Part 1 (2/2)
Again history and the judgment of the world moved forward. The ”Rosy Death” had decomposed and poisoned all the healthful juices of society and corrupted the very heart of the human race--morality, faith, and philosophy, everything which makes men manly, had gradually perished un.o.bserved in the thoughtless whirl. The tinsel and apish civilisation no longer sufficed to conceal the brute in human nature. It shook off every veil and stood forth in all its nakedness. The modern deluge, the French Revolution burst forth. Murder, anarchy, the delirium of fever swept over the earth in every form of horror.
Again came a change, a transformation to the lowest depths of corruption. Grace now yielded to brutality, beauty to ugliness, the divine to the cynical. Altars were overthrown, religion was abjured, the earth trembled under the ma.s.s of destroyed traditions.
But from the turmoil of the throng, fiercely rending one another, from the smoke and exhalations of this conflagration of the world, yonder in the German Garden of Gethsemane again rose victoriously, like a Ph[oe]nix from its ashes, the denied, rejected G.o.d, and the undefiled sun of Ammergau wove a halo of glory around the sublime figure which hung high on the cross.
It was a quiet, victory, of which the frantic mob were ignorant; for they saw only the foe confronting them, not the one battling above. The latter was vanquished long ago, He was deposed, and that settled the matter. The people in their sovereignty can depose and set up G.o.ds at pleasure, and when once dethroned, they no longer exist; they are hurled into Tartarus. And as men can not do without a G.o.d, they create an idol.
The country groaned beneath the iron stride of the Emperor and, without wis.h.i.+ng or knowing it, he became the avenger of the G.o.d in whose place he stood. For, as the Thirty Years War ended under the scourge of the pestilence, and the age of mirth and gallantry under the lash of the Revolution, the Revolution yielded to the third scourge, the self-created idol!
He, the man with compressed lips and brow sombre with thought, ruled the unchained elements, became lord of the anarchy, and dictated laws to a universe. But with iron finger he tore open the veins of humanity to mark upon the race the brand of slavery. The world bled from a thousand wounds, and upon each he marked the name ”Napoleon.”
Then, wan as the moon floats in the sky when the glow of the setting sun is blazing in the horizon, the sovereign of the world in his b.l.o.o.d.y splendor confronted the pallid shadow of the Crucified One, also robed in a royal mantle, still wet with the blood He had voluntarily shed.
They gazed silently at each other--but the usurper turned pale.
At last, at the moment he imagined himself most like Him, G.o.d hurled the rival G.o.d into the deepest misery and disgrace. The enemy of the world was conquered, and popular hatred, so long repressed, at last freed from the unbearable restraint, poured forth upon the lonely grave at St. Helena its foam of execration and curses. Then the conqueror in Oberammergau extended His arms in pardon, saying to him also: ”Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
A time of peace now dawned, the century of _thought_. After the great exertions of the war of liberation, a truce in political life followed, and the nations used it to make up for what they had lost in the development of civilization during the period of political strife. A flood of ideas inundated the world. All talent, rejoicing in the mental activity which had so long lain dormant, was astir. There was rivalry and conflict for the prize in every department. The rising generation, conscious of newly awakening powers, dared enterprise after enterprise and with each waxed greater. With increasing production, the power of a.s.similation also increased. Everything grand created in other centuries was drawn into the circle of their own nation as if just discovered. That for which the enlightened minds of earlier days had vainly toiled, striven, bled, now bloomed in luxuriant harvests, and the century erected monuments to those who had been misjudged and adorned them with the harvest garland garnered from the seeds which they had sowed in tears.
What Galvani and Salomon de Caus, misunderstood and unheard, had planned, now made their triumphal pa.s.sage across the earth as a panting steam engine or a flas.h.i.+ng messenger of light, borne by and bearing ideas.
The century which produced a Schiller and a Goethe first understood a Shakespeare, Sophocles and Euripides rose from the graves where they had lain more than a thousand years, archaeology brought the buried world of Homer from beneath the earth, a Canova, a Thorwaldsen, a Cornelius, Kaulbach, and all the great masters of the Renaissance of our time, took up the brushes and chisels of Phidias, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens, which had so long lain idle. What Aristotle had taught a thousand, and Winckelmann and Lessing a hundred years before, the knowledge of the laws of art, the appreciation of the beautiful, was no longer mere dead capital in the hands of learned men, but circulated in the throbbing veins of a vigorously developing civilization; it demanded and obtained the highest goal.
