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Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. In the printed
original, emphasis is indicated by gesperrt (spaced) text, but is here
also delimited as the italic.
Footnotes have been collected at the end of each section or act in which
they are referenced.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any other textual issues encountered during its
preparation.
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
VOLUME IV
PEER GYNT
1867
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
_Copyright Edition. Complete in 12 Volumes._
_Crown 8vo, price 4s. each._
=ENTIRELY REVISED AND EDITED BY=
=WILLIAM ARCHER=
Vol. I. Lady Inger, The Feast at Solhoug, Love’s
Comedy
Vol. II. The Vikings, The Pretenders
Vol. III. Brand
Vol. IV. Peer Gynt
Vol. V. Emperor and Galilean (2 parts)
Vol. VI. The League of Youth, Pillars of Society
Vol. VII. A Doll’s House, Ghosts
Vol. VIII. An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck
Vol. IX. Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea
Vol. X. Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder
Vol. XI. Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, When
We Dead Awaken
Vol. XII. From Ibsen’s Workshop
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
COPYRIGHT EDITION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOLUME IV
PEER GYNT
A DRAMATIC POEM
TRANSLATED BY
WILLIAM AND CHARLES ARCHER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: title page]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1912
_Collected Edition, first printed March 1907_
_New Impressions, April 1909, November, 1912_
_Copyright 1894 by William Heinemann_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION TO “PEER GYNT” vii
_By_ WILLIAM ARCHER
“PEER GYNT” 1
_Translated by_ WILLIAM AND CHARLES ARCHER
PEER GYNT.
INTRODUCTION.
The publication of _Brand_, in March 1866, brought Ibsen fame (in
Scandinavia) and relieved him from the immediate pressure of poverty.
Two months later the Storthing voted him a yearly “poet-pension” of £90;
and with this sum, as he wrote to the Minister who had been mainly
instrumental in furthering his claim, he felt “his future assured,” so
that he could henceforth “devote himself without hindrance to his
calling.” This first glimpse of worldly prosperity, no doubt, brought
with it the lighter mood which distinguishes _Peer Gynt_ from its
predecessor. To call it the gayest of Ibsen’s works is not, perhaps, to
say very much. Its satire, indeed, is bitter enough; but it is not the
work of an unhappy man. The character of Peer Gynt, and many of his
adventures, are conceived with unmistakable gusto. Some passages even
bear witness to an exuberance of animal spirits which reminds one of Ben
Jonson’s saying with regard to Shakespeare—“aliquando sufflaminandus
erat.”
The summer of 1866 Ibsen spent at Frascati, in the Palazzo Gratiosi,
where he lived “most comfortably and cheaply.” He found Frascati and
Tusculum “indescribably delightful.” From the windows of his study he
could see Soracte, “rising isolated and beautiful from the level of the
immense plain ... the battlefield where the chief engagement in the
world’s history took place.” So he writes in a letter to Paul
Botten-Hansen, and immediately afterwards proceeds: “I shall soon be
setting to work in good earnest. I am still wrestling with my subject,
but I know that I shall get the upper hand of the brute before long, and
then everything will go smoothly.” But was the play here referred to
_Peer Gynt_? Perhaps not. From a letter to his publisher, Hegel, written
three months later, we learn that at that time he was still turning over
several themes in his mind, and that one of them dealt with the period
of Christian IV. of Denmark. It is in a letter to Hegel, dated from
Rome, January 5, 1867, that we find the first unmistakable reference to
_Peer Gynt_: “Now I must tell you that my new work is well under way,
and will, if nothing untoward happens, be finished early in the summer.
It is to be a long dramatic poem, having as its chief figure one of the
Norwegian peasantry’s half-mythical, fantastic heroes of _recent_ times.
It will bear no resemblance to _Brand_, contain no direct polemics and
so forth. I have long had the subject in my thoughts; now the entire
plan is worked out and written down, and the first act begun. The thing
grows as I work at it, and I am certain that you will be satisfied with
it.”
Two months later (March 8) the poem has “advanced to the middle of the
second act.” On August 8, he sends to Hegel, from Villa Pisani,
Casamicciola, Ischia, the complete manuscript of the first three acts,
and writes: “I am curious to hear how you like the poem. I am very
hopeful myself. It may interest you to know that Peer Gynt is a real
person, who lived in Gudbrandsdal, probably at the end of last, or
beginning of this, century; but of his exploits not much more is known
than is to be found in Asbjörnsen’s _Norwegian Fairy Tales_, in the
section _Pictures from the Mountains_. Thus I have not had very much to
build upon; but so much the more liberty has been left me. It would
interest me to know what Clemens Petersen thinks of the work.” What
Clemens Petersen did think we shall presently learn.
On October 18 Ibsen despatched from Sorrento the remainder of his
manuscript, and the book was published on November 14. It has often been
pointed out (by myself among others) as a very remarkable fact that two
such gigantic creations as _Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_ should have been
given to the world in two successive years; but on examination the
marvel somewhat dwindles. _Peer Gynt_ did not follow so hot-foot upon
_Brand_ as the bare dates of publication would lead us to suppose.
_Brand_ was written in the summer of 1865, _Peer Gynt_ (as we have seen)
in 1867; so that the poet’s mind had lain fallow for a whole year (1866)
between the two great efforts. It was a long delay in the publication of
_Brand_ that made its successor seem to tread so close upon its heels.
