Just Reading Some Early 20th Century German Expressionist Plays

Recently I’ve been reading some of the oeuvre of Carl Sternheim, a German playwright of the early 19th century. It’s pretty good stuff, but you have to know a bit about Expressionism to really get the plays. I’m referring specifically to Expressionism in a literary sense. And what is Expressionism? If we define it as an intentional distortion or magnification of reality, then Sternheim’s dialogue can be approached from the right perspective.

Because in marked contrast to the realism of his contemporary Henrik Ibsen, Sternheim makes no effort whatsoever to write realistic dialogue. (I’ll go ahead and add here that I am an enormous fan of Ibsen and I think his greatest gift as a playwright was his ability to write dialogue that actually sounds like something someone would actually say. Quentin Tarantino is also quite good at this.) In fact, the unrealistic nature of the speech in his plays is kind of the point. Much like Raven-Symoné’s execrable sitcom, the characters in Sternheim’s plays converse in words and phrases that could not sound less like real speech. Which is, of course, his intent. By using unrealistic and distorted speech, he can exaggerate the negative traits of his characters and thus call more attention to them. Since his best plays are satires of German middle-class social mores, exaggeration and Expressionist dialogue was probably the best call in that context.

However, there is one big problem with Sternheim’s approach. In the introduction to the collection of plays I’ve been reading, the translator laments that the plays are not performed more often. But there’s a reason these plays aren’t performed very often: they’re not terribly accessible. According to the online Literary Encyclopedia: “the stylized language in which he wrote made considerable demands on his audience.” No shit. The inaccessibility I refer to manifests itself in two ways: first, if you’re not familiar with Expressionist writing, you might say to yourself, “What the hell is going on here? Nobody actually talks like that.” Secondly, and perhaps more significant, is the subjects he chose for his plays. Sternheim’s best work is satirical, but more specifically he is satirizing the developing bourgeoisie in early 20th century Germany. If you don’t know anything about the social history of pre-war Wilhelmine Germany, then the whole point of his plays is going to go totally over your head. His tales are so closely tied to a specific time and place that it becomes very difficult to fully appreciate them outside of that context.

Let me offer William Shakespeare as a counterpoint. Shakespeare’s work was undoubtedly influenced by the political and social atmosphere of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Knowledge of that atmosphere will absolutely aid in the appreciation of his work. But it’s certainly not necessary. This is because Shakespeare concerned himself with themes and subjects that are resonant in any culture at any time. There is a reason his plays are performed as often as they are and in so many different languages (including the original Klingon). While countless high school students may bemoan the density of his language, it’s important to remember that Shakespeare’s plays are about things like love, honor, duty, and the bounds of friendship and loyalty. That’s considerably more timeless than tales of the German middle class of the early 20th century.

All artists, and writers especially I believe, have to ask themselves how accessible they want their work to be. If you want to write a 1,200 page book that meticulously details Lyndon Johnson’s 10-year senatorial career, it's not realistic to expect it to be a bestseller. Likewise, if you want to focus your themes on a really specific time and place, perhaps you shouldn’t expect your work to age too well. I don’t mean to take anything away from Carl Sternheim. I think he was an excellent playwright and I think his plays accurately and effectively convey the messages he was trying to get across. But ultimately, I think these plays might work better as historical documents than they do as pure stories.

They All Matter

The D.C. public school system has been in the news more often of late due to Mayor Adrian Fenty’s recent “takeover” and ousting of Superintendent Clifford Janey. While I certainly am no fan of Mayor Fenty, I can’t predict whether or not his efforts will improve the quality of education received by children in the District. I might, however, ask those optimistic about the mayor’s plans to name a single urban school district in America that provides a quality education. Why is this? Why can’t America’s cities provide such a basic need to its youngest citizens?

According to a series of articles in the Washington Post last week, Philadelphia provides a quality education. Or at least, the quality has improved markedly over the last several years. (Click here for the full article.) One thing you will learn from reading the whole thing (and it is pretty long) is that this cost a lot of money. And that many of the gains accomplished by Philadelphia’s visionary superintendent are in danger of being wiped away because politicians won’t pony up more ducats. In a way, it is not surprising that education is such a low spending priority for governments: the people the money is spent on can’t vote. You can cut teacher’s salaries, cut arts & music programs, and it’s not like the children whose schools are damaged are going to vote you out of office. But try to cut medicare or social security, and you’ll have so many pissed-off voters that the AARP will be all up in your grill before you can say “Jiminy Christmas.”

