Hamburg Dramaturgy

Essay 1

Wendy Arons

June 8, 2020

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 1 May 1767[1.1]

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 The theater celebrated its successful opening on the 22nd of last month with the tragedy Olint and Sophronia.[1.2]

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 [†]No doubt they really wanted to begin with a German original, which would also have the appeal of novelty. The intrinsic value of this play could not make any claims to such recognition. The choice would warrant criticism, if it were clear that something better could have been found.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0  Olint and Sophronia is the work of a young writer, and it is his unfinished posthumous work.[1.3] Cronegk certainly died too young for our stage; but in truth, his fame is based upon what he might have achieved, according to the judgment of his friends, rather than upon what he actually accomplished. And what dramatic writer, from any era or nation, could have died in his twenty-sixth year without leaving an equally ambivalent assessment of his true talent?

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 The subject matter is the well-known episode from Tasso.[1.4] It is not easy to reshape a brief, touching story into a touching drama. It may take little effort to invent new entanglements and to expand isolated feelings into entire scenes. But to know how to prevent these new developments from weakening the interest or compromising the appearance of truth; to be able to shift oneself from the perspective of narrator to the authentic position of each and every person; to avoid describing passions and instead to let them develop before the eyes of the audience and grow smoothly with such illusory continuity that the audience must sympathize, whether it wants to or not: that is what is necessary.[1.5] That is what the genius does unconsciously, without explaining everything to death. And it is what the merely clever wit torturously tries to imitate, but in vain.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 In his Olint and Sophronia, Tasso seems to have had Virgil’s “Nisus and Euryalus” in mind.[1.6] Where Virgil portrayed the power of friendship in his work, Tasso wanted to depict the power of love. In Virgil, it is the heroic sense of duty that triggers the test of friendship. In Tasso, it is religion that gives love the opportunity to show its true power. But religion, which is just the means through which Tasso shows love at work, becomes the central theme of Cronegk’s version. Cronegk wanted to ennoble the triumph of love through the triumph of religion. Certainly, a pious improvement – but nothing more than pious! For it has misled him into taking the simple, natural, true, and human in Tasso and rendering it so complicated, fanciful, wondrous, and heavenly that it is devoid of meaning.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 In Tasso, it is a magician – a man who is neither Christian nor Muslim but rather someone who has woven together his personal belief out of both religions – who advises Aladin to move the miraculous image of Mary from the Temple to the Mosque.[1.7] Why did Cronegk turn this magician into a Mohammedan priest? The priest could give such advice only if he were as ignorant of his own religion as the playwright seems to be. Muslims do not permit any images in their mosques. Cronegk reveals in numerous places that he possesses a very mistaken conceptualization of the Muslim faith. The most negligent mistake, however, is that he makes this religion guilty of polytheism when it is perhaps more than any other committed to a singular God. He refers to the mosque as “the seat of false gods,” and he has the priest cry out:

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 “Will you not arm yourselves with vengeance and punishment, oh Gods? Strike down, destroy the brazen Christian people!”

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 So the dutiful actor tried to observe the precise mode of dress in his costume, from head to toe; and then he had to speak such nonsense![1.8]

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 In Tasso, the image of Mary disappears from the mosque without anyone knowing whether it was taken by human hands or whether a higher power was involved. Cronegk makes Olint responsible. It is true that he transforms the image of Mary into “an image of the Lord on the Cross.”[1.9] Nevertheless, an image is an image, and this miserable superstition creates a despicable side to Olint’s character. One cannot forgive him for being willing to risk leading his people to the brink of destruction through such a small act. When he later freely confesses, it is only out of guilt and not magnanimity. Tasso has him take this step out of love: he wants to save Sophronia or die with her. Die with her, simply to die with her – he can do nothing more. Unable to share a bed, they share a pyre; bound at her side to the same stake, certain to be consumed by the same fire, he feels nothing but the happiness of such a sweet proximity. He does not give a thought to what awaits him beyond the grave and wishes for nothing more than that the proximity be even closer and more intimate, that he press his breast against her breast and be allowed to breathe out his spirit upon her lips.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 This superb contrast between a sweet, gentle, romantic, effusive young woman and a fiery-tempered, lusty young man is entirely lost with Cronegk, where they are both driven by the coldest singularity of intent: both have nothing but martyrdom in mind. And it is not enough that they both want to die for the sake of religion; Evander also wants to, and even Serena seems to have no small desire to do so.[1.10]

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Here I would like to make a two-fold argument that, if well heeded, will protect an aspiring tragic playwright from great missteps. The first point has to do with tragedy in general. If heroic sentiments are to evoke admiration, then the playwright must not use them promiscuously.[1.11] People stop marveling at what they hear and see too often. Cronegk crossed this line badly with his Codrus.[1.12] The love for the land of one’s birth and the willingness to die for its sake should have been embodied by Codrus alone.[1.13] He should have stood as the only example of a very particular type, in order to make the impression that the playwright intended. But Elisinde and Philaide and Medon (and how many others?) are all equally ready to sacrifice their lives for their homeland.[1.14] Our admiration is divided, and Codrus gets lost in the crowd. The same occurs here. In Olint and Sophronia, all those of Christian faith appear to regard being martyred as if it were no more than drinking a glass of water. We hear such pious bravado so often, from so many mouths, that it loses all of its power.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 The second observation has to do with the Christian tragedy in particular. Heroes of these plays are usually martyrs. Now, however, we live in a time in which the voice of healthy reason calls out too loudly to allow every madman to claim the title of martyr just because he willingly and unnecessarily hurtles toward death with no thought to his civic obligations. We now know all too well how to distinguish the false martyrs from the true; we despise the former as much as we revere the latter, and the most they can do is squeeze from us a melancholy tear over the blindness and stupidity of which humanity is evidently all too capable. However, this tear is not the pleasurable sort that tragedy wants to stimulate. When the playwright chooses a martyr as his hero, he must give him the clearest and most effective motivations! Place him in conditions of utter necessity, so that he must take the step that puts him in danger! Do not let him seek death lightly or arrogantly will it! Otherwise, his pious hero will become an object of our disgust, and religion itself – that which the playwright wants to honor – may suffer. I have already touched upon the fact that only a worthless superstition, like the one we despise in the magician Ismenor, could drive Olint to take the image out of the mosque. It does not excuse the playwright that there have been times when such superstition was common and existed alongside many positive traits, and that there are still lands where such superstition accords with pious simplicity. But he did not write his play for those times, any more than he intended it to be produced in Bohemia or Spain.[1.15] The good writer, regardless of genre – if he is not writing merely to demonstrate his wit or his erudition – always has the best and most enlightened people of his time and place in mind, and he deigns only to write what will appeal to them, what can move them. Even the dramatic writer, if he sinks to the level of the masses, only condescends in order to enlighten and improve, and not to confirm them in their prejudices and ignoble ways of thinking.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0