s a world by coiling round it. I
should like to analyze the novel more in detail, but am glad that the
limits of my essay, or rather the patience of my readers and auditors,
do not permit me to do so; for the members of the society will thus feel
prompted the sooner to acquaint and familiarize themselves with the
works of Heinrich von Kleist, if they have not already done so.

While hastening on to the close, I must, in accordance with the
introduction to this essay, call attention to the fact that Kleist, no
less than Koerner, did not leave unheeded the claims that his country
properly made upon him in the portentous age in which he lived. In his
breast, as in that of his contemporaries, there glowed the flame of
enthusiasm for the honor and freedom of his people; and the oppression
that they endured, the internal and external slavery in which he beheld
them sunk, placed the pistol in his hand. I mention this because it has
been imputed to the poet Koerner as a great merit that he was at the same
time a martyr. But Kleist could behold his country unworthily treated
without for that reason having unworthy thoughts of the man who was
treading it in the dust; he was great enough to be able to forgive
Napoleon the pain which he could not endure. He wrote no war-songs for
patriotic journeymen-tailors and high-minded counter-jumpers, but he
described Hermann's Battle and the battle of Fehrbellin; he called the
dead to life in order to arouse the living.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: The extracts from _The Prince of Homburg_ are taken from
Mr. Hagedorn's translation, Volume IV of THE GERMAN CLASSICS.]

LUDOLF WIENBARG'S "THE DRAMATISTS OF
THE PRESENT DAY"

A REVIEW (1839)

By FRIEDRICH HEBBEL

TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING

It is probable that no German who is able to appreciate the power of the
theatre, its silent influence on the people, and the consequent reaction
on the development of dramatic talent, has looked on indifferently at
the decay and complete ruin of our stage. The drama of a nation,
conceived in a worthy sense, represents that nation in its
self-consciousness; it is the burning-mirror which receives the separate
rays of the nation's innermost being while passing history is enticing
them out of the depths, which condenses and concentrates them and thus
kindles one century by means of another, and calls to life one glorious
deed by means of another. Tragedy represents a people in its relation to