, not excepting the most valuable of all, personal
experience. The sinister shadow cast by Ibsen fell across the
shoulders of the young poet, and he has read Max Stirner and Nietzsche
not wisely, but too well. He is as frank as Walt Whitman (and as
shameless) concerning the mysteries of life, and as healthy (and as
coarse) as Rabelais. Furthermore, Strindberg played a marked role in
his artistic development. Without the hopeless misogyny of the Swede,
without his pessimism, Wedekind is quite as drastic. And the realism
of the Antoine Theatre should not be omitted.

He exhibits in his menagerie of types--many of them new in the
theatre--a striking collection of wild animals. In the prologue to one
of his plays he tells his audience that to Wedekind must they come if
they wish to see genuine wild and beautiful beasts. This sounds like
Stirner. He lays much stress on the fact that literature, whether
poetic or otherwise, has become too "literary"--hardly a novel idea;
and boasts that none of his characters has read a book. The curse of
modern life is the multiplication of books. Very true, and yet I find
that Wedekind is "literary," that he could exclaim with Stephan
Mallarme: "La chair est triste, helas! et j'ai lu tous les livres."

Regarding the modern stage he is also positive. He believes that for
the last twenty years dramatic literature is filled with half-humans,
men who are not fit for fatherhood, women who would escape the burden
of bearing children because of their superior culture. This is called
"a problem play," the hero or heroine of which commits suicide at the
end of the fifth act to the great delight of neurotic, dissatisfied
ladies and hysterical men. Weak wills--in either sex--have been the
trump card of the latter-day dramatist; not a sound man or woman who
isn't at the same time stupid, can be found in the plays of Ibsen or
Hauptmann or the rest. Wedekind mentions no names, but he tweaks
several noses prominent in dramatic literature.

He is the younger generation kicking in the panels of the doors in
the old houses. There is a hellish racket for a while, and then when
the dust clears away you discern the revolutionist calmly ensconced in
the seats of the bygone mighty and passionately preaching from the
open window his version of New Life; he is become reformer himself and
would save a perishing race--spiritually speaking--from damnation by
the gospel of beauty, by shattering the shackles of love--