Hebbel / Ludwig Works of Hebbel and Ludwig

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-9222-3
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 362 Seiten

This collection includes works by Hebbel and Ludwig. The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 9, edited by Kuno Francke.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hebbel, Friedrich

Ludwig, Otto

Leseproben

MARIA MAGDALENA
   DRAMATIS PERSONAE   Master ANTONY, a joiner   His Wife   CLARA, his daughter   CARL, his son   LEONARD   A Secretary WOLFRAM, a merchant   ADAM, a bailiff   Another bailiff   A Boy   A Maid   Place. A fair-sized town   MARIA MAGDALENA (1844)   TRANSLATED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS   ACT I   A Room in the Joiner's House.   SCENE I   Enter CLARA; the MOTHER.   CLARA.   Your wedding dress? Oh, how well it becomes you! It looks as if it had been made today!   MOTHER.   Yes, child, fashion keeps on going forward until it can go no farther and has to turn around and go back. This dress has already been out of style and in again ten times.   CLARA.   But this time it is not exactly in style, dear mother! The sleeves are too wide! It must not annoy you!   MOTHER (smiling).   I should have to be you for that! CLARA.   And so this is the way you looked! But surely you carried a bunch of flowers too, didn't you?   MOTHER.   I should hope so! Else why do you think I nursed that sprig of myrtle in the pot for so many years?   CLARA.   I have often asked you to, but you have never before put it on. You have always said: It is no longer my wedding dress; it is my shroud now, and that is something one should not play with. I got so that I couldn't even look at it any more, because, hanging there so white, it always made me think of your death, and of the day when the old women would try to pull it on over your head. Why then today?   MOTHER.   When one is very sick, as I was, and does not know whether one is going to get well again or not, a great many things revolve in one's head. Death is more terrible than you think--oh, it is awful! It casts a shadow over the world; one after the other it blows out all the lights that shine with such cheerful brightness all around us, the kindly eyes of husband and children cease to sparkle, and it grows dark everywhere. But deep in the heart it strikes a light, which burns brightly and reveals a great deal one does not care to see. I am not conscious of ever having done a wrong; I have walked in God's ways, I have done my best about the home, I have brought you and your brother up to fear God, and I have kept together the fruits of your father's hard work. I have always managed to lay aside an extra penny for the poor, and if now and then I have turned somebody away, because I felt out of sorts or because too many came, it wasn't a very great misfortune for him, because I was sure to call him back and give him twice as much. Oh, what does it all amount to? People dread the last hour when it threatens to come, writhe like a worm over it, and implore God to let them live, just as a servant implores his master to let him do something over again that he has done poorly, so that he may not come short in his wages on pay-day.   CLARA.   Don't talk in that way, dear mother! It weakens you.   MOTHER.   No, child, it does me good! Am I not well and strong again now? Did not the Lord call me merely to let me know that my festal robe was not yet pure and spotless? And did he not permit me to come back from the very edge of the grave, and grant me time to prepare myself for the heavenly wedding? He was not as kind as that to those five Virgins in the Gospel, about whom I had you read to me last night. And that is the reason why today, when I am going to the Holy Communion, I put this dress on. I wore it the day I made the best and most pious resolutions of my life; I want it to remind me of those which I have not yet carried out.   CLARA.   You still talk as you did in your illness!   SCENE II   CARL (enters).   Good morning, mother! Well, Clara, I suppose you might put up with me, if I were not your brother?   CLARA.   A gold chain? Where did you get that?   CARL.   Why do I sweat so? Why do I work two hours longer than the others every evening? You are impertinent!   MOTHER.   A quarrel on Sunday morning? Shame on you, Carl!   CARL.   Mother, haven't you got a gulden for me?   MOTHER.   I haven't any money except for the housekeeping!   CARL.   Well, give me some of that then! I won't grumble if you make the pancakes thinner for the next two weeks. You have often done so before! I know that all right! When you were saving up for Clara's white dress, we didn't have anything decent to eat for a month. I shut my eyes, but I knew right well that a new hair ribbon or some other bit of finery was on the way. So let me get something out of it too, for once!   MOTHER.   You are absolutely shameless!   CARL.   I haven't much time, else--[He starts to go.]   MOTHER.   Where are you going?   CARL.   I won't tell you, and then, when the old growler asks you where I am, you can answer without blushing that you don't know. Anyway I don't need your gulden--it is best not to draw all your water from one well.   [To himself.]   Here at home they always think the worst things they can about me; why shouldn't I take pleasure in keeping them worried? Why should I say that, since I don't get my gulden, I shall have to go to church, unless a friend helps me out of my predicament?   SCENE III   CLARA.   What does he mean by that?   MOTHER.   Oh, he grieves me terribly! Yes, yes, your father is right! Those are the consequences! He is just as insolent now in demanding a gulden as he was cunning in pleading for a piece of sugar when he was a little curly-headed baby. I wonder if he would not demand the gulden now, if I had refused him the sugar then? That often hurts me! And I think he doesn't even love me! Did you ever once see him cry during my illness?   CLARA.   I didn't see him very often at best--almost never except at the table. He had more appetite than I!   MOTHER (quickly).   That was natural! He had to work so hard!   CLARA.   To be sure! And how strange men are! They are more ashamed of their tears than they are of their sins! A clenched fist--why not exhibit that? But red eyes!--And father too! The afternoon they opened your vein and no blood came, he sobbed at his work-bench until it moved my very soul! But when I went up to him and stroked his cheeks, what did he say? "See if you can't get this accursed splinter out of my eye! I have so much to do and can't accomplish anything!"   MOTHER (smiling).   Yes! yes!--I never see Leonard any more, by the way. How does that happen?   CLARA.   Let him stay away!   MOTHER.   I hope you are not seeing him anywhere else, except here at the house!   CLARA.   Is it because I stay out too long when I go to the well in the evening that you have reason to suspect that?   MOTHER.   No, not that. But it was just for that reason that I gave him permission to come here to the house, so that he wouldn't lie in wait for you out there in the dark. My mother would never allow that, either!   CLARA.   I don't see him at all!   MOTHER.   Have you had a quarrel? Otherwise I think I might like him--he is so steady! If he only amounted to something! In my time he would not have had to wait long. Then gentlemen were eager for a good penman, as lame people are for their crutch, for they were rare. Even we humble people could use one. Today he would compose for a son a New Year's greeting to his father and receive for the gilded initials alone enough to buy a child's doll with. Tomorrow the father would give him a sly wink and have him read the greeting aloud, secretly and behind closed doors, so as not to be surprised and have his ignorance discovered. That meant double pay. Then penmen were jolly people and made the price of beer high. It is different now. Now we old folks, not knowing anything about reading and writing, must allow ourselves to be made fun of by nine-year-old children. The world is steadily growing wiser; perhaps the time is yet to come when people who can't walk a tight-rope will have to feel ashamed of it!   CLARA.   The bell is ringing!   MOTHER.   Well, child, I will pray for you. And as far as Leonard is concerned, love him as he loves God--no more and no less. That is what my old mother said to me when she died and gave me her blessing. I have kept it long enough; now you have it!   CLARA (hands her a...