ART

The expressionists' initial battle cries ring out: Impressionism conveys photographic realism, tinged with sentimentality (in varying degrees of delicacy), and decorated with appeal (in varying degrees of talent). Precisely this represents a decline into conventionality. The world of the practical man is a characterless means of communication: between the natural object and the art object there exists an unbridgeable vacuum.

For the artist, everyday reality is coincidental. The natural object is created anew in the realm of art, without obligation to its original form. Similarity, when viewed in this light, is an extra-artistic term. Henri Matisse, in his 1908 "Notes of a Painter", strove to interpret the intellectual process thus: "From the standpoint of subjectivity, we have seen the thought, or nature as viewed through temperament, replaced by the theory of the equivalent or the symbol. We formulate the rule that the sensibilities and conditions of the soul, which are called forth by a certain process, impart signs or graphic equivalents to the artist, by which he is able to reproduce the sensibilities and conditions of the soul, without the necessity of providing a copy of the actual spectacle".

No copy of the actual spectacle. Thereon lies the emphasis. The artist takes in nondescript data, which he allows to take shape through his creative activity. Expressionism does not represent the object's tangible reality: it is concerned with a fundamentally different plane of existence. The artistic world is pushed back into the consciousness of the artist, who then articulates his subjectivity with an absoluteness that wrests all subject matter from it – that renders it empty. But it is the distinguishing characteristic of art that that which is most personal to the artist must be strictly objective – otherwise his art is false. Purely aesthetic conditions determine whether a seemingly straight line changes course when an artist is creating a photograph, or whether a group of words or series of sounds is antithetical to regular speech.

The important thing is to recognize that we are dealing with the artist's necessary state of being. If this condition is lacking, we are left with an empty formalism that cannot get beyond anemic, decorative attractions.

LITERATURE

As we consider Expressionism's impact on literature, it will become apparent to what extent Expressionism is a general state of mind, rather than a special case in the visual arts.

Many have smiled at the broken syntax of modern poets. August Stramm, who died in the war, published verses in which isolated, melodious, strongly meaningful words supported the lyrical texture: they were labeled the ravings of a lunatic. [Carl] Sternheim's pronoun-free, newly-constructed dramatic phrases, and Georg Kaiser's bold word architecture have been regarded as talented "aestheticism" at best.

But the recognition that spoken expression in art takes place on another level than that of communication through words as they are commonly spoken – that a completely new complex of laws and possibilities comes alive – has indeed become accepted by the general public. Georg Kaiser's From Morn to Midnight stands henceforth as the representative work of an era. What was once considered absurdist diction has now been legitimized as an artistic constraint. Kaiser portrays a man's attempt to leap from a dull bank cashier's existence to the big wide world. He ends with a revolver shot. So that we may be made keenly aware of the novelty of this, let us consider how an embezzler's suicide would have transpired in an impressionist drama. It would take place in some quiet corner and involve ironic or accusatory self-mutilation; a face would be turned up toward heaven, with one eye on Browning. Georg Kaiser's cashier, however, stands in the Salvation Army Hall of Repentance, left hand ...

Cashier

(Feeling with his left hand in his breast pocket, grasps with his right a trumpet, and blows a fanfare toward the lamp):

Ah! – Discovered. Scorned in the snow this morning – welcomed now in the tangled wires. I salute you. (Trumpet.) The road is behind me. Panting, I climb the steep curves that lead upward. My forces are spent. I've spared myself nothing. I've made the path hard where it might have been easy. This morning in the snow when we met, you and I, you should have been more pressing in your invitation. One spark of enlightenment would have helped me and spared me all trouble. It doesn't take much of a brain to see that – Why did I hesitate? Why take the road? Whither am I bound? From first to last you sit there, naked bone. From morn to midnight, I rage in a circle ... and now your beckoning finger points the way ... whither? (He shoots the answer into his breast, the trumpet blast fading out on his lips) [English translation by Ashley Dukes. New York: Brentano's Publishers 1922].

This excerpt from a thoroughly formalized world would be a caricature if integrated into our everyday reality. The drama's concept, meaning and locution make up a unique world which, when compared with reality, seems no less contorted and arbitrary than an expressionist landscape. This man, who turns his face toward the lamp, parodying his readiness for death with a grotesque musical instrument, who lets the stages of his life roll over him in fragments, accentuating them with abrupt trumpet blasts, would be incomprehensible, even laughable, in a world arranged psychologically. But the structure of this work organizes his loops, reductions, and fragmentations into a prepared mental visual space: and thus this atonal sally to the great god of the Salvation Army is portrayed no less logically than that moody suicide in the Impressionist scenery.

Kaiser's work stands at a crossroads. From a distance, it seems to deal with the struggle between the two generations; introspection and structured life fight their final duel, sparks flying. If the expressionist speech structure falls short of clear realization, this can be traced back to the attitude of direct speech in drama, which tries to distance itself from formative principle, aligning itself to the very end with the natural object....