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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MASQUE TO COMMEMORATE THE SPIRIT OF THE WARS OF LIBERATION, by GERHART HAUPTMANN Poet's Biography
First Line: But rarely I appear before the curtain
Last Line: [the old marshal, touched by the director's wand, drops lifeless.
Subject(s): Masques; Napoleonic Wars; Nationalism - Germany
First Line: But rarely I appear before the curtain
Last Line: [the old marshal, touched by the director's wand, drops lifeless.
Subject(s): Masques; Napoleonic Wars; Nationalism - Germany
CHARACTERS
THE DIRECTOR.
PHILISTIADES.
PYTHIA.
A BOY.
THE KNIGHT.
FREDERICK THE GREAT.
NAPOLEON.
TALLEYRAND.
HEGEL.
GYMNAST JAHN.
BARON VON STEIN.
GNEISENAU.
SCHARNHORST.
HEINRICH VON KLEIST.
FICHTE.
BLÜCHER.
ATHENE GERMANIA.
THE FURY.
THE EAGLE.
THE JURIST.
JOHN BULL.
Jacobins, Drummers, Women, Hangmen, Masqueraders, Chorus of Birds, French and
Prussian Soldiers and Officers, Marshals of Napoleon, Mothers, Students,
Populace.
Behind an orchestra a flight of three stages is placed. The first is
divided by a curtain. When this opens, another is at once background
and a screen for the second stage. When it parts, this second higher stage is v
isible, with a third curtain as background, which in turn is opened to reveal
the third curtain as background, which in turn is opened to reveal the third
and topmost stage.
In front of the first curtain, black and embroidered with gold stars, steps
the DIRECTOR. He wears the high cap of the magician and a long robe,
both similarly covered with heavenly symbols. He bears a magic wand.
THE DIRECTOR
But rarely I appear before the curtain
Of that world-stage which I have long directed.
Fair days and foul, I make them both, quite certain
That personally I am not affected.
Yet e'en the finest of all apparatus
We cannot hope will always perfect show:
A cog will break, a wire be snapt, and lo,
This world of show, all hollow at the centre,
This best of worlds has a hiatus,
Such as the breach I am about to enter.
In short, the mime who till this very day
The prologue of this play has always spoken,
Has left the troupe, his contract broken.
We'll get along, have no dismay!
If the director's not afraid of
Your scorn, and knows the stuff he's made of.
Of course I will not reel off word for word
The same old prologue — that would be absurd.
It sprang from my imagination,
As is our wont on such occasion,
But from my head the phrases flit:
Hence, since 'tis easier to compose
Than learn outright what has been writ,
For now a brief account in prose.
How would you call the piece? That's hard to say.
The type's not common in our land and day.
Perhaps a "mimus," mimic supposition?
As when Philistion, the world despising,
Died of the laughter born of his devising?
Yet when I read it with my mental vision,
I find indeed a mimic irony,
But a more strictly modern phantasy.
Well, all is one: whatever be its name,
Its author's head and hand it doth acclaim,
And in its diverse scenes of shifting power
It shows a continent's most fateful hour.
The swaying stage is called, for this production,
Europe, and yet the echoes of the ruction
Extend across to both the hemispheres.
For you, old foot-rest, I could give three cheers:
For what you've borne, and have not met prostration,
This your director knows his obligation.
[From behind the curtain steps PHILISTIADES, a slender youth but sc
antily clad, with the wings of Hermes on heels and head-gear. He casts a great
knapsack at the feet of the DIRECTOR.
PHILISTIADES
I come again, my hoary, star-crowned sage,
And wait the signal of your sovereign might;
You're still, as ever, bearded, stiff with age,
And aeons have turned your crown a whiter white.
Once more you would — ah yes, your servant knows! —
Mid rage and strife, after so long a while,
Behold some tragic heroes' dying throes,
And smile your soft sardonic childish smile.
A nod from you: I open up my sack,
And set your puppets dancing in a pack.
THE DIRECTOR
No, Philistiades, first look about:
Down yonder sits an audience immense.
To them, not me, that curious, intense,
And silent wait, show what you've trotted out.
Tell them, my lad, just how we ever strive
To mirror life, and whence success derive.
Hide not at all, my ever cheerful son,
How our delightful little plant is run,
And how with Time and Place we do not fuss,
And Aristotle does not worry us.
Air, water, earth, to us they're all the same;
Our troupe's at home in lands of every name,
And e'en high up above the kingdoms three:
Whereof this staff the sign and symbol be.
PHILISTIADES
[Taking the articles from his sack as required, and showing them.
Our theatre's both small and great,
As you behold it, so is its state.
Here, for example, a first-sized ball:
That means the earth, as it whirls in the All.
You've seen it now, I lay it aside;
At once it expands both far and wide
And you hear now louder and better the roar
And rush of the Flood, and your glance sweeps o'er
The shores of the ocean, the fruit-bearing land,
The deserts and hills. Now before you stand
The continents five, then, mile upon mile,
The mighty rivers, the mighty places,
The houses, the streets, the cabinet faces,
And we note the tiny insect, with a smile,
That in houses and cabinets bides a while.
Oh, no, 'tis not ants that we had in mind:
Let us praise the lord of the world, mankind.
He calls him godling over the rest,
And may call himself as suits him best.
When seen close by, he becomes a giant.
For instance, observe this little client.
[He shows some puppets.
You laugh! With mirth you'll soon be through,
As soon as you've seen the things they do.
They seem to be stiff, but they move quite well,
And are quite unspeakably irritable.
You won't be able to trust your sight
When you see them shoot and stab and fight,
Massacre, murder, and throttle each other.
One loses patience with all this pother.
As a matter of fact, our piece of to-day
Is composed of blood-baths and battle-fray,
A gruesome, horrible omnium-gatherum.
These puppets are Furies, and how they bother 'em!
Then here you see the thunder-machine,
For thunder and lightning are part of the scene.
And here are some gods and genii;
With but few of these our luck we try,
But one or two of them we require,
For you see we shall be in the early Empire.
I lift the sack, and out they dribble
At random, thus: the Delphian Sibyl,
Old Gymnast Jahn and Talleyrand,
German and English generals too,
A Cossack hetman, French marshals a few.
"An eye for an eye and a hand for a hand" —
You hear them mutter and shout and whistle,
And when a pair of them chance to meet,
With powder and ball each other they treat,
Caressing each other with gun and pistol.
Here composers, philosophers, poets gabble,
Peaceable burghers and city rabble:
Puppets, carved to the very life,
And each will bleed at the touch of your knife.
THE DIRECTOR
Stop there, and not too over-hasty.
Excess of speed is never tasty.
Hand me the puppets singly and slow,
And of course the wire to make them go.
First let's just take this puppet unruly;
His name is Nelson, an actor for parties
That take place out on the sea, my hearties!
With such we're not overstocked unduly.
The sublimest fellow! — I tell you truly.
We jestingly call him the Admiral;
He's from over the channel, from the nor'ard.
Now here! we'll show you this other doll:
We call it simply Marshal Forward.
This puppet has hand and heart and head,
Is sometimes a bit of a blow, 'tis said.
But the words of a blunt old fighting man
Should not be laid in the weighing-pan.
A fiery nature, a brilliant actor;
I challenge you, find such another character.
Now comes an article extra scarce:
A Kaiser, a Tsar, and a Prussian King.
But these are very hard to coerce,
We'd better leave them out of the ring.
If one of them a leg should break,
My position 'twould very gravely shake.
Now this, however, is somewhat robuster.
A later model,— it passes muster!
Indeed this puppet's phenomenal,
Entitled the Little Corporal.
It's really unique of its kind, I've found;
I carved it while to the Southland bound
From the holm-oak wood of Corsica,
And it bears my own artist's insignia.
It really was to have been a figure
Than which the earth has had nothing bigger,
But an old dismissed theatrical wight,
Pedro Carbonaro hight,
Put a spoke in the creature's wheel,
And so he's a dubious hero, I feel.
He went to Marseilles and from there to Paree,
For that's where his principal dance was to be,
And he danced so well and withal so quick
That soon all France learned the dancing trick;
In fact all Europe began to dance —
You'll hear the whole tale as the scenes advance.
Queues and curls and boundaries quivered,
Throne-room, steeple, and sentry-box shivered.
Crowns and thrones o'er each other went tumbling,
And over these high and low were stumbling;
But he was not merely a social prancer,
His real pursuit was that of sword-dancer.
Yet later he danced, himself, no more,
But sent other dancers on before.
This actor the world will recall evermore.
He acted now Great Alexander,
And now 'twas Julius Cæsar he played;
But forgetting that he was a different gander,
He mixed up the parts he had essayed:
Now Roman consul, now Charlemagne,
Now Attila, then again Hannibal,
He was this and that, he was everywhere.
He loved the Emperor's pose to maintain.
Before his rout marched a drummer rare,
The drummer Death! a form to appal.
The roll of his drum was deep and hollow,
And all the world at his heels did follow.
From morn till night they onward pressed,
Then all were finally brought to rest.
You see from this that my actor-chap
Is a man of uncommon force and snap.
I gave him permission, for twenty years
To flood the earth with blood and cheers.
As a star he had a troupe most docile;
Now he was a puppet — I call him colossal.
But every stage he at last outgrew,
And the whole world into the fray he drew,
Till he brought his director into danger,
Although to his tricks I was far from a stranger.
Returned to the doll-box and black-listed,
From his active career he then desisted.
I was sorry, but him I had to abandon,
Or the firm would have had not a leg to stand on.
He's had a rest now, long and fine,
But if he refuses to toe the line,
So let him again on the stage be going,
And acts like a stream, his banks o'erflowing,
Once more he goes, to eternal rest,
Right back to the manager's rubbish-chest.
[The DIRECTOR has displayed several puppets, lastly that which
represents Napoleon Bonaparte. He now returns them to PHILISTIADES.
PHILISTIADES
'Tis true without exaggeration
He's lost who loses his approbation.
Signor Balsamo, Cagliostro by name,
Is a baby beside him at this little game.
Grand-Master of all your Lodges and Orders,
He knows how to manage creations and murders.
White magic and black, they're his at call,
And philosophy, too, that knows it all.
THE DIRECTOR
Enough, to action let us now proceed;
I hope our toys are ready for word and deed.
Our stage is this platform, bald and bare:
Our performance takes place, so to speak, plein air.
We begin with some German mysticism
And end with quasi-classicism.
"His Rhodus, hic salta" — that's our gait.
We've no wings, no prompter to set us straight.
[Unseen music.
Curtains alone are our simple wile.
These habits, sanctioned by agelong custom,
Not God himself has the power to bust 'em,
So long as Creation's so full of guile.
But you'll be surprised by our stars and "supes:"
Just try your casts of different grades,
You'll find neither local nor roving troupes
To whom we can't give cards and spades.
Why, just this music, this grand confusion,
It gives you at once the whole Revolution.
All praise to Sebastian Bach, the Cantor:
Our Ariel's art you'll witness instanter.
Already you sniff the Jacobin caps,
The blood-soaked streets and the bloodier scraps;
You can fairly see the wild Carmagnole,
And a robber's drawn pistol crowning the whole.