One or two other references to the origin of _Peer Gynt_ may be found in
Ibsen’s letters. The most important occurs in an autobiographical
communication to Peter Hansen, dated Dresden, October 28, 1870: “After
_Brand_ came _Peer Gynt_, as though of itself. It was written in
Southern Italy, in Ischia and at Sorrento. So far away from one’s
readers one becomes reckless. This poem contains much that has its
origin in the circumstances of my own youth. My own mother—with the
necessary exaggerations—served as the model for Ase. (Likewise for Inga
in _The Pretenders_).” Twelve years later (1882) Ibsen wrote to George
Brandes: “My father was a merchant with a large business and wide
connections, and he enjoyed dispensing reckless hospitality. In 1836 he
failed, and nothing was left to us except a farm near the town.... In
writing _Peer Gynt_, I had the circumstances and memories of my own
childhood before me when I described the life in the house of ‘the rich
Jon Gynt.’”
Returning to the above-quoted letter to Peter Hansen, we find this
further allusion to _Peer Gynt_ and its immediate predecessor and
successor in the list of Ibsen’s works: “Environment has great influence
upon the forms in which imagination creates. May I not, like Christoff
in _Jakob von Tyboe_,[1] point to _Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_, and say:
‘See, the wine-cup has done this?’ And is there not something in _The
League of Youth_ [written in Dresden] that suggests ‘Knackwurst und
Bier’? Not that I would thereby imply any inferiority in the latter
play.” The transition to prose was no doubt an inevitable step in the
evolution of Ibsen’s genius; but one wishes he had kept to the
“wine-cup” a little longer.
A masterpiece is not a flawless work, but one which has sufficient
vitality to live down its faults, until at last we no longer heed, and
almost forget, them. _Peer Gynt_ had real faults, not a few; and its
great merit, as some of us think—its magnificent, reckless profusion of
fantasy—could not but be bewildering to its first critics, who had to
pronounce upon it before they had (as Ballested[2] would put it)
acclimatised themselves to its atmosphere. It’s reception, then, was
much more dubious than that of _Brand_ had been. We find even George
Brandes writing of it: “What great and noble powers are wasted on this
thankless material! Except in the fourth act, which has no connection
with what goes before and after, and is witless in its satire, crude in
its irony, and in its latter part scarcely comprehensible, there is
almost throughout a wealth of poetry and a depth of thought such as we
do not find, perhaps, in any of Ibsen’s earlier works.... It would be
unjust to deny that the book contains great beauties, or that it tells
us all, and Norwegians in particular, some important truths; but
beauties and truths are of far less value than beauty and truth in the
singular, and Ibsen’s poem is neither beautiful nor true. Contempt for
humanity and self-hatred make a bad foundation on which to build a
poetic work. What an unlovely and distorting view of life this is! What
acrid pleasure can a poet find in thus sullying human nature?”[3] The
friendship between Brandes and Ibsen was at this time just beginning,
and—much to Ibsen’s credit—it appears to have suffered no check by
reason of this outspoken pronouncement.
On the other hand, he deeply resented a criticism by Clemens Petersen,
who seems to have been at this time regarded as the æsthetic lawgiver of
Copenhagen. Why he should have done so is not very clear; for Petersen
professed to prefer _Peer Gynt_ to _Brand_, and his criticism on _Brand_
Ibsen had apparently accepted without demur. Most of Petersen’s article
is couched in a very heavy philosophic idiom; but the following extract,
though it refers chiefly to _Brand_, may convey some idea of his general
objection to both poems:—“When a poet, as Ibsen does in _Brand_, depicts
an error, a one-sidedness, which is from first to last presented in an
imposing light, it is not sufficient that he should eventually, through
a piece of sensational symbolism, let that one-sidedness go to ruin, and
it is not sufficient that in the last word of the drama[4] he should
utter the name of that with which the one-sidedness should have blended
in order to become truth. If he throughout his work shows us this
error—in virtue of its strength, if for no other reason—justifying
itself as against everything that comes in contact with it, then it is
not only in the character depicted that something is lacking, but in the
work of art itself. That something is the Ideal, without which the work
of art cannot take rank as poetry—the Ideal which here, as so often in
art, lies only in the lighting of the picture, but which is nevertheless
the saving, the uplifting element. It is to poetry what devotion is to
religion.... In _Peer Gynt_, as in _Brand_, the ideal is lacking. But
this must be said rather less strongly of _Peer Gynt_. There is more
fantasy, more real freedom of spirit, less strain and less violence in
this poem than in _Brand_.” The critic then speaks of _Peer Gynt_ as
being “full of riddles which are insoluble, because there is nothing in
them at all.” Peer’s identification of the Sphinx with the Boyg (Act IV.
Sc. 12) he characterises as “Tankesvindel”—thought-swindling, or, as we
might say, juggling with thought. The general upshot of his
considerations is that _Peer Gynt_ belongs, with Goldschmidt’s
_Corsaren_, to the domain of polemical journalism. It “is not poetry,
because in the transmutation of reality into art it falls half-way short
of the demands both of art and of reality.”
