By Hanns Heinz Ewers 1914
(Deutsche Kreigslieder)
Translated by Joe E. Bandel
Copyright 2009 by Joe E. Bandel
Protected under United States Copyright Law as a derivative work of a foreign Author originally published prior to 1923
Conspicuous among the myriad of modern authors, were the men who, aside from originality of style and treatment might introduce a new and sudden element into the world of literature. It has always been the critic’s delight to predict the initiation of each new school of art. Naturally, not before it has been safely investigated and finally accepted by the public at large. Consequently my own misgiving in pointing out the evolution toward Hanns Heinz Ewers, is by no means diminutive.
That the culture of modern Germany presupposes the decadent and insinuates the perverse is a boresome truth. Philosophers state it. Scientists chronicle it. Religion cunningly denounces it. -But the artist, – the artist sings it.
We might have known, we might have expected. Did not Wedekind bulge upon us with eager portent? And did not — But let us consider. Undoubtedly E. T. A. Hoffmann and De Quincey, with the former thoughtfully sad and the latter sadly thoughtful. Then Poe with his melancholy utterance of the unutterable. Villiers, Beaudelaire, Wilde, — the brain aches, memory falters. What next? What –
Yes, of course, Ewers was expected. Not by reluctant critics but by a nation grown secure in attainment; by a people whose emotions craved the relief of expression, – a man to voice the scorching fervor of a fantasy, heavy with the past, rhythmic with the electric throb of the present. And behold! Not as mould came he but as the facile embodiment of an athletic aestheticism. Soldier, student, war correspondent, world traveler, sportsman, dandy, cynic, poet, Epicurean – these H. H. Ewers.
Such paradoxical elements find refuge also in his works. Of these, some entertain, some elevate, others frighten and repulse, and still others coax with the sweet subtle voice of a child. But all are firm with the will of their creator, all vibrate with a strange, healthy madness. You feel: Here is the soul of a great fearless animal, of a man at once tender and ferocious in passion. The new element is the daring of sex. – We cosmopolitans applaud.
Ewers has given us several volumes of short stories. The most significant of these books is perhaps “Das Grauen”. In it we find remote echoes of his intellectual ancestry but also a wealth of invention and promising delineation of character. That the fantastic moves not distant from the moon-struck is amply shown by the first story – “Tomato-sauce”. – One actually fears for the ultimate sanity of the writer! These short stories stand in almost perfect ratio to his greater works. In them are found that bizarre fusion which the grotesque implies and the exact analysis of psychological decay.
When Ewers published his first novel “Der Zauberlehrling”, the literary world gasped, – gasped and coughed. Here was a work whose tension was prolonged almost to a paralysis of the imagination, – a single vast crescendo in half-a-thousand pages! A strange book! A sinful book! A fascinating book! A book that made one feel guilty to have read, yet one whose final resolution might be a study in medical psychology. With this volume we believed the genius of Ewers forever culminated. Since it easily surpassed everything in the realm of the fantastic its own supremacy was unimpeachable.
I repeat – “The literary world gasped and coughed.” – Ewers smiled, – smiled, and wrote “Alraune”.
“The Mandrake” as it may be called in English, was destined to accord him the enthusiastic admiration of nearly all its reader. Not so dearly is the author taxed who gives his fantasy fantastic setting, as he who subjects a grotesque theme to the challenge of a milieu like Berlin. To place Poe’s “Mask of the Red Death” on a thronged thoroughfare of London, or to localize “Gulliver’s Travel’s”, that were the supreme task of the strenuous dreamer. The thesis of H. H. Ewers transcends improbability, yet here the phantasmagician fibres and inspires his subject by the sternest actualities of a great city.
The conception of the Alraune of Mandragora antedates Pythagoras. Nothing more motive to horror appears in Mythology, than this fable of the plant that shrieks when plucked. To combine this superstitious legend with the science of the twentieth century was Ewer’s ambition. By placing it in our own time he also creates a strange story of stranger passions and goads the human mind to interest in the working out of his huge metaphor.
Simultaneously with “Alraune”, Ewers’ book of travel “India and I”, appeared. Several years before, he had recorded his impressions of South America in a published volume, “With my own eyes –“ But that India could fulfill the promise of her out-stretched arms, her cushion-soft lips, her redolent body – That the swaying limbs of the dancers, and the scarlet pipings of the snake-charmers, the persistent undulation of temple gongs, the pulse of many voices, the dissonance of militating colors, the loathsome grin of satiated idols, the thousand unspeakable wonder, untold lusts — That these could be given new expression, new interpretation, we ever anticipated, and that Hanns Heinz could isolate out of these reeling cacophonies of life the essential, individual voices, we firmly believed.
The book is its own best criticism. Like most of its author’s work there streams from its pages the curious nervous glitter of the obsessed – unlike other books of travel whose sole raison d’etre is the competition with Baedecker, its covers enfold a novel and whimsical portrayal of the writer’s own personality, thru which, indeed, the entire subject-matter has been filtered.
The advantages of such domination of ego over theme find no better proof than in Ewers’ drama “The Miracle-girl of Berlin”. The action, which is historically will-nigh faultless, might easily fetter the creator’s imagination and in being true to life be false to the promptings of the artistic sensibilities. Although this is Ewers’ second play it reveals a startling master of stage-technique and a complete conquest of conversational style. That it is unique goes without saying. Yet here is no frantic stumbling after originality – favorite transit of dilletanti! – Ewers but pours into the ancient, jaded veins of art his own effervescing life-blood.
Out of a collaboration with Marc Henry, the Parisian poet, has sprung the Dramatic Poem, “Les Yeux Morts”. Upon the completion of Eugen D’Albert’s musical setting, it was cast for performance in most large European cities. But now its premiere may be expected at the Metropolitan.
What a supreme if not impossible task to appreciate the proper proportion of any new work to the collected manuscripts of art! And doubly difficult to adjust any recent reputation to the scale of immortality, yet, the utter potency of the works of Hanns Heinz Ewers banishes all doubt as to their ultimate fate. The rapid pyrotechny which characterized his inauguration as the accepted factor in modern German art bids fair to become a lasting flame. As long as the world finds more reality in the boundless regions of the fantastic than in reality itself the supreme fruits of his imagination will not perish. Religion although contra-balanced will further this psychological effect. After all, the wonders of the esoteric and the occult lie so deep-rooted in our spiritual natures that there must often steal to the lips of the philosopher the query: Is mind perhaps the only actuality, and imagination the only mind!
Our present age could well decry this statement were we not to possess Ewers. For unlike H. G. Wells or Jules Verne, he declines refuge in the all-promising future, or like H. Rider Haggard in the past. His the present, with its amazing rendezvous of conflicting attributes.
But enough! – This hosanna dangers between an elegy and an advertisement. Its only fault is its naïve sincerity and its single virtue the motives of propaganda. Let me hope for an equally naïve persuasibleness.
-Frederic H. Lopere