A master-director runs the game,
And puts a Dantesque fancy to shame.
Here's Greedy-gut and Stow-the-booty.
They're coming! Now isn't that mob a beauty?
[A furious Paris mob of the time of the Revolution throngs into the
orchestra and thence gets at the DIRECTOR and PHILISTIADES.
THE WOMEN
Freedom! Equality! Brotherhood!
THE DIRECTOR
[Vehemently.
You come too soon, the times are rude.
Out, out! Your cue has not been spoken.
FIRST JACOBIN
Scoundrel, you want your cranium broken?
THE DIRECTOR
I'm the director!
SECOND JACOBIN
Who?
FIRST WOMAN
Aye, who?
THIRD JACOBIN
Out with him! and the apprentice too!
Infamous wire-puller! Humanity's flayer!
Freedom, freedom! She is our mother.
Devil take it! Don't call me a player:
I'm known, a Septembrist am I, no other.
Burn down the house! Aye, aye, that's good!
No pasteboard and canvas for us, but blood.
[The DIRECTOR and PHILISTIADES have been thrust behind the
curtain. In the orchestra meanwhile there develops a Parisian street
scene of the time of the Revolution. The mob dances the Carmagnole.
Human heads are borne about on pikes. The FIRST JACOBIN,
standing on the first stage, tries to get a hearing. In
vain. Then the DRUMMER DEATH appears, steps forward
to the edge of the stage, and beats a long roll. Hereupon quiet ensues.
FIRST JACOBIN
Come on, we've got our footing clear.
Hell and Satan! No jesting here.
Communal ownership! Human right!
No slaves are we! The lords are in flight!
The People alone has omnipotent power:
You are greater than God, yourself is God.
Save you, no avenger over the sod.
All the People's foes may the plague devour!
FOURTH JACOBIN
[Holding blood-flecked arms high in the air.
Who am I? A September butcher.
Once a Bourbon baker, consider
Me now an aristocrat-unlidder.
I know my trade, I've done my part.
[He shows a dagger.
Here's my tooth, as keen as a dart;
With it I've done some honest biting,
Torn the guts from each paunch inviting.
The Revolution — hip, hip, hooray!
Freedom breaking forces had risen,
And so we cleaned out every prison
From the infamous conspirators' brood.
We fairly waded in traitors' blood.
Officers, priests, and city rapscallions,
Palace-parasites, Swiss battalions,
We struck them down like so many cattle;
The city reeked with the steam of the battle.
But we had our little joke, at least.
The man who works deserves his feast.
The Princess Lamballe was a bite to allure you:
We lit'rally tore her to bits, I assure you.
But that was the final scene of the fray,
For first we had at her with merry play:
You know she was furnished without and within.
La Force shook with mirth at the jolly din.
FIRST JACOBIN
I also am a Septembriseur.
Long live the Terror! Terreur! terreur!
I fished in a body as though 'twas a pocket,
To pull the quivering heart from its socket;
I held it as a cat a captured mouse,
And sucked it bare as a haunted house.
People, so must you gobble and guzzle,
That is the genuine sacrament
That's neither by church nor parson sent.
With such a baptism wet your muzzle.
Retaliate, down with your old oppressors!
Freedom shall conquer, if we're the aggressors.
[The curtain opens, revealing the guillotine
and SAMSON, the executioner of the Terror,
standing beside it and holding a severed head
aloft. The DRUMMER DEATH beats a muffled roll.
THE POPULACE
[Roars.
The Veto, the Veto! Capet, hooray!
FIRST VOICE
Look, the Veto's making a pool!
SECOND VOICE
Where's his Jacobin cap, the fool?
THIRD VOICE
Oh, Samson, does that hurt him, hey?
THE POPULACE
Vive la terreur! And death to each lord!
[Again the curtain swiftly covers
the entire scene, together with the street
mob, which has been on the first stage.
The orchestra now lies dark and
silent. PHILISTIADES alone is visible before the starry curtain.
PHILISTIADES
This happened in Paris, Place de la Concorde,
On the twenty-third of Januaree
Seventeen hundred and ninety-three
Years after Jesus was crucified.
These also died as the martyrs died.
For victims fall as the passions wax,
And freedom was theirs through the hangman's axe.
The monarch became an underling,
But once again he was the King,
When he, with vigorous hero tread,
Gave up his head, on the block was dead.
Just this much more I'd like to mention:
We took no harm from this past dissension,
Nor I nor the other gentleman here.
We hope you'll find this reassuring:
We shall not change our plans, no fear,
For the slight harm we've been enduring
From rowdies a trifle discourteous:
What of it? They don't worry us.
They'll all return, ere very long,
Back to the spot where they belong;
That's something we've often seen before.
The spirit that over all doth soar,
Controls after all the stage completely
And the Director, smiling discreetly,
Quietly sits behind his wall,
And the governing threads, he holds them all.
[The curtain opens,
and PYTHIA is seen in a mystic light, a wreath of bays on her head, the pro
phet's staff in her hand.
PYTHIA
O Europe, ever subject to the Christian god,
With night o'erspread since fled the gods of ancient Greece,
Into thy destiny's abyss I gaze far down
And, looking far ahead, I see thy future path.
Oft hast thou trembled, now thou tremblest once again
In blood and pain, like to a woman travailing sore,
For still as yet the longed-for child has not been born
That thou didst deem was born two thousand years agone.
O Europe, thou still pregnant with the seed of Zeus,
The steer that bore thee far and far through ocean waves,
Thou homeless one, that like poor Io tossed about
By Hera's vengeance cannot ever come to rest.
Insensate roaring ragest thou, thy mouth a froth,
Veiled in a cloud of swarming, stinging, swarthy flies
That thrust in tireless eager toil, as thick as dust,
Their poisonous stings by day and night into thy flanks.
And when betimes thou, deathly faint and sweat-bedecked,
Collapsest, heeding thy tormentors frightful for the time
No more, nor feeling any more for weariness the spur
Of thousand, million thorns: there comes to thee in dreams,
In the half slumber of thy pain, a youthful god.
And ever thinkst thou then, for a brief space deceived,
The gruesome, awful time of trial o'er at last.
But not e'en now art thou delivered, and the weight
Of that great son of God, unborn, thou still must bear.
Oh, not yet born is he, is Europe's Prince of Peace,
Not the Redeemer, not though men do consecrate
Full many a shrine to him: he lies who this denies.
For were this offspring of the highest Godhead there
Where men do worship: how could strife and silent rage
And sickness further have so seared the mother's womb
And chased her, roaring pain, full tilt through stones and thorns?
Ah no, this Prince of Peace, whom all men laud, he has
But kindled e'er the savage brand of cruel war,
Aye, and his servants did such martydoms devise
As never devil has conceived in flesh and blood.
The blackest age of Greece saw not such tortures vile.
But far away, like breaking day, the dawn of peace
I see, however much the poisonous pest to-day,
And gloomy madness, rage unchecked in Europe's blood.
[While the prophetess has been speaking, the orchestra has gradually
become more and more animated. As the light increases there arises among the po
pulace a hum, a murmur, the sound of many voices, and finally a roar out of
which is heard a universal cry. To the sound of the Marseillaise severed
heads are carried about on pikes. The DRUMMER DEATH leads the
procession.
THE POPULACE
Vive la réApublique! Vive la liberté!
FIRST JACOBIN
Freedom's wedding-bells are ringing to-day.
The down-trodden folk and liberty
Are wedding this day in blood and glee.
There on those pikes is a noble crowd
Of witnesses — how the proud heads are bowed!
Great harlots, princes, and lords, they ride
Proudly on high, yet are far from pride.
FIRST WOMAN
[Screams up at the prophetess
Hey, scare-crow, with your head in the air!
What are you doing? Get out of there!
SECOND WOMAN
To scratch your face off would please me most.
VOICES
Hang her up to the nearest post!
FIRST WOMAN
Down with her, take her before the Committee.
Suspicious she looks. Down without pity.
She's an aristocrat, she's a vampire.
VOICES
Down with her, spear her into the mire.
THE PROPHETESS
Lay not your hands upon the sacred prophetess,
Inspired of Phœbus, from whose eyes no thing is hid.
Ye froth in blindness, like a frog-spawn in a pond,
But I can see, can see you and your better good.
Freedom? Equality? — Aye, down yonder in the tomb!
Fraternity? — Say "brother" to the gnawing worms
That wait with greed upon your ugly carcasses.
In this great day, ye are but dung upon the fields.
[A handsome, twelve-year-old boy leaps from behind the
curtain upon the first stage, where he begins, in perfect
innocence, to play with a top which he impels with a small whip.
PYTHIA
Look here! Know ye the lad? — But nay, ye know him not —
That gayly spins his top with blow of snapping whip?
Know ye the top he spins? — But nay, ye know it not —
'Twas baked of dust, your blood-soaked dust, and it is called
The World. To-morrow's world, but not the world to-day.
[The mob climbs the steps to the first stage,
amused and curious; at length the people burst out laughing.
VOICE
Come, look at the boy! And look once more!
Fair as am angel and French to the core.
THE BOY
Oh, pshaw, I'm not French, I'm from Corsica,
Your France is only my step-mamma.
A WOMAN
A devilish lad, courageous, I vow.
A SEPTEMBRIST
What would you say, if I killed you now?
THE BOY
'Twould be just like you, you big clodhopper;
You're as bold as France: no baby can stop her.
You're as lying too, in every line.
I am a Corsican, you are a swine.
[Thunders of laughter from the mob.
VOICES
He gave him his dose, that's plain to see.
THE SEPTEMBRIST
That's courage, that's courage! He's safe from me.
But why call la France a coward and liar?
THE BOY
La France is simply a lazy quagmire.
We Corsicans have but a foot of land,
But slavery's something we will not stand.
You threw the fire-brand into our homes,
And now the time for our vengeance comes.
Your feet upon our necks you plant,
But break my hold on your throats you can't;
I'll drill you, conquer you and quell you,
You shall dance the steps that I will tell you!
Blood you shall swill to your heart's content:
But to get it your own breasts shall be rent.
THE POPULACE
[Bursts out.
L'Empereur! L'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur!
VOICES
The boy understands the proper tone.
He'll carry out the Revolution.
Up with him! Set him upon the throne!
[The BOY is carried off in triumph with a "Vive l'Empereur!" through
the orchestra, on which darkness descends. Before the first curtain, now
closed again, the spot-light falls on PHILISTIADES.
PHILISTIADES
You're startled, it's more than you can stomach.
The whole event is really comic.
So to speak, it's genius's lightning stroke,
A kind of cosmic historical joke.
Around a boy the rabble swirled:
They lift him on high, an imperial strutter;
'Tis a Shrovetide masque from the dregs of the gutter,
An imperial farce, for all the world.
You know what idea they hooted down,
Why, a dog or a cat might have cabbaged the crown.
But this hooting brought them no end of trouble.
They painted the devil on the wall,
And later he actually came at their call.
And then he made their burdens double.
For you see this lad was not really an ox,
But a genius for rule and as sly as a fox.
They'll find it out when they come to stare
At the canister-shot of the Vendémiaire,
Which will take off their heads with a neat incision,
And prove that the lad had a genuine mission.