But there is actually another point here that I’d like to make. I tutor at an elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia. More than half of the students there receive subsidized lunches, this despite the fact that in most cases both of their parents have at least one job. I was recently there for a “volunteer appreciation lunch.” It was nice, but it wasn’t really necessary; anyone who engages in that sort of thing to get recognition needs to reconsider his motives.

This spring I’ve been working with a fourth-grader and helping him with his reading skills. At the lunch, I got to talk to his teacher, who told me that the kid’s reading comprehension and speed has improved noticeably since he started working with me. It was immensely rewarding to hear this. The thing about tutoring is that it’s pretty much impossible to measure a quantifiable result. If you volunteer for Habitat For Humanity, at the end of the day you can say, “hey, there’s a house.” If you remove non-native plants from a nature preserve, you can say, “I bet those damn Japanese maples will think twice before they set up shop around here again.” You’ll have a tangible, material result. In reference to my tutee, the teacher also added “I know he can be a handful sometimes.” Yes, he can, and those kids are the ones who need help most. Because they are the easiest ones to give up on. It’s hard to give up on people who make it easy for you to help them. If you are one of those difficult kids, then the more people there are that give up on you, the easier it is to believe that you’re not valuable. If people keep treating you that way, eventually you’ll start to believe them.

The article in the Post details a senior named Reggie Mays. He grew up in an unstable family environment in an ugly, violent neighborhood. He got suspended several times as a freshman. But now he’s gone from a D student to a B student, and he’s planning on going to college and law school. What happened? He received “lots of academic and personal support” and “prominent Philadelphia lawyers mentored him.” In other words, people told him he was important. People told him he matters. That his feelings, and his goals, and his dreams, are just as valid as some kid who grew up in the suburbs and had his life handed to him on a silver platter. Reggie himself added that without the guidance, “I’d be locked up or doing something illegal…I wouldn’t have anything to strive for to keep me going.”

Fun Facts About the Isle of Man

Sometimes when people ask me about my ethnic background, just to mess with them I’ll say, “I’m one-sixteenth Manx.” My great-great-grandfather Robert Garrett left the Isle sometime in the 19th century and immigrated to Florida. The main reason I say this is to be willfully obscure. Most people have never heard of the Isle of Man and have no idea that people or things from there are called Manx.

In case you didn’t know, the Isle of Man is a small island located in the Irish Sea. It is nearly equidistant from Ireland, Scotland and Great Britain. It is approximately 35 miles long and between 8 and 15 miles wide. Here are some more fun facts about the Isle:

• The Isle of Man has the oldest parliament in continuous existence in the world. It is called the Tynwald and it has been meeting regularly since 979. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom or the European Union, nor is it part of the Commonwealth. Legally, the island is a crown dependency, as are the Channel Islands. The head of state of the Isle of Man is HM Queen Elizabeth II, represented by a lieutenant-governor. The UK takes care of defense and represents the Isle in international forums, but the Tynwald has almost total control over domestic matters. Nonetheless, the Manx are British citizens.
• The eldest three of the Brothers Gibb (Barry and twins Robin and Maurice) were born on the Isle of Man. Andy Gibb was born in Manchester shortly before the family immigrated to Australia. (I might as well take this opportunity to point out once again that the BeeGees totally don’t get the respect they deserve. They had top ten hits in the UK and the US in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. Who does that? Pop music is so fickle that anyone who can pull that off deserves some cred. They also basically introduced disco to a mass audience more or less by themselves. Some people might not necessarily think that’s a good thing, but those people are wrong.)
• There are two varieties of the famous Manx cat: the “rumpy,” which has no tail at all, and the “stumpy,” which has a small vestigial tail.
• The Manx Gaelic language is a Goidelic Celtic language, grouped with Irish and Scottish Gaelic, as opposed to the Brythonic Celtic languages, such as Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Together the Brythonic & Goidelic language families comprise the Insular Celtic Languages. Ned Maddrell, the last native Manx speaker, died in 1974. Since then, however, there has been an upsurge in interest and many bilingual primary schools exist on the island. Manx Gaelic is recognized as an autochthonous regional language by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
• The symbol of the Isle is the triskelion, which consists of three bent human legs. In the case of the Isle of Man, the legs are armored, and the triskelion can be found on the Manx flag as well as the coat of arms depicted above. The Manx flag used to fly in front of “The Crackhouse” on 13th Street North in Arlington. The Isle’s Latin motto references the triskelion: Quocunque Jeceris Stabit, which translates as “whichever way you throw it, it will stand.”