is free, appears free, and favors the individual. Wollen, therefore, is flattering, and perforce took possession of men as soon as they learned to know it. It is the god of the new time; devoted to it, we have a dread of its opposite, and that is why there is an impassable gulf between our art, as well as our mode of thought, and that of the ancients. Through Sollen, tragedy becomes great and forceful; through Wollen, weak and petty. Thus has arisen the so-called drama, in which the awful power of Fate was dissolved by the will; but precisely because this comes to the aid of our weakness do we find ourselves moved if, after painful expectation, we finally receive but scant comfort.

If now, after these preliminary reflections, I turn to Shakespeare, I can not forbear wishing that my readers should themselves make the comparison and the application. Here Shakespeare stands out unique, combining the old and the new in incomparable fashion. Wollen and Sollen seek by every means, in his plays, to reach an equilibrium; they struggle violently with each other, but always in a way that leaves the Wollen at a disadvantage.

No one, perhaps, has represented more splendidly the great primal connection between Wollen and Sollen in the character of the individual. A person, from the point of view of his character, should: he is restricted, destined to some definite course; but as a man, he wills. He is unlimited and demands freedom of choice. At once there arises an inner conflict, and Shakespeare puts it in the forefront. But then an outer conflict supervenes, which often becomes acute through the pressure of circumstances, in the face of which a deficiency of will may rise to the rank of an inexorable fate. This idea I have pointed out before in the case of Hamlet; but it occurs repeatedly in Shakespeare; for as Hamlet is driven by the ghost into straits which he cannot pass through, so is Macbeth by witches, by Hecate, and by the arch-witch, his wife; Brutus by his friends; nay, even in Coriolanus, we find a similar thing—in short, the conception of a will transcending the capacity of the individual is modern. But as Shakespeare represents this trouble of the will as arising not from within but through outside circumstances, it becomes a sort of Fate and approaches the antique. For all the heroes of poetic antiquity strive only for what lies within man's power, and thence arises that fine balance between will, Fate, and performance; yet their Fate appears always as too forbidding, even where we admire it, to possess the power of attraction. A necessity which, more or less, or completely, precludes all freedom, does not comport with the ideas of our time; but Shakespeare approaches these in his own way; for, in making necessity ethical, he links, to our gratified astonishment, the ancient with the modern. If anything can be learned from him, it is this point that we should study in his school. Instead of exalting our romanticism—which may not deserve censure or contempt—unduly and exclusively, and clinging to it in a partisan spirit, whereby its strong, solid, efficient side is misjudged and impaired, we should strive to unite within ourselves those great and apparently irreconcilable opposites—all the more that this has already been achieved by the unique master whom we prize so highly, and, often without knowing why, extol above every one. He had, to be sure, the advantage of living at the proper harvest-time, of expending his activity in a Protestant country teeming with life, where the madness of bigotry was silent for a time, so that a man like Shakespeare, imbued with a natural piety, was left free to develop his real self religiously without regard to any definite creed.