E'en while I speak, the decision is taken:
To-morrow an Emperor new will awaken.
The Pope will anoint him — a sorry task —
With St. Remigius' holy flask.
No matter: his sanction they did not ask.
But since the boy would not go to Rome,
To Notre Dame must his Holiness come,
And so the bay-crowned young dictator
Was duly installed as Imperator.
Charlemagne from his ancient tomb
Lent the insignia handed down
To bless his successors that wear the crown.
He even sent him his Frankish sword,
And honor and precepts was pleased to accord.
So the Franks' new ruler was deeply imbued
With the old imperial attitude:
Its aims were embracing, grand, amazing.
But on the Impossible closely grazing.
But now I had better go my ways.
Our piece now enters a different phase.
[The orchestra, which is again lighted up, shows a new scene. The Paris
ian mob has vanished. In its stead a Carnival procession has entered. Buffoons
draw a float on which an enormous dummy sits enthroned: a ridiculously attired
strawman, supposed to represent the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation in full regalia, with sceptre and imperial globe. On the
front of the float crouches a gigantic, sadly ruffled eagle, one of
whose talons is fettered with ring and chain. About the float moves a crowd of
laughing masqueraders, some with crowns, some with bishop's mitres, others in
cap and gown, with monstrous ink-wells and goose-quills. A special group is
formed by a number of birdmasks. At the head of the procession strides a
herald who carries on a cushion the symbol of imperial and judicial
power, the "secular sword." Behind the wagon walk the holders of
hereditary offices, such as LORD HIGH STEWARD, CUPBEARER,
and so on. On the float beside the straw-man stands a grizzled KNIGHT.
THE KNIGHT
Be off! nor treat with indignity
His imperial Roman Majesty,
Or I'll take a dozen of you by your habits,
You brawlers, and choke you like so many rabbits.
[The crowd replies with mocking laughter.
FIRST CROWNED HEAD
We know about that, you knock-kneed knight,
That wooden blade is a terrible sight!
SECOND CROWNED HEAD
And he can't even lift this trifling bauble,
For he can't move himself, and that's the trouble.
The Paladin is as stiff as a post,
And all he can do is to fume and boast.
THE KNIGHT
Not so fast, my old crown-wearing son.
Here sits the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
What's your complaint? What's his Majesty done?
FIRST BIRD
'Tis Shrovetide, sir, and we're going to masque it
With Charlemagne's spectre, since you ask it,
Praise the old rag-bag with shout and Te Deum,
Mouldered and worm-eaten down in its casket,
Ere we deposit it in the museum.
THE KNIGHT
If your wings aren't clipped, away you go flying,
When you open your bills, it's only for lying.
This crown is no fool's cap, to clink as I caper,
This sceptre and sword are not fashioned of paper,
When the Emperor stirs, all the land's in commotion
From the German sea to the Mediterranean.
The ruling will is the one in his cranium,
And that is the law from ocean to ocean.
Deny your lord, and you're then a denier
Of the flourishing, hallow'd, Roman Empire.
[He kicks out toward the eagle, who in some
strange wise coughs up something out of his throat.
Be quiet there, you lousy fool!
SOME MASQUERADERS
[Confusedly.
What is it?
FIRST BIRD
He's disgusted and coughing up wool.
SECOND BIRD
Nay, what he spews is blood and gall.
ALL
[Except the Birds, confusedly.
Let's settle his has for good and all.
[The eagle is trodden by the KNIGHT,
spattered with ink by the JURISTS, while the CROWN-WEARERS pull out w
ing and tail-feathers. The BUFFOONS strike him with their wooden swords.
The BISHOPS poke him with their crooks and singe him with lighted
candles. He hops very pitifully back and forth. The BIRDS burst
out in shrieks of anguish.
THE EAGLE
Treason, treason! Accursèd fate!
I've become a mock'ry and scorn in the state.
They want to see limping my loyalty staunch,
Hard pressed by many a priestly paunch,
Plucked bare by princes and counselors,
Made soup for th' imperial chancellors.
And he that sits yonder, a Carnival puppet,
With lifeless fingers, the childish wight,
Powerless either to cure or to stop it,
Cannot restore my old, free flight.
Hardly I scaped from the Roman cages,
But this golden freedom my spirit cheers,
Spite of those terrible Thirty Years.
But if once more my talon engages —
For I am that noble bird, the Phœnix —
The demon who almost my life had ended,
I'll rend him (I'm none of your weak anæmics).
But till God has sent the redeemer splendid,
The German nation they'll try to kill;
But try as they will, 'twill oppose them still.
My ailments came through Inheritance Portal,
Yet I am an eagle, and I am immortal.
[On the opposite side, in front, a closed sedan-chair is
carried in. Bearers and escorts in costumes of the eighteenth
century. When the small procession has reached the train of
masqueraders, the door of the chair opens, "OLD FRITZ"
steps out, and frees the eagle from its tormentors,
laying about him with his stick.
FREDERICK
Parbleu, Messieurs! Parbleu, Messieurs!
Does you still take pleasure in sooch caresses?
I vas, you see, in de Champs Élysées,
And I almost forget de Cherman distresses.
Cet aigle ici in de Roman Carnival?
Quelle infamie! quel grand scandale!
Dese things make my anger verree beeg,
'Ave you den not any new Smalkaldic Ligue?
As body-guard for zis oiseau céleste?
Leave 'im in peaces! Hell and pest!
[The tormentors have retired. The KING
re-enters his sedan-chair. All the BIRDS
surround it with noisy clamor.
CHORUS OF BIRDS
Hip, hurrah, the monarch mighty!
Go not from us, tarry by us.
Free the eagle, king most pious:
Countless voices thus incite thee.
To the threshold of God's dwelling
Hear our voices upward swelling.
[The song ceases abruptly. The KING descends from his chair again an
d thumps on the ground with his cane.
FREDERICK
None begins at the beginning
Who has had a through inning.
What comes now, that is your chose,
I've my duty done, God knows.
Did I not my country guide
Unto self-esteem and pride?
Taught them how their souls might leap
From their vegetable sleep?
How to act, lest cope and cowl
Turn them into beast or fowl?
How with unsheathed sword to brave
Those whom conscience had made slave?
But for my awak'ning breath
In Germany —
[He touches the eagle with his stick. he were in death!
Roman priests their hands had toasted
While upon a spit he roasted.
And your patriotic ditty,
Stead of singing to your king:
Miserere, Lord have pity!
Or you'd have no voice to sing.
[The KING disappears in the chair. The straw-man lifts his arm and
his hand lets a great parchment scroll fall. A JURIST picks it up and
steps to the door of the sedan-chair.
THE JURIST
[Addressing FREDERICK inside the chair.
My name is Doctor April, Sire.
Hark to my sayings one and all.
You've felt the excommunicating fire,
But the lord of the Roman Carnival
Has also put you under the ban,
Because you have not yet felt the curb,
To last till you've changed your mind, my man,
And our pleasure no longer will disturb.
["OLD FRITZ" again leaps out of the sedan-chair.
FREDERICK
Monsieur, 'e weesh a lettle treat.
Bon!
[He slaps the JURIST'S face.
Dere's my pour le mérite!
[Turning and taking a large parchment scroll from the chair.
But to you, ye sons of an eagle's brood,
Here's another parchment for your German blood.
Be pleased to stand up in martial array.
And hark to the German Phœnix his song,
Writ by my royal fingers strong
During my rest in the Champs Élysées.
[He vanishes in the sedan-chair, which is rapidly carried off.
The BIRDS gather, shrieking, about the parchment, and begin to
read, or rather sing it, in chorus.
THE BIRDS
Truly now no child of fortune,
Poor, plucked eagle, you at last
Shall be Phœnix, past be past.
Even while the pyres are piling
To consume the old reviling.
Parsons, Princes beyond counting
Set the pitch and sulphur mounting,
Pluck your feathers, almost flay you;
One might think they fain would slay you.
All these — who could name their names? —
Thrust and east you in the flames.
Once so strongly you could vanquish,
Now in childish weakness languish.
Conqueror of boundless spaces,
Chains and bells to-day you're wearing,
Calling jeers from empty faces,
In your bird-cage mock'ry bearing.
Yet howe'er you helpless hop,
Making giant fans to flop,
Sadly crawling, bound and fettered,
Soon your status shall be bettered.
Once again when you have moulted
Through the clouds you will have bolted,
And on mighty pinions soaring
Space and time you'll go exploring.
Bare and scabbed, today, O sorrow!
Glad and facing the sun tomorrow.
See his eyes, so nearly blind:
Far away, with eyes of mind,
He can see the dawn-light quicken.
Darkness here his sight had stricken.
[The procession, after a brief delay, proceeds again.
Suddenly the DRUMMER DEATH appears before the curtain on the edge of the fi
rst stage. The voices of the masqueraders and the roll of the drum mingle
inextricably. Then the curtains of the first and second stage open, and
the EMPEROR NAPOLEON, with TALLEYRAND beside him, is seen
together with his MARSHALS. The EMPEROR takes a
filed-glass from his eyes.
NAPOLEON
Why do these fowl make such a racket?
TALLEYRAND
I did not catch the words from afar.
NAPOLEON
I know what Cossacks and Pandours are,
But I never saw such a feather-jacket.
They are not Jews, not Mohammedans,
Not Mamelukes, not Bedouins.
What's their tribe, and where is their native cranny?
I don't know, they look to me uncanny.
TALLEYRAND
To me as well 'tis a crowd suspicious;
I know not where are their haunts pernicious.
I take them for phantoms visionary.
That plucked one is the master-canary.
They're maggots, unbidden kernel-pickers,
Airy romantics, regular stickers.
Here in the land of poets and thinkers
There live, they say, a lot of such stinkers,
Folks without or field or stubbles,
Their bird-brains filled with smoke and bubbles,
Separatists, neuter genders,
Ne'er-do-wells and time-expenders.
Uncertain, hard to seize and feel,
They form the danger of the Ideal.
I fancy the big ones we'll easily settle,
But each of these small fry's a stinging nettle.
The farmer and citizen soon will obey us,
But sparrows and storks will continue to slay us.
Kings, civilians, and even the priests,
But not these awful idealists.
How shall we manage to tie their firsts?
Some one could pluck and roast, like plover,
But that is a thing they'd soon get over.
The others will mock our prohibitions
With their vapid patriot-exhibitions.
They'll swarm all over, they'll raise a clamor
In North and South with the patriot's hammer;
They'll peep and chirp in the East and West
The ideologist's litany:
That there's but one single Germany,
Without boundary-lines or the tariff test.
NAPOLEON
The idea is good: but the questions arise
Who has it, with whom its fulfilment lies.
I'm the man for the job, I realize.
I too am a kind of kernel-biter,
A kind of boundary-dynamiter,
Not like those, a simple guano-dropper!
But at all events also a pinion-flopper,
Who flies to the sun without coming a cropper.
To be sure at the time a good practician,
And most of all a fine tactician.
TALLEYRAND
I wonder if your Majesty saw
That imperial effigy made of straw,
And the group on the float that's rolling there?
