THE ART OF STORYTELLING
Letter
Jacob Wassermann
Finnished
V. Tarkiainen
In Porvoo, Werner Söderström Ltd., 1907.
THE ART OF STORYTELLING
It must be more than a year since we last saw each other. Since my friend died I have rarely sought company, and only leave my room to go on my solitary walks. My only pleasure is reading and wondering what effect books have on me. I think that if I were to pick up a pen again now I could do something decent.
OLD:
And where does your mind return to then? An artist must not be like a hunter who, regardless of what prey comes his way, wanders from land to land, but he must be like a sailor whose inner sense, his inner eye, is constantly sharpened towards a perhaps invisible, but nevertheless completely certain goal. So where does your mind return to? Where do you think you were born? What island of the spirit do you think you will find?
YOUNG:
I feel the desire and enthusiasm only to make up stories. In moments of solitude and concentration, it feels as if my whole soul is full of events and destinies. My mind often wanders, as if the entire course of the world, since the time of Adam, were revealed to me in a very special way, and I feel a passionate desire, how should I say?… to tell, to tell.
OLD:
That's good, that's excellent. If you truly feel that desire and then don't make a mistake in following it, then you were truly born to tell.
YOUNG:
How could I be wrong? Why do you doubt? What could be simpler than that?
OLD:
That it is not at all simple, nor at all obvious, is shown to you by just a glance at the current products of storytelling. Most people no longer even know what it means to craft a story, and even the most talented create nothing but muddles and formlessness.
YOUNG:
You are very harsh as always. But I think you are not right. There has never been so much going on as there is right now. The day is breaking on every side.
OLD:
The eternal mistake of youth.
YOUNG:
I'm afraid you won't accept my products so far either.
OLD:
I cannot answer that question until I know how your affairs are, and whether there are no desires other than love for the matter in your mind, whether your innermost heart does not seek other ends than perfection in that love, whether you are not afraid to look the truth in the eye, or whether frivolous gratitude has not blinded you for all time. If you are afraid of a bitter moment, then speak frankly, I will gladly remain silent. You seem thoughtful.
YOUNG:
Do you then consider your judgment irrevocable, the only possible one? Could it not be born of delusion, excessive severity, or independence?
OLD:
I will try to justify it to you, and if you can deny my testimony binding force, then I promise to be content with that.
YOUNG:
So speak.
OLD:
There are three kinds of writers: those who have their own style and are able to develop it to the highest perfection; those who seek their own style; and finally those who seize upon the style of the whole world and hold it as guests in a restaurant hold their host's tables, mugs and chairs; they never become masters of their words, thoughts and sentences; the most fervently felt feeling is absolutely congealed in their expression, the sublime moods become commonplace, every poetic enthusiasm becomes a deliberate intention, every external influence becomes imitation, everything strong becomes coarse and everything fine becomes tacky. But we are not talking about these writers who look after the market goods of the great hordes. You belong to the second group.
YOUNG:
That wouldn't be any worse. We are all seekers. It can be said that even the greatest master has not stopped searching until his dying day. Why are you smiling?
OLD:
Because I see from this remark how little you still understand me. If the great masters seek, they want to create a harmony between matter and form. They know that without such harmony there is usually no work of art. And when they know this and strive for perfection in this way, being careful not to waste the abundance of their artistic means on the wrong object or in the wrong place, a product is always created that harmonizes with the art and the creator's own creative personality. They seek with seeing eyes, you seek like blind men; they follow a straight path and arrive at the goal, although not always the desired one; instead you grope around in the same circle. Seekers who do not know the right path are doomed to ruin.
YOUNG:
You're making me very uneasy. I'd be angry with you if I didn't know you were serious. I can see what you're after. So finally talk about me.
OLD:
Good. First of all, there are two things to be noted in your works, apparently external and apparently internal: namely, that they do not fill the reader's soul with pleasantness, and that the subject itself lacks the necessity of existence. But the two belong together more closely than you think; I will prove that to you at once.
YOUNG:
What do you mean by pleasantness? Of course, when we design poems, we mean the exact opposite: to arouse interest, to excite, to keep the sympathy going, and to shock you internally. I think you're making fun of me.
OLD:
Patience. I use pleasantness here in a higher, artistic sense. I mean by it the boundless trust of the ideal reader in the narrator. This trust is generated by credibility, and credibility by the necessity of what is narrated. You see, then, how closely these two things are connected, and how they become still more indistinguishable to the eye and the feeling by what the layman, the dilettante, and the ordinary critic call technique: by the art of narration; which too is only an apparently external thing, for in reality it is the soul of epic art.