Petersen’s review is noteworthy, not for its own sake, but for the
effect it produced on Ibsen. His letters to Björnson on the subject are
the most vivid and spontaneous he ever wrote. Björnson happened to be in
Copenhagen when Petersen’s article appeared in _Fœdrelandet_, and Ibsen
seems somehow to have blamed him for not preventing its appearance. “All
I reproach you with,” he says, “is inaction.” But Petersen he accuses of
lack of “loyalty,” of “an intentional crime against truth and justice.”
“There is a lie involved in Clemens Petersen’s article, not in what he
says, but in what he refrains from saying. And he intentionally refrains
from saying a great deal.... Tell me, now, is Peer Gynt himself not a
personality, complete and individual? _I_ know that he is. And the
mother; is she not?” But the most memorable passage in this memorable
letter is the following piece of splendid arrogance: “My book _is_
poetry; and if it is not, then it will be. The conception of poetry in
our country, in Norway, shall be made to conform to the book.” It
certainly seems that any definition of poetry which should be so framed
as to exclude _Peer Gynt_ must have something of what Petersen himself
called “Tankesvindel” about it.
Ibsen’s burst of indignation relieved his mind, and three weeks later we
find him writing, half apologetically, of the “cargo of nonsense” he had
“shipped off” to Björnson, immediately on reading Petersen’s review. He
even sends a friendly “greeting” to the offending critic. But this is
his last (published) letter to Björnson for something like fifteen
years. How far the reception of _Peer Gynt_ may have contributed to the
breach between them, I do not know. Björnson’s own criticism of the
poem, as we shall presently see, was very favourable.
_Peer Gynt_ was not, on its appearance, quite so popular as Brand. A
second edition was called for in a fortnight; but the third edition did
not appear until 1874, by which time the seventh edition of _Brand_ was
already on the market. Before the end of the century ten editions of
_Peer Gynt_ had appeared in Copenhagen as against fourteen of _Brand_.
The first German translation appeared in 1881, and the present English
translation in 1892. A French translation, by Count Prozor, appeared in
the _Nouvelle Revue_ in 1896, but does not seem to have been published
in book form.
After a great deal of discussion as to the stage-arrangement, _Peer
Gynt_, largely abbreviated, was produced, with Edvard Grieg’s now famous
incidental music, at the Christiania Theatre in February 1876, Henrik
Klausen playing the title-part. It was acted thirty-seven times; but a
fire which destroyed some of the scenery put a stop to the performances.
In 1892, at the same theatre, the first three acts were revived, with
Björn Björnson as Peer, and repeated fifty times. In the repertory of
the National Theatre, too (opened in 1899), _Peer Gynt_ has taken a
prominent place. It was first given in 1902, and has up to the present
(1906) been performed eighty-four times. In the version which has
established itself on the Norwegian stage, all five acts are given, but
the fourth and fifth acts are greatly abbreviated. In the season of 1886
the play was produced at the Dagmar Theatre, Copenhagen. August
Lindberg’s Swedish Company acted it in Gothenburg in 1892, in Stockholm
in 1895, and afterwards toured with it in Norway and Sweden. Count
Prozor’s translation was acted by “L’Œuvre” at the Nouveau Théâtre,
Paris, in November, 1896, of which remarkable production a lively
account by Mr. Bernard Shaw may be found in the _Saturday Review_ of
that period. At the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna, in May 1902, two
performances of _Peer Gynt_ were given by the “Akademisch-Litterarische
Verein.” I can find no record of any other German production of the
play. The first production in the English language took place at the
Grand Opera House, Chicago, on October 29, 1906, when Mr. Richard
Mansfield appeared as Peer Gynt. Mr. Mansfield would seem to have acted
the greater part of the play, but to have omitted the Sæter-Girl scene
and the madhouse scene.
We have seen that the name, Peer Gynt, was suggested to Ibsen by a
folk-tale in Asbjörnsen and Moe’s invaluable collection. It is one of a
group of tales entitled _Reindeer-Hunting in the Rondë Hills_;[5] and in
the same group occurs the adventure of Gudbrand Glesnë on the
Gendin-Edge, which Peer Gynt works up so unblushingly in Act I. Sc. 1.
The text of both these tales will be found in the Appendix, and the
reader will recognise how very slight are the hints which set the poet’s
imagination to work. The encounter with the Sæter-Girls (Act II. Sc. 3)
and the struggle with the Boyg (Act II. Sc. 7) are foreshadowed in
Asbjörnsen, and the concluding remark of Anders Ulsvolden evidently
suggested to Ibsen the idea of incarnating Fantasy in Peer Gynt, as in
Brand he had given us incarnate Will. But the Peer Gynt of the drama has
really nothing in common with the Peer Gynt of the story, and the rest
of the characters are not even remotely suggested. Many scattered traits
and allusions, however, are borrowed from other legends in the same
storehouse of grotesque and marvellous imaginings. Thus the story of the
devil in a nutshell (Act I. Sc. 3) figures in Asbjörnsen under the title
of _The Boy and the Devil_.[6] The appearance of the Green-Clad One with
her Ugly Brat, who offers Peer Gynt a goblet of beer (Act III. Sc. 3),
is obviously suggested by an incident in _Berthe Tuppenhaug’s
Stories_.[7] Old Berthe, too, supplies the idea of correcting Peer
Gynt’s eyesight according to the standard of the hill-trolls (Act II.