NAPOLEON
For imperial farces I do not care.
TALLEYRAND
Too bad! I was just about to state:
You might overthrow this potentate
And seat yourself in the idol's stead.
The Carnival would then be dead,
And many a consequence might follow.
NAPOLEON
The notion is not entirely hollow.
The straw-man's appearance is not æsthetic,
But he seems to be sacred. If not splenetic,
For personal ends one might employ him,
Or contrariwise one might destroy him.
Superstition, servility conquer the masses.
So if inside of the Moloch we crawl,
Or clutch him and throw him, head and all,
We can easily free them, the stupid asses.
The helpless ones one readily gathers
Round any new gods, with a few bell-wethers.
TALLEYRAND
Good, good, your Majesty grasps, I see,
The whole of this sanctified mummery.
You have there a straw-man for an opponent,
A Cæsar of straw: you can give him fits,
After settling real fighters at Austerlitz.
To be sure he too is no great exponent
Of war, yet don't underestimate him,
But go through the moves, and then checkmate him.
The world still rings with the Three-Emp'ror-Fight.
'Tis well if the folk again laugh with delight.
And now by good luck unexpected meeting,
We've suddenly this Two-Emperor-Greeting.
The youngest of all, and of all the oldest,
The most disfigured, the most perfect and boldest!
NAPOLEON
I command that the idol be pelted with stones,
Then my grenadiers can pick up the bones.
[The dummy is stoned and torn to pieces. French
grenadiers clear the orchestra.
NAPOLEON
I have an idea, by the way.
The imperial mummy is happily finished.
Divide imperabis! Don't carry the rags away.
Pick up th' insignia, they must not be diminished,
The globe and the sceptre, tutti quanti!
For as for the Carnival, sempre avanti!
Why shouldn't this trash be hung up in the Louvre?
I'll have it then, whatever befall,
Especially if I restore the Capitol,
And myself in addition Augustus call.
For that however some work is needed.
And the wise man says: time cannot be speeded.
All Europe I'll turn into martial camps.
Dies irœ: I'll get them down, the scamps!
These arrogant, filibustering traders
Shall whine at my heel, the isle-dwelling raiders;
I'll cleanse the seas of these pestilent pirates,
These Anglo-Saxon, sea-going sly rats,
Though the rivers of blood make me put on my waders.
Their money-bags buy those that give me battle:
I'll stick themselves into bags, like cattle,
And deep in the English channel sink them,
For a thousand years they can sit and bethink them
How they have failed, and be all the wiser —
As at Austerlitz yesterday Tsar and Kaiser.
[In the meantime a distinguished company of
Germans, in street clothes, have entered and
occupied the orchestra. Now the curtain of
the second stage closes, concealing
NAPOLEON and his generals. HEGEL, the German philosopher, appears on the
first stage.
HEGEL
You saw this man: never mind his cognomen.
I call him the Earth-Spirit — absit omen!
The soul of the world is enshrined in his breast,
The goddess of Reason made manifest.
I speak these words with firm conviction,
With a proudly humble nuchal constriction:
My philosophy of history
This man has turned into prophecy!
There stood the embodied concept of the state,
And the Mind that gave it real existence.
[GYMNAST JAHN climbs the steps to the first stage.
GYMNAST JAHN
He heard the grass-blades grow, that's straight!
And how? His ears extend such a distance.
FIRST CITIZEN
[From the crowd.
You stow your gab, you ruffian low!
Don't insult our Hegel, the glorious sage.
Whatever he teaches is bound to be so.
GYMNAST JAHN
He's a maker of phrases on page after page.
FIRST CITIZEN
But you are a boor, and a regular one.
GYMNAST JAHN
You're right: for I am Gymnast Jahn.
Strictly boorish and strictly Teutonic —
My words, I assure you, are not ironic.
This lad with his factory-made idee
Would only make a breakfast for me.
But I'd need a good portion of rye-bread and ham
And Rhine wine: for that's the kind I am.
Say, where does he live? I suppose it's in regions
Where the blessed spirits dwell by the legions;
For he never could worship the heel that has trodden
His land, by heaven, if his soul were not sodden.
I call upon devils three thousand and seven
To keep me from out this Hegelian heaven.
Before such a Hegel my soul shall inveigle,
I'll venture my luck with the hawk and the eagle,
Consign myself fully with hide and hair
To the German eagle, the king of the air.
And though it may be somewhat premature,
I'll sing you the Phœnix-song, simon-pure.
A CRYPTIC NON-GENTLEMAN
We know the song! We have heard the tone;
It's directed against both altar and throne.
GYMNAST JAHN
[Calls back.
Pull his lid off on the spot,
And you'll find a spot where the hair is not.
Take heed, his secret society
Has ominous plans for Germany.
A CRYPTIC NON-GENTLEMAN
Look out for lies, spite of German foggery.
I smell, I smell some demagogery.
GYMNAST JAHN
Oh, pshaw, don't think I feel molested.
We have a deliverer well attested.
Of course the child is tiny yet,
All Germany's nursing it, dry and wet.
The child is called: the German idea.
SECOND CITIZEN
A bastard that's none of my flesh, that's clear.
GYMNAST JAHN
When the child is a man, the idea an act,
Then the new German national state is a fact.
THIRD CITIZEN
Merci! We'll leave that salad intact.
[BARON VON STEIN also climbs the steps to the first stage, and places
himself beside JAHN.
BARON VON STEIN
A salad today, and that's no jest,
Is our land, the land of tribes Germanic.
'Tis a meal the nation can hardly digest,
In special certain coxcombs Romanic.
Devil take those cooks that flour us,
That carve us and rend us at will in our meekness,
Letting outsiders more quickly devour us,
Grinding us up, in our national weakness.
Devil take the several valets
Who offer us to the two principal palates
On Russian bread or on Gallic toast:
For they are the pair can digest the most.
They'll swallow us down like a little sparrow,
As the Briton's world-plum-pudding enters his marrow.
Think if your France were so fricasseed,
Or England so carved that its arteries bleed;
A beautiful statue so shattered and broken,
Each stone-cutter takes home his piece as a token.
If Germany is to withstand her foes,
Indivisible lines must their weapons oppose.
THE COSMOPOLITE
How strange! such things I never could feel.
Sooner I'd hold an un-German ideal
Than the diadem shift, with its jewels particular,
On our country's blond head, from the perpendicular.
I love the gay-colored rich radiation,
Each jewel denoting a princely station.
Each jewel of courtly splendor the soul,
And more by itself than a whole as a whole.
GNEISENAU
And though the piece be ne'er so delicious,
Though the façade be ne'er so auspicious,
Without some statics, without foundation,
The whole remains a tarararation.
[He puts his hand on BARON VON STEIN'S shoulder.
Here stands our imperial architect,
Baron von Stein, his title in winning:
Give him his workmen and give him respect,
This very day he will make a beginning.
And as foundation and corner-stone
Stein alone his place will own.
For alas we've but a single Stein;
We'd have thousands more, if the say were mine.
And if I knew of another Stein-quarry,
I'd dig them myself, nor further worry.
O German House, how noble your lines
If built entire of similar Steins!
You'd be so firm and roomy and bright,
An architectural dream of delight;
Chambers light, and festive the whole:
A sound, strong, cheery body for the strong, cheery national soul.
THIRD CITIZEN
Pitch out the Austrian, bones and brisket:
What's he got to say? I'd certainly risk it.
GYMNAST JAHN
The truth! 'Tis the genuine German's part
To make his start with the German heart.
It hangs in you now as heavy as lead,
That's why your cry is so empty and dead.
A CRYPTIC NON-GENTLEMAN
This unity racket's a stale old ditty.
The princes will give you a loud haw haw! —
And the imperial baron from old Nassau
They'll soon string up from the gates of a city.
This wonderful grand united state
Which, bluntly, the heretics dominate,
Is a lovely thing for the kings to belabor:
I can hear each one of them whetting his sabre.
BARON VON STEIN
Why, then we shall build with sword and trowel
Like the favored pair the she-wolf nourished,
Begotten of Mars, that so splendidly flourished.
THE CRYPTIC NON-GENTLEMAN
Oh, yes, with the Devil's imps to howl.
BARON VON STEIN
But why should not their Royal Graces
Pull with us at the self-same traces?
Why should they turn from us their faces?
There's none that is born to a lofty stand
But higher yet is his Fatherland.
Save that he love it better than life,
Such nobility cannot compare to
His that will render his life in the strife
For the land that his hand did allegiance swear to.
The humblest toiler who does that thing
Is the truly noble, the duke and the king.
FOURTH CITIZEN
Haha! This fellow calls him a German!
And what does he give us? A Jacobin sermon!
Deuce take you, discord — and trouble-producers,
Babbling idealists, folk-seducers!
SECOND CITIZEN
A national state? That's for others to stew in.
Or should we then bring the divine order to ruin?
The unassailable, inviolable order?
Such attempts on folly or roguery border.
SCHARNHORST
[Has taken a stand beside STEIN and JAHN.
Though you may scoff and laugh and jeer,
The German idea's no mockery here.
Here in our kitchen alchemistic
We're making a spirit Germanistic.
Our foundries have managed, as first creation,
The elementary patriot of the German nation,
Who at least as much national pride possesses
As any good Briton's or Frenchman's eye expresses.
Moreover we've now a different object,
To take the so-called narrow-minded subject
And melt him, cleanse him, and then refound him:
Let him stand on his own two feet, confound him!
With citizens, farmers, and workmen around him.
Instead of trying to blight them and slight them,
We take their back-bones and try to right them;
Instead of trying to knave and enslave them,
We teach them to walk upright, to save them.
We're going to succeed, is my confident feeling,
In making the German standpoint appealing,
Then heroes will spring up like trees of the forest,
Not women — excuse me! that point is the sorest.
We'll have warriors then like the sands of the sea,
A reserve of invincible infantry.
Unlashed, unquelled, and uncompelled,
By a terrible, holy sense of duty impelled,
None will fear to lay down his precious life
For Germany's greatness, in battle-strife.—
Already our smiths their skill have shown
On a new German people's imperial throne;
Though we'd like to see, where the Kaiser sits,
Reincarnated our own "old Fritz."
Of commanding slaves he had grown so tired:
Free men we could offer his rule inspired.
Of course we still seek the man of the hour,
To show the way to Germany's power,
To dominate house and palace and steeple,
And lead into freedom the German people.
FIRST CITIZEN
Freedom! Aye, that's the proper bait.
We know all right where you got your drugs.
Parisian physic is out of date.
The best thing would be to fill you with slugs.
They ought to be in a dungeon-cell.
Now we only need Schiller with William Tell,
Whose arrow unseen Gessler's beauty spiles
And magisterial blood defoils,
While Fate in the end on the scoundrel smoils.
[HEINRICH VON KLEIST takes his stand beside STEIN, JAHN, and
SCHARNHORST.
HEINRICH VON KLEIST
Who speaks of the arrow from Tell enticed,
Has hit upon my depest reflection,
My secret-gloomy thought-complexion.
I am the poet Heinrich von Kleist.
The deed of Tell, and Gessler's death,
Would end in the end this torturing death.
