The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/Prague Letter (Fischer)

by Otokar Fischer

PRAGUE LETTER

November, 1923

THERE is in Prague, especially in the Czech theatrical life, a brisk interaction between the domestic and the foreign. Held within narrow bounds for years, often nourished on outside influences, our theatre was as good as cut off from Europe during the world war; it now enters upon a new phase, and is minded to be not only a receiver, but also a giver, in the activities of modem art. The public at large knows the names of the highly gifted Capek brothers, who have also secured fitting attention from American audiences; further, people abroad are well aware that Prague has done much worth watching in the field of contemporary dramaturgy, and particularly in the most modern methods of stage management. Now, building upon the Prague reports which Mr P. Beaumont Wadsworth has furnished to readers of The Dial, it would be appropriate to project on a larger scale a picture of our present-day theatre and our aesthetic interests.

To epitomize the most recent developments of our theatre: just as October 28, 1918 (the day on which the American slogan of the self-determination of small peoples became an actuality for Czecho-Slovakia) is of decisive significance in the national and political life of the Czechs, similarly the date of this declaration of independence will also play an essential ré/e in the history of our artistic progress, and precisely in the sense that if we are not making an actual change of rôle, we have nevertheless increased our obligations and heightened our aims. Up to the end of the world war the latent content of Czech drama (which in this respect was quite similar to the Irish) was determined by the struggle for national independence; so that the concept of “nation,” the dream of a future state, could be utilized as leading character or principal theme to reconcile the requirements of national consciousness with the Bohemian’s deeply-rooted humanitarian impulses. But with the fulfilment of a dream hundreds of years old, with the realization of our constitutional projects, new and greater demands have been placed upon the national life and, above all, on its parallel in the art of words and the drama. With the result that we see the Czech theatre of most recent years endeavouring to illuminate and evaluate the new cultural factor of the mother country’s inclusion in the list of Europe’s national entities, and at the same time to bring some kind of synthetic and dramatic formula to bear on the chaos of the post-war period. And besides realistic or semi-lyric and satiric attempts to put on the stage the life of the Siberian legions or the fall of the Austrian military power, or the hopes and perils of the liberated home-land, the signature of the times was to be seen in the fact that national problems had been displaced by social ones. The real dramatis personae was no longer the Czech people, but contemporary society; not simply the fashions of Europe, but Europe itself ; not the nation, but the world and humanity.

This found its expression also in the selection of the foreign repertoire, in which field there was precisely as much love of experiment, as the term “experiment” can ordinarily be applied to designate the most daring and successful enterprises of our theatre. Verhaerens’ social tragedy, Les Aubes (never produced before except in Russia) and Kraszynski’s Godless Comedy (never played except in Poland, the country of origin) distinguished the repertoire of the daring stage-manager, K. H. Hilar; Romain Rolland’s historical dramas, revolutionary pieces by Büchner and others, Galsworthy’s humanitarian plays, attempts at a new style in the stage management of crowds, were outstanding symptoms in the last four or five seasons; and especially we must consider the efforts which were made here to find some new type of social tragedy or comedy. There was, for instance, the broadly limned Hussite tragedy by Arno Dvorak, in which the intention was to give not merely a chronicle-like chain of events, but neither more nor less than a ‘“tragedy of the people.” (Incidentally, the conception proved to be more powerful than the execution.) Then a young expressionist, Jan Bartos, came forward with caricatures of modern society. Then the ideologist Stanislav Lom attempted to express in a simplified version the development of the state or the struggles of the race. Then the leader of the younger generation, F. K. Salda, wrote a tragedy, The Hosts, and followed this with a play on the theme of the eternal revolution in life and customs. Further, there is ferment in the sphere of Moravian literature. The passion for style is evident in Leo Blatny and others; while Gungen and Jängsters show a predilection for treating in the drama not merely this or that individual, but some entire collectivity, a class, a people, a period. Up to now this tendency has been realized most effectively by Karel Capek who followed an intimate comedy of love with his high-powered and gripping Robot tragedy, and then in collaboration with his brother Josef, who has attempted the collective drama in his Land of Many Names, wrote the well-known comedy of the insect world.

Yet in spite of the great emphasis on social and socialistic problems, the opposite pole, the traditional drama of strongly pronounced individualism, has not been abandoned. The protagonist of modern drama in Bohemia, Jaroslav Hilbert, who composed among other things a drama of discovery called Columbus, was and still remains individualistic. Individualistic, or even aristocratic and decadent, are the themes and analyses of Jaroslav Maria and others. Also, the cult of the strong relentless personality which aspires to the superman of Nietzsche is defended by Frantirck Zavriel in his dramas of contemporary life. The contrasting elements of this age are most intensely sharpened in our theatrical life: for instance the battle which is now facing our public as to whether a pessimistic and violently antisocialistic play should or should not be presented on the stage of the national theatre. The dramatist and politician Viktor Dyk is distinguished by a keen national-mindedness; we should also mention the national dramas of Jir Mahen and the dramatized histories of the old master of historical fiction, Alois Jirasek.