Sc. 6), as well as the germ of the fantastic thread-ball episode in the
last Act (Sc. 6). The castle, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”
(Act III. Sc. 4), gives its title to one of Asbjörnsen’s stories,[8]
which may be read in English in Mr. Andrew Lang’s _Blue Fairy Book_; and
“Soria Moria Castle” is the title of another legend.[9] Herr Passarge
(in his _Henrik Ibsen_, Leipzig, 1883) goes so far as to trace the idea
of Peer Gynt’s shrinking from the casting-ladle, even though hell be the
alternative (Act V. Sc. 7, &c.), to Asbjörnsen’s story of _The Smith
whom they Dared not let into Hell_;[10] but the circumstances are so
different, and Ibsen’s idea is such an inseparable part of the ethical
scheme of the drama, that we can scarcely take it to have been suggested
by this (or any other) individual story.[11] At the same time there is
no doubt that _The Folk-Lore of Peer Gynt_ might form the subject of a
much more extended study than our space or our knowledge admits of.[12]
The whole atmosphere of the first three acts and of the fifth is that of
the Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales. It must be remembered, too, that in
the early ’sixties Ibsen was commissioned by the Norwegian Government to
visit Romsdal and Söndmöre for the purpose of collecting folk-songs and
legends. To these journeys, no doubt, we are mainly indebted for the
local colour of _Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_.
What are we to say now of the drift, the interpretation of _Peer Gynt_?
The first and most essential thing may be said in Ibsen’s own words. On
February 24, 1868, he wrote from Rome to Frederik Hegel: “I learn that
the book has created much excitement in Norway. This does not trouble me
in the least; but both there and in Denmark they have discovered much
more satire in it than was intended by me. Why can they not read the
book as a poem? For as such I wrote it. The satirical passages are
tolerably isolated. But if the Norwegians of the present time recognise
themselves, as it would appear they do, in the character of Peer Gynt,
that is the good people’s own affair.” In the last sentence the
innocence of intention is, no doubt, a little overdone; but there is
still less doubt that Ibsen was absolutely sincere in declaring that he
wrote it primarily as a poem, a work of pure imagination, and that as a
work of pure imagination it ought primarily to be read. There is
undeniably an undercurrent of ethical and satirical meaning in the play;
but no one can properly enjoy or value it who is not swept along
irresistibly by the surface stream of purely poetic invention and
delineation. Peer himself is a character-creation on the heroic scale,
as vital a personality as Falstaff or Don Quixote. It is here that the
poem (as Clemens Petersen vaguely discerned) has a marked advantage over
its predecessor. In spite of the tremendous energy with which he is
depicted, Brand remains an abstraction or an attitude, rather than a
human being. But Peer Gynt is human in every fibre—too human to be alien
to any one of us. We know him, we understand him, we love him—for who
does not love a genial, imaginative, philosophic rascal? As for his
adventures and vicissitudes, if they do not give us pleasure in and for
themselves, quite apart from any symbolic sub-intention—just as the
adventures of Sindbad, or Gil Blas, or Tom Jones, or Huckleberry Finn
give us pleasure—then assuredly the poem does not affect us as Ibsen
intended that it should. Readers who approach it for the first time may
therefore be counselled to pay no heed to its ethical or political
meanings, and to take it as it comes, simply as a dramatic romance or
phantasmagoria of purely human humour and pathos. Reading it in this
way, they will naturally find a good deal that seems obscure and
arbitrary; but much of this will be cleared up on a second reading, by
the aid of such sidelights as this Introduction can afford. No assiduity
of study, however, can find in _Peer Gynt_ a clear, consistent,
cut-and-dried allegory, with a place for everything and everything in
its place. It is not an allegory, but (as aforesaid) a phantasmagory.
This is what the early critics did not realise. They quarrelled with it
for the very luxuriance of its invention, the buoyant irrepressible
whimsicality of its humour, the shimmering iridescence of its style.
They stood before an “undulant and diverse” carnival-pageant, and
grumbled because it would not fit into any recognised form, sanctioned
by their preconceived æsthetic principles.
I am far from maintaining that the reckless, elusive capriciousness of
the poem is an unmixed merit. It would probably have done no harm if,
after the first rapture of composition had died away, Ibsen had gone
over it and pruned it a little here and there. I can by no means endorse
the critics’ sweeping condemnation of the fourth act, which contains
some of the most delightful passages in the whole poem; but the first
scene of this act is unquestionably shallow in conception and diffuse in
style—a piece of satiric journalism rather than of literature. The
concluding scenes of the last act, too, would certainly have been none
the worse of a little compression. The auction scene (Act V. Sc. 4),
though it has a sort of fantastic impressiveness, seems to me hopelessly
baffling in its relation both to the outward story and to the inner
significance of the poem. Here, and perhaps at some half-dozen other
points, one may admit that Ibsen appears to have let his fancy run away
with him; but the inert, excessive, or utterly enigmatic passages in
_Peer Gynt_ are surely few and brief in comparison with the passages in
_Faust_ to which the same epithets may be applied. On the other hand,
the scenes of poignant and thrilling and haunting poetry are too many to
be severally indicated. The first act, with its inimitable life and
movement, Åse’s death-scene, and the Pastor’s speech in the last act,
are usually cited as the culminating points of the poem; and there can
be no doubt that Åse’s death-scene, at any rate, is one of the supreme
achievements of modern drama.[13] But there are several other scenes
that I would place scarcely, if at all, lower than these. In point of
weird intensity, there is nothing in the poem more marvellous than the
Sæter-Girl scene (Act II. Sc. 3); in point of lyric movement, Peer
Gynt’s repudiation of Ingrid (Act II. Sc. 1) is incomparable; and in
point of sheer beauty and pathos, Solveig’s arrival at the hut (Act III.