YOUNG:
Your speech branches out into very broad areas. Your intention was to talk about my works.
OLD:
I say therefore that there is no pleasantness in your products, because you do not know how and do not understand how to create them. In your writings, the stamp of a life lived, directly or indirectly, is evident, but this life is not artistically brightened or exalted, and therefore it does not make a poetic impression. There is a strong and natural feeling in you, but it rarely acts purely, because the matter does not have the strength to merge completely with it. Do you now see what my speech is aiming at, do you see how everything internal is at the same time external and vice versa?
YOUNG:
I see nothing but chatter and hear only words. If some form of art is not enough to express what is in my heart, let it be expanded. In what book are the learned laws to which I must submit? Who has made them, and how shall I learn to bow to them?
OLD:
In what book are they? In human feeling. Who wrote them? Human feeling. Why must you bow to them? Because otherwise you cannot influence, because otherwise your words and works are of a more volatile quality than a piece of ice in the heat of midday. For through centuries and millennia of searching, it has been discovered what captivates a person, what comforts and delights him, what comes from the depths of his soul and strives back to its depths. He who has followed that advice and produced a deep impression, not blindly, but with clear understanding, has been a master. He who despises teaching, on the other hand, does not even develop into a student.
YOUNG:
So advise me.
OLD:
I have already said that the elements do not come together in you; the subject and the feeling remain enemies and unmelted against each other. The result is a constant and everywhere noticeable discord. You do not really narrate events, but describe situations. It is precisely what seems important to you that is important for the flow of the story and must be insignificant. You jump from situation to situation, what is in between is for you a makeshift and becomes a mandatory description and awakens the reader from the fascination of poetry with its dry railiness. When you yourself feel this wavering very clearly when you write, it forces you to level out, and you cannot help but resort to pathetic-phyreal descriptions in which the action does not progress even a little. For, as is understandable: movement is everything in everything, all art is created through movement. Your characterisation is very closely connected with it. The characters in your stories have no resting place. They are cleverly and believably drawn, insofar as and as long as they are connected with the action, but when detached from it and living on their own, they become impotent and wooden. They know too well what they have to do, not in their own world, but in yours. They lack the higher enchantment of poetry and are incapable of creating a poetic impression of reality. A character should live independently of the action, not through it. Why else would it be that in all mediocre writers those characters are the most believable who are least involved in the action and exciting scenes, the so-called secondary characters? Only from them does pleasantness, i.e. credibility, spread, because they do not seem to follow any preconceived plan. If, therefore, it is said that art is created through movement, then at the same time it must be added that its effect depends on the apparent purposelessness of the movement.
YOUNG:
One doubt after another arises in me. Hundreds of questions flood my mind, for now I see how deeply you approach the matter. And many things obscure my thoughts that I had not suspected before. But allow me to ask a question. You said that I do not narrate events, but describe situations, and I must confess that these concepts confuse me. Isn't that just a play on words? What, in your opinion, distinguishes a narrative from a description? I mean to what extent the effect of the work suffers from the descriptions. Aren't they schoolmaster-like limitations?
OLD:
Let us suppose that you had made a difficult and dangerous journey, that you had risked your life in daring adventures, that you had been considered a lost and gone man for years, and that you had now returned. Everyone is then eager to hear how you have managed everything and what you have experienced. You sit down among a curious and sympathetic audience and tell them, you begin to talk about your journey across the sea, list your traveling companions, briefly describing what kind of men they are and what their previous experiences were, then you continue to tell about the landing, the departure to unknown regions, etc., etc. Would it then be appropriate to exhaust the interest of your listeners by describing landscapes, animals, plants? If you did so, they would have a slight doubt as to whether the fates you experienced were real and whether they were really so difficult. They want to know how you have been, and nothing else, and the simpler and more factual your story is, the more believable your life stages will sound. You don't need to describe it in a word. The image of the country and the landscape arises of itself in the imagination; the less you talk about it, the more strongly your listeners' imagination and precisely through your experiences will see it. Unknowingly, they are walking the same path as you and seeing with your eyes. It doesn't matter to you whether the image thus obtained corresponds to reality, as long as the image is created in them by the movement of the soul. This movement of the soul, in turn, is created by the movement of the artistic material, and so you see again how the outer and inner sides merge into each other and how they must merge.
YOUNG:
The example is illuminating. It makes it clear to me that deviation from the point raised seems as unreal in art as in life, and I understand that the reader's confidence may suffer from it. But you mentioned something about the clarification and elevation of the subject and the poetic effect. It seems to me now entirely unnecessary, since there is no need to doubt the truth and authenticity of what is said.
