The Awakening of Spring

Moritz

What delays you?–

(A masked man appears.) The Masked Man (To Melchior.)

You are trembling from hunger. You are not fit to judge. (To Moritz.) You go!

Melchior

Who are you?

The Masked Man

I refuse to tell. (To Moritz.) Vanish!–What business have you here!–Why haven't you on your head?

Moritz

I shot myself.

The Masked Man

Then stay where you belong. You are done with! Don't annoy us here with your stink of the grave. It's inconceivable!–Look at your fingers! Pfu, the devil! They will crumble soon.

Moritz

Please don't send me away–

Melchior

Who are you, sir??

Moritz

Please don't send me away. Please don't. Let me stay here a bit with you; I won't disturb you in anything–It is so dreadful down there.

The Masked Man

Why do you gabble about sublimity, then?–You know that that is humbug–sour grapes! Why do you lie so diligently, you chimera? If you consider it so great a favor, you may stay, as far as I am concerned. But take yourself to leeward, my dear friend–and please keep your dead man's hand out of the game!

Melchior

Will you tell me once for all who you are, or not?

The Masked Man

No–I propose to you that you shall confide yourself to me. I will take care of your future success.

Melchior

You are–my father?

The Masked Man

Wouldn't you know your father by his voice?

Melchior

No.

The Masked Man

Your father seeks consolation at this moment in the sturdy arms of your mother.–I will open the world to you. Your momentary lack of resolution springs from your miserable condition. With a warm supper inside of you, you will make fun of it.

Melchior (To himself.)

It can only be the devil! (Aloud.) After that of which I have been guilty, a warm supper cannot give me back my peace!

The Masked Man

That will follow the supper!–I can tell you this much, the girl had better have given birth. She was built properly. Unfortunately, she was killed by the abortives given by Mother Schmidt.–I will take you out among men. I will give you the opportunity to enlarge your horizon fabulously. I will make you thoroughly acquainted with everything interesting that the world has to offer.

Melchior

Who are you? Who are you?–I can't trust a man that I don't know.

The Masked Man

You can't learn to know me unless you trust me.

Melchior

Do you think so?

The Masked Man

Of course!–Besides, you have no choice.

Melchior

I can reach my hand to my friend here at any moment.

The Masked Man

Your friend is a charlatan. Nobody laughs who has a pfennig left in cash. The sublime humorist is the most miserable, most pitiable creature in creation.

Melchior

Let the humorist be what he may; you tell me who you are, or I'll reach the humorist my hand.

The Masked Man

What then?

Moritz

He is right, Melchior. I have boasted. Take his advice and profit by it. No matter how masked he is–he is, at least.

Melchior

Do you believe in God?

The Masked Man

Yes, conditionally.

Melchior

Will you tell me who discovered gunpowder?

The Masked Man

Berthold Schwarz–alias Konstantin Anklitzen.–A Franciscan monk at Freiburg in Breisgau, in 1330.

Moritz

What wouldn't I give if he had let it alone!

The Masked Man

You would only have hanged yourself then.

Melchior

What do you think about morals?

The Masked Man

You rascal, am I your schoolboy?

Melchior

Do I know what you are?

Moritz

Don't quarrel!–Please don't quarrel. What good does that do?–Why should we sit, two living men and a corpse, together in a churchyard at two o'clock in the morning if we want to quarrel like topers! It will be a pleasure to me to arbitrate between you. If you want to quarrel, I'll take my head under my arm and go!

Melchior

You are the same old 'fraid cat as ever.

The Masked Man

The phantom is not wrong. One shouldn't forget one's dignity.–By morals I understand the real product of two imaginary quantities. The imaginary quantities are “shall” and “will.” The product is called morals and leaves no doubt of its reality.

Moritz

If you had only told me that earlier! My morals hounded me to death. For the sake of my dear parents I killed myself. “Honor thy father and mother that thy days may be long in the land.” The text made a phenomenal fool of me.

The Masked Man

Give yourself up to no more illusions, dear friend. Your dear parents would have died as little from it as you did. Judged righteously, they would only have raged and stormed from the healthiest necessity.

Melchior

That may be right as far as it goes.–I can assure you, however, sir, that if I reach Moritz my hand, sooner or later my morals alone will have to bear the blame.

The Masked Man

That is just the reason you are not Moritz!

Moritz

But I don't believe the difference is so material, so compulsive at least, esteemed unknown, but what by chance the same thing might have happened to you as happened to me that time when I trotted through the alder grove with a pistol in my pocket.

The Masked Man

Don't you remember me? You have been standing for the moment actually between life and death.–Moreover, in my opinion, this is not exactly the place in which to continue such a profound debate.

Moritz

Certainly, it's growing cold, gentlemen! They dressed me in my Sunday suit, but I wear neither undershirt nor drawers.

Melchior

Farewell, dear Moritz. I don't know where the man is taking me. But he is a man–

Moritz

Don't blame me for seeking to kill you, Melchior. It was old attachment. All my life I shall only be able to complain and lament that I cannot accompany you once more.

The Masked Man

At the end everyone has his part–You the consoling consciousness of having nothing–you an enervating doubt of everything.—Farewell.

Melchior

Farewell, Moritz. Take my heartfelt thanks for appearing before me again. How many former bright days have we lived together during the fourteen years! I promise you, Moritz, come what may, whether during the coming years I become ten times another, whether I prosper or fail, I shall never forget you–

Moritz

Thanks, thanks, dear friend.

Melchior

——and when at last I am an old man with gray hair, then, perhaps, you will again stand closer to me than all those living about me.

Moritz

I thank you. Good luck to your journey, gentlemen. Do not delay any longer.

The Masked Man

Come, child! (He lays his arm upon that of Melchior and disappears with him over the graves.)

Moritz (Alone.)

Now I sit here with my head under my arm.–The moon covers her face, unveils herself again and seems not a hair the cleverer.–I will go back to my place, right my cross, which that madcap trampled down so inconsiderately, and when everything is in order I will lie down on my back again, warm myself in the corruption and smile.

FROM A LENGTHY ESSAY IN “THE FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG.”

Wedekind's dramas are reminiscent of the pre-Shakespearian stage. But often enough one may recall Shakespeare himself.–But we do not wish to fall into the error of that unstable enthusiasm which always makes comparison with the very greatest when only something remarkable is in question. The aim of these lines is not to hail Wedekind as the Messiah of the drama, nor as the John of a coming Messiah. For all I care, he might be the devil himself. Only one thing is certain: he is a power without his like among us, and where such a power has worked once it produces after results. Power releases power. With this drink in their bodies the public will not long continue to support either lyrical lemonade on the stage nor the dregs of dramatic penury.

This poet, this artist is at the same time a knower of life. One cannot be mistaken! This is no joke. Behind all this swarm of jumping, dancing, tumbling, contending, inflamed, agitated discourse; behind all this pushing, roaring, foaming, gargling, flood of action, stands intuition of the world, stands the sense of life, as made manifest in the thoughts of Wedekind. It is no tearer, no eradicator, no falterer, who in this frightfully beautiful bustle of passion and inevitableness has given a picture of his own dissoluteness. He is a poet-animal trainer, who knows and rules his beasts. A man—if you please.

1

An aromatic herb, used in preparing a beverage drunk in Spring time.

2

“Man möchte glauben, die ganze Welt drehe sich um P– und V–!”