Oct. 7, 1892. A Masterpiece.
"_Peer Gynt_ takes its place, as we hold, on the summits of
literature precisely because it means so much more than the poet
consciously intended. Is not this one of the characteristics of
the masterpiece, that everyone can read in it his own secret? In
the material world (though Nature is very innocent of symbolic
intention) each of us finds for himself the symbols that have
relevance and value for him; and so it is with the poems that are
instinct with true vitality."
I was glad to come across the above passage in Messrs. William and
Charles Archer's introduction to their new translation of Ibsen's
_Peer Gynt_ (London: Walter Scott), because I can now, with a clear
conscience, thank the writers for their book, even though I fail to
find some of the things they find in it. The play's the thing after
all. _Peer Gynt_ is a great poem: let us shake hands over that. It
will remain a great poem when we have ceased pulling it about to find
what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own
particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected,
though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John
Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths.
Not a Pamphlet.
_Peer Gynt_ is an extremely modern story founded on old Norwegian
folk-lore--the folk-lore which Asbjörnsen and Moe collected, and
Dasent translated for our delight in childhood. Old and new are
curiously mixed; but the result is piquant and not in the least
absurd, because the story rests on problems which are neither old nor
new, but eternal, and on emotions which are neither older nor newer
than the breast of man. To be sure, the true devotee of Ibsen will not
be content with this. You will be told by Herr Jaeger, Ibsen's
biographer, that _Peer Gynt_ is an attack on Norwegian romanticism.
The poem, by the way, is romantic to the core--so romantic, indeed,
that the culminating situation, and the page for which everything has
been a preparation, have to be deplored by Messrs. Archer as "a mere
commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen had not outgrown when he wrote
_Peer Gynt_." But your true votary is for ever taking his god off the
pedestal of the true artist to set him on the tub of the
hot-gospeller; even so genuine a specimen of impressionist work as
_Hedda Gabler_ being claimed by him for a sermon. And if ever you have
been moved by _Ghosts_, or _Brand_, or _Peer Gynt_ to exclaim "This is
poetry!" you have only to turn to Herr Jaeger--whose criticism, like
his namesake's underclothing, should be labelled "All Pure Natural
Wool"--to find that you were mistaken and that it is really
pamphleteering.
Yet Enforcing a Moral.
To be sure, in one sense _Peer Gynt_ is a sermon upon a text. That is
to say, it is written primarily to expound one view of man's duty, not
to give a mere representation of life. The problem, not the picture,
is the main thing. But then the problem, not the picture, is the main
thing in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, _Faust_. In _Peer Gynt_ the poet's own
solution of the problem is presented with more insistence than in
_Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, or _Faust_: but the problem is wider, too.
The problem is, What is self? and how shall a man be himself? And the
poet's answer is, "Self is only found by being lost, gained by being
given away": an answer at least as old as the gospels. The eponymous
hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, "the incarnation
of a compromising dread of self-committal to any one course," a fellow
who says,
"Ay, think of it--wish it done--_will_ it to boot,
But _do_ it----. No, that's past my understanding!"
--who is only stung to action by pique, or by what is called the
"instinct of self-preservation," an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is
the very last that will preserve self.
The Story.
This fellow, Peer Gynt, wins the love of Solveig, a woman essentially
whole-hearted, who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders
self. Solveig, in short, stands in perfect antithesis to Peer. When
Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to
his hut in the forest. The scene in which she presents herself before
Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad
of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed romantic I must own to
thinking Solveig one of the most beautiful figures in poetry. Peer
deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and grows an old woman
while her lover roams the world, seeking everywhere and through the
wildest adventures the satisfaction of his Self, acting everywhere on
the Troll's motto, "To thyself be enough," and finding everywhere his
major premiss turned against him, to his own discomfiture, by an
ironical fate. We have one glimpse of Solveig, meanwhile, in a little
scene of eight lines. She is now a middle-aged woman, up in her forest
hut in the far north. She sits spinning in the sunshine outside her
door and sings:--
_"Maybe both the winter and spring will pass by,
And the next summer too, and the whole of the year;
But thou wilt come one day....