OLD:
Of course, if only it were the same thing to tell orally or in writing. There is such a deep gulf between them that neither spirituality, nor knowledge, nor sincere directness can build a bridge over it, but only artistic genius. It is a gulf between reality and imagination, between the mirror and the person standing before it, between life and memory, between the moment and eternity. Your lively listeners see you, they see you possessed, inspired, and pressed by your memories; the vividly spoken word already has a very valid evidentiary force in itself. If you were to write this true and shocking travelogue of yours in the words of your oral presentation, it might sound tasteless, false, and, so to speak, untrue. Once again, the artistic impression is created by the seemingly most external characteristic of all: style. To be able to make the reader believe the simplicity which the listener perceives without any special effort on your part, if you are of a simple and honest nature, requires half a life of tireless experiment, of exhausting toil, of what seem to be torturous exertion. In life there is simple clarity, or, to use the professional term, naivety as a prerequisite, in art it is the last achievement, the highest peak.
YOUNG:
So we must strive for a form in which everything is reflected as self-evident, and to create within the circle of art a picture in which the features of nature are revealed. Until then, I am clear. But each individual has his own special naivety, each "self" has its own peculiar clarity. Are there then certain laws to which everyone is unknowingly bound, both the creators and the enjoyers of art?
OLD:
Let us start from the narrowest point to develop the matter to the broader. Anyone who has a sense of language and a keen ear probably knows or has already felt, without realizing it, that the greatest beauty of our language is its ability to form organically structured, as if living, sentence sequences. A thought, an image is created and expressed by means of a noun and an action word; a predicate word is connected to them either to clarify or embellish, another image or action wants to justify the previous one and develop it further, and so a subordinate clause is formed, in which the same phenomena occur as in the main clause, only more restrained, reduced, and toned down. This is the reason for the rhythm of the direct method of presentation: the swelling and lowering of the tone and pitch, the mutual relationship of sentences and sentence parts to each other, the freely and independently undulating grouping, and the fullness of the feeling expressed in the fewest words. The most characteristic power of our language is in the verb: its development, formation, and in a way its isolation from others is the hallmark of a good, straightforward writer, while a mediocre writer puts more emphasis on the ornamental imperative, — naturally. Observe the style of our good narrators from this point of view: how it undulates and flows majestically calmly, always moving and always striving for a goal worth pursuing. The imperative has a stiffening effect and should only be used sparingly, and only the perceptive imagination can put it in its right place; the verb makes it alive and is the actual motor ingredient in the construction of the sentence. It is always fascinating to study good narrative style exclusively from the point of view of its rhythm and to notice for real how well the sentence segments and breathing fit together, how sensibly structured the sentence and the subordinate clause relate to each other, and how the chord fades out at the end when the paragraph ends. In fact, one could recognize a good straightforward book already from its printing, which is, so to speak, its facade. In addition, the epic artist has the overflowing of poetic images experienced from his soul and the peculiar feeling of how immediately the words flow into him into plastic images, which protects his manner of presentation from flatness. For how else could literary language remain fresh and vibrant for centuries? The rare originality of turns of phrase does not do it, and neither are sense and form alone capable of creation, — only the organic connection of feeling with the word prevents the language of epic from withering and dying. It is difficult to pronounce it in clear words unless you feel it in your mind.
YOUNG:
I feel it. I have felt it often when reading Gottfried Keller. A very everyday word, which in our social language flickered faintly and seemed as dead as worn-out money, suddenly appeared before me new and strange, as if dressed in a magic suit.
OLD:
And yet most of our young poets are word seekers, and what is worse, they do not know how to tell in long breaths. I do not deny the author the right to chop his sentences into pieces and rush them out at a frantic pace, if the situation and his mood so require. But just as a man can not hold his breath for a long time, so a book does not allow it, or else it makes an unpleasant and disgusting impression. I have held books in my hands in which mere narrow, narrow-minded fragments of sentences have stood side by side, mute and sad like soldiers on parade. Individual parts of a sentence swam like severed arms and legs in a flood of too many punctuation marks, and every rhythm was mutilated, because the modest middle ground of writing is not held in such high esteem as madness squeezed out by torture, or when one wants to create the feeling that the author was in the grip of a deeply turbulent mood when writing it. No state of turbulence is required of the author at all; God has not hung a sign on every tree or on the side of every mountain saying: how beautiful, how mighty and characteristic I am. God is modest, he hides invisibly in his world, and so is the great artist. Invisibility is required of the narrator, and the utmost visibility of the narrated.
YOUNG:
I have no objection to that. However, it cannot be denied that, for example, in a thick novel, it is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a harsh narrative tone throughout. Such a book would be tiring with its monotony, I think, and the author should not be blamed if he tries to avoid this drawback through dramatic discussions and exciting descriptions.