By birth I'm a Prussian war-aristocrat.
Our king's a Cunctator: give me deeds, verbum sat.
I did write a play, "Arminius's Fight."
'Twas a deed; but all that I did was to write.
Now that's not enough to keep me contented;
My temples glow, my pulse is demented.
I lie in a burning bed, and shiver
As voices awake me: deliver, deliver!
Deliver us from the tyrannizer,
The pitiless, world- and man-despiser.
But no resistance I command,
Except the dagger in my hand.
My day would 'gin to dawn,
Were by this knife the Corsican gone.
FIRST CITIZEN
To prison with fools and visionaries,
Malcontents, dang'rous tumultuaries!
First poetasters, then assassinators!
First sniv'lers and sleepers, and then high traitors!
GYMNAST JAHN
For all we care, you may choke in your delusion:
But we will conspire to our enemies' confusion.
[JAHN, SCHARNHORST, STEIN, GNEISENAU, and KLEIST raise their
hands for the oath.
VOICES
[From the orchestra.
A Rütli oath, a Schilleresque poesy!
A highly ominous fantasy.
[JOHN BULL with a bag of gold steps from behind the curtain on
to the stage; JAHN, SCHARNHORST, STEIN, GNEISENAU, and KLEIST
leave it.
JOHN BULL
Hi sez there ain't enough tin in the gyme.
'Ere's plenty o' pounds as I've gone an' brought.
Cos wy? Ye see, I simply thought
My gold 'ud myke your courage flyme,
An' fighters, thinks I, they can be bought.
But more o' that another time.
Now the Little Corporal's plyguin' you?
Pst! Sh! Don't myke too much of a stew,
Or 'e'll cop us an' myke us a sizzlin' brew.
Wot we've got to do is to block up 'is wy.
You Proosians are a fine lot o' 'eroes, I sy!
You've got brave monarchs, and many a square 'un,
Augustus the Strong — now he was a rare 'un.
They all found out, long, long ago,
That the Britisher's pounds myke the German mare go.
But Hi am a merchant — no wish to offend ye —
Hi don't myke no gifts, but I've got lots to lend ye.
We Britishers know 'ow to pick up a colony.
You poor, frozen mice, leave your sand-box an' follo' me.
Them critters in the Louver, they still 'ave their jokes
'Bout your poor old king as "the king o' poor folks."
The cove as wants to live in this bloomin' creytion
'E's got to 'ave money, wotever 'is nytion.
An' the boy with a good bit o' beef in 'is belly,
'E knows 'ow to 'and out the w'acks, now I tell ye.
But if 'e don't get lots o' grub for to swaller,
'Is w'ines is loud an' 'is stummick is 'oller.
Now I'll spit on me 'ands — look out, you ninnies! —
An' tyke a good look at me golden guineas.
THE COSMOPOLITE
[Has climbed lazily out of the orchestra and taps JOHN
BULL on the shoulder.
Quite humbly I'd like to ask information,
Should like to find out — unless it is treason —
Why your Mightiness shows such great indignation?
Is your conscience not clear? Or for some other reason?
Have you stumbled on something unforeseeable,
Or what else has transpired that you find disageeable?
JOHN BULL
Oh, it's on'y the Frenchy. You know 'ow they are.
We gyve 'em a lickin' at Trafalgar:
They lost the battle to Hadmiral Nelson,
An' they lost lots o' ships — hull, miggin', and keelson.
But that emp'ror, Boney is 'is nyme,
'E 'as the opinion, jus' the syme,
'E don't like salutin' the Union Jack;
But we myde 'im run an' we're 'ard on 'is track.
Hi 'ates that there bloody Napoleon,
Cos 'e's the worst enemy of Albion,
An' a deadly fighter 'gen Frederick's realum,
We'll both on us 'ate 'im, but Hi'll keep the 'ellum,
For w'ether I looks to the starboard or leeward,
Hover the hocean old Hengland's the steward
For ever; the Proosians can 'ave the land.
That's a bargain, old fellows, so give us your 'and.
Now 'ere's the tin, let's open the gyme
An' send the scamp flyin' right back w'ere 'e cyme.
FIRST VOICE
[From the orchestra.
Now wot's the bloke talkin' about all the time?
We're neutral, we're neutral; we're not in the gyme!
SECOND VOICE
[From the orchestra.
What does he want? We won't bite at his bait!
Document writing's my permanent fate.
What do we care if Britons are killed,
So long as our own recruits are drilled?
THIRD VOICE
You may scuffle out yonder and fight your fill,
As long as every Prussian has his pipe and his spill.
JOHN BULL
Ho, 'baccy an pipes is all right in their plyce,
But Hi fail to see wy you want 'em now in your fyce,
An' wy you don't tyke them famous troops you drill
To cop that dam Europeen bird Roc, an' kill
That bird, wot's been tearin' up the 'ole German map —
Course it's Boney I mean, 'e's th' hidentical chap —
An' dark'nin' the sky both near an' far.
Hi though you was Prooshans — dunno wot y'are.
FIRST VOICE
Germans? — bosh! That's our position.
Let others make advances, for we're Frederician.
The deuce! What's the use of our Frederick's troops,
If we've got to do washing for all the nincompoops.
We've peace here, and comfort — both in a true sense,
Your "Germany" 's nothing to us but a nuisance.
THE COSMOPOLITE
Your most obedient servant, my son:
You were talking of Emp'ror Napoleon.
Your joy in War-heroes is not symptomatic.
Now I am by no means democratic,
Yet a person with half and eye can see
This Homme-Peuple surely a genius must be.
That is, myself am no bête allemande,
But I represent cult-yuh in ouah lahnd,
And, avec permission, a deed I salute
Which cost us our Aix, and Mayence to boot.
Mayence, and Aix, and Trèves, and Cologne!
Hear the butcher and baker and chandler groan!
Je vous demande pardon, Monsieur.
The French have taken one bank of the Rhine.
Bon! We'll simply say adieu.
As if it were no relation of mine.
And besides: I'm terribly fond of Voltaire,
So theocracy is a subject for laughter
Or horror. The mitres went up in the air,
And hundreds of crooks came hurtling after.
That's once when the Critic of Reason Pure
Played the joker — those bats thought their trick was secure!
JOHN BULL
Hi never could tell wot this rigmarole's about.
All I know is count gold an' for old Hengland shout.
So I arsks you again for the one last time ...?
VOICES
[From the orchestra.
We're neutra., we're neutral, we're not in the gyme!
[JOHN BULL disappears behind the curtain with his
money-bag. A WAR-FURY dashes through the crowd
swinging two burning torches. She storms up the
steps to the first stage, while at the same time
the muffled thunder of guns is heard.
THE FURY
War! War! Ye have been slumb'ring.
The nations' guns are thund'ring.
Ye wake too late, the troops are met,
Your eagles sink at Jena and Auerstädt.
Your general in the mire doth stick,
They call him Duke of Brunswick.
Your officers are runaways, braggart noddies,
Your generals sulky, conceited busybodies.
Marshal Lannes put his heavy hand
On your radiant Louis Ferdinand.
To never a foe would his sword be tendered:
For Prussia his hero-life was surrendered.
Hear ye the boom of the battle-song
And the dread en avant! of Napoleon?
See ye the fire-spewing terror
And prone Prussian corpses paying for error?
Hear ye the Reaper? He mows, he mows!
And the Gallic cock, as he murder crows?
Marmont, Davoust, as they come up like thunder
And smash your squadrons all asunder?
That's the language the Corsican knows:
A language of blood, a vengeance of blood,
He's covering Prussia with a bloody flood.
Hurrah, Murat and Bernadotte!
Blood wells or here or there, impartial,
Under each step of a Gallic marshal.
Pray, pray to your God, and tarry not.
Too late ye awake, too late, I repeat.
Hear the whimper and wail: Retreat, retreat.
'Tis the retreat of the good old days
Which fiery riders are trampling apace,
The retreat of the peace-devoted
Before the new life, the hundred-throated.
The retreat of the darkness-enshrouded
From reason's light, which scorn has beclouded.
War! War! I announce Prussia's last deathsong!
Ye have slept too long, ye have slept too long!
[The FURY disappears behind the curtain, shrieking.
THE COSMOPOLITE
What's this scolding about Jena and Auerstädt?
Tant de bruit pour une omelette.
[He descends leisurely to the
orchestra, his hands behind his back.
THE PUBLIC
[In a confused murmur.
What's Jena to us, or Auerstädt?
Tant de bruit pour une omelette.
[The room grows dark; the
illuminated figure of PHILISTIADES stands at the footlights.
PHILISTIADES
You've clearly forgotten my humble sector.
Meanwhile I've been helping the director
While this vast historic setting we guided;
Twixt a thousand things my mind was divided.
Just now a state has kicked the bucket.
Of course a high decree had struck it.
Then too the unfortunate country perished
Of the narrow views its citizens cherished.
For they seized, like a sickness pestilential,
At last on the classes most influential,
Yet all of them felt like the real "old Fritz" —
Which for once revealed in them healthy wits.
For our laughter we surely can hardly swallow,
When a night-watch takes him to be an Apollo.
In short, night covered the Prussian throne,
Where the Reformation's success was grown;
That was and is its sacred mission.
And John Bull's gold, their troops to commission,
They needn't have thought such a queer exhibition.
For Prussian hand and English hand
Might clasp, since each was a Protestant land.
Aye, that's the healthy duality
Of a healthy freedom of spirituality!
As to these facts, if they ever forget 'em,
The devilish Satan will get 'em;
For breakfast he'll eat them gobble, gobble,
And religious freedom to the background will hobble.
Do any applaud the Revolution?
Here is more: the lasting religious solution.
These peoples each other a hand should lend
And the sacredest rights of mankind defend.
Ye Prussians, or people or kings, recall
The striking word old Sallust let fall:
From that do not swerve the slightest distance
To which you owe greatness, even existence.
FIRST CITIZEN
Je n'y comprends rien. Rien du tout.
SECOND CITIZEN
A cow at the barn-door knows more than I do.
[Students in typical
costumes are placing a lecture-desk on the first stage.
THIRD CITIZEN
What's that they're dragging on the stage?
FOURTH CITIZEN
A pulpit or desk, I'll go bail.
THIRD CITIZEN
Nowadays talking's the rage,
And too few are put in jail.
PHILISTIADES
Hark, hark, hark!
Hark to the doctor, a learned clerk
From the chair of philosophy
At our new founded Prussian university.
FIFTH CITIZEN
Nous sommes Prussiens. Mais j'espère
Il est Français, an orator.
FIRST CITIZEN
Vient-il de Paris? Where was he before?
[JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE appears in an academic gown.
FIRST CITIZEN
O mon dieu! A simple German bear.
PHILISTIADES
He'll lecture to you on Germanistics,
And show all Francomaniacs their true characteristics.
Hark, hark, hark to his every remark.
He's a learned light in a world of dark.
A simple weaver's son, sir,
Germany's genius was his sponsor.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte is his name.
In the history of the German spirit great is his fame.
'Ray for Fichte! Receive him with shouts of applause.
Show that you welcome his work for the cause.
FICHTE
[At the desk.