Somewhat aside from the hot battle of ideas and parties, there is a list of theatrically effective plays which have as their subject the eternally recurring song of the human heart: here dramatists like Frantirck Langer and Frana Sramek should be named—but these authors also have given evidence by their previous works how closely their products touch on the vital nerve of our times, and how much our theatre is linked with the general experiences of present (and future) Europe. Bohemia has often been spoken of as the “heart of Europe”; and in this “heart” there is one point which reacts as intensively as possible to the vacillations and hopes of the times. In this middle country (but not middling, let us hope!) there is a kind of sun dial on which the position of the world’s sun can be read. This fine and delicately sensitive instrument is the complicated adjustment of our theatre. A survey of our actors (in whose ranks a painful gap has been made by the death of the great mime, Eduard Vojan); a review of our leading stage directors; an examination of the prospective foreign plays in the newly announced repertoires—all this should provide further testimony for our basic assertion that there is a brisk interaction between the domestic and the foreign.

In our foreign repertoire during the last season (to speak at present only of Anglo-Saxon literature) we have gone back to Marlowe’s Edward II, and attempted to recover Shelly’s Cenci; now Beaumont and Fletcher (Wit Without Money) and Byron (on the occasion of his centennial) are to be produced—not to mention the achievements of contemporary England and America, among which we expect much of O’Neill’s first appearance here (Emperor Jones or The Hairy Ape). Incidentally, Mr C. E. Bechhofer, who introduced the American dramatist in England, is also well acquainted with the Czech theatre. But the extent and the height of the aspirations of the local stage are best indicated by the manner in which the Czech theatres cling to Shakespeare, who always remains with us the most popular dramatist, and is part of the steady repertoire not only of the leading stages, but also of the smaller ones. Jaroslav Kvapil still is the most convincing interpreter of Shakespeare. In the year 1916 he undertook a vast Shakespeare cycle, which he is now supplementing by the production of several rarely-played pieces. In addition to Cymbeline, he has had an especially remarkable success with Troilus and Cressida. Also, he is preparing for a kind of revival of his former Shakespeare productions. A pupil and successor of the Munich Künstlertheater, allied with the dramaturgy of Eugen Kilian and the stage-directing of Reinhardt, Kvapil has his artistic counterpart in Karel H. Hilar who, previously connected with Jessner in Berlin, has also attempted in staging Shakespeare to apply the principles of expressionistic stagecraft, and in this way has presented Coriolanus and The Tempest, and recently also As You Like It, although without taking the position of his “senior’’ rival. The rivalry of these two stage-directors displays a good part of Prague’s theatrical life: Kvapil’s tasteful harmony in lights, lines, and tones—Hilar’s self-willed storming and stressing; Kvapil’s finely shaded lyricism—Hilar’s dynamic theatrics which calls for works by Grabbe or Hebbel, but also knows how to bring out new qualities in French classicism (Molière or Corneille’s Le Cid); in Kvapil the danger of the sweetly and trivially idyllic—in Hilar the danger of a noisy, angular mannerism; in Kvapil a flood of tried and delicate traditions—in Hilar, in spite of all crudenesses, a glimpse into the future, a will to stride forward into a still unknown and barely guessed-at territory.

We stand on the threshhold of a new theatrical season, and for the time being we can enjoy a production of Lysistrata which has been put on with modest means, but much industry. We are standing, it is to be hoped, before new expressions of a fruitful competitive battle between collectivism and belief in the personality, between tradition and modernity, between the purport of ideas and the problems of form. In all these points the Czech theatrical life touches on tendencies which are to be observed in the other spheres of our literature: in criticism, the lyric, and the novel.

 

The present state of lyric poetry is interesting and is probably also nearing a crisis. The sensualist and erotic, the ideological poet of cosmopolitan schooling, the extensive translator, Jaroslav Urchlicky, has left his disciples as a most valuable legacy the instrument of a richly resounding poetic language. The lyric masters of the generation of the Nineties, Otakar Brèfina and Antonia Sova, have admitted Czech poetry to new depths, have extended its scope to social problems and mystical insight. Among the younger contemporary lyric artists, a numerous group is gathered about the former anarchist and present champion of communistic ideas, Stanislav K. Neumann, who is unfolding a programme of so-called “civilized” poetry, and in a free rhythm that often verges close on to prose sings the facts of ordinary life: the humming of telegraph wires, the swinging and churning of factory machines, but also his collectivistic expectations, and his violent love-hunger. Otakar Theer, who died young, and who was another theorizer and practitioner of vers libre, made the lyric serve for ethical problems. Yet in a succession of first books, among which the intimate and social ballads of Jiri Wolker are especially prominent, a turn away from individualistic ethics and national ideals is noticeable: the culmination of the social tendency is not marked by this or that adventurous débutant, but by the ripe and logical thinker, Josef Hora.

Sharply opposed to him is a writer already named as a dramatist, Viktor Dyk, with his epigrammatically pointed comments and broadsides, his lyrically felt and national-minded marginal notes to current politics, his laconic yet deeply romantic emotionalism. Rudolf Medek has secured a reputation as a crier in the battle, as a poet of soldier songs, and now of love songs. The paradoxically tragic situation of the people in the midst of the world war has been expressed most strikingly by the richly tuned writer of elegies, Karel Toman, and the author of simple nature lyrics, Petr Kricka; while Frana Sramek, who was also touched on in the paragraphs on the theatre, has, by his delicately perfumed impressionistic variations on the themes of love and youth, secured for himself an all too unstinting adherence and discipleship among the present generation of lyrists.

In the lyric too there is seething and ferment. Here also strenuous trials and experiments are being made; the search prevails for a new form to fit a new life content, or for some way of adapting the traditional rigid song form, with its musical inspiration and its strophic arrangement, to the powerful content which is continually rising about us, but which comes even more persistently from the depths of the inner life, crying for expression and bidding fair to enrich not only the national culture, but the culture of Europe as well.

Otokar Fischer