OLD:
That is quite a different matter. You cannot demand that a cookbook solve scientific problems. If it is difficult for a poet to create a work of art, let him be content with a hunchback, but let him not then demand the name of an artist for himself. Is it then obligatory to write the thick monsters of novels that you speak of? And if they are written, am I obliged to delve into them? If we direct our examination to these lower circles, what all could be said, what all could be complained about: women's embroidery, newspapers, poor translations from foreign languages, etc. But let us also agree to the most artistic of all laws for our discussion and let us stay on the subject.
YOUNG:
You are right. However, there are hybrids that cannot be judged and whose impact is deeper and the motive for their creation is greater than in pure works of art. That must not be forgotten.
OLD:
I think that is a mistake. Those works of art that have a smaller impact and a weaker durability than the products you mentioned are not really viable in that case and their destruction is only a matter of time.
YOUNG:
Everything, everything is fleeting. Even Homer and Shakespeare.
OLD:
A stupid phrase. They will only disappear when the earth disintegrates and light turns to darkness. They are the common property of humanity and talk of immortality outside of humanity is nonsense.
YOUNG:
One thing is not quite clear to me. In storytelling, the main thing is to present an event and within the event to paint private pictures or situations, for without such pictures I would rather write history than create art. How then can I create a situation without violating the law that demands that an epic performance should constantly move forward like a rolling stream? In a word, how can I be narrative and plastic at the same time?
OLD:
In answer to this question I will read a passage from Goethe's "Master Wilhelm's Apprenticeship." It reads: "Two or three houses were completely engulfed in flames. No one had been able to escape to the garden, as the archway leading there was on fire. Wilhelm was more worried about his friends than about his own belongings. He did not dare to leave the children alone and saw the disaster only grow bigger. He spent a few moments in a cramped space. Felix had fallen asleep in his arms, Mignon lay beside him and held her hand tightly. At last the fire was stopped by strenuous measures. The charred buildings collapsed to the ground, morning broke, the children began to shiver with cold, and he himself could hardly bear the rising dew, for he was thinly dressed. He took them to the ruins of the collapsed building, and they warmed themselves in the sweet heat of the heap of coal and ash. When day came, all the friends and acquaintances gradually began to gather, etc.» You can clearly see how calmly and restrainedly the terrible incident melts into the general atmosphere of the story. A new event calmly joins the lovely, sparse description of the people warming themselves by the ash heap, and there is not the slightest excitement in the appendages of the sentences. Compare it with one of Zola's descriptions of the ravages of fire; one detail pushes another into the back of the head. The endless flood of little details breaks the picture and drowns the imagination in its turmoil. What the describer needs fifty pages for, the epic writer says in ten lines. The narrative style is by no means the painting of situations, but it conjures up a higher state of being for the situation, so that it slips past us in perfect peace. Kleist, perhaps our greatest narrative genius, is almost a model in this respect. As sublimely concise as in a folk tale, he creates movement within movement. Only in this way does the sentence structure acquire vitality, and thus shed that paperiness that is present in the style of even the most eminent writers; it suddenly acquires the same inner strength and bloodiness as a living being, and just as the work as a whole is an organism of flesh and spirit, so too does the sentence structure. A tree is composed of small cells; the health of its fruits depends on the health of that invisible tissue. The breadth and fullness of the entire work depends on the breadth and fullness of the sentence periods; neither the adventurousness of the events, nor the extensiveness of the plan, nor the finest psychological hair-splitting, nor any newness of the subject, nor any external tension, neither wit, nor dexterity, nor philosophical depth can elevate a work that lacks true epic breadth and peace to the value of a true work of art.
YOUNG:
So peace and again peace. But we have shown inexorably that only movement makes art alive, and we have beautifully noticed that the purposelessness of movement is a condition of artistic effect, now again peace is supposedly all-determining. It puts one's head on the wheel. Peace? After all, that means the same as coldness, that would be the same as misunderstanding the entire essence of the poet and defending virtuosity.
