"The reformation of the theater will not originate with the managers, and as for dramatic creativity, what is it really? . . . The seeking of something in the dark, a dog-like scenting about, an aimless straying, or the antics of a flea. A genius must arrive to revolutionize the modern theater; I already have a feeling that one is coming . . ." asserted Glogowski. "How is that? . . . Aren't the existing masterpieces of the drama sufficient for creating an ideal theater?" queried Janina. "No . . . those masterpieces belong to the past; we need other works. For us those masterpieces are a very important archeology," answered Glogowski. "So in your estimation Shakespeare is antiquated?" "Sh! let us not speak of him; he is the whole universe; we can merely contemplate him, but never understand him . . ." "And Schiller?" "A Utopian and classic: an echo of the Encyclopedists and the French Revolution. He represents nobility, order, German doctrinarianism and pathetic and wearisome declamation." "And Goethe?" ventured Janina, who had developed a great liking for Glogowski's paradoxical definitions. "That means only Faust, but Faust is so complicated a machine that since the death of the inventor no one knows how to wind it or start it going. The commentators push its wheels, take it apart, clean it, and dust it, but the machine will not go and already is beginning to rust a little. . . . Moreover, it is a furious aristocracy. That Mr. Faust is first of all not the ideal type of man, but an experimenter; he is nothing but the brain of one of those learned rabbis who spend their whole lives on pondering whether it is proper to enter the synagogue with the right or the left foot first; he is a vivisector, who, after breaking the heart of Margaret in the process of his experimentation, and fearing the threat of imprisonment, and being unable by virtue of his shortsightedness to see anything beyond his study and his retorts, makes a sport of complaining and laments that life is base and knowledge is worthless. In truth, it requires a great deal of genuinely German arrogance to maintain when you have a catarrh that everybody else has it or ought to have it." "I prefer such merry works to your wise plays," whispered Kotlicki. "Oh, and what of Shelley and Byron?" begged Janina, whose interest was fully aroused. "I prefer foolishness even when it presumes to speak rather than when it seeks to create something" Glogowski hastily flung back at Kotlicki.