I am certain you've had some information
About my famous speeches to the un-German nation.
Once more I have been here besought
To give to you my well-known lecture.
We must shake off this web of alien texture,
Return to our German blood and thought.
What should be Germany's basic trait?
A German soul's independent state.
With selfishness that does not coincide.
Each German must feel his country's pride,
And the German land
Must strengthen the German's heart and hand.
In a word I'll give you the short and the long of it:
Germandom's going, you've heard the last song of it.
The miseries of a foreign sway
Consume our strength, on our marrow prey.
Pitiful folk, all poet and thinker,
Into filth and shame descended you groan,
Since the Corsican fighter, the war-blood-drinker,
Cut out your tongue and broke your backbone.
Shame is not wiped out by thinking or poetizing.
Where's the doctor to cure this shamed one for his uprising?
O blinded German tax-payer,
With goods and blood you cheerfully serve the alien slayer
Under alien flags 'gainst your motherland.
Your own rent banner lies prone on the sand.
Cold-hearted and cowardly thrown away:
That shame-blot will mark you for ever and aye.
And yet you must wash it with tears and with blood,
Hard though it be, and hurt though it should.
German folk, you must once more be clean.
I see a land strewn with dead bones on the green.
Fields full of dead men's bones I have seen,
Corruption and worms, and corpses unclean.
And it seemed that I heard the whisper of God:
Manikin, look on yonder scene,
Will these bones so mean, full of worms unclean,
Ever again alive be seen?
Said I, O master, no more, I ween.
And God said with a nod,—
Manikin, preach to these bones unclean:
You shall again alive be seen,
Shall stretch and expand,
Find flesh and skin and sinews at hand.
Blood shall be teeming,
Breath through many a lung be streaming.
And as the Lord myself has bidden,
I preached to the bones, whom death had hidden.
Then a rustle was heard in the fields full of dead,
And then came a sprouting, a rising, a swelling,
Men as from fountains upward welling,
Women's forms from ivory bred.
As if sprung from the ground an army immense,
An ocean of people, surging and dense,
Ready to flood all banks with their ridges,
No longer restrained by dikes and bridges.—
Will it ever my privilege be,
Living again such bones to see?
To wake you down there from your leaden sleep?
Teach you apers of others
To gather like brothers and honor your mothers?
Will you take your brooms to the aliens, and sweep?
Not dull with the copper of foreign tongues
The gold that to your own speech belongs?
Not for foreign dross change your native metal,
And give better for worse, your accounts to settle?
Will you learn at last, all comprehending,
That other peoples their strength are bending
To pull up by the roots the German soul?
Will you ever seek power, and self-control?
Beat the mighty reveille of self-estimation
In this shameful, death-branded obscuration?
FIRST CITIZEN
My worthy professor, for the provost look out.
Palm the book-man was shot: you recall it no doubt.
Emp'ror Napoleon will feel no compunctions
About putting an end, as to his, to your functions,
For talking on Germany's Humiliation.
[A company of
German STUDENTS rushes into the orchestra with drawn rapiers.
FIRST STUDENT
[Thrusting at the first citizen.
Slave, slave! Take that as retaliation.
FIRST CITIZEN
You puppy, you chick just out of the shell!
To talk so to reverend men, is that well?
SECOND STUDENT
Philistine and piker, you rouse my derision;
On your belly to Paris, you're just a Parisian.
FIRST CITIZEN
So these are our polished diamonds and rubies?
Is that what the varsities teach you, you boobies?
THIRD STUDENT
[Knocks in his top hat.
Go back to your desk with your quill in your pawers,
You in your swell French underdrawers.
SECOND CITIZEN
I think to protest we're obligated.
If such a brood's being cultivated,
Our youth so terribly spoiled and misled —
High time that the citizen's word was said.
FOURTH STUDENT
That means: "denounce 'em wherever they're found!
Out with the clubs, hit 'em over the head!
Throw into the casemates the German hound!"
THIRD CITIZEN
I know you, your worthy father has made
A good Christian, a master who knows his trade.
'Twould be good for his son, if he should larrup
You soundly and well with his shoemaker's stirrup.
FOURTH CITIZEN
Nowadays we all aspire,
And hence these scamps that rouse my ire:
Scoundrels, immoderate place-hunting gobblers,—
Stick to your last, say I to all cobblers.
FOURTH STUDENT
My last, I think, would little suit you;
I'd bend you over it first, you brute, you.
For you've much too limited a noddle.
THIRD CITIZEN
You big-mouthed, immature molly-coddle.
Take your spellers and go to your classes.
FIFTH STUDENT
Oh how I hate you, you servile asses!
Insensible, inert, sluggish masses,
Thick, slimy new wine, without fermentation,
Without or fire or clarification.
No spark can affect, no ray can go through you,
No spirit, but any kick will subdue you.
FIFTH CITIZEN
What, Fritz? You here? And you, my son?
FIFTH STUDENT
I wish we had got a bit farther on.
With spurs and sword I'd be sitting astride,
Or my blood would be dung on the country-side.
FIFTH CITIZEN
Fantastic gabble! Silly discourses!
THIRD CITIZEN
Oh, let them gallop their hobby-horses.
Give them paste-board shields and wooden swordlets,
False beards, paper helmets with pretty cordlets.
If the play-room pretenders make too much noise —
Short work makes the Emp'ror of small schoolboys.
For our all-powerful Empereur
Is after all the best Professeur.
[Old
BLÜCHER,
seventy
years
old,
whitehaired, forces his way through the students. They step back reverently, fo
rming a lane and lowering their swords.
BLÜCHER
Your talking certainly makes me laugh.
Parbleu! Hell and Satan! and that's not half.
All this babble I call rubbish:
Some like to croak as free men, others
In coats of masters that I call snobbish.
One loves gold braid and livery,
Another prefers his liberty.
One likes to eat truffles from a silver platter,
For truckling service that knows no ending,
Another on mice and rats grows fatter,
While his neck is proud, unbending.
I for example, as is well known,
Prefer to assume a Teutonic tone.
Courage for me! But cowards — I pass!
Boys, let me tell you, they ...
And courage you find in a red-coat hussar,
Or in blouse or gown — where the stout hearts are.
You'll find it in young, you'll find it in old,
For instance, in me: my own I still hold.
But a lousy young cub, who hasn't got that,
He ought to be drowned in the Cattegat.
And so I, Gebhart Leberecht Blücher,
Prefer to your book-worm your sabring butcher.
Your worthy sires, on the other hand,
Thought books and documents much more grand.
But without my sword should I be any good?
Not worth the powder to shed my blood.
At Stargard, what should I have had to endure,
Had this pig-sticker not been sharp and sure?
For every fly that lit on the wall,
I ran him through and through, that's all,
To keep from choking with gall and rancor.
Napoleon's ship was far from my anchor.
So I massacred flies and other vermin,
Gave them names of French generals and German courtiers to squirm in,
And when a big buzzer the quiet troubled,
My venom and anger were both redoubled.
I gen'rally called him Bonyparty,
And the blows with the flat of my sword were hearty.
Yes, boys, by God, t'was a mighty spasm,
A Schilleresque enthusiasm.
In short, I've got my theme by the collar —
If 'twas only Napoleon, I'd give a dollar.
For my theme is this, and mark it well:
Let's send Napoleon straight to hell.
It's here in my heart, it's part of my breath,
And nothing can end it but victory or death.
It makes me sick, it makes me sound,
And sweating for game like a hunting-hound.
Wherever I'm standing, wherever I'm lying,
My prey before my eyes is flying.
I am no saint, no prophesier,
Yet night by night I pray with desire
That the highest God our land will waken,
And let his vengeance through me be taken.
There'll be no But nor If in that battle.
The man who has trampled on us I'll trample,
The trouble we give him he'll find quite ample.
I'll never rest till I hear his death-rattle.
FIRST CITIZEN
Why is your Honor in so furious a mood?
BLÜCHER
That, let me tell you, is bred in the blood.
If any one slaps you in the face,
Your pulse is not stirred from its normal pace:
Brand a sheep on the brow — for all of its pain,
Unmoved remains its stupid brain.
Harness you up with bridle and saddle,
You proudly waddle with servile straddle.
If from the spur your flanks are bloody,
Your pious prancing's a comical study.
That rider or this — all one to you,
And any miller's lad will do.
Any one can seize your halter,
If the knacker wants your hide, you never falter.
But people like me and the Baron von Stein,
We've long since ceased to be quadrupeds,
Our necks are stiff and high are our heads —
And most people's views agree with mine.
Perhaps you'll decide to be noble and teachable,
And in point of honor, like me, unimpeachable.
FIRST CITIZEN
I've no objection, your Excellence.
Receive my most humble reverence.
Perhaps your Grace will be moved to content me
And to his Majesty kindly present me.
If the conqueror's once and for all perdu,
I'll be glad to sing your melody.
And once you have ended and won the fight,
Then all will be changed in a single night.
I'll certainly show no frenzy Byronic
And try to remain Napoleonic.
As things now stand, I'm bound to ride,
Whatever befall, with the winning side.
You Honor's face shows perplexity:
The Corsican still rules the stage, you see.
The tribune will be overthrown, without quarter,
The thinker be made one head the shorter.
SECOND CITIZEN
You German fool, wait! You're going to heaven
Just like those at Wesel, the famous eleven.
[A detachment of French soldiers has meanwhile overthrown the tribune
and is driving JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE before it from the stage.
Immediately thereafter sounds a hollow roll of the drum.
[The second stage is revealed, showing eleven officers of
Hussars in a heap beside a wall. The French division which has
shot them stands with grounded arms. Between the French and
the dead, in the background, stands the DRUMMER DEATH.
His drum ceases to beat and now the third stage opens, disclosing once more
NAPOLEON and his MARSHALS.
NAPOLEON
What was the meaning of that last volley?
Splendid fellows. Why, that's sheer folly.
FIRST FRENCH OFFICER
Eleven of Schill's own officers, Sire.
NAPOLEON
No pardon for them. Aye, let them expire.
If I should pardon such revolters,
My own head wouldn't stay long on my shoulders.
Such hot-heads have to be shot; 'tis well.
And the Major himself?
FIRST OFFICER
Alas, he fell.
At Stralsund, Sire, in a street affray.
NAPOLEON
A typical Prussian tête carrée!
The most ridiculous silly dare-devil.
After such intrigue and insurrection,
Prussia may look to her own protection.
My word, they don't know what they do,
These poor, down-trodden German peons,
That sweat for princes and lords, and in æons
Get a fowl once a decade to make a stew.
I free them from service everlasting,
I make them disused to sweating and fasting,
End their hereditary feudality,
Bring them back to humanity from old bestiality,
And like these hussars, they return me but evil.
And so I say: let them go to the devil.
Before my star was in the ascendant,
On their masters' lashings they were dependent;
Their hides were marked with many a weal,
Their swollen cheeks had no time to heal,
To the wine-press three hundred lords would feed them,
There to queeze them, knead them, tread them, bleed them.
I found only skins emaciated,
Weaklings, their sap evaporated.
Should this people's weakness suddenly vanish,
Should they try the kick that I call Spanish?