Sc. 3), with the whole of the scene that follows, stands supreme.[14]
For my own part, I reckon the shipwreck scenes at the beginning of the
fifth act among the most impressive, as they are certainly not the least
characteristic, in the poem. And, in enumerating its traits of
undeniable greatness, one must by no means forget the character of Åse,
on which Ibsen himself dwelt with justified complacency. There is not a
more life-like creation in the whole range of drama.
Having now warned the reader against allowing the search for symbolic or
satiric meanings to impair his enjoyment of the pure poetry of _Peer
Gynt_, I may proceed to point out some of the implications which do
indubitably underlie the surface aspects of the poem. These meanings
fall under three heads. First, we have universal-human satire and
symbolism, bearing upon human nature in general, irrespective of race or
nationality. Next we have satire upon Norwegian human nature in
particular, upon the religious and political life of Norway as a nation.
Lastly, we find a certain number of local and ephemeral references—what,
in the slang of our stage, are called “topical allusions.”
In order to provide the reader with a clue to the complex meanings of
_Peer Gynt_, on its higher lines or planes of significance, I cannot do
better than quote some paragraphs from the admirable summary of the
drama given by Mr. P. H. Wicksteed in his _Four Lectures on Henrik
Ibsen_.[15] Mr. Wicksteed is in such perfect sympathy with Ibsen in the
stage of his development marked by _Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_, that he has
understood these poems, in my judgment, at least as well as any other
commentator, whether German or Scandinavian. He writes as follows:
“In _Brand_ the hero is an embodied protest against the poverty of
spirit and half-heartedness that Ibsen rebelled against in his
countrymen. In _Peer Gynt_ the hero is himself the embodiment of that
spirit. In _Brand_ the fundamental antithesis, upon which, as its
central theme, the drama is constructed, is the contrast between the
spirit of compromise on the one hand, and the motto ‘everything or
nothing’ on the other. And Peer Gynt is the very incarnation of a
compromising dread of decisive committal to any one course. In _Brand_
the problem of self-realisation and the relation of the individual to
his surroundings is obscurely struggling for recognition, and in _Peer
Gynt_ it becomes the formal theme upon which all the fantastic
variations of the drama are built up. In both plays alike the problems
of heredity and the influence of early surroundings are more than
touched upon; and both alike culminate in the doctrine that the only
redeeming power on earth or in heaven is the power of love.
“Peer Gynt, as already stated, stands for the Norwegian people, much as
they are sketched in _Brand_, though with more brightness of colouring.
Hence his perpetual ‘hedging’ and determination never so to commit
himself that he cannot draw back. Hence his fragmentary life of
smatterings. Hence his perpetual brooding over the former grandeur of
his family, his idle dreams of the future, and his neglect of every
present duty. Hence his deep-rooted selfishness and cynical indifference
to all higher motives; and hence, above all, his sordid and
superstitious religion; for to him religion is the apotheosis of the art
of ‘hedging.’
“But Ibsen’s allegories are never stiffly or pedantically worked out.
His characters, though typical, are personal. We could read _Brand_, and
could feel the tragedy and learn the lessons of the drama without any
knowledge whatever of the circumstances or feelings under which it was
written, or the references to the Norwegian character and conduct with
which it teems.
“So, too, with _Peer Gynt_. We may forget the national significance of
the sketch, except where special allusions recall it to our minds, and
may think only of the universal problems with which the poem deals, and
which will retain their awful interest when Ibsen’s polemic against his
countrymen has sunk into oblivion. The study of _Peer Gynt_ as an
occasional poem should be strictly subsidiary and introductory to its
study as the tragedy of a lost soul.
“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 his 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 on earth 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 stauncher ally than _want of perception_! [Act V.
Sc. 9.]
“But, after all, you may generally find out what God meant you for, if
you will face facts. It is easy to find a refuge from facts in lies, in
self-deception, and in self-sufficiency. It is easy to take credit to
yourself for what circumstances have done for you, and lay upon
circumstances what you owe to yourself. It is easy to think you are
realising yourself by refusing to become a ‘pack-horse for the weal and
woe of others’ [Act IV. Sc. 1], keeping alternatives open and never
closing a door behind you or burning your ships, and so always remaining
the master of the situation and self-possessed. If you choose to do
these easy things you may always ‘get round’ your difficulties [Act II.
Sc. 7], but you will never get through them. You will remain master of
the situation indeed, but the situation will become poorer and narrower
every day. If you never commit yourself, you never express yourself, and
yourself becomes less and less significant and decisive. Calculating
selfishness is the annihilation of self.”