OLD:
Curb your enthusiasm, you will soon see how thoughtless it is. Narrative art presents past events. It concerns what has been lived, what has been seen, what has happened. Whereas drama is based on the present of events and passions, the epic or the short story is retrograde, looking back, — naturally, and its form absolutely demands greater peace and precision, for its interpretation as art requires a spectator, an observer, a critic, a linker. Whereas drama is apparently a free, isolated independent product, the narrative always and in every line refers back to the narrator, and his relationship to the subject determines everything. Coldness and peace are therefore only apparent, a restraint of ardor. The creator of such a work is all the more forced to conceal his own personality, since he ultimately represents the whole world that he conjures up. If he ceases to be invisible, our illusion suffers, and apparent peace is therefore the condition of all the effects of his art. But it depends on his nature and his poetic ability whether we can become deeply attached to his work, see everything with his eyes, live in his own states of mind, whether joyful or tragic. His worldview and spiritual power on the one hand, and on the other the peace that enables him to divide light and shadow, to give birth to images and to create time perspectives, these can be said to be the two main points between which his art moves. That is why epic art demands full maturity of spirit.
YOUNG:
So the requirement is not that the feeling be suppressed, but that it be restrained and that the warmth be distributed more widely. Obviously, a work suffers if too much light falls on a private person. So what about portraits? How much can they rise above the plane of the narrative in order to have a plastic effect?
OLD:
It depends on the subject matter and the general tone. Let us compare the course of a few straightforward epic works from this point of view: the historical narratives of Herodotus, Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Goethe's "Master Wilhelm," and Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace."
Herodotus has a natural, personal naivety that is in harmony with the time and the young emerging culture. He has no role models and does not long for them. He does not particularly strive to sharpen the memory of the art form. He avoids fancy words. He stays away from all abstractions. He "narrates". His tone is that of a man who, rich in experience and knowledge, sits among his relatives and explains everything as simply as he truly does. However, a strong connection of style prevails in his works, not only externally, but also internally. Man's actions are guided by Nemesis (fate). Pervaded by this worldview, his creations have achieved not only moral greatness, but also artistic power.
Cervantes naturally stands on the basis of traditions. But he breaks them completely, making use of them. The description of events is organized externally under the direction of a plan and mentally under the direction of an idea. In starting to fight against the pathetic hero of Catholicism, he encounters that high form of presentation which we call humor and which gives his characters much more tangible outlines than their essences seem to have in reality. Cervantes is also (in the banal sense) a naive narrator; but in his naivety there is already a considerable place for artistic understanding. It is clear: he is no longer a narrator of real events. At the same time as the world of imagination was created, the sincere joy that the events and their presentation gave rise to withered away completely. The narrator is now joined by a chatterbox, and questions about the method arise as if by themselves. Cervantes already has everything in art : the characters and their shaping, the threads of action woven according to plan, the dialogue and its motoric meaning. But with the help of an amazing instinct, all this has again received a natural color and costume that is deceptively realistic.
Goethe's novel is first and foremost an expression of a great personality. While the Spanish poet developed before us an image behind which he himself disappeared without a word, the German remains standing before his own creation and only with the help of his own being, his own movements and his guiding words does he raise it to the right light and to the right value. His presentation is cool and thoughtful, philosophically precise, and above the portraits we never forget the master magician who is able to set them in motion. Cervantes is great because of his "Don Quixote"; "Wilhelm the Master" is great because of Goethe.
In the poetry of the Russian poet, the subject and the manner of presentation have finally become inseparably connected. Its author himself becomes an infinity like a natural force that directs the stream in its course. The tone of this novel is Homeric. The people described in it are so strongly individual and, on the other hand, so much in the power of the fate of their own temperament that it seems as if, even if they were not detached from their environment and activities, they would have to be subjected to the same stages of life and experiences to which the poet's will leads them in the poetry. The description of events, national peculiarity, human importance, artistic peace, simplicity and grandeur, all combine to create the most vivid effect. The dialogue no longer has any motor purpose, nor any philosophical or tendentious one, but is purely descriptive of characters.
YOUNG:
"The subject and the manner of presentation are joined in an inseparable union," you said. I would rather say: the subject and the artist. But what is the subject? When does the subject attain the "necessity of existence"? When does it become as inevitable as nature's own creations? Probably one must first live it, another invent it, a third take it from history. The latter uses a ready-made story, the former weaves his images as if from the threads of dreams, in which there is the movement and atmosphere of life and the integrity of poetry. Thus, it is not the quality of the subject itself that is important, but the intensity of the poet's vision, the vision that the subject awakens and which need not be based on a single image, but which often, like the fog of the primordial worlds, may conceal within itself fire and the power of growth.
OLD:
Without a doubt. The strength of the poet's vision determines the power of the work, but its harmony determines its durability and unforgettability. Nothing else has anything to do with the inspiring factors, but is subject to the laws of development. Where the poet's vision ends, mental work begins, the sphere of sensation, evaluation, and choice. Therein lies the boundary between the poet and the writer. The poet's relationship to his subject is the same as to the leaves of a tree, while the writer's subjects resemble the furniture of a chamber, arbitrarily gathered together, poor or luxurious. In the former case, every defect is only the shadow of an advantage, in the latter all the advantages result from a single defect. In the former case, the work is a living organism, either sickly or strong, in the latter a machine, either carelessly manipulated or perfect in its nature.
