The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX | Page 8

in the hands of the Almighty--certainly a laudable undertaking--is her only fault, and is tragic because inconsistent with the character of womanhood, which the Almighty has also ordained. Compared with the iron necessity of her being, to which Judith succumbs, the accidental and improbable fault of Schiller's Maid of Orleans seems as trivial as it is conventional.
Similarly, in the conception of the story of Genoveva, Hebbel shifted attention from the saint to the sinner. In the centre of his Genoveva stands Golo, the unfortunate young man whose good instincts are made criminal because the faults and errors of others excite them, and because his desire, justifiable according to nature, is directed toward a woman who is bound to another in a wedlock which, from the side of the husband at least, is only formally correct. In Golo's crime and atonement we accordingly see a great deal more than the operation of the moral law: we see how crime is begotten of innocence; and instead of thinking of the wretched creature, we think of the Creator who has so ordained it, and at whose central position in the moral universe there can be neither good nor evil, but an equilibrium of forces which become one or the other, and may become either when the equilibrium is disturbed. Good and evil, mutually exclusive qualities in the world of appearance, are, in the world of ideas, complementary conceptions, different aspects of one and the same thing.
Golo appears, despite his crimes, less guilty than Siegfried, the husband of Genoveva; and in his case a divine impulse, love, becomes an evil because it happens to collide with an institution, marriage, which we are here justified in calling human, since, though it has a social sanction, it lacks the evidence of divine approval. Clara, in _Maria Magdalena_, is chargeable with but the minimum of guilt, and perishes because, too honest and dutiful to safeguard her own interests in a stern and selfish community, she cannot otherwise preserve for her father that unassailable reputation which is, in his imperfect ethics, the highest good. The tragedy in this play is the tragedy of pharisaical bourgeois society itself. There is no collision between high and low, such as constituted the plot of the _tragédies bourgeoises_ of the eighteenth century--e.g., Lessing's _Emilia Galotti_, Schiller's _Cabal and Love_--but the stubborn hardness of the middle-class society in its typical representative is unable to meet a crisis; and by the banishment, or the condemnation to suicide, of its most promising members, this society pronounces its own doom. Altruism is contrary to the custom, that is, to the morals of this community, and for that reason is forbidden and suppressed.
Another community in which altruism is unusual and discredited is Jud?a just before the birth of Christ. Herod the king is a masterful ruler and a benefactor; but the end justifies the means that he adopts, and he is no respecter of persons. He does not even respect the person of his wife. The love of Mariamne is the one sure rock upon which he can rest when the earthquake, threatening at every moment, comes to shatter his throne and engulf him. He loves her too with a passion which dreams of union so perfect that death cannot break it, so perfect that one of them would wish to die at the moment when the soul of the other left the body. This is Mariamne's dream also, but Herod cannot trust her to fulfil it. Not once, but twice, upon going to the wars, he leaves orders that Mariamne shall be slain if he is killed; and these orders are an assassination of her soul. The community can execute an individual; but one individual can only assassinate another. In the ancient orient a wife was a precious possession, entirely subject to the will of her husband, and liable to be burned in his funeral pyre. Herod represents such an ancient, oriental point of view; but Jud?a is on the eve of becoming occidental and modern. Herod represents the law and has the power to crush the insurgent personality of Mariamne: he has not the power to slay the infant Savior, nor to hinder the coming of the day when every human soul is known to be an object of divine concern.
That play of Hebbel's in which the dualism of all being is most conspicuously tragic is Agnes Bernauer. Agnes is the daughter of a barber and surgeon, and is so beautiful that she is commonly known as the angel of Augsburg. Albrecht, the son and sole heir of the reigning duke Ernst, comes to Augsburg, falls in love with her, and, in spite of friendly warning, marries her; for she has loved him at first sight, too. As persons, they do what is right for