Wedekind imagines that people idealize sex and hold it a beautiful force. Poor Wedekind, where did he get such an idea? And then he imagines that in reality sex passion is a smashing force that knocks people into each other’s arms, tumbles their heavens, smears their lives. He imagines that men and women love without thought, mate with the irresponsibility of hyenas. And imagining all this Wedekind creates a sort of droll fiend to prove it. Behold her—a creature to confound saints and sinners, to tear the beauty out of men’s souls and dance with muddied feet upon the finery of life. He dangles her before our eyes, naked and glorious—the diseased siren of the ages. And he calls her Lulu, the earth spirit. He introduces her fresh and joyous and vibrating with tabooed emotions. She is in love with her own beauty. Her body thrills her with its whiteness and its movement. She already has felt its power. Were I in these plays I would as soon think of kissing Lulu as biting a stick of dynamite. But I am not an ideal conception. There are other men—Wedekind digs them up from every corner of life—who fall at her feet and who shoot each other and themselves for the sake of being contaminated by her caresses. Queer men, idealists. They tumble about her, whining, cursing, chanting, forswearing their Gods, their souls and their vanities. And she tumbles with them, from one precipice down to another, faithful only to her nervous system. Her only virtue is a complete absence of the quality. If only Wedekind had invested her with a single human moral conviction—merely for the sake of completing her diabolically. If only he had made it possible for her to sin against something. But she hasn’t anything to sin against—not a conviction, not a moral. In this country she would be tried for her murders and treasons and sent to an asylum for incomplete people. What she does she does simply. When this hussy kills the father who owned her in order to save herself from his threats and then throws herself laughingly into the arms of the son, she does it all without malice. It is all natural, spontaneous. When she rebukes her own father for making love to her (she tells him he’s getting too old for such tricks), when she murders, deceives and pollutes she hasn’t any feeling of doing wrong, any reaction except one of satisfaction. If this isn’t an ideal I’d like to know what is. If everybody was like she is there would be no sorrow or suffering in the world. We would all be simple animals dashing around, biting each other, drinking from each other’s throats, feeling pain only when our nerves were touched and joy only when our nerves were touched. Wedekind imagines that this state is the true reflection of today. He exaggerates what according to his experience may be a logical prejudice and hurls it brutally behind the footlights and into the bookcase.