* * * * *
God strengthen thee, whereso thou goest in the world!
God gladden thee, if at His footstool thou stand!
Here will I await thee till thou comest again;
And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend!"_
At last Peer, an old man, comes home. On the heath around his old hut
he finds (in a passage which the translators call "fantastic,"
intending, I hope, approval by this word) the thoughts he has missed
thinking, the watchword he has failed to utter, the tears he has
missed shedding, the deed he has missed doing. The thoughts are
thread-balls, the watchword withered leaves, the tears dewdrops, etc.
Also he finds on that heath a Button-Moulder with an immense ladle.
The Button-Moulder explains to Peer that he must go into this ladle,
for his time has come. He has neither been a good man nor a sturdy
sinner, but a half-and-half fellow without any real self in him. Such
men are dross, badly cast buttons with no loops to them, and must go,
by the Master's orders, into the melting-pot again. Is there no
escape? None, unless Peer can find the loop of the button, his real
Self, the Peer Gynt that God made. After vain and frantic searching
across the heath, Peer reaches the door of his own old hut. Solveig
stands on the threshold.
As Peer flings himself to earth before her, calling out upon her to
denounce him, she sits down by his side and says--
"_Thou hast made all my life as a beautiful song.
Blessed be thou that at last thou hast come!
Blessed, thrice-blessed our Whitsun-morn meeting_!"
"But," says Peer, "I am lost, unless thou canst answer riddles." "Tell
me them," tranquilly answers Solveig. And Peer asks, while the
Button-Moulder listens behind the hut--
"_Canst thou tell me where Peer Gynt has been since we parted_?"
Solveig.--_Been_?
Peer.-- _With his destiny's seal on his brow;
Been, as in God's thought he first sprang forth?
Canst thou tell me? If not, I must get me home_,--
_Go down to the mist-shrouded regions_.
Solveig (smiling).--_Oh, that riddle is easy_.
Peer.-- _Then tell what thou knowest!
Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?
Where was I, with God's sigil upon my brow_?
Solveig.--_In my faith, in my hope, in my love_.
A Shirking of the Ethical Problem?
"This," says the Messrs. Archer, in effect, "may be--indeed
is--magnificent: but it is not Ibsen." To quote their very words--
"The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to
be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he
satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrote _Peer
Gynt_. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of
the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not
a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the
Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) that _No man can save
his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt_."
In a footnote to the italicized words Messrs. Archer add the
quotation--
"No, nor woman, neither."
* * * * *
Oct. 22, 1892. The main Problem.
"Peer's return to Solveig is surely a shirking, not a solution of the
ethical problem." Of what ethical problem? The main ethical problem of
the poem is, What is self? And how shall a man be himself? As Mr.
Wicksteed puts it in his "Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen," "What is it
to be one's self? God _meant something_ when He made each one of us.
For a man to embody that meaning of God in his words and deeds, and so
become, in a degree, 'a word of God made flesh' is to be himself. But
thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay
the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and
must strive to find his true orbit, and swing, self poised, round the
great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out
what God _did_ mean when He made him? Why, then he must _feel_ it. But
how often your 'feeling' misses fire! Ay, there you have it. The devil
has no stancher ally than _want of perception_."
And its Solution.
This is a fair statement of Ibsen's problem and his solution of it. In
the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we
may say. Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make
himself the centre round which others revolve, who never sacrifices
his Self generously for another's good, nor surrenders it to a decided
course of action. Diagram II. is Solveig, a woman who has no dread of
self-committal, who surrenders Self and is, in short, Peer's perfect
antithesis. When Peer is an outlaw she forsakes all and follows him to
his hut in the forest. Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he
finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at
last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo. But though his own
theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one. To find this
he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted
wife. There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the
answer. "Where," he asks, "has Peer Gynt's true self been since we
parted:--
"Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?
Where was I with God's sigil upon my brow?"