The World of Yesterday (21 page)

Now my path lay open before me. I had begun to publish my work at an almost indecently early age, but privately I was convinced that at the age of twenty-six I had not yet written any real works of literature. Mingling with the best creative artists of the time as a friend had been the great achievement of my youth, but curiously enough that stood in the way of my own creativity. I had learnt to understand genuine values too well; it made me hesitant. Thanks to this timidity, all I had published so far, apart from translations, was confined, with cautious economy, to small-scale works such as novellas and poems. It was a long time before I found the courage to begin a novel (another thirty years, in fact). My initial venture into a genre on a larger scale was with drama, and after my very first attempt
many good omens tempted me to pursue it. I had written a play in the summer of 1905 or 1906—in the style of the time it was, of course, a verse drama in the classical manner. It was called
Thersites
, and the fact that—as with almost everything I wrote before I was thirty-three—I have never had it reprinted renders it superfluous for me to give my present opinion of this play. Only its form was any good. All the same, the play did indicate a certain personal tendency of mine never to take the side of the supposed ‘heroes’ of my works, seeing the tragedy of the losers instead. I am always most attracted to the character who is struck down by fate in my novellas, and in my biographies it is those who are morally right but never achieve success who appeal to me—Erasmus and not Luther, Mary Stuart and not Elizabeth, Castellio
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and not Calvin. Even in that early place I took not Achilles as my heroic character but the most insignificant of his opponents, Thersites—the man who suffers, not the man whose strength and sure aim inflict suffering. I did not show the play to any actors when I had finished it, not even those who were friends of mine; I knew the world well enough to be aware that dramas in blank verse and performed in ancient Greek costume, even if written by Sophocles or Shakespeare, are not calculated to be a big box-office success. For form’s sake I sent a few copies to the large theatres, and then forgot the whole thing entirely.

Imagine my surprise, then, when a letter arrived for me some three months later, in an envelope bearing the imprint ‘Royal Berlin Theatre’. Why on earth, I thought, was the Prussian state theatre writing to me? Again to my surprise, the director Ludwig Barnay, formerly one of our greatest actors, wrote to say that my play had made a great impression on him, and it was particularly welcome because in Achilles he had found the right part for Adalbert Matkowsky, something he had long been searching for. He would be glad, he said, if I would let the Royal Theatre in Berlin put on the first production.

I was delighted, but almost frightened. The German-speaking countries had two great actors at the time, Adalbert Matkowsky and Josef Kainz. The former, a North German, was unsurpassed in the elemental force of his nature, projecting passion that enraptured audiences—the latter, our own Josef Kainz in Vienna, delighted them with his fine intellect, his perfect diction, his mastery of both soaring eloquence and a harsher, more metallic tone. And now Matkowsky was going to bring my character to life, speak my verse, the most highly regarded theatre in the capital of the German Reich was to stand sponsor to my play—a wonderful career as a dramatist seemed to open up before me, although I had never thought of such a thing before.

Since then, however, I have learnt never to look forward expectantly to a performance until the curtain actually rises. The rehearsals did indeed begin, one following another, and friends assured me that Matkowsky had never been better or more virile than when he spoke my verse at these rehearsals. I had already booked a train ticket in a sleeping car to Berlin when, at the last moment, a telegram arrived—the premiere was postponed because Matkowsky had fallen ill. I thought it was just an excuse, which is usually the case in the theatre when an engagement or a promise cannot be met. But a week later the papers published the news of Matkowsky’s death. My verses had been the last to pass his wonderfully eloquent lips.

So that’s that, I said to myself. All over. It was true that now two other court theatres of distinction, in Dresden and Kassel, wanted the play, but my own interest had waned. I couldn’t imagine anyone but Matkowsky playing Achilles. Then, however, an even more astonishing piece of news arrived; a friend woke me one morning saying that he was there on behalf of Josef Kainz, who happened to have come upon the play and saw a part for himself in it—not Achilles, the role that Matkowsky had been going to take, but the tragic role of his adversary Thersites.
Kainz was going to get in touch with the Burgtheater at once, he said. Schlenther, the director of the theatre, had come there from Berlin as a pioneer of contemporary realism, and to the considerable annoyance of the Viennese was managing the theatre on those lines. He wrote to me at once, saying that he could see the interest of my drama, but unfortunately there was no likelihood of lasting success after the premiere.