So far Mr. Wicksteed. The general significance of the poem, in the terms
of that theism which may or may not have been Ibsen’s personal creed
during the years of its incubation, could scarcely be better expounded.
When we come to subsidiary meanings, we must proceed more carefully, for
we have the poet’s own word for it that many have been read into the
poem whereof he never dreamt. For example, in his first letter to
Björnson after reading Clemens Petersen’s criticism, he protested
against that critic’s assumption that the Strange Passenger (Act V. Scs.
1 and 2) was symbolic of “dread.” “If my head had been on the block,” he
said, “and such an explanation would have saved my life, it would never
have occurred to me. I never thought of such a thing. I stuck in the
scene as a mere caprice.” For this element of caprice we must always
allow. The whole fourth act, the poet told the present writer, was an
afterthought, and did not belong to the original scheme of the play.
Here we come upon the question whether Ibsen consciously designed _Peer
Gynt_ as a counterblast to Björnson’s idyllic peasant-novel, _Synnöve
Solbakken_. This theory, put forward by a judicious French critic, M.
Auguste Ehrhard,[16] among others, has always seemed to me very
far-fetched; but as Dr. Brandes, in the introduction to _Peer Gynt_ in
the German collected edition, appears to give it his sanction, I quote
what he says on the point: “German critics have laid special emphasis on
the fact that Ibsen here placed himself in conscious opposition to
Björnson’s glorification, in his early novels, of the younger generation
of Norwegian peasants. Quarrelsomeness and love of fighting were
represented in Thorbjörn, the hero of _Synnöve Solbakken_, as traits of
the traditional old-Norse viking spirit; in _Arne_ the poetic
proclivities of the people were placed in an engaging light. The vaunted
fisticuff-heroism was, in Ibsen’s view, nothing but rawness, and the
poetic proclivities of Norwegian youth appeared to him, in the last
analysis, simply a very prevalent love of lying and gasconading. The
Norwegians appear in the caricaturing mirror of this brilliant poem as a
people who, in smug contentment, are ‘to themselves enough,’ and
therefore laud everything that is their own, however insignificant it
may be, shrink from all decisive action, and have for their national
vice a tendency to fantastication and braggadocio.” That _Peer Gynt_ is
a counterblast to national romanticism and chauvinism in general there
can of course be no doubt; but I see no reason to suppose that Ibsen had
Björnson’s novels specially in view, or intended anything like a
“caricature” of them. It is pretty clear, too, that Björnson himself had
no such idea in his mind when he reviewed the poem in the _Norsk
Folkeblad_ for November 23, 1867. His long article is almost entirely
laudatory, and certainly shows no smallest sign of hostile party-spirit.
“_Peer Gynt_,” says Björnson, “is a satire upon Norwegian egoism,
narrowness, and self-sufficiency, so executed as to have made me not
only again and again laugh till I was sore, but again and again give
thanks to the author in my heart—as I here do publicly.” Beyond
remarking upon the over-exuberance of detail, and criticising the
versification, Björnson says little or nothing in dispraise of the poem.
On the other hand he says curiously little of its individual beauties.
He never mentions Åse, says nothing of her death-scene, or of the
Pastor’s speech, and picks out as the best thing in the play the
thread-ball scene (Act V. Sc. 6).
The most obviously satirical passage of the first three acts is the
scene in the Dovrë-King’s palace (Act II. Sc. 6), with its jibe at
Norwegian national vanity:
The cow gives cakes and the bullock mead,
Ask not if its taste be sour or sweet;
The main matter is, and you mustn’t forget it,
It’s all of it home-brewed.
Much more difficult is the interpretation of the Boyg,[17] that vague,
shapeless, ubiquitous, inevitable, invulnerable Thing which Peer
encounters in the following scene (Act II. Sc. 7). Ibsen found it in the
folk-tale, and was attracted, no doubt, by the sheer uncanniness and
eerieness of the idea. Neither can one doubt, however, that in his own
mind he attributed to the monster some symbolic signification. Dr.
Brandes would have us see in it the Spirit of Compromise—the same evil
spirit which is assailed in _Brand_. The Swedish critic, Vasenius,
interprets it as Peer Gynt’s own consciousness of his inability to take
a decisive step—to go through an obstacle in place of skirting round it.
Herr Passarge reads in it a symbol of the mass of mankind, _perpetuum
immobile_, opposing its sheer force of inertia to every forward
movement.[18] This would make it nearly equivalent to “the compact
majority” of _An Enemy of the People_; or, looking at it from a slightly
different angle, we might see in the scene an illustration in action of
that despairing cry of Schiller’s Talbot: “Mit der Dummheit kämpfen
Götter selbst vergebens.” The truth probably is that the poet vaguely
intended this vague monster to be as elusive in its symbolism as in its
physical constitution. But when, in Act IV. Sc. 12, he formally
identifies the Boyg with the Sphinx, we may surely conclude that one of
the interpretations present to his mind was metaphysical. In this
aspect, the Boyg would typify the riddle of existence, with which we
grapple in vain, and which we have to “get round” as best we can.