A Frenchman might sooner be a Herero
Than a German mutton become a Torero.
What did this Major take me for,
That laid his hand on the Tricolor?
I'm master of Italy, Netherland,
Of Oldenburg and East Friesland,
Of the Hansa cities and th' imperial free cities,
And Prussia is forced to sing French ditties.
Austria four times I've beaten,
Dirt she has eaten.
Whenever I spoke, the world was willing.
And should I be stopped by this paltry Schill-ing?
God forbid us such mortifications.
We're pursuing quite different speculations.
Well may Europe whisper and shake and dissemble:
Soon I shall set the world in a tremble.
Imminent now is the Unavoidable,
And the fate of East and West decidable.
To-morrow we'll have the army inspection,
Day after destroy the old world's complexion.
What is Europe? A puny state.
A so-called continent, would-be great.
A part of the earth? — Why, so is a stone —
But in my eyes it is none.
Where India sweats neath the lash of the Briton,
That's the spot for the world-ruling spider to sit on.
There my eagles shall go, — please note my candor —
There uniting the power of Charlemagne and Alexander.
Aye, the Chinese wall I'll bring to a tumble,
And a Central Realm to my needs I'll humble.
I share not Cæsar's ambitions vain:
All these things I shall easily gain.
The road to that goal is shorter far
Than the one I have come in the train of my star.
[The second and third stages are curtained again. On the first one
re-appears the WAR-FURY.
THE FURY
[Swinging her torch.
War! War! Ye have been slumb'ring.
The nations' guns are thund'ring.
War-flames everywhere
From Samarcand to Finisterre.
Woe to you, O Russian land!
You're in another Cæsar's hand.
On a throne above thrones he's upward leaping,
The ever-immortal Emperor.
His ever-thundering guns are sweeping
The earth his triumphant march before.
He beckons: monarchs bring, obeying,
Chariots, steeds, and swords for slaying.
And see what more they are conveying:
That is more, that is more!
His armies rule from shore to shore.
Italy's blood,
Spain's ardent mood,
Are caught in the all-destroying flood.
Their fiery striplings all are sending,
Germany, Austria, Holland, alike.
The flood swells roaring, then bursts the dike.
Eagles mount, screaming Gloire.
Guard thee, Tsar, guard thee, Tsar!
Six hundred thousand troops are ample
All your growing grain to trample.
The joy of vassalage you shall sample.
By undying suns irradiated,
Who follow like moths obedient:
The battle begun, the vict'ry's fated,
He slays or exalts, as expedient.
He makes, by signs mysterious,
Or corpses or half-gods delirious.
And when they cover the earth with bleeding,
His deathless suns on the blood 'gin feeding.
These are his divine, his heavenly hounds,
With their hot, greedy baying the earth resounds.
He has them or mute or baying or biting,
Rending peoples and lands in furious fighting.
I prophesy Russia's last death-song.
Ye have slept too long! Ye have slept too long!
[THE FURY rushes out. The orchestra has been in semi-darkness.
Voices are now audible there.
FIRST VOICE
Europe like a top he drives!
SECOND VOICE
The scourge of God on sinful lives!
THIRD VOICE
Ægis-shaper! Lightning-hurler!
Realm-disperser! Heaven-whirler!
[The upper stage is disclosed, revealing NAPOLEON
enthroned as ZEUS, the eagle at his feet. Lightning
flashes in his hand, followed by a terrific thunder-clap. But the picture fades
out in growing darkness, accompanied by a gradually advancing snow-storm.
During the following is heard the ringing of sleighbells.
VOICES
[From the orchestra.
Bow your heads, refuge taking!
See the lightning!
The stage is shaking.
It struck! But where?
Where, where? Where did it strike?
It is still, quite still.
Keep your places!
Smell the fire, sulphur-like.
Did the earth split before your faces?
Poor Germany!
Is that drops of blood I see?
No, it is rain. Woe, O woe!
'Tis not rain, 'tis bloody snow.
Hark, what's that: sighs of the dying!
Death-rattle of men in ice and snow lying!
Torn-off limbs and wounds! Ragged clumps!
Teeth-baring corpses! Bleeding lumps!
Hounds and wolves in entrails burrowing.
Death stark countenances furrowing.
[It has become brighter. Only the first stage is still curtained.
On it two Prussian sergeants are sitting at a green table by lamplight.
They are holding goose-quills and have writing before them. Access to
this stage is cut off by Prussian soldiers, who with guns at port are thrusting
back German mothers of all classes as they press forward.
FIRST MOTHER
What has happened? Are they learning?
A rain of blood falls on my hand.
SECOND MOTHER
I do not see my son returning.
With Napoleon he marched to the Russian land.
He went for the king, at his command.
Until he returns, right here I stand.
Why did the king give away my son
To shed his blood for the Corsican?
FIRST CLERK
Ma chère Madame, that is not clear.
We simply do our duty here.
But I will say this for your consideration,
Three hundred thousand young men are the Emperor's annual gift from the
nation;
French mothers are called upon to bear them
And till slaughtering day to feed and prepare them.
THIRD MOTHER
Where is my son? Where is my son?
He marched with the Emperor Napoleon.
I commended him to God, with my kiss and blessing.
What's this bloody rain, my heart distressing?
FIRST GRENADIER (FRENCH)
I be un Français. We be peuple, camarade.
Ma mère 'as a son, 'as been soldier made.
In France they sleep not, it is many years,
Les mères at night, wiz sorrow an' tears.
Mon père est mort in ze fight, long, long,
'E 'as smile bloody smile in my face an' say: bon!
My son, learn to die: say mon père.
I 'ave see im zat once an' no more — nevaire!
THIRD MOTHER
What do I care for his goings on?
I wanted to know about my son.
SECOND CLERK
We're doing our soldier's duty here.
What's come of your son, does not appear.
FOURTH MOTHER
Oh, soldier's duty! — you make me wild.
Give me my child! Where is my child?
I saw in a dream a stream and it was red;
My child floated in it, and he was dead.
SECOND GRENADIER
Let your dream-books alone — don't be offended.
The grande armée is destroyed, but the emperor's health is splendid.
FIFTH MOTHER
You scoundrels, give us our sons, I say!
SECOND GRENADIER
Shut up, you fury, and fade away!
Or go and fish in the Beresina.
Forty thousand mother's sonlets
Float in it, swept there by the gunlets.
They do better work than the guillotina.
Perhaps your laddie will take the hook.
Try! But the cost of a shroud you'll have to shoulder.
What's to be done with the corpse of a soldier?
SIXTH MOTHER
Canaille! — Oh listen to them mock us!
FIRST CLERK
Pshaw! War is war, and cannot shock us.
FIRST MOTHER
If it is destroyed, la grande armée,
We mothers must wail for ever and aye.
And a tenfold curse for the blood just spilt;
God, write it in thy book of guilt.
That the sons we bore are by butchers slaughtered
By droves on the fields their sweat has watered.
That our darling babes who followed the clarion
Lie on the ground as stinking carrion.
SECOND GRENADIER
[Seizes the FIRST MOTHER, to lead her away.
Mr. Clerk, she needs other waters to swim in.
FIRST CLERK
That's right, they're surely dangerous women.
And this one may talk behind doors locked and bolted,
Till the good, quiet, peaceable citizens have revolted.
[University teachers, students, high school boys, youths and
boys of all classes have made their way through the women and
liberate the FIRST MOTHER from her captor.
FIRST STUDENT
[Resembling Theodor Körner.
No! Do not take the woman away!
See ye yonder the bloody ray?
The mystery I'll unravel.
Mother Russia lies in travail!
No, she has borne, she is delivered!
A devouring flame in her child's hair quivered!
A child most wild and fiercely featured,
A son all-mighty and lion-natured,
Stronger than kings, than army organization,
Its name: the honor of a nation.
National honor hight,
Slave-chains it rends with might.
Bailiff, remove thy hand and see:
Here is dear Mother Germany.
Knowest thou her, degenerate son?
That bore Luther, Dürer, and Melanchthon?
Our heavenly tongue was her contribution;
She shall now bear the god of retribution.
SECOND STUDENT
See ye the fan of fire glowing?
Mother Russia set it going.
For she did allow
The flames to consume her own Moscow:
Before it should bear the Corsican's soles,
She made it a bed of glowing coals.
And an angry heat is bred in the ashes
That the people's courage to fury lashes;
It singes the feet of the emperor glorious
And clouds the fame of the soldier victorious.
Then the Corsican felt a might
More strong than a victory in open fight:
It is the word of the mothers, the mothers!
The lightning flashes were its brothers.
As the thunder rolls from cloud to cloud,
So people to people cried aloud.
And so our mother will understand
The cry that has come from a sister land.
THIRD STUDENT
Mother, cease thy lamentation.
Though thy sons in death are lying,
Risk us others that we be trying
To win for our brothers retaliation.
See how yonder the human wave swells,
How in every breast youth and manhood wells.
Those are not hireling mercenaries,
But each in his veins thy true blood carries.
Give us thy blessing motherly,
We'll rush to the field and conquer for thee.
Bless our naked limbs: there will be no quailing
When we come into freedom's bullet-hailing.
Filial love will keep us,
When thy violator's guns with death and ruin sweep us.
Naked we shall rush at those hellish jaws,
And him thou mayst call illegitimate,
If not firm and hard he meets his fate,
Scorning loss of life for the holy cause.
For a joy of death cries out in us now,
To offer the enemy breast and brow.
[The WOMAN liberated by the youths is led up to
the next stage, which has opened. The figure grows, and a
mass of auburn hair is loosened and rolls down her back
to the earth. On the second stage an altar is erected,
surrounded by priestesses in Greek garb, also by
single groups of youths, led respectively by
STEIN, SCHARNHORST, FICHTE, and JAHN.
THE FIRST MOTHER
[About half-way up to the second
stage, stands still and turns. She has
been transformed into an apparition of almost superhuman kind.
[In an altered voice.
Stand up, with trumpets blowing,
Let your guns be showing!
You that when small were born of my womb,
Infants, be great in your manhood's bloom!
You fathers and mothers, youths and daughters,
Be not hirelings: fight freely on lands and waters.
They sacrificed you on fields of dishonor:
The motherland calls, have compassion upon her.
The tyrant you served with willing drilling;
For your country be drilling, your mother is willing.
I give you away, nor count nor array you.
Choose, without choosing, your freedom, I pray you.
We're not a new people, though enemies claim it:
Our name is an old one, let men not defame it:
Though we be Bavarian, Swabian, Saxon,
To a common speech each his dialect tacks on;
Prussian, Thuringian, Badener, Hessian,
We're brothers, whatever our creed or confession,
And both Lorraine and her sister Alsace
Are wines that grew on the old home place.
I suckled all of you at my breast
In joy and unrest.
Forget all envy and civil strife:
Be as one, show the world the worth of your life.
BARON VON STEIN
[Has advanced to the speaker.
Mother, you are right.
Your words are goodly in our sight.
Wait, do you know this face of mine?
I am your son, am Baron von Stein.
Your thoughts my own heart have animated:
No question: that nick must be eliminated.
You were far too forbearing, you warmed too slowly,
But now you reveal your mother-love holy.