That’s that, I said to myself again, doubtful as I had always been of myself and my literary work. Kainz, however, felt bitter about it. He invited me to visit him at once, and for the first time I saw before me the idol of my youth. We schoolboys would happily have kissed his hands and feet. His figure was lithe, his intellectual face still animated by fine dark eyes in his fiftieth year. It was a pleasure to hear him speak. Even in private conversation, he articulated every word clearly, every consonant was sharply pronounced, every vowel full and clear; there are many poems that, if I ever heard him recite them, I cannot read now without recalling the incantatory power of his voice, its perfect rhythm, its heroic and sweeping range. I have never again taken such pleasure in the sound of the German language. And lo and behold, this man, whom I revered like a god, was actually apologising to me, young as I was, because he had not managed to persuade the theatre to put on my play. However, he assured me, we would not lose sight of each other now. In fact he had a favour to ask me—I almost smiled to think of Kainz asking me a favour!—and this was it: he was giving a great many guest performances these days, he said, and had two one-act plays for the purpose. He could do with a third, and what he had in mind was a small piece, preferably in verse, and if possible with one of those lyrical cascades of words that he—alone in the world of the German theatre—thanks to his magnificent elocution and breath control, could deliver like a crystalline waterfall of sound falling on a large audience that held its own breath as it listened. Could I write him a one-acter like that, he asked.

I promised to try. And as Goethe said, poetry sometimes lets the will command it—I sketched out a one-act play entitled
Der verwandelte Komödiant
—The Actor Transformed—a light, rococo piece with two big lyrical and dramatic monologues built into it. Instinctively, I had gone along with precisely what Kainz wanted by feeling my way into his mind and even his manner of speech with all the passion of which I was capable, and this occasional piece was one of those lucky chances that only enthusiasm can create, not mere dexterity. After three weeks I was able to show Kainz the half-finished sketch with one of the aria-like monologues already incorporated. Kainz was genuinely enthusiastic. He immediately recited that cascading monologue from the manuscript twice, the second time with unforgettable perfection. Visibly impatient, he asked how much longer I would need. A month, I said. Excellent! That would suit him very well! He was going away now for several weeks on tour in Germany, and when he came back the rehearsals for this play, to be staged at the Burgtheater, must begin at once. And then, he promised me, wherever he travelled he would take it with him in his repertory; it fitted him like a glove. “Like a glove!” He kept repeating the phrase, shaking hands with me warmly three times.

Obviously he had imposed his will on the Burgtheater before he went away, because the director in person telephoned me asking to see the one-act play, even though it was still in draft form, and he accepted it at once in advance. The supporting parts had already been sent to the theatre’s actors for reading. Once again I seemed to have won the highest prize without staking anything much on it—a work of mine was to be produced at the Burgtheater, the pride of our city, and what was more, the man who shared with Eleonora Duse the reputation of being the greatest actor of the time was to appear in it at that same theatre. It was almost too much for a beginner. There was only one danger left—suppose Kainz changed his mind
about the play when it was finished? But that was very unlikely! The impatience was all on my side now. At last I read in the newspaper that Josef Kainz had come back from touring. Out of civility, I waited two days so as not pester him the moment he had arrived. But on the third day I summoned up my courage, went to the Hotel Sacher, where Kainz was staying, and handed my card to the old clerk at the reception desk, whom I knew well. “For Herr Kainz, the actor at the court theatre!” I said. The old man looked at me over the top of his pince-nez in surprise. “Oh, don’t you know, Doctor?” No, I knew nothing. “They took him away to the sanatorium this morning.” This was the first I had heard of it—Kainz had come back severely ill from his tour in Germany, where he had performed his great roles for the last time, heroically overcoming terrible pain in front of audiences that had no idea of it. Next day he had an operation for cancer. Reading the bulletins in the newspaper, we still dared to hope he would recover, and I visited him. He lay there looking exhausted and emaciated, the dark eyes in his gaunt face looking even larger than usual, and I was horrified. For the first time, a moustache as grey as ice showed above the eternally young lips that spoke so eloquently. I was looking at an old man on his deathbed. He gave me a melancholy smile. “Will the good Lord allow me to act our play? That might yet cure me.” But a few weeks later we were standing beside his coffin.