YOUNG:
Accordingly, a poet would actually live his own themes, while a writer would invent them.
OLD:
It is not possible to make such a sharp distinction. We should first determine what is meant by the phrase that the subject has been lived. It would be very shortsighted if it meant only the external act, for then the affairs of those who are prevented by chance or social position or personal peculiarity from entering the great machinery of society would be bad. It would follow that only he who has committed a murder can reveal the state of the murderer's soul, and woman as a special world would be a completely closed field for the poet. I do not deny that a certain amount of general life experience is not necessarily necessary, but for someone who does not live deeply in his soul the pain of the world and its creation, it is of very little use, even if he spends all his days in adventures and even if he thus discovers the most secret recesses of human nature. This is the peculiarity of the poet's nature, that in it, as it were, the experiences of all others gather and reach a high consciousness; it is as if God gave him references and sign words, from which he created the basic threads of another world, condensed into beauty. He lives at the center of everything, he is the living conscience of the peoples, he lives not only in the present, no, but for him all the past is also the present. And then the subject.
YOUNG:
I think it doesn't matter whether he chooses the story of a tailor or a world conqueror. And the environment can only facilitate the development of characters and the motivation of destinies.
OLD:
True.
YOUNG:
And yet we just talked about the necessity of the subject's existence.
OLD:
It has often been said that the poet gives up because of an invincible inner compulsion. Often fighting against external circumstances, often, almost always, waging an inner war. Therefore, talk of the happiness of creation is just a worn-out phrase. There is only the despair of creation and a very short intoxication of happiness after the work of creation. And then the poet must learn to hate his work, so that he may learn to recognize its faults, and the more strongly he hates his work, the more deeply he loves art. It is clear that what is born and clothed in form under such obstacles absolutely has the possibility and necessity of life, at least in the eyes of its own creator. The only question is whether and to what extent the work speaks to other people, how many spheres of life it touches with its existence, how many other beings it is likewise necessary for. It depends on the subject. I would like to argue that a subject is all the greater and more universal the more myth it contains, the deeper it sinks its roots into the mysterious, unconscious, religious, imaginative depths of the essence of a people and at the same time of all mankind. After all, a poet is an interpreter of the silent. The greater the poet, the more silent beings speak through his mouth. He does not choose his subject, but the subject chooses him. It meets him as if it were lightning from heaven. Therefore, one can speak as little of inventing a subject as of living it, namely in the highest sense. Poets who—let us say—poetry about their own experiences always run the risk of having to value them too highly unless there is a great typical destiny behind them. The poet's vision is everything. It can brighten and elevate a subject that has been treated a thousand times, so that it becomes an event of unimaginable importance. The more you expand and deepen your feelings through your own narrow and in any case modest destiny into something spacious, human and mythical, the less you actually need to "live", the freer scope you will have for your art.
YOUNG:
More advanced aesthetes have called what you call a myth an idea.
OLD:
Give it any name you like. People always talk about the fact that art has no tendencies and that it must not pursue any useful goals. But in another, higher sense, every work of art must prove something, if it does not want to incur the curse of being nothing more than mere play. It must, of course, come into being for its own sake. But it does not have to exist for its own sake, any more than any living being. We can hardly go any further in our examination. We have already arrived at the border between dreams and reverie.
(Five years later.)
OLD:
Coincidence has led us on a journey together!
YOUNG:
You might think that you have always deliberately avoided meeting me until now.
OLD:
How dare I! You have become a famous man, I am sinking further and further back into the shadows.
YOUNG:
I hope that so-called fame hasn't robbed me of your favor.
OLD:
It would only happen if it seduced you into self-satisfaction. Such people stand as if dead in the midst of their works, and their works are children born sickly, awaiting an early death.
YOUNG:
Above all, there are two kinds of fame. The first arises from the temporal, accidental, fleeting, enigmatic nature of our actions; it may be part of a true or a false work, and has little to do with that reputation which is determined by our whole being, and which depends on the inner sum of our works. The former is like the short-lived success of a joker or a good talker in some circle of society, the latter like the deep, quiet, long-lasting influence of a priest or a friend of mankind; the former is proclaimed by others, and its emergence often surprises us; the latter radiates from our innermost soul, our personality, and may in any case only appear after our death or the end of our life's work; the former must be looked after by every newspaperman, the latter has no judge but our own heart.
