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REPETITION OF A WORD AS A MEANS OF SUSPENSE IN THE GERMAN DRAMA UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ROMANTICISM

I. GENERAL RELATIONS BETWEEN REPETITION AND ARTISTIC COMPOSITION

The repetition of some part or parts organically related to the fundamental idea of any work of art, literary, musical, or pictorial, is both an essential part of artistic structure and an effective means of intensification of utterance. The parts repeated may be any units of expression: in poetry, a word, a phrase, a sound, a stress, a vowel or consonant, or groups and concretions of these; in music, a tone or a group of tones, a theme, or a musical phrase; in pictorial art, a line or a general direction of lines, a color or a combination of colors, spots or masses of color, or of light and shade. They may even be whole sections, as the burdens of ballads, the various restatements of the theme in symphonic composition, especially in the symphony and sonata, or the return to the first part in Chopin's Nocturnes, and all the frequent repeats in musical composition; in architecture, all the structural duplications designated by the term "symmetry;" and in the drama they may be, under certain circumstances, whole situations and scenes -with modifications- as Herod's return in Hebbel's Herodes und Mariamne.

The function of repetition as a necessary part of artistic structure is chiefly amplification. In order to give richness and diversity, depth and breadth, to the main idea of a work of art, it is necessary that this idea be presented in a variety of relations; which means that it must be repeated in many different surroundings. In every symphonic composition the various themes are repeated in a constantly changing harmonic environment. Without this repetition musical composition would be impossible. The same is true of pictorial art, as any good Japanese print, or any fragment from the frieze of the Parthenon, or any example of great art that has weathered the criticism of history will show.

The other function of repetition, that of intensification, is derived from the emotional effect of the reiterated impact of the same perception upon our consciousness preoccupied with the train of associations induced by the general idea of some work of art. If the repetition is sufficiently regular to be anticipated and calculated, it takes the form of symmetry, rhyme, or rhythm, the latter including not only poetic rhythm, but the form of repetition called rhythm of lines, colors, tones, curves, masses, and movement in the pictorial and dramatic arts and architecture. The repeated parts may be separated by others, or they may be reiterated in uninterrupted succession. Beethoven frequently doubles and again doubles the ratio of the repetition of a note; others-Chopin and Liszt, for instance-increase the ratio of repetition less regularly. Liszt uses the repetition of a note in a very characteristic and effective manner, in his piano concertos and rhapsodies, to produce the effect of an echo-like reverberation.

Numerous as are these cases in which intensification is due to regularity of repetition, they are yet easily classified under what is properly termed the general technique of each art. Far more complicated are the cases in which intensification is the result of the opposite condition. The spectator may be startled into intense anticipation by the unexpectedness, or by the length or brevity, of the intervals separating the recurrences of the part repeated. Or, repetition may, by a gradual unemphatic cumulation of emotional effects, produce an all-pervading emotional atmosphere, Stimmung, which may at times, as in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, grow to an almost mesmeric power. The secret of Stimmungs-poetry, and of the art and poetry in which mood predominates, consists in a skilful manipulation of the emotional possibilities of irregular repetition.

Repetition in art, however, never occurs unaccompanied by some variation. In its structural function, variation is implied in the very purpose of achieving variety and amplitude of associations. But even when intensification is desired, entire absence of variety would be monotonous and inartistic. Even repetitions of the same musical note are attended by variations in intensity, speed, quality of touch; all of which, though almost imperceptible,