My uneasiness about persisting in the dramatic vein will be easily understood, and so will the anxiety I now felt as soon as I had delivered a new play to a theatre. I am not ashamed to say that the deaths of the two greatest actors in the German-speaking countries, when the last parts they had been rehearsing were written by me, made me superstitious. It was not until a few years later that I could bring myself to try writing another dramatic work, and when the new artistic director of the
Burgtheater, Alfred Baron Berger, an eminent man of the theatre and a master of eloquent oratory himself, immediately accepted my play I looked almost anxiously at the list of actors he had selected. Paradoxically, I breathed a sigh of relief: “Thank God, no famous name among them!” There was no one to be the victim of disaster. Yet the improbable happened all the same; close one door to misfortune and it will come in by another. I had been thinking only of the actors, not the director of the play. Berger was planning to direct my tragedy
Das Haus am Meer
—The House by the Sea—himself, and had already been working on the prompt copy. Sure enough, fourteen days before the first rehearsals were to begin he died. So it seemed that the curse on my dramatic works was still in force. Even when my
Jeremiah
and
Volpone
were staged in many different languages after the Great War, more than a decade later, I did not feel secure. And in 1931 I deliberately acted against my own interests when I had finished a new play,
Das Lamm des Armen
—The Poor Man’s Ewe Lamb. I had sent it to my friend Alexander Moissi, and I received a telegram from him asking me to reserve the lead part in the first production for him. Moissi, who had brought with him from his native Italy a feeling for sensuous, melodious language previously unknown on the German stage, was the sole successor to Josef Kainz’s crown at this time. A man of captivating appearance, clever, lively, and in addition kindly and inspiring, he imbued every play with some of his personal magic; I could not have wished for a better actor in the part. All the same, when he put the proposition to me, I remembered Matkowsky and Kainz, and made an excuse for declining Moissi’s request without telling him the real reason. I knew that he had inherited the ring known as the Iffland
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ring from Kainz; it was always passed on by the greatest German actor of his time to his greatest successor. Was he to inherit Kainz’s fate as well? I for one did not want to bring disaster down on the greatest German actor of the day for the third time. So out of superstition and friendship, I sacrificed
what would almost certainly have been an ideal performance of my play. Yet although I would not let him take the part, and although I wrote no more plays after that, even this sacrifice of mine could not protect him. I was still, through no fault of my own, to be involved in bringing misfortune on others.

I realise that at this point I shall be suspected of telling a ghost story. Matkowsky and Kainz can be explained away as mere coincidence. But what about Moissi after them, when I had not let him take the part he wanted and I had not written any more plays? It happened like this: years later—I am anticipating events here—in the summer of 1935, I was in Zurich, with no idea of any looming threat, when I suddenly had a telegram from Alexander Moissi in Milan. He said he was coming to Zurich that evening on purpose to see me, and he asked me to be sure to meet him at the railway station. Strange, I thought, what could be so urgent? I had no new play, and had felt no great interest in the theatre for years. But of course I happily went to meet him; I loved that warm-hearted man like a brother. He got out of his carriage and rushed towards me; we embraced in the Italian way, and even in the car driving away from the station he was pouring out, with his usual wonderful verve, the gist of what I could do for him. He had a favour to ask me, a great favour, he said. Pirandello had honoured him by giving him rights for the first production of his new play,
Non si sa mai
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. This was to be not just the Italian premiere but the world premiere—and it was to be in Vienna and performed in German. This was the first time, said Moissi, that such an Italian master had given precedence to a foreign country for the premiere of one of his works. He had never even brought himself to allow a world premiere in Paris. And Pirandello, fearing that the musicality and nuances of his prose might be lost in translation, had one wish very much at heart; he did not want just any translator to produce the German
version of his play, he had long admired my linguistic skill and would very much like me to do it. Pirandello had of course had scruples about wasting my time on translations, and so, said Moissi, he had taken it upon himself to deliver the playwright’s request. In fact at this time I had done no translation for years. But I revered Pirandello, whom I had met on several pleasant occasions, too much to disappoint him, and most of all I was delighted to be able to give such a close friend as Moissi proof of my comradely feeling. I dropped my own work for one or two weeks, and a few weeks after that Pirandello’s play had its international premiere in Vienna, in my translation. The political background of the time meant that it was to be staged on a particularly grand scale. Pirandello had said that he would come in person, and since Mussolini was still regarded as the friend of Austria that he declared himself to be, members of many official circles, headed by the Chancellor, had said they would attend. The evening was to be a political demonstration of Austro-Italian friendship (in reality, it marked Austria’s new status as an Italian protectorate).