The fourth act contains a good many special allusions, in addition to
the general, and somewhat crude, satire in the opening scene on the
characteristics of different nationalities, with particular reference to
their conduct in the Dano-German crisis. Peer’s dreams of African
colonisation (Act IV. Sc. 5) are said to refer to certain projects which
Ole Bull had about this time been ventilating. But it is especially in
the madhouse scene (Act IV. Sc. 13) that satiric sallies abound. “The
Fellah with the royal mummy on his back,” says Henrik Jæger,[19]
“is—like Trumpeterstråle—a cut at the Swedes, the mummy being Charles
the Twelfth. Like the Fellah, it is implied, the Swedes are extremely
proud of their ‘Hero-king,’ and yet during the Dano-German war they
showed not the smallest sign of having anything in common with him,
unless it were that they, like him, ‘kept still and completely dead.’ In
the delusion of the minister Hussein, who imagines himself a pen, there
is a general reference to the futile address- and note-mongering which
went on in Norwegian-Swedish officialdom during the Dano-German War, and
a more special one to an eminent Swedish statesman [Grev Manderström],
who, during the war, had been extremely proud of his official notes, and
had imagined that by means of them he might exercise a decisive
influence on the course of events.”
Most prominent and unmistakable of all the satiric passages, however, is
the attack on the language-reformers in the personage of Huhu. In the
list of characters, Huhu is set down as a “Målstræver from Zanzibar.”
Now the Målstrævers are a party which desires to substitute a language
compounded from the various local dialects, for the Norwegian of the
townsfolk and of literature. This they call Danish, and declare to be
practically a foreign tongue to the peasants, who form the backbone of
the Norwegian nation. Ibsen’s satire, it must be said, has had little or
no effect on the movement, which has gone on slowly but steadily, and
has of late years met with official and legislative recognition. There
is a large and increasing literature in the “Mål”; it is taught in
schools and it is spoken in the Storthing. Where the movement may end it
is hard to say. It must seem to a foreigner, as it seemed to Ibsen,
retrograde and obscurantist; but there is doubtless some genuine impulse
behind it which the foreigner cannot appreciate.
The principles which have guided us in the following transcript demand a
few words of explanation. _Peer Gynt_ is written from first to last in
rhymed verse. Six or eight different measures are employed in the
various scenes, and the rhymes are exceedingly rich and complex. The
frequency of final light syllables in Norwegian implies an exceptional
abundance of double rhymes, and Ibsen has taken full advantage of this
peculiarity. In the short first scene of the second act, for example,
twenty-five out of the forty lines end in double rhymes, and there are
three double-rhymed triplets. The tintinnabulation of these double
rhymes, then, gives to most of the scenes a metrical character which it
might puzzle Mr. Swinburne himself to reproduce in English. Moreover,
the ordinary objections to rhymed translations seemed to apply with
exceptional force in the case of _Peer Gynt_. The characteristic quality
of its style is its vernacular ease and simplicity. It would have been
heart-breaking work (apart from its extreme difficulty) to substitute
for this racy terseness the conventional graces of English poetic
diction, padding here and perverting there. To a prose translation, on
the other hand, the objections seemed even greater. It is possible to
give in prose some faint adumbration of epic dignity; but we had here no
epic to deal with. We found (though the statement may at first seem
paradoxical) that the same vernacular simplicity of style which forbade
a translation in rhyme, was no less hostile to a translation in prose.
The characteristic quality of the poet’s achievement lay precisely in
his having, by the aid of rhythm and rhyme, transfigured the most easy
and natural dialogue, without the least sacrifice of its naturalness.
Entirely to eliminate these graces of form would have been to reduce the
poem to prose indeed. It seemed little better than casting a silver
statue into the crucible and asking the world to divine from the ingot
something of the sculptor’s power. A prose translation, in short, could
not but strip Fantasy of its pinions, rob Satire of its barbs. The poet
himself, moreover, expressly declared that he would rather let _Peer
Gynt_ remain untranslated than see it rendered in prose. After a good
deal of reflection and experiment, we finally suggested to him a middle
course between prose and rhyme: a translation as nearly as possible in
the metres of the original, but with the rhymes suppressed. To this
compromise he assented, and the following pages are the result.
We had no precedent—within our knowledge, at any rate—to guide us, and
were forced to lay down our own laws. Even at the risk of falling
between two stools, we proposed to ourselves a dual purpose. We sought
to produce a translation which should convey to the general reader some
faint conception of the movement and colour, the wit and pathos, of the
original, and at the same time a transcript which should serve the
student as a “crib” to the Norwegian text. This, then, the reader must
be good enough to bear in mind: that the following version is designed
to facilitate, not to supersede, the study of the original. But, apart
from our desire to provide a “crib” to _Peer Gynt_, we felt that, in
taking the liberty of suppressing the rhymes, we abjured our right to
any other liberty whatsoever. A rhymed paraphrase of a great poem may
have a beauty of its own; an unrhymed version must be no paraphrase, but
a faithful transcript, else “the ripple of laughing rhyme” has been
sacrificed in vain. Our fundamental principle then, has been to
represent the original _line for line_; and to this principle we have
adhered with the utmost fidelity. There are probably not fifty cases in
the whole poem in which a word has been transferred from one line to
another, and then only some pronoun or auxiliary verb. It is needless to
say that in adhering to this principle we have often had to resist
temptation. Many cases presented themselves in which greater clearness,
grace, and vigour might easily have been attained by transferring a word
or phrase from this line to that, or even altering the sequence of a
whole group of lines. In no case have we yielded to such temptation,
feeling that, our rule once relaxed, we should insensibly but inevitably
lapse into mere paraphrase. Temptation beset us with especial force in
the less vital passages of the poem. In these places it would have been
easy to give our rendering some approach to grace and point by
disregarding inversions and other defects of expression, justified in
the original by the wit and spirit of the rhymes, but of course deprived
in our transcript of any such excuse. Here, as elsewhere, we were proof
against temptation; it is for our readers to decide whether our
constancy was heroic or pedantic.