OLD:
I am glad that you think so. But have you always lived and written in that sense? You think that I have deliberately avoided you for years; your feeling is not entirely wrong. To put it bluntly: your success has made me restless. It seemed to me too fast, too noisy, there was too little substance in it, in my opinion, and it could appeal too little to art. I felt like waiting and I waited for your next book. It was a disappointment. It was not that you were unfaithful to yourself in it, but that you were restless within yourself. Your poetic vision was not pure, but you saw in it, as it were, the curious faces of your readers and friends. You sought to satisfy them and not yourself.
YOUNG:
Truly. But I have suffered my punishment. I have received my punishment, learning to despise. I have suffered my punishment, when my soul cried out to me more and more painfully. Do you know that strange mood that makes every stay restless, every thought bitter? It is as if one would like to travel home and the wild horses would fly towards distant deserted regions. What a mysterious creature lives in the depths of the human soul. Its voice overcomes even the most blatant market noise, and if a moment later you are alone, it suddenly falls silent, as if wanting revenge, because you did not obey its melody sooner. You must become more and more attentive, more and more silent, if you do not want to become deaf to that voice, and if it demands it, you must give up your wife, children, money, or property.
OLD:
So much understanding along with such a big mistake!
YOUNG:
How could one become wise without being mistaken? Do you still remember our discussion then about the nature and laws of the art of narration? I have thought about it a lot and often. I have reached a clarity in its main points that can no longer be dimmed. And yet, as soon as I tried to apply one of these laws, even the most lapidary, to my work, it evaporated into mere mist. It is just like written collections of laws in the living world of man. In themselves: true, correct and clear. Adapted to that deed, to that and to that blink of an eye: null, senseless, dead. From this I gradually came to the conclusion that there is no other law than that which we ourselves, by the power of our own work, raise as a model. Everyone is allowed to do what he can.
OLD:
But you won't deny that our conversation at that time was not useful and necessary for you, will you?
YOUNG:
Not at all.
OLD:
It is a problem of education. There is good and evil in man. Example awakens the forces. Teaching marks the way, shows the boundaries. A bourgeois who always chooses the highway, and an artistic vagabond who stumbles in the brushwood — neither of them is a leader, the former is unnecessary, the latter is harmful. So too art and its legislators. I have indeed seen and noticed to my sorrow that you have contemptuously pushed aside everything that you then seemed to cling to so ardently, so passionately. Well, you have often clung to the brushwood, and even today I do not see that the path and the goal are clear to you; as hard as it may sound, I must say it.
YOUNG:
It doesn't sound harsh to me. I guess that's what I look like to you. You look back at me from the end of the road. You naturally know the path you've taken, you only think you know the course of my journey. Each has its own pain, its own longing, its own search that is necessary, and where you think destruction awaits me, perhaps my salvation is there. If only all criticism that is not limited to the narrowest, the most tangible, the most tangible would be abandoned for once! Human existence is not a frame of boards, and it cannot be measured with a straightedge, nor determined with pins and tines when it is suitable for its purpose. If only there were no more schoolmasters! There is so much harshness and hardness hidden in every teacher, and what is really to be said to those who, out of a mere desire for contemptible superiority, deny the organism created by nature the right to exist.
OLD:
Now you are talking to yourself. But don't you defend yourself against the unskilled scoundrels and those impudent newcomers who encroach on the temple of art? And do you always act justly in your judgment? Are you never misled by prejudice, and do you try to understand a phenomenon that is foreign to your nature, or don't you often reject it simply because it is foreign to you?
YOUNG:
You are right. But in the anger I feel against the mouthpieces and the boasters, there is often a desirable kindness towards the forces that are still undeveloped and struggling. We in Germany are in a very sad state. Among a hundred art critics and critics, there is hardly one who is even able, let us say, to grasp the pedestal on which it rests. Vanity and mental dryness dictate to them their enthusiastic or dismissive judgments. Everywhere the schoolmaster appears, and while they are good-natured, they already think they are going too far. Forgive me for getting heated up and becoming bitter: but you too prefer to become a dictator to being a friend, an understanding, an approving, a fellow-interpreter. Why do you not agree to acknowledge as true the necessity that fills me ? Perhaps what I create from an invincible necessity does not differ so much from what the doctrines demand as you think? And whoever never violates any of those seemingly ironclad rules and doesn't make even the sharpest critic shake their head is not a creator, but will forever remain a wasteful person.