The ice has burst with the press of new life.
And now we'll have strife, only strife to the knife!
But check your outcries furious,
Ascending step by step with us.
See, there is a flame upon an altar
That long ago did faint and falter.
Vestals in weeds that never vary
Guarding a lifeless sanctuary:
Let us guide you thither, in state
The new High Mass to celebrate.
At once both priestess and goddess be.
We are not France, but Germany.
We'll make you of course a German Athene:
But wholly German, only half a Hellene.
'Twill give you no drop of foreign admixture.
In the native soil your roots are a fixture.
But this must be: if you are to serve us,
By night you must have owl-eyes to observe us,
And by day with eyes of azure
Heaven and earth see through and measure.
Then we must procure you other disguises:
Please bear in patience these little surprises.
On your head Athene's gold-helmeted splendor,
You shall be German unity's eternal defender.
The gleam from your golden lance-tip streaming
Be our folk-honor's token brightly gleaming.
And this your ægis you shall brandish,
You of all the mothers the mightiest,
When with rancorous envy and hate outlandish
They fill the ether, with quarrels the flightiest.
Then drive rats and mice away from the cheeses,
Send all vermin to freeze in the winter breezes,
And steel the German Achilleses, Ulyssesses and Herculeses.
Be the cogniting one, ne'er disuniting one,
The warming and lighting one, but if need be the igniting one!
Be the loving one, rarely detesting one,
But if need be, the firmly divesting one.
[The WOMAN has been led up to the steps of the altar, and there
she now stands erect and lofty, dressed and armed as Pallas Athene. Loud and en
thusiastic acclamation from the throng.
ATHENE GERMANIA
Ye have armed me well, that is good.
Exalted me as priestess and goddess.
I greet ye neath this golden hood,
Ye noble-hearted, with swelling bodice:
Ye men and boys, who the courage have taken
My body to arm, my soul to awaken.
Radiant youth, inexhaustible force,
Disciples of science and art at its source.
Sweet singers, poets, deep cogitators,
Our new life's founders and originators.
Step forward, young man by young man,
I'll bless you for victory or death, as I can.
From your own laurel-crowned thoughts arisen,
I must bend your necks, must the victims imprison.
Your thoughts you did give that I might live:
In return unto death your lives I give.
My commands are three:
From alien rule make Germany free!
See that your land united be!
And yourselves be free! Yourselves be free!
[She has seized two of the young men by their long blond hair and bent
their heads over the altar as for sacrifice. The throng applauds with
enthusiasm, and voices are heard singing "Lützows wilde Jagd,"
"Frisch auf zum fröhlichen Jagen," "Was blasen die Trompeten,
Husaren heraus," and so on. The entire vast scene grows dark. The
roars of enthusiasm subside, and the songs die away. Only one
figure is left: PALLAS ATHENE, erect and lofty in a
mystical illumination. Also PHILISTIADES on the first stage.
PHILISTIADES
You'll scarcely greet me with acclamation,
Spoiling this solemn consecration.
But what's to be done 'gainst the word of the director
When one's but a simple under-inspector?
This mighty up-roaring I vastly admire:
I love Plutonic and Olympian fire.
I wanted to include in our production
The glowing lava on its path of destruction.
But when he got this information
He cried: art is abbreviation.
Life goes on in rambling prolixity;
Art must be ending, its rules are a fixity.
Well, it is true, the decisive word is spoken:
Our hero-doll, the Corsican's broken.
The fortune of war surged forward and back,
But the director no longer cleared his track.
He struggled with overwhelming force,
Yet he won, for instance, at Lützen, of course:
Beat Scharnhorst and Blücher, beat Russian and Prussian.
At Bautzen he struck with more frightful concussion.
He beat them at Dresden, at la Rothière,
But at Leipzig and Waterloo luck was not there.
His banners sank, his eagles were frightened,
The comb of the Gallic cock was whitened.
[He takes a ship's model from his knapsack and holds it high.
Now here is a ship, called Bellerophon,
Emits sounds of pain when tapped upon.
It bears the mighty Napoleon
As captive of mighty Albion.
To a vasty void it directs its motion,
To the lonesomest isle in the lone Middle-ocean.
And what beats there against the shrouds
Is the heart that was known to a thousand crowds.
And the terrible will, that naught could face,
Lies conquered in the ship's embrace.
And mile after mile the vessel covers,
They take him away where oblivion hovers.
Where a will the stoutest and most tenacious
Must prey on itself in the solitude spacious.
He will struggle in vain with a fate contrary
In those spaces infinite, solitary.
Sleepless in his chains he'll languish,
As once his foes on their beds of anguish.
[He turns and seems to see ATHENE GERMANIA
again for the first time.
But what do I see, the great godhead
In the changes of time has not been dead:
She raises her helmeted head to the light.
This coup of my chief I don't see, quite.
For if she continues to stand and tower,
Then sacred Reason will come to power.
Then what of the world and my imbecility
Before this maid-mother's armed ability?
Her splendor pierces, her silence appals me.
Some impulse, I feel, from this platform calls me.
On entanglements rests the drama of humanity,
But this silence resolves all departures from sanity.
When she hurls her spear, or her voice we hear,
The infiltrating light is no longer clear.
It might be said that deeds undignify.
Silence is gold: so these feelings signify.
[Behind ATHENE GERMANIA, on the
topmost stage, the façade of a Gothic
cathedral gradually becomes visible.
Moreover, ATHENE'S helmet,
shield, and spear shed a steadily growing radiance.
And the sun, the source of heavenly brightness,
Silently sheds a silent lightness.
From his wakening, nourishing rays man derives
Love-enkindled human lives.
The fruits from grasses and trees he entices,
And wild-flowers bloom where in winter the ice is.
And strange: this one of an ancient race
Transforms and upbuilds with silent face,
While she leads them up to the holy place:
High above warfare's dark delusion,
High above victory's bloody confusion.
ATHENE GERMANIA
[To a soft, ethereal harmony of transparent tones.
What new accords, what purest tones strike on my ear,
Now that from bloody night pure daylight doth appear.
The bonds dissolve, that nightmare dreams about me forged,
And free and rich the lucid light is joined with me.
And as the dark from shield and sword and helmet flows
To Hades, so is dripping from my spirit too
And leaving me, all darkness. And the bloody spooks
Are gone. Still trembling from the bath of night's black dreams
I enter now Olympus' pure, unsullied peaks,
The radiant home of blessed gods, expanding far
And high into the ether's bright and different bath.
And penetrating world and all and me at once,
I see the meaning of my life and shining arms:
They are for deeds of peace, and not for deeds of war.
They are for benefits, and never for misdeeds!
But warfare's naked murder, say, what else is that?
So then I call on ye, that in another war
Have warred! That brought not death, but have created life!
I gave to you the golden weapon, sacred tool,
To dig the ripened fruit from stony soil. I made
You wrestlers with delusion. Of unseeing hate
I tore the bandage from your eyes; and made you love.
I showed you how to tread your paths with feet of peace
Enwreathed and fair. I taught you how to lay broad ways
For love's fraternal tread. The unforgiving gulf
I bade be still, and alienating things be fused
Into the bridge's arch. Now man with man unites
Across the gulfs, as folk with folk. And caravans
Bear precious loads, but do not feel dissension's weight.
[In the orchestra
appears the head of a
well-proportioned
procession, which embraces all the activities and blessings that peace entails.
With banners, flags, and garlanded tools the workingman marches beside the
farmer, the noble beside the commoner, the miner beside the sailor and
fisher. Beautiful women of all classes, but especially country girls
are among them, carrying baskets of fruit, sheaves of grain, etc.
The procession is crowned as it were by great men of all ages;
portrait-like representations of artists, poets, scientists,
philosophers, composers, and inventors. Also some rulers who have really advanc
ed the highest interests of their people. Wreath-crowned boys carry festooned
name-plates behind the personages thus distinguished.
ATHENE GERMANIA
Lo, what a throng ascends the steps to reach my side:
How sweet to me to hear the rustle of their flags,
Well-known from ancient service in my templed shrine.
Ascend, ascend! I feel as if I were but now
Become a goddess, and Olympus' glory were
An emptiness, as 'twere another darksome night.
Here where I am, and where ye throng, here is the light:
We, never parted, e'er united ones, of war
Know nothing. Therefore peace is dwelling here with us.
Not there, not yonder, not perchance by us enclosed,
As by a sacred troop that guards its sovereign lord.
No, no! Our spirits and its spirit are at one.
No tongues divide us, streams and seas divide us not.
No gods divide, nor can the unknown god divide
Those men who have at heart the common weal of man.
What does divide is error; what alone can loose
Blind hate, is ignorance, is hunger's naked need!
Not the divine that in the human spirit dwells.
For this divine impulse is Eros! Eros is
The forming one, creator! Every thing that lives
Is Eros, born of Eros, grows in him, and him
Begets anew. And he begets the world anew! —
What purpose serves the human eye without him? He
Alone reveals the beautiful to ear, to eye,
To sense of smell, to feeling — last not least
To lightning-pinioned thought, that in a trice all space,
Though boundless, measures. Better servants do not serve the gods.
And therefore, Eros let us praise! Therefore this feast
Is vowed to love that was made flesh, and that bears fruit
In spirit! From which spirit come its other fruits,
In word and tone, in works create of ore and stone,
Proportion, order, and in short in deeds and work.
So follow me into this German structure's feast of love,
Approach that wonder, which my sure, unerring word
May call the sacredest of all that fate can give.
To you I need not name, however, what yourselves,
A burning happiness, bear in your heart of hearts.
[Amid the resounding tones of a mighty organ and the peal of bells,
led by ATHENE, the procession vanishes little by little in the
interior of the cathedral. The curtains close, and the DIRECTOR
steps out in front of the first one.
THE DIRECTOR
I was the first, and I am the last one,
I'm the beginning and I'm the completing one,
I am the food and I am the eating one,
Ever immovable, never held-fast one.
I am the speaker, and yet no betrayer,
Much more discreet than those people back there,
Gods and men, and shifters of scenery —
In short, my whole play-acting machinery —
Who to be sure for some time to come
Will shine in silence — they too are dumb.
But who comes climbing up here? Hey!
Who are you, you fire-eater?
BLÜCHER
[Coming up the steps with rattling sabre.
Marshal Forward!
THE DIRECTOR
My information's completer:
March into the sawdust, the excelsior, the seaweed, I say!
You're a doll, my property personal,
The shade of a long dead general.
BLÜCHER
What's that tinkle of peace-bells? The air's all trembly.
I'm still alive!
THE DIRECTOR
You'd like to be.
BLÜCHER
We're not going to Gethsemane!
Buglers! Forward! Play the Assembly!
What do I want of this peace-tirili?
I'm for infantry and cavalry.
THE DIRECTOR
To your box!
BLÜCHER
Hey? What? Box? Try and see.
[He has drawn his sword.
THE DIRECTOR
To your place, you brave gray-bearded sire.
But your word shall live, though you expire.
To your country I give it, as destiny's foreword —
Not your joy of battle, but — your: Forward!
[The old marshal, touched by the director's wand, drops lifeless.
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