In Memoriam Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946)

\ ' REVIEWS '207 extra-Blakean all~sions further serve to leaven the sometimes difficult exegesis of Blake's own work. Still> the concluding proposition1 at tractive though it is in many ways, is too sweeping to command a general acceptance. The thought of discovering or framing Blakean symmetries for all Jiterature· does indeed present a "fearful" aspect. Yet it should be underscored that this extension of Blake is presented only in the final few pages. The reader may continue to think that, in the department of allegorical poet.ry, Blake himself is "a better teacher than Aquinas" and Spenser, and that Fearful SymmeJry is a sound and solid vade-mecum of his teaching. IN MEMORIAM. GERHART HAUPTMANN (1862-1946),. S. D. STJRK The excellent little book on Gerhart 1-lauptmrmn the Silesian was first published by the Schlesien-Verlag in Breslau in 1942. Voigt wrote it as his own personal present for Hauptmann's eightieth birthday; and Hauptmann repeatedly expressed his pleasure and gratitude. The addition of a chapter on Hauptmann's last days and death at his home in Agnetendorf has transformed the happy birthday present into a sad memorial essay. The expansion of PoJ1~d westwards as far as the Oder-Neisse line has also given it the quality of a tribute to the memory of German Silesia. Like Hauptmann, , Voigt is a Silesian in his very ,bones, and proud of it. This fact, together with his bng and close association with Hauptmann, and his pre-eminent position in the small but faithful band of German Hauptmann scholars, qualified him better thap anyone else to write on this theme. Josef Nadler's frequently quoted assertion, in his article "Schlesische Nlachte" (Preussische 7ahrbucher, 1922), that Hauptmann's family ·came originally from Bohemia is now known to be false. The genealogi.cal table prepared by Edmund Glaeser for the Festschrift der Provinz. Schlesien, the finely produced symposium published by the Schlesien-Verlag in 1942, shows that Hauptmann's ancestors, both paternal and maten1al) had lived in Silesia since 1600. Voigt was fortunately able to include this "Ahnentafel"_ · in the Goslar reprint. Succeeding chapters deal with Hauptmann's childhood in Salzbrunn) his years at school and art academy in Breslau, and his '(return to the hills of his homeland" (in 1S91 to a house in Schreiberhau;. · in 1900-1 "Haus Wiesenstein" was built in Agnetendort). Voigt's. treat-. ment of the Silesian landscape and the host of Silesian characters in Hauptmanit 's works is, ofc.ourse, no more than a sketch, but like the chapter which: links Hauptmann with Jakob Bohme and Silesian mysticism, it is illu'ininating and authoritative. The conclusion wisely stresses that Hauptmann was a 11 \Velt-Dichter," and not a "Nur-Schlesier•· (like his brother Carl). '~G~rlulrt Hrmptm in·October1 1944, in AgnetendorF. Voigt concentrates even more than Behl on Hauptmann's later years. Four great works represent Hauptmann's cmwning achievement since his sixtieth birthday in 1922; the verse epics Till (1927) and Der Grosse Traum (1942), the un£nished novel Der Neue Christophorus, and the dramatic fragment Der Dom. Voigt characterizes them as "der Strom in die Tiefe." In a long set·ies ofbaffiing and sometimes terrible 11 Cosmic" visions, Hauptmann tried to come to grips with the uchthonian" powers (i.e., the gods and spirits of the underworld); he probed the secret foundations of the universe and penetrated to the weJI-Spri ngs of life itself; he wrestled with the problem of God and evil-in the sense of the Theodicee of Leibniz, but (as Voigt remarks) wirh little of the Leibniz optimism. Hauptmann's great spiritual ancestors in this connection are Jakob Bohme and the long line of Siles.ian mystics1 and Paracelsus, l'whose works always lay open in Hauptmann's library." "Like Paracelsus and Bohme, Hauptmann teaches that the evil as well as the good; the No as well as the Yes, rests in God." ·And yet there are still superficial .and facile crit1cs who maintain that Hauprmann had no "\Veltanschauung" ! These two books are I.imired in size and scope; but they are indispensable (or Hauptmann research. THE STORY OF THE ILTAD>l rarely avoids intruding his personal tastes...