This is the plot of the play, which I believe to have described accurately in this outline, at least in terms of its essence and character. What I cannot describe, however, is the tone in which the entire thing is presented, because it is impossible to do so. And this is the reason why any account of it will always be imperfect and also damaging most of the time. With respect to works like this, which are a lot like ballads, the tone is virtually everything, since it is equal to the question of truth or untruth. If it captures me, if it is so powerful that it allows me to overlook weaknesses or imperfections, even the odd ridiculousness, then a poet has spoken to me, a real poet who cannot exist without purity of perception, and who expresses this best by acknowledging realities and at the same time giving them their proper name. If this effect is missing, if the tone fails to exercise its sanctifying, saving power, if it does not transfigure the ugly, then the writer has lost the gamble, either because his motivations were not pure enough yet and the lie, or at least the empty phrase, was lodged in his heart, or because his powers left him in the lurch and let him commence his work at an ill-fated moment. If the latter is the case, then he will do better next time, but if the former applies, he would do better to turn to “other spheres of pure activity.” Gerhart Hauptmann, though, may hold his ground in his chosen field, and he will hold his ground, for he has not only the right tone but also the right courage and, along with the right courage, the right art. In instances of Naturalist coarseness, it is foolish to suspect a lack of art all the time. On the contrary, when applied properly (this, however, will be subject to debate), these instances offer proof of the highest art.
Those were my approximate reflections as I read Gerhart Hauptmann’s play. He simply appeared to me as the fulfillment of Ibsen. Everything I had admired about Ibsen for years, that “reach into the fullness of human life,” the novelty and boldness of the problems addressed, the artful simplicity of language, the gift for characterization, and, at the same time, the most consistent realization of the plot and the removal of everything extraneous to the subject matter – all of that I found again in Hauptmann. And everything that I have fought in Ibsen for years – the crackpot ideas, the hairsplitting, the striving to continue sharpening the pointed statement until that point finally breaks, additionally, that tendency to get lost in vagueness, the prophecy-making, and the speaking in riddles, riddles that no one wished to solve because they had long become boring. None of these flaws did I find in Gerhart Hauptmann. Here is no realist who occasionally ails from philosophical-romantic quirks, but a refined realist, that is, one who remains the same from beginning to end.
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