He dare scarcely tell them that their preoccupations,
that their very love, slay the ideal in his soul. And so the pitiless
attrition goes on. There is no action: there is being. The struggle is
rooted in the deep divisions of men's souls, not in unwonted crime or
plotting. And Anna Mahr, the free woman of a freer world, parts from
Johannes because she recognises their human unfitness to take up the
burden of tragic sorrow which any union between them must create. The
time for such things has not come, and may never come. Thus Johannes is
left desolate, powerless to face the unendurable emptiness and decay that
lie before him, destroyed by the conflicting loyalties to personal and
ideal ends which are fundamental to the life of creative thought.
V
Drama, then, which relies so little upon external action, but finds
action rather in "every inner conflict of passions, every consequence
of diverging thoughts," must stress the obscurest expression of such
passions and such thoughts. Since its fables, furthermore, are to arise
from the immediate data of life, it must equally emphasise the
significant factor of those common things amid which man passes his
struggle.
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