KAHL. Lap it up like a b-bunch o' p-p-pigs.
HELEN. Oh, my. You mean that such things are hereditary?
LOTH. Alcoholism runs in families. Some are destroyed by it.
[ . . . ]
Act II
[ . . . ]
LOTH. (Who has gradually become more and more absorbed in his contemplation of the dewy orchard and has now given himself over to it completely.) It's magnificent here. Look at that sun coming up over the mountain. – And all these apples in your garden – what a harvest.
HELEN. Three-quarters of them will be stolen again this year, as always. The poverty around here is simply too enormous.
LOTH. You can't imagine how deeply I love the country. Unfortunately, for the most part, my own crops must be harvested in the city. But for once I intend to enjoy a brief pastoral respite thoroughly. A man like myself needs a bit of fresh air and sunshine more than most people.
HELEN. (Sighing.) More so than others? . . . Why?
LOTH. Because I am in the midst of a gruelling struggle, the end of which I shall not live to see.
HELEN. Aren't the rest of us engaged in the same sort of struggle?
LOTH. No.*
HELEN. But we're all involved in some sort of struggle, aren't we?
LOTH. Of course, but in one that has a chance of ending.
HELEN. Has a chance – there you're right. But why is there no such chance for your struggle, Mr. Loth?
LOTH. Because your struggle can, after all, only be one for your personal well-being. And an individual can attain this, insofar as is humanly possible. But my struggle is a pitched battle for the happiness of all mankind. For me to be happy, the entire rest of humanity must first be happy; I would have to be able to look around me everywhere and see neither disease nor poverty, neither servitude nor meanness. I could not, in a manner of speaking, take my seat at the feast of life except as the last of its guests.
HELEN. (With deep conviction.) Then you are a really, truly good man.
LOTH. (A bit embarrassed.) There's no particular virtue in my stance; it's no great moral choice; it's just my nature. Furthermore, I must admit that my struggle in the interest of human progress gives me great personal satisfaction. And this is a kind of happiness that I value much more than the sort that gratifies your run-of-the-mill egoist.
* Felix Dahn's Ein Kampf um Rom (1876) was a popular historical novel of heroic deeds. Dahn, Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Breslau at the time of the premiere of Vor Sonnenaufgang, extolled the virtues of the Romans and more particularly of the Goths. A pronounced attitude of national superiority permeates the novel. It was reprinted in the early 1930s and gained new popularity with the rise of the Nazis. There is now an inadvertent irony in Loth's high regard for this potboiler which glorified endeavors of conquest and self-denial in the national interest.
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