OLD:
You have always had higher ideas of yourself than of others. But I do not blame you at all. On the contrary, I must confess that your enthusiasm warms me strangely, and that when I see it, the thought arises in me how futile, distant, and powerless is all that feverish rushing about things, which nevertheless — almost with a sneer on their lips — follow their own paths. Man is everything in everything, vitality is everything in everything, and nature, endowed with a yearning for better things, courage, and the will to create, no matter how cramped, always puts its murmurers to shame. But I would like to know what you think of the future of your art, for your speeches exude revolutionary ideas.
YOUNG:
Dear friend, how quickly we learn to understand each other if you talk like that.
OLD:
And how greatly we are astonished to discover that one has not fought against the other, but has struck at his own misunderstanding, his own impatience, his own uncertainty. So let us leave all generalities aside this time and tell me about yourself, only about yourself. I think that way I will learn the most about your art too.
YOUNG:
About my art! I confess to you that this possessive pronoun seems a little strange and unexpected to me. If I examine myself honestly, I really have no art at all. What drives me to work is not the desire to create something perfect, nor the hope of owning something outside my field, nor at least not primarily the desire to shape colorful pictures or plastic portraits or explain destinies, but some other, wonderful force drives me. It is a deep, ever-growing restlessness in my soul; it feels as if there is a being hidden in my chest that wants to know itself, to reach clarity and truth about itself, and before whom the work of my hands, the created work, is only a mirror in which it can look at its image and which makes it all the more satisfied and happier the more calmly and clearly it reflects around itself the image of its driven despair.
OLD:
This is the case with many poets today. That is why they are no longer able to deal with their inner world objectively enough.
YOUNG:
Once again, schoolmaster. Your reproach applies only to those who are not yet strong enough people, or strong enough artists (for I think it is the same thing), to satisfy that demon, that goblin, that restlessness of their being. The background of their mirror is not pure alloy. That is precisely what is new: man and the human soul are becoming more and more important, more noble, I might say more divine. All lived feelings are condensed inward, all tense knots concern only the heart or else they lack essence and are unfit for the poet to use. Why everything is so and how it has come to be, I do not feel myself calm enough and capable to explain, but that the situation is so is proved by thousands of signs. To coarse eyes and coarse senses, art shaped and created in such an atmosphere still seems shadowy, but in time they will learn to see and feel.
OLD:
All of that doesn't sound as new to me, and it doesn't surprise me as much as you seemed to assume. I think your somewhat excessive verbosity can be fully compensated for if we say that you have surrendered to the power of atmospheric art.
YOUNG:
And do you think you said something by it? Let it be. Yes, for me. If it reassures you that you know its name, — for me. With as good reason as it could be called the art of the heart, it could be called the art of the heart. And whoever surrenders himself to it, let him no longer draw a syllable on paper without his heart beating, otherwise he will be kicked out of the group of those invited. So do you think that whim or defiance or a vain desire to deceive guides the actions of our best men in their best moments? They are not stubborn, they are children of their time, they crystallize the longing and spiritual need of humanity.
OLD:
I would like to know something about you , to hear something about your uniqueness.
YOUNG:
I don't think I can do it. And what good would it do, when you doubt my skill, even if I told you: I want to create people whose souls are the purest and most sensitive instrument to be touched by the incomprehensible fingers of fate? — I mold into images my own fears, my own admiration, my own imaginations about life, God and death, I want to present beings who, under the weight of such feelings and when they breathe, react, resonating immediately and in many tones; in whom, combined with childish wonder, there is the rich experience of a wise observer and who wander in everyday clothes as we all wander, not knowing where, not knowing where. I want to make one a shadow, because his existence, his passions, his impulses and his actions are as incomprehensibly obscure and worthless to him and others as a shadow, while I want to elevate the other, who stands by, who wants nothing, gives nothing, is capable of nothing, means nothing, into a characteristic image. I do not want to depict the knotting of external life stages, but the turmoil of inner life feelings, I do not seek any glory by tying and untying the threads of fate. I would not like to create any thunder, but to depict the passage of a thunderstorm, the heat of a heavy day from premonitions, everything that goes before, that bears the cause and responsibility. I do not want to brag about great events, but I seek the small pain that in a thousand figures drags the soul towards ruin, and I want to lead all this to a great harmony in the end and unite the motives that have branched out in many directions into an infinite melody.
OLD:
The role model is not poorly chosen.
YOUNG:
I am surprised myself that at this turn of the discussion I have arrived on a very familiar path. And it is actually no coincidence. All contemporary art, if it asks to be something and gives us something, must in one way or another refer to the valuable name of Richard Wagner or be indirectly derivable from him. He himself and all of us, great and small, are members of the same body. Each has a part of the other. Only the one who denies is rejected. Let us learn to be devout and sincere.
OLD:
And once we grow old, let us not forget to die at the right time.
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