Gerhart Hauptmann Critical Essay | Critical Review by Charles K. Trueblood

Critical Review by Charles K. Trueblood

SOURCE: “A Pagan Chorale,” in The Dial, Vol. 79, October, 1925, pp. 339-41.

In the following review, Trueblood favorably assesses Hauptmann's novella The Heretic of Soana.

Hauptmann—the Ibsenist, the Zolaist, the psychologist-lover of man—is also a Nietzschean and a great lyric pagan. The two latter have joined minds, in The Heretic of Soana, to write in a great round hand what might seem to be a foot-note to Der Anti-Christ, or a tremendous hymn to Pan. It is both and neither. Hauptmann, by what may be rather provident use of a familiar narrative device, has made it simply the autobiography of the heretic's heart, and a Novelle of force and charm, which has been competently rendered by the translator.

One can hardly recollect the psychology of the Fall more ably studied in brief compass than in this tale of Francesco Vela, sometime priest, all but saint of Monte Generoso. It...
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