But what I write is written acting). Kraus's mode of thinking and writing was essentially theatrical, and
Die Fackel may in itself be regarded as a stage, often taking the form of a pillory, on which Kraus dramatized himself and his ethical, didactic, aesthetic, and, above all, satiric mission. In his life and work criticism and showmanship, ethics and aesthetics were invariably linked, and his celebrated prose style is replete with expressive, rhetorical, theatrical elements. Many of Kraus's polemics and feuds were carried on with theater people, and he came to take a highly personal and polemical view of such celebrated actors as Otto Tressler, Joseph Kainz, Helene Odilon, Alexander Moissi (all negative); and Alexander Girardi, Adolf Sonnenthal, and Charlotte Wolter (all positive). All his life he championed and yearned for the old Vienna Burgtheater with its high style, dignity, integrity, artistry, and congruence of ethical and aesthetic purpose. He repeatedly evoked that theater's traditional style in programmatic and principled opposition to what he regarded as the corruption, commercialism, politicization, charlatanry, sensationalism, and feuilletonism (by which he meant slickness, shallowness, and meretriciousness) of the lavish productions of such directors as Leopold Jessner, Erwin Piscator, and Max Reinhardt.
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