The circle between the old and the new civilization has closed, every chasm has been bridged. There is an alternate action of old and new forces, a common labor of all the nations and the ages, as if there was no longer any division of time and s.p.a.ce, as if there was but one eternal art, one eternal science. Ascending humanity has trodden matter under foot, conquered science, made manufactures useful, and transfigured art.
But this light which has so suddenly flamed through the world also casts its shadows. Progress in art and science matures the judgment, but judgment becomes criticism and criticism negation. The dualism which permeates all creation, the creative and the destructive power, the principle of affirmation and of denial, cannot be shut out even now, but must continue the old contest which has never yet been decided. Critical a.n.a.lysis opposes faith, materialism wars against idealism, pessimism contends with optimism. The human race has reached the outermost limit of knowledge, but this does not content it in its victorious career, it wishes to break through and discover _the G.o.d_ concealed behind. Even the heart of a G.o.d must not escape the scalpel which nothing withstood. But the barrier is impenetrable. And one party, weary of the fruitless toil, pulls back the aspiring ones.
”Down to matter, whence you came. What are you seeking? Science has attained the highest goal, she has discovered the protoplasm whence all organism proceeded. What is the Creator of modern times? A physiological--chemical, vital function within the substance of a cell.
Will ye pray to this, suffer for this, ye fools?”
Others turn in loathing from this cynical interpretation of scientific results and throw themselves into the arms of beauty, seeking in it the divinity, and others still wait, battling between earth and heaven, in the dim belief of being nearest to the goal.
It is a tremendous struggle, as though the earth must burst under the enormous pressure of power demanding room, irreconcilable contrasts.
Then amid the heat of the lecture rooms, the throng of students of art and science, comes a long-forgotten voice from the days of our childhood! And the straining eyes suddenly turn from the teachers and the dissecting tables, from the glittering visions of art and the material world to the stage of Oberammergau and the Pa.s.sion Play.
There stands the una.s.suming figure with the crown of thorns and the sorrowful, questioning gaze. And with one accord their hearts rush to meet Him and, as the son who has grown rich in foreign lands, after having eaten and enjoyed everything, longs to return to the poverty of his home and falls repentantly at the feet of his forsaken father, the human race, in the midst of this intoxication of knowledge and pleasure, sinks sobbing before the pale flower of Christianity and longingly extends its arms toward the rude wooden cross on which it blooms!
That powerful thinker, Max Muller, says in his comparative study of religions:[1] ”When do we feel the blessings of our country more warmly and truly than when we return from abroad? It is the same with regard to religion.” That fact is apparent here! It is an indisputable verity that, at the precise period when art and science have attained their highest stages of development, the Oberammergau Pa.s.sion Play enjoys a degree of appreciation never bestowed before, that during this critical age, from decade to decade, people flock to the Pa.s.sion Play in ever increasing throngs. Not only the uncultivated and ignorant, nay, the most cultured--artists and scholars, statesmen and monarchs. The poor village no longer has room to shelter all its guests; it is positively startling to see the flood of human beings pour in on the evening before the commencement of the play, stifling, inundating everything.
And then it is marvellous to notice how quiet it is on the morning of the play, as it flows into the bare room called the theatre, how it seems as it were to grow calm, as if every storm within or without was subdued under the influence of those simple words, now more than two thousand years old. How wonderful it is to watch the people fairly holding their breath to listen to the simple drama for seven long hours without heeding the time which is far beyond the limit our easily wearied nerves are accustomed to bear.
What is it, for whose sake the highest as well as the lowest, the richest and the poorest, prince and peasant, would sleep on a layer of straw, without a murmur, if no bed could be had? Why will the most pampered endure hunger and thirst, the most delicate heat and cold, the most timid fearlessly undertake the hard journey across the Ettal mountain? Is it mere curiosity to hear a number of poor wood-carvers, peasants, and wood-cutters repeat under the open sky, exposed to sun and rain, in worse German than is heard at school the same old story which has already been told a thousand times, as the enemies of the Pa.s.sion Play say? Would this bring people every ten years from half the inhabited world, from far and near, from South and North, from the mountains and the valleys, from palaces and huts, across sea and land?
Certainly not? What is it then? A miracle?
Whoever has seen the Pa.s.sion Play understands it, but it is difficult to explain the mystery to those who have not.
The deity remains concealed from our earthly vision and unattainable, like the veiled statue of Sais. Every attempt to raise this veil by force is terribly avenged.
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