ModernGermanLiterature18801950

292 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

in love with Pitt -, and the restraint imposed upon the two by
good breeding are indicated: her longing for embraces is foiled by
Pitt's gentlemanly aloofness, and the point made is that the female
undergoes a sexual awakening in contact with a male whose atti-
tude is one of intellectual interest and sympathy: for Pitt, Elfriede
is a lady, not sex. Pitt is sexually awakened by a simple girl - the
daughter of Fox's landlady - of whom by the accepted code of
student (that is, Philistine) morality he has a right of possession:
he is too decent to exercise this right and it is taken by his brother.
The novel ranks as a penetrating study of sexual phases; the
Dickensian element - an almost affectionate delineation of whim-
sicalities - fails by comparison with the English model. Friedrich
Huch's last novel, En^io (1910), is yet another in the long list of
Kfinstlerrowane: the hero has music and a sensuous response to
beauty in his blood - his father is a conductor; and his musical
career is ruined because he cannot control his sex impulses. He
has a student's affair with a simple and very charming girl of the
people; Enzio is condemned, not for this experience - to Friedrich
Huch natural and beautiful - but for his disreputable drifting to
worthless creatures. Admirable is the contrast of this restless genius
with a cultured girl whose name, Irene, symbolizes her nature;
when she hears the tale of his loose living she breaks off her en-
gagement to him, and he skates down the river till the ice breaks
and rids the world of one who has been spoilt, not shaped, by
what should be the best life can offer. The lesson of the book is
that life and work are parallels: Enzio loves music as he loves his
women, but in both spheres he is tossed about on the waves of
impulse; work and love should be terra fir ma for artist and lover
to build his sanctuary on.

In the novels of RUDOLF HUGH (1862-1943) the fling-back to
pre-naturalistic models is declared and decided. He fluttered the
dove-cotes by his two pamphlets launched against naturalism,
the over-estimation of Gerhart Hauptmann, Maeterlinck, Helene
Bohlau, and against other crazes of a degenerate day (Mehr Goethe,
1899; Bine Krisis, 1904), and shaped his style on that of Goethe
and Wilhelni Raabe. He satirizes the life of small towns in Aus
dem Tagebuche ernes Hohlenmokhes (1895), Der Frauen wunderlich Wesen
(1903), Komodianten des 'Lebens (1906), and Die fJibenstedter (1910).
His best novels are Die beiden l&tterhelm (1907), Familie Hellmann
(1908), and TaKon (1913); and in these there is something of the