It would be folly to pretend either that we have reproduced every word
of the original, or that we have avoided all necessity for “padding.”
The chief drawback of our line-for-line principle is that it has
debarred us from eking out the deficiency of one line with the
superfluity of the next. We trust, however, that few essential ideas, or
even words, of the original will be found quite unaccounted for; while
with regard to padding, we have tried, where we found it absolutely
forced upon us, to use only such mechanical parts of speech as
introduced no new idea into the context. We have found by experiment
that the fact of writing in measure has frequently enabled us to keep
much closer to the original than would have been possible in prose. This
is not in reality so strange as it may at first sight appear. A prose
translation of verse can avoid paraphrase only at the cost of grotesque
inelegance; whereas in rendering metre into metre, we are working under
the same laws which govern the original, and are therefore enabled in
many cases to adopt identical forms of expression, which would be quite
inadmissible in prose.
Thirty out of the thirty-eight scenes into which the five acts are
divided are written almost entirely in an irregular measure of four
accents, evidently designed to give the greatest possible variety and
suppleness to the dialogue. The four accents constitute almost the only
assignable law of this measure, the feet being of any length, from two
to four syllables, and of all possible denominations—iambics, trochees,
dactyls, anapæsts, amphibrachs. The effect is at first rather baffling
to the unaccustomed ear; but when one gets into the swing of the
rub-a-dub rhythm, if we may venture to call it so, the feeling of
ruggedness vanishes, and the verse is found to be capable of poignantly
pathetic, as well as of buoyantly humorous, expression.
We have not attempted to reproduce each line of this measure accurately,
foot for foot, holding it enough to observe the law of the four accents.
Where the four-accent rule is obviously departed from, it will generally
be found to be in obedience to the original; for Ibsen now and then (but
very rarely) introduces a line or couplet of three or of five accents.
Of the eight scenes in which this measure is not employed, three—Act I.
Sc. 1, Act II. Sc. 1, and Act IV. Sc. 7—are in a perfectly regular
trochaic measure of four accents, the lines containing seven or eight
syllables, according as the rhymes are single or double. In dealing with
this measure, we have not thought it necessary to follow the precise
arrangement of the original in the alternation of seven and eight
syllable lines. In other words, we have sometimes represented a
seven-syllable line by one of eight syllables, an eight-syllable line by
one of seven. In the short first scene of the second act, however, every
line represents accurately the length of the corresponding line in the
original.
The fourth scene of Act II. is written in lines of three accents; the
last scene of the third act—Åse’s death-scene—in lines of three accents
with alternate double and single rhymes. In rendering this scene, we
have been careful to preserve the alternation of strong with light
endings, which gives it its metrical character.
Two scenes—Act IV. Sc. I, and Act V. Sc. 2—consist of four-accent iambic
lines, differing from the octosyllabic verse of _Marmion_ or _The
Giaour_ chiefly in the greater prevalence of double and even treble
rhymes. Finally, the sixth scene of Act V. consists mainly of eight-line
lyrical stanzas, with two accents in each line, Peer Gynt’s interspersed
remarks being in trochaic verses, like those of Act I. Sc. 1. In such
intercalated passages, so to speak, as the rhapsodies of Huhu and the
Fellah in Act IV. Sc. 13, and the Pastor’s speech at the grave in Act V.
Sc. 3, we have accurately reproduced the measures of the original. The
Pastor’s speech is the only passage in the whole poem which is couched
in iambic decasyllables.
In dealing with idioms and proverbial expressions, our practice has not
been very consistent. We have sometimes, where they seemed peculiarly
racy and expressive, translated them literally; in other cases we have
had recourse to the nearest English equivalent, even where the metaphor
employed is quite different. In the latter instances we have usually
given the literal rendering of the phrase in a footnote.
For the present edition the text has been carefully revised, and some
rough edges have, it is hoped, been smoothed away; but no very essential
alteration has been made. While we are keenly conscious of all that the
poem loses in our rendering, we cannot but feel that it has justified
its existence, inasmuch as it has brought home to thousands of readers
on both sides of the Atlantic a not wholly inadequate sense of the
greatness of the original.
W. A.
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Footnotes:
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Footnote 1:
One of Holberg’s most famous comedies.
Footnote 2:
See _The Lady from the Sea_.
Footnote 3:
Brandes: _Ibsen and Björnson_, p. 35. London, Heinemann, 1899. Except
in regard to the fourth act, Dr. Brandes has, in the introduction to
_Peer Gynt_ in the German collected edition, recanted his early
condemnation of the poem.
Footnote 4:
The last words are “deus caritatis.”
Footnote 5:
_Norske Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn_, Christiania, 1848, p. 47. See
also Copenhagen edition, 1896, p. 163.
Footnote 6: