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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
VOLUME XI
LITTLE EYOLF
JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN
WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
_Copyright Edition._ _Complete in 11 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
LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
COPYRIGHT EDITION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOLUME XI
LITTLE EYOLF
JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN
WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN
WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY
WILLIAM ARCHER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: title page]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1910
_Collected Edition first published November 1907_
_Second Impression July 1910_
_Copyright 1907 by William Heinemann_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION TO “LITTLE EYOLF” vii
INTRODUCTION TO “JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN” xvii
INTRODUCTION TO “WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN” xxv
“LITTLE EYOLF” 1
_Translated by_ WILLIAM ARCHER
“JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN” 153
_Translated by_ WILLIAM ARCHER
“WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN” 325
_Translated by_ WILLIAM ARCHER
LITTLE EYOLF.
INTRODUCTION.
_Little Eyolf_ was written in Christiania during 1894, and published in
Copenhagen on December 11 in that year. By this time Ibsen’s
correspondence has become so scanty as to afford us no clue to what may
be called the biographical antecedents of the play. Even of anecdotic
history very little attaches to it. For only one of the characters has a
definite model been suggested. Ibsen himself told his French translator,
Count Prozor, that the original of the Rat-Wife was “a little old woman
who came to kill rats at the school where he was educated. She carried a
little dog in a bag, and it was said that children had been drowned
through following her.” This means that Ibsen did not himself adapt to
his uses the legend so familiar to us in Browning’s _Pied Piper of
Hamelin_, but found it ready adapted by the popular imagination of his
native place, Skien. “This idea,” Ibsen continued to Count Prozor, “was
just what I wanted for bringing about the disappearance of Little Eyolf,
in whom the infatuation[1] and the feebleness of his father are
reproduced, but concentrated, exaggerated, as one often sees them in the
son of such a father.” Dr. Elias tells us that a well-known lady-artist,
who in middle life suggested to him the figure of Lona Hessel, was in
later years the model for the Rat-Wife. There is no inconsistency
between these two accounts of the matter. The idea was doubtless
suggested by his recollection of the rat-catcher of Skien, while traits
of manner and physiognomy might be borrowed from the lady in question.
Footnote 1:
The French word used by Count Prozor is “infatuation.” I can think of
no other rendering for it; but I do not quite know what it means as
applied to Allmers and Eyolf.
The verse quoted on pp. 52 and 53 is the last line of a very well-known
poem by Johan Sebastian Welhaven, entitled _Republikanerne_, written in
1839. An unknown guest in a Paris restaurant has been challenged by a
noisy party of young Frenchmen to join them in drinking a health to
Poland. He refuses; they denounce him as a craven and a slave; he bares
his breast and shows the scars of wounds received in fighting for the
country whose lost cause has become a subject for conventional
enthusiasm and windy rhetoric.
“De saae paa hverandre. Han vandred sin vei.
De havde champagne, men rörte den ei.”
“They looked at each other. He went on his way. There stood their
champagne, but they did not touch it.” The champagne incident leads me
to wonder whether the relation between Rita and Allmers may not have
been partly suggested to Ibsen by the relation between Charlotte
Stieglitz and her weakling of a husband. Their story must have been
known to him through George Brandes’s _Young Germany_, if not more
directly. “From time to time,” says Dr. Brandes, “there came over her
what she calls her champagne-mood; she grieves that this is no longer
the case with him.”[2] Did the germ of the incident lie in these words?
Footnote 2:
_Main Currents of Nineteenth Century Literature_, vol. VI. p. 299.
The first performance of the play in Norway took place at the
Christiania Theatre on January 15, 1895, Fru Wettergren playing Rita and
Fru Dybwad, Asta. In Copenhagen (March 13, 1895) Fru Oda Nielsen and Fru
Hennings played Rita and Asta respectively, while Emil Poulsen played
Allmers. The first German Rita (Deutsches Theater, Berlin, January 12,
1895) was Frau Agnes Sorma, with Reicher as Allmers. Six weeks later
Frl. Sandrock played Rita at the Burgtheater, Vienna. In May 1895 the
play was acted by M. Lugné-Poë’s company in Paris. The first performance
in English took place at the Avenue Theatre, London, on the afternoon of
November 23, 1896, with Miss Janet Achurch as Rita, Miss Elizabeth
Robins as Asta, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell as the Rat-Wife. Miss
Achurch’s Rita made a profound impression. Mrs. Patrick Campbell
afterwards played the part in a short series of evening performances. In
the spring of 1895 the play was acted in Chicago by a company of
Scandinavian amateurs, presumably in Norwegian. Fru Oda Nielsen has
recently (I understand) given some performances of it in New York, and
Madame Alla Nazimova has announced it for production during the coming
season (1907-1908).
As the external history of _Little Eyolf_ is so short, I am tempted to
depart from my usual practice, and say a few words as to its matter and
meaning.
George Brandes, writing of this play, has rightly observed that “a kind
of dualism has always been perceptible in Ibsen; he pleads the cause of
Nature and he castigates Nature with mystic morality; only sometimes
Nature is allowed the first voice, sometimes morality. In _The Master
Builder_ and in _Ghosts_ the lover of Nature in Ibsen was predominant;
here, as in _Brand_ and _The Wild Duck_, the castigator is in the
ascendant.” So clearly is this the case in _Little Eyolf_ that Ibsen
seems almost to fall into line with Mr. Thomas Hardy. To say nothing of
analogies of detail between _Little Eyolf_ and _Jude the Obscure_, there
is this radical analogy, that they are both utterances of a profound
pessimism, both indictments of Nature.
But while Mr. Hardy’s pessimism is plaintive and passive, Ibsen’s is
stoical and almost bracing. It is true that in this play he is no longer
the mere “indignation-pessimist” whom Dr. Brandes quite justly
recognised in his earlier works. His analysis has gone deeper into the
heart of things, and he has put off the satirist and the iconoclast. But
there is in his thought an incompressible energy of revolt. A pessimist
in contemplation, he remains a meliorist in action. He is not, like Mr.
Hardy, content to let the flag droop half-mast high; his protagonist
still runs it up to the mast-head, and looks forward steadily to the
“heavy day of work” before him. But although the note of the conclusion
is resolute, almost serene, the play remains none the less an indictment
of Nature, or at least of that egoism of passion which is one of her
most potent subtleties. In this view, Allmers becomes a type of what we
may roughly call the “free moral agent”; Eyolf, a type of humanity
conceived as passive and suffering, thrust will-less into existence,
with boundless aspirations and cruelly limited powers; Rita, a type of
the egoistic instinct which is “a consuming fire”; and Asta, a type of
the beneficent love which is possible only so long as it is exempt from
“the law of change.” Allmers, then, is self-conscious egoism, egoism
which can now and then break its chains, look in its own visage, realise
and shrink from itself; while Rita, until she has passed through the
awful crisis which forms the matter of the play, is unconscious,
reckless, and ruthless egoism, exigent and jealous, “holding to its
rights,” and incapable even of rising into the secondary stage of
maternal love. The offspring and the victim of these egoisms is Eyolf,
“little wounded warrior,” who longs to scale the heights and dive into
the depths, but must remain for ever chained to the crutch of human
infirmity. For years Allmers has been a restless and half-reluctant
slave to Rita’s imperious temperament. He has dreamed and theorised
about “responsibility,” and has kept Eyolf poring over his books, in the
hope that, despite his misfortune, he may one day minister to parental
vanity. Finally he breaks away from Rita, for the first time “in all
these ten years,” goes up “into the infinite solitudes,” looks Death in
the face, and returns shrinking from passion, yearning towards selfless
love, and filled with a profound and remorseful pity for the lot of poor
maimed humanity. He will “help Eyolf to bring his desires into harmony
with what lies attainable before him.” He will “create a conscious
happiness in his mind.” And here the drama opens.
Before the Rat-Wife enters, let me pause for a moment to point out that
here again Ibsen adopts that characteristic method which, in writing of
_The Lady from the Sea_ and _The Master Builder_, I have compared to the
method of Hawthorne. The story he tells is not really, or rather not
inevitably, supernatural. Everything is explicable within the limits of
nature; but supernatural agency is also vaguely suggested, and the
reader’s imagination is stimulated, without any absolute violence to his
sense of reality. On the plane of everyday life, then, the Rat-Wife is a
crazy and uncanny old woman, fabled by the peasants to be a were-wolf in
her leisure moments, who goes about the country killing vermin. Coming
across an impressionable child, she tells him a preposterous tale,
adapted from the old “Pied Piper” legends, of her method of fascinating
her victims. The child, whose imagination has long dwelt on this
personage, is in fact hypnotised by her, follows her down to the sea,
and, watching her row away, turns dizzy, falls in, and is drowned. There
is nothing impossible, nothing even improbable, in this. At the same
time, there cannot be the least doubt, I think, that in the poet’s mind
the Rat-Wife is the symbol of Death, of the “still, soft darkness” that
is at once so fearful and so fascinating to humanity. This is clear not
only in the text of her single scene, but in the fact that Allmers, in
the last act, treats her and his “fellow-traveller” of that night among
the mountains, not precisely as identical, but as interchangeable,
ideas. To tell the truth, I have even my own suspicions as to who is
meant by “her sweetheart,” whom she “lured” long ago, and who is now
“down where all the rats are.” This theory I shall keep to myself; it
may be purely fantastic, and is at best inessential. What is certain is
that death carries off Little Eyolf, and that, of all he was, only the
crutch is left, mute witness to his hapless lot.
He is gone; there was so little to bind him to life that he made not
even a moment’s struggle against the allurement of the “long, sweet
sleep.” Then, for the first time, the depth of the egoism which had
created and conditioned his little life bursts upon his parents’
horror-stricken gaze. Like accomplices in crime, they turn upon and
accuse each other—“sorrow makes them wicked and hateful.” Allmers, as
the one whose eyes were already half opened, is the first to carry war
into the enemy’s country; but Rita is not slow to retort, and presently
they both have to admit that their recriminations are only a vain
attempt to drown the voice of self-reproach. In a sort of fierce frenzy
they tear away veil after veil from their souls, until they realise that
Eyolf never existed at all, so to speak, for his own sake, but only for
the sake of their passions and vanities. “Isn’t it curious,” says Rita,
summing up the matter, “that we should grieve like this over a little
stranger boy?”
In blind self-absorption they have played with life and death, and now
“the great open eyes” of the stranger boy will be for ever upon them.
Allmers would fain take refuge in a love untainted by the egoism, and
unexposed to the revulsions, of passion. But not only is Asta’s pity for
Rita too strong to let her countenance this desertion: she has
discovered that her relation to Allmers is _not_ “exempt from the law of
change,” and she “takes flight from him—and from herself.” Meanwhile it
appears that the agony which Allmers and Rita have endured in probing
their wounds has been, as Halvard Solness would say, “salutary
self-torture.” The consuming fire of passion is now quenched, but “it
has left an empty place within them,” and they feel a common need “to
fill it up with something that is a little like love.” They come to
remember that there are other children in the world on whom reckless
instinct has thrust the gift of life—neglected children, stunted and
maimed in mind if not in body. And now that her egoism is seared to the
quick, the mother-instinct asserts itself in Rita. She will take these
children to her—these children to whom her hand and her heart have
hitherto been closed. They shall be outwardly in Eyolf’s place, and
perhaps in time they may fill the place in her heart that should have
been Eyolf’s. Thus she will try to “make her peace with the great open
eyes.” For now, at last, she has divined the secret of the unwritten
book on “human responsibility,” and has realised that motherhood
means—atonement.
So I read this terrible and beautiful work of art. This, I think, is _a_
meaning inherent in it—not perhaps _the_ meaning, and still less all the
meanings. Indeed, its peculiar fascination for me, among all Ibsen’s
works, lies in the fact that it seems to touch life at so many different
points. But I must not be understood as implying that Ibsen constructed
the play with any such definitely allegoric design as is here set forth.
I do not believe that this creator of men and women ever started from an
abstract conception. He did not first compose his philosophic tune and
then set his puppets dancing to it. The germ in his mind was dramatic,
not ethical; it was only as the drama developed that its meanings dawned
upon him; and he left them implicit and fragmentary, like the symbolism
of life itself, seldom formulated, never worked out with schematic
precision. He simply took a cutting from the tree of life, and, planting
it in the rich soil of his imagination, let it ramify and burgeon as it
would.
Even if one did not know the date of _Little Eyolf_, one could
confidently assign it to the latest period of Ibsen’s career, on noting
a certain difference of scale between its foundations and its
superstructure. In his earlier plays, down to and including _Hedda
Gabler_, we feel his invention at work to the very last moment, often
with more intensity in the last act than in the first, in his later
plays he seems to be in haste to pass as early as possible from
invention to pure analysis. In this play, after the death of Eyolf
(surely one of the most inspired “situations” in all drama) there is
practically no external action whatsoever. Nothing happens save in the
souls of the characters; there is no further invention, but rather what
one may perhaps call inquisition. This does not prevent the second act
from being quite the most poignant or the third act from being one of
the most moving that Ibsen ever wrote. Far from wishing to depreciate
the play, I rate it more highly, perhaps, than most critics—among the
very greatest of Ibsen’s achievements. I merely note as a characteristic
of the poet’s latest manner this disparity of scale between the work
foreshadowed, so to speak, and the work completed. We shall find it
still more evident in the case of _John Gabriel Borkman_.
JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN.
INTRODUCTION.
The anecdotic history of _John Gabriel Borkman_ is even scantier than
that of _Little Eyolf_. It is true that two mentions of it occur in
Ibsen’s letters, but they throw no light whatever upon its spiritual
antecedents. Writing to George Brandes from Christiania, on April 24,
1896, Ibsen says: "In your last letter you make the suggestion that I
should visit London. If I knew enough English, I might perhaps go. But
as I unfortunately do not, I must give up the idea altogether. Besides,
I am engaged in preparing for a big new work, and I do not wish to put
off the writing of it longer than necessary. It might so easily happen
that a roof-tile fell on my head before I had ‘found time to make the
last verse.’ And what then?" On October 3 of the same year, writing to
the same correspondent, he again alludes to his work at “a new long
play, which must be completed as soon as possible.” It was, as a matter
of fact, completed with very little delay, for it appeared in Copenhagen
on December 15, 1896.
The irresponsible gossip of the time made out that Björnson discerned in
the play some personal allusions to himself; but this Björnson
emphatically denied. I am not aware that any attempt has been made to
identify the originals of the various characters. It need scarcely be
pointed out that in the sisters Gunhild and Ella we have the pair of
women, one strong and masterful, the other tender and devoted, who run
through so many of Ibsen’s plays, from _The Feast at Solhoug_
onwards—nay, even from _Catilina_. In my Introduction to _The Lady from
the Sea_ (p. xxii) it is pointed out that Ibsen had the character of
Foldal clearly in his mind when, in March 1880, he made the first draft
of that play. The character there appears as: "The old married clerk.
Has written a play in his youth which was only once acted. Is for ever
touching it up, and lives in the illusion that it will be published and
will make a great success. Takes no steps, however, to bring this about.
Nevertheless accounts himself one of the ‘literary’ class. His wife and
children believe blindly in the play." By the time Foldal actually came
to life, the faith of his wife and children had sadly dwindled away.
There was scarcely a theatre in Scandinavia or Finland at which _John
Gabriel Borkman_ was not acted in the course of January 1897.
Helsingfors led the way with performances both at the Swedish and at the
Finnish Theatres on January 10. Christiania and Stockholm followed on
January 25, Copenhagen on January 31; and meanwhile the piece had been
presented at many provincial theatres as well. In Christiania, Borkman,
Gunhild, and Ella were played by Garmann, Fru Gundersen, and Fröken
Reimers respectively; in Copenhagen, by Emil Poulsen, Fru Eckhardt, and
Fru Hennings. In the course of 1897 it spread all over Germany,
beginning with Frankfort on Main, where, oddly enough, it was somewhat
maltreated by the Censorship. In London, an organisation calling itself
the New Century Theatre presented _John Gabriel Borkman_ at the Strand
Theatre on the afternoon of May 3, 1897, with Mr. W. H. Vernon as
Borkman, Miss Geneviève Ward as Gunhild, Miss Elizabeth Robins as Ella
Rentheim, Mr. Martin Harvey as Erhart, Mr. James Welch as Foldal, and
Mrs. Beerbohm Tree as Mrs. Wilton. The first performance in America was
given by the Criterion Independent Theatre of New York on November 18,
1897, Mr. E. J. Henley playing Borkman, Mr. John Blair Erhart, Miss
Maude Banks Gunhild, and Miss Ann Warrington Ella. For some reason,
which I can only conjecture to be the weakness of the third act, the
play seems nowhere to have taken a very firm hold on the stage.
Dr. Brahm has drawn attention to the great similarity between the theme
of _John Gabriel Borkman_ and that of _Pillars of Society_. “In both,”
he says, “we have a business man of great ability who is guilty of a
crime; in both this man is placed between two sisters; and in both he
renounces a marriage of inclination for the sake of a marriage that
shall further his business interests.” The likeness is undeniable; and
yet how utterly unlike are the two plays! and how immeasurably superior
the later one! It may seem, on a superficial view, that in _John Gabriel
Borkman_ Ibsen has returned to prose and the common earth after his
excursion into poetry and the possibly supernatural, if I may so call
it, in _The Master Builder_ and _Little Eyolf_. But this is a very
superficial view indeed. We have only to compare the whole invention of
_John Gabriel Borkman_ with the invention of _Pillars of Society_, to
realise the difference between the poetry and the prose of drama. The
quality of imagination which conceived the story of the House of Bernick
is utterly unlike that which conceived the tragedy of the House of
Borkman. The difference is not greater between (say) _The Merchant of
Venice_ and _King Lear_.
The technical feat which Ibsen here achieves of carrying through without
a single break the whole action of a four-act play has been much
commented on and admired. The imaginary time of the drama is actually
shorter than the real time of representation, since the poet does not
even leave intervals for the changing of the scenes. This feat, however,
is more curious than important. Nothing particular is gained by such a
literal observance of the unity of time. For the rest, we feel
definitely in _John Gabriel Borkman_ what we already felt vaguely in
_Little Eyolf_—that the poet’s technical staying-power is beginning to
fail him. We feel that the initial design was larger and more detailed
than the finished work. If the last acts of _The Wild Duck_ and _Hedda
Gabler_ be compared with the last acts of _Little Eyolf_ and _Borkman_,
it will be seen that in the earlier plays his constructive faculty is
working at its highest tension up to the very end, while in the later
plays it relaxes towards the close, to make room for pure imagination
and lyric beauty. The actual drama is over long before the curtain falls
on either play, and in the one case we have Rita and Allmers, in the
other Ella and Borkman, looking back over their shattered lives and
playing chorus to their own tragedy. For my part, I set the highest
value on these choral odes, these mournful antiphonies, in which the
poet definitely triumphs over the mere playwright. They seem to me noble
and beautiful in themselves, and as truly artistic, if not as
theatrical, as any abrupter catastrophe could be. But I am not quite
sure that they are exactly the conclusions the poet originally
projected, and still less am I satisfied that they are reached by
precisely the paths which he at first designed to pursue.
The traces of a change of scheme in _John Gabriel Borkman_ seem to me
almost unmistakable. The first two acts laid the foundation for a larger
and more complex superstructure than is ultimately erected. Ibsen seems
to have designed that Hinkel, the man who “betrayed” Borkman in the
past, should play some efficient part in the alienation of Erhart from
his family and home. Otherwise, why this insistence on a “party” at the
Hinkels’, which is apparently to serve as a sort of “send-off” for
Erhart and Mrs. Wilton? It appears in the third act that the “party” was
imaginary. “Erhart and I were the whole party,” says Mrs. Wilton, “and
little Frida, of course.” We might, then, suppose it to have been a mere
blind to enable Erhart to escape from home; but, in the first place, as
Erhart does not live at home, there is no need for any such pretext; in
the second place, it appears that the trio do actually go to the
Hinkels’ house (since Mrs. Borkman’s servant finds them there), and do
actually make it their starting-point. Erhart comes and goes with the
utmost freedom in Mrs. Wilton’s own house; what possible reason can they
have for not setting out from there? No reason is shown or hinted. We
cannot even imagine that the Hinkels have been instrumental in bringing
Erhart and Mrs. Wilton together; it is expressly stated that Erhart made
her acquaintance and saw a great deal of her in town, before she moved
out into the country. The whole conception of the party at the Hinkels’
is, as it stands, mysterious and a little cumbersome. We are forced to
conclude, I think, that something more was at one time intended to come
of it, and that, when the poet abandoned the idea, he did not think it
worth while to remove the scaffolding. To this change of plan, too, we
may possibly trace what I take to be the one serious flaw in the
play—the comparative weakness of the second half of the third act. The
scene of Erhart’s rebellion against the claims of mother, aunt, and
father strikes one as the symmetrical working out of a problem rather
than a passage of living drama.
All this means, of course, that there is a certain looseness of fibre in
_John Gabriel Borkman_ which we do not find in the best of Ibsen’s
earlier works. But in point of intellectual power and poetic beauty it
yields to none of its predecessors. The conception of the three leading
figures is one of the great things of literature; the second act, with
the exquisite humour of the Foldal scene, and the dramatic intensity of
the encounter between Borkman and Ella, is perhaps the finest single act
Ibsen ever wrote, in prose at all events; and the last scene is a thing
of rare and exalted beauty. One could wish that the poet’s last words to
us had been those haunting lines with which Gunhild and Ella join hands
over Borkman’s body:
We twin sisters—over him we have both loved.
We two shadows—over the dead man.
Among many verbal difficulties which this play presents, the greatest,
perhaps, has been to find an equivalent for the word “opreisning,” which
occurs again and again in the first and second acts. No one English word
that I could discover would fit in all the different contexts; so I have
had to employ three: “redemption,” “restoration,” and in one place
“rehabilitation.” The reader may bear in mind that these three terms
represent one idea in the original.
Borkman in Act II. uses a very odd expression—“overskurkens moral,”
which I have rendered “the morals of the higher rascality.” I cannot but
suspect (though for this I have no authority) that in the word
“overskurk,” which might be represented in German by “Ueberschurke,”
Borkman is parodying the expression “Uebermensch,” of which so much has
been heard of late. When I once suggested this to Ibsen, he neither
affirmed nor denied it. I understood him to say, however, that in
speaking of “overskurken” he had a particular man in view. Somewhat
pusillanimously, perhaps, I pursued my inquiries no further.
WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN.
INTRODUCTION.
From _Pillars of Society_ to _John Gabriel Borkman_, Ibsen’s plays had
followed each other at regular intervals of two years, save when his
indignation over the abuse heaped upon _Ghosts_ reduced to a single year
the interval between that play and _An Enemy of the People_. _John
Gabriel Borkman_ having appeared in 1896, its successor was expected in
1898; but Christmas came and brought no rumour of a new play. In a man
now over seventy, this breach of a long-established habit seemed
ominous. The new National Theatre in Christiania was opened in September
of the following year; and when I then met Ibsen (for the last time) he
told me that he was actually at work on a new play, which he thought of
calling a “Dramatic Epilogue.” “He wrote _When We Dead Awaken_,” says
Dr. Elias, “with such labour and such passionate agitation, so
spasmodically and so feverishly, that those around him were almost
alarmed. He must get on with it, he must get on! He seemed to hear the
beating of dark pinions over his head. He seemed to feel the grim
Visitant, who had accompanied Alfred Allmers on the mountain paths,
already standing behind him with uplifted hand. His relatives are firmly
convinced that he knew quite clearly that this would be his last play,
that he was to write no more. And soon the blow fell.”
_When We Dead Awaken_ was published very shortly before Christmas 1899.
He had still a year of comparative health before him. We find him, in
March 1900, writing to Count Prozor: “I cannot say yet whether or not I
shall write another drama; but if I continue to retain the vigour of
body and mind which I at present enjoy, I do not imagine that I shall be
able to keep permanently away from the old battlefields. However, if I
were to make my appearance again, it would be with new weapons and in
new armour.” Was he hinting at the desire, which he had long ago
confessed to Professor Herford, that his last work should be a drama in
verse? Whatever his dream, it was not to be realised. His last letter
(defending his attitude of philosophic impartiality with regard to the
South African War) is dated December 9, 1900. With the dawn of the new
century, the curtain descended upon the mind of the great dramatic poet
of the age which had passed away.
_When We Dead Awaken_ was acted during 1900 at most of the leading
theatres in Scandinavia and Germany. In some German cities (notably in
Frankfort on Main) it even attained a considerable number of
representations. I cannot learn, however, that it has anywhere held the
stage. It was produced in London, by the Stage Society, at the Imperial
Theatre, on January 25 and 26, 1903. Mr. G. S. Titheradge played Rubek,
Miss Henrietta Watson Irene, Miss Mabel Hackney Maia, and Mr. Laurence
Irving Ulfheim. I find no record of any American performance.
In the above-mentioned letter to Count Prozor, Ibsen confirmed that
critic’s conjecture that “the series which ends with the Epilogue really
began with _The Master Builder_.” As the last confession, so to speak,
of a great artist, the Epilogue will always be read with interest. It
contains, moreover, many flashes of the old genius, many strokes of the
old incommunicable magic. One may say with perfect sincerity that there
is more fascination in the dregs of Ibsen’s mind than in the “first
sprightly running” of more commonplace talents. But to his sane admirers
the interest of the play must always be melancholy, because it is purely
pathological. To deny this is, in my opinion, to cast a slur over all
the poet’s previous work, and in great measure to justify the criticisms
of his most violent detractors. For _When We Dead Awaken_ is very like
the sort of play that haunted the “anti-Ibsenite” imagination in the
year 1893 or thereabouts. It is a piece of self-caricature, a series of
echoes from all the earlier plays, an exaggeration of manner to the
pitch of mannerism. Moreover, in his treatment of his symbolic motives,
Ibsen did exactly what he had hitherto, with perfect justice, plumed
himself upon never doing: he sacrificed the surface reality to the
underlying meaning. Take, for instance, the history of Rubek’s statue
and its development into a group. In actual sculpture this development
is a grotesque impossibility. In conceiving it we are deserting the
domain of reality, and plunging into some fourth dimension where the
properties of matter are other than those we know. This is an
abandonment of the fundamental principle which Ibsen over and over again
emphatically expressed—namely, that any symbolism his work might be
found to contain was entirely incidental, and subordinate to the truth
and consistency of his picture of life. Even when he dallied with the
supernatural, as in _The Master Builder_ and _Little Eyolf_, he was
always careful, as I have tried to show, not to overstep decisively the
boundaries of the natural. Here, on the other hand, without any
suggestion of the supernatural, we are confronted with the wholly
impossible, the inconceivable. How remote is this alike from his
principles of art and from the consistent, unvarying practice of his
better years! So great is the chasm between _John Gabriel Borkman_ and
_When We Dead Awaken_ that one could almost suppose his mental breakdown
to have preceded instead of followed the writing of the latter play.
Certainly it is one of the premonitions of the coming end. It is Ibsen’s
_Count Robert of Paris_. To pretend to rank it with his masterpieces is
to show a very imperfect sense of the nature of their mastery.
LITTLE EYOLF
(1894)
CHARACTERS
ALFRED ALLMERS, _landed proprietor and man of letters, formerly a
tutor_.
MRS. RITA ALLMERS, _his wife_.
EYOLF, _their child, nine years old_.
MISS ASTA ALLMERS, _Alfred’s younger half-sister_.
ENGINEER BORGHEIM.
THE RAT-WIFE.
_The action takes place on ALLMERS’S property, bordering on the fiord,
twelve or fourteen miles from Christiania._
LITTLE EYOLF
PLAY IN THREE ACTS
ACT FIRST
_A pretty and richly-decorated garden-room, full of furniture, flowers,
and plants. At the back, open glass doors, leading out to a
verandah. An extensive view over the fiord. In the distance,
wooded hillsides. A door in each of the side walls, the one on the
right a folding door, placed far back. In front on the right, a
sofa, with cushions and rugs. Beside the sofa, a small table, and
chairs. In front, on the left, a larger table, with arm-chairs
around it. On the table stands an open hand-bag. It is an early
summer morning, with warm sunshine._
_MRS. RITA ALLMERS stands beside the table, facing towards the left,
engaged in unpacking the bag. She is a handsome, rather tall,
well-developed blonde, about thirty years of age, dressed in a
light-coloured morning-gown._
_Shortly after, MISS ASTA ALLMERS enters by the door on the right,
wearing a light brown summer dress, with hat, jacket, and parasol.
Under her arm she carries a locked portfolio of considerable size.
She is slim, of middle height, with dark hair, and deep, earnest
eyes. Twenty-five years old._
ASTA.
[_As she enters._] Good-morning, my dear Rita.
RITA.
[_Turns her head, and nods to her._] What! is that you, Asta? Come all
the way from town so early?
ASTA.
[_Takes off her things, and lays them on a chair beside the door._] Yes,
such a restless feeling came over me. I felt I _must_ come out to-day,
and see how little Eyolf was getting on—and you too. [_Lays the
portfolio on the table beside the sofa._] So I took the steamer, and
here I am.
RITA.
[_Smiling to her._] And I daresay you met one or other of your friends
on board? Quite by chance, of course.
ASTA.
[_Quietly._] No, I did not meet a soul I knew. [_Sees the bag._] Why,
Rita, what have you got there?
RITA.
[_Still unpacking._] Alfred’s travelling-bag. Don’t you recognise it?
ASTA.
[_Joyfully, approaching her._] What! Has Alfred come home?
RITA.
Yes, only think—he came quite unexpectedly by the late train last night.
ASTA.
Oh, then _that_ was what my feeling meant! It was that that drew me out
here! And he hadn’t written a line to let you know? Not even a
post-card?
RITA.
Not a single word.
ASTA.
Did he not even telegraph?
RITA.
Yes, an hour before he arrived—quite curtly and coldly. [_Laughs._]
Don’t you think that was like him, Asta?
ASTA.
Yes; he goes so quietly about everything.
RITA.
But that made it all the more delightful to have him again.
ASTA.
Yes, I am sure it would.
RITA.
A whole fortnight before I expected him!
ASTA.
And is he quite well? Not in low spirits?
RITA.
[_Closes the bag with a snap, and smiles at her._] He looked quite
transfigured as he stood in the doorway.
ASTA.
And was he not the least bit tired either?
RITA.
Oh, yes, he seemed to be tired enough—very tired, in fact. But, poor
fellow, he had come on foot the greater part of the way.
ASTA.
And then perhaps the high mountain air may have been rather too keen for
him.
RITA.
Oh, no; I don’t think so at all. I haven’t heard him cough once.
ASTA.
Ah, there you see now! It was a good thing, after all, that the doctor
talked him into taking this tour.
RITA.
Yes, now that it is safely over.—But I can tell you it has been a
terrible time for me, Asta. I have never cared to talk about it—and you
so seldom came out to see me, too——
ASTA.
Yes, I daresay that wasn’t very nice of me—but——
RITA.
Well, well, well, of course you had your school to attend to in town.
[_Smiling._] And then our road-maker friend—of course he was away too.
ASTA.
Oh, don’t talk like that, Rita.
RITA.
Very well, then; we will leave the road-maker out of the question.—You
can’t think how I have been longing for Alfred! How empty the place
seemed! How desolate! Ugh, it felt as if there had been a funeral in the
house!
ASTA.
Why, dear me, only six or seven weeks——
RITA.
Yes; but you must remember that Alfred has never been away from me
before—never so much as twenty-four hours. Not once in all these ten
years.
ASTA.
No; but that is just why I really think it was high time he should have
a little outing this year. He ought to have gone for a tramp in the
mountains every summer—he really ought.
RITA.
[_Half smiling._] Oh yes, it’s all very well for you to talk. If I were
as—as reasonable as you, I suppose I should have let him go
before—perhaps. But I positively could not, Asta! It seemed to me I
should never get him back again. Surely you can understand _that_?
ASTA.
No. But I daresay that is because I have no one to lose.
RITA.
[_With a teasing smile._] Really? No one at all?
ASTA.
Not that _I_ know of. [_Changing the subject._] But tell me, Rita, where
is Alfred? Is he still asleep?
RITA.
Oh, not at all. He got up as early as ever to-day.
ASTA.
Then he can’t have been so very tired after all.
RITA.
Yes, he was last night—when he arrived. But now he has had little Eyolf
with him in his room for a whole hour and more.
ASTA.
Poor little white-faced boy! Has he to be for ever at his lessons again?
RITA.
[_With a slight shrug._] Alfred will have it so, you know.
ASTA.
Yes; but I think you ought to put down your foot about it, Rita.
RITA.
[_Somewhat impatiently._] Oh no; come now, I really cannot meddle with
that. Alfred knows so much better about these things than I do. And what
would you have Eyolf do? He can’t run about and play, you see—like other
children.
ASTA.
[_With decision._] I will talk to Alfred about this.
RITA.
Yes, do; I wish you would.—Oh! here he is.
[_ALFRED ALLMERS, dressed in light summer clothes, enters by the
door on the left, leading EYOLF by the hand. He is a slim,
lightly-built man of about thirty-six or thirty-seven, with
gentle eyes, and thin brown hair and beard. His expression is
serious and thoughtful. EYOLF wears a suit cut like a uniform,
with gold braid and gilt military buttons. He is lame, and walks
with a crutch under his left arm. His leg is shrunken. He is
undersized, and looks delicate, but has beautiful intelligent
eyes._
ALLMERS.
[_Drops EYOLF’S hand, goes up to ASTA with an expression of marked
pleasure, and holds out both his hands to her._] Asta! My dearest Asta!
To think of your coming! To think of my seeing you so soon!
ASTA.
I felt I must——. Welcome home again!
ALLMERS.
[_Shaking her hands._] Thank you for coming.
RITA.
Doesn’t he look well?
ASTA.
[_Gazes fixedly at him._] Splendid! Quite splendid! His eyes are so much
brighter! And I suppose you have done a great deal of writing on your
travels? [_With an outburst of joy._] I shouldn’t wonder if you had
finished the whole book, Alfred?
ALLMERS.
[_Shrugging his shoulders._] The book? Oh, the book——
ASTA.
Yes, I was sure you would find it go so easily when once you got away.
ALLMERS.
So I thought too. But, do you know, I didn’t find it so at all. The
truth is, I have not written a line of the book.
ASTA.
Not a line?
RITA.
Oho! I wondered when I found all the paper lying untouched in your bag.
ASTA.
But, my dear Alfred, what have you been doing all this time?
ALLMERS.
[_Smiling._] Only thinking and thinking and thinking.
RITA.
[_Putting her arm round his neck._] And thinking a little, too, of those
you had left at home?
ALLMERS.
Yes, you may be sure of that. I have thought a great deal of you—every
single day.
RITA.
[_Taking her arm away._] Ah, that is all I care about.
ASTA.
But you haven’t even touched the book! And yet you can look so happy and
contented! That is not what you generally do—I mean when your work is
going badly.
ALLMERS.
You are right there. You see, I have been such a fool hitherto. All the
best that is in you goes into thinking. What you put on paper is worth
very little.
ASTA.
[_Exclaiming_.] Worth very little!
RITA.
[_Laughing._] What an absurd thing to say, Alfred.
EYOLF.
[_Looks confidingly up at him._] Oh yes, Papa, what _you_ write is worth
a great deal!
ALLMERS.
[_Smiling and stroking his hair._] Well, well, since _you_ say so——But I
can tell you, some one is coming after me who will do it better.
EYOLF.
Who can that be? Oh, tell me!
ALLMERS.
Only wait—you may be sure he will come, and let us hear of him.
EYOLF.
And what will you do then?
ALLMERS.
[_Seriously._] Then I will go to the mountains again——
RITA.
Fie, Alfred! For shame!
ALLMERS.
—up to the peaks and the great waste places.
EYOLF.
Papa, don’t you think I shall soon be well enough for you to take me
with you?
ALLMERS.
[_With painful emotion._] Oh, yes, perhaps, my little boy.
EYOLF.
It would be so splendid, you know, if I could climb the mountains, like
you.
ASTA.
[_Changing the subject._] Why, how beautifully you are dressed to-day,
Eyolf!
EYOLF.
Yes, don’t you think so, Auntie?
ASTA.
Yes, indeed. Is it in honour of Papa that you have got your new clothes
on?
EYOLF.
Yes, I asked Mama to let me. I wanted so to let Papa see me in them.
ALLMERS.
[_In a low voice, to RITA._] You shouldn’t have given him clothes like
that.
RITA.
[_In a low voice._] Oh, he has teased me so long about them—he had set
his heart on them. He gave me no peace.
EYOLF.
And I forgot to tell you, Papa—Borgheim has bought me a new bow. And he
has taught me how to shoot with it too.
ALLMERS.
Ah, there now—that’s just the sort of thing for you, Eyolf.
EYOLF.
And next time he comes, I shall ask him to teach me to swim, too.
ALLMERS.
To swim! Oh, what makes you want to learn swimming?
EYOLF.
Well, you know, all the boys down at the beach can swim. I am the only
one that can’t.
ALLMERS.
[_With emotion, taking him in his arms._] You shall learn whatever you
like—everything you really want to.
EYOLF.
Then do you know what I want most of all, Papa?
ALLMERS.
No; tell me.
EYOLF.
I want most of all to be a soldier.
ALLMERS.
Oh, little Eyolf, there are many, many other things that are better than
that.
EYOLF.
Ah, but when I grow big, then I shall _have_ to be a soldier. You know
that, don’t you?
ALLMERS.
[_Clenching his hands together._] Well, well, well: we shall see——
ASTA.
[_Seating herself at the table on the left._] Eyolf! Come here to me,
and I will tell you something.
EYOLF.
[_Goes up to her._] What is it, Auntie?
ASTA.
What do you think, Eyolf—I have seen the Rat-Wife.
EYOLF.
What! Seen the Rat-Wife! Oh, you’re only making a fool of me!
ASTA.
No; it’s quite true. I saw her yesterday.
EYOLF.
Where did you see her?
ASTA.
I saw her on the road, outside the town.
ALLMERS.
I saw her, too, somewhere up in the country.
RITA.
[_Who is sitting on the sofa._] Perhaps it will be our turn to see her
next, Eyolf.
EYOLF.
Auntie, isn’t it strange that she should be called the Rat-Wife?
ASTA.
Oh, people just give her that name because she wanders round the country
driving away all the rats.
ALLMERS.
I have heard that her real name is Varg.
EYOLF.
Varg! That means a wolf, doesn’t it?
ALLMERS.
[_Patting him on the head._] So you know that, do you?
EYOLF.
[_Cautiously._] Then perhaps it may be true, after all, that she is a
were-wolf at night. Do you believe that, Papa?
ALLMERS.
Oh, no; I don’t believe it. Now you ought to go and play a little in the
garden.
EYOLF.
Should I not take some books with me?
ALLMERS.
No, no books after this. You had better go down to the beach to the
other boys.
EYOLF.
[_Shyly._] No, Papa, I won’t go down to the boys to-day.
ALLMERS.
Why not?
EYOLF.
Oh, because I have these clothes on.
ALLMERS.
[_Knitting his brows._] Do you mean that they make fun of—of your pretty
clothes?
EYOLF.
[_Evasively._] No, they daren’t—for then I would thrash them.
ALLMERS.
Aha!—then why——?
EYOLF.
You see, they are so naughty, these boys. And then they say I can never
be a soldier.
ALLMERS.
[_With suppressed indignation._] Why do they say that, do you think?
EYOLF.
I suppose they are jealous of me. For you know, Papa, they are so poor,
they have to go about barefoot.
ALLMERS.
[_Softly, with choking voice._] Oh, Rita—how it wrings my heart!
RITA.
[_Soothingly, rising._] There, there, there!
ALLMERS.
[_Threateningly._] But these rascals shall soon find out who is the
master down at the beach!
ASTA.
[_Listening._] There is some one knocking.
EYOLF.
Oh, I’m sure it’s Borgheim!
RITA.
Come in.
[_The RAT-WIFE comes softly and noiselessly in by the door on the
right. She is a thin little shrunken figure, old and
grey-haired, with keen, piercing eyes, dressed in an
old-fashioned flowered gown, with a black hood and cloak. She
has in her hand a large red umbrella, and carries a black bag by
a loop over her arm._
EYOLF.
[_Softly, taking hold of ASTA’S dress._] Auntie! That must surely be
her!
THE RAT-WIFE.
[_Curtseying at the door._] I humbly beg pardon—but are your worships
troubled with any gnawing things in the house?
ALLMERS.
Here? No, I don’t think so.
THE RAT-WIFE.
For it would be such a pleasure to me to rid your worships’ house of
them.
RITA.
Yes, yes; we understand. But we have nothing of the sort here.
THE RAT-WIFE.
That’s very unlucky, that is; for I just happened to be on my rounds
now, and goodness knows when I may be in these parts again.—Oh, how
tired I am!
ALLMERS.
[_Pointing to a chair._] Yes, you look tired.
THE RAT-WIFE.
I know one ought never to get tired of doing good to the poor little
things that are hated and persecuted so cruelly. But it takes your
strength out of you, it does.
RITA.
Won’t you sit down and rest a little?
THE RAT-WIFE.
I thank your ladyship with all my heart. [_Seats herself on a chair
between the door and the sofa._] I have been out all night at my work.
ALLMERS.
Have you indeed?
THE RAT-WIFE.
Yes, over on the islands. [_With a chuckling laugh._] The people sent
for me, I can assure you. They didn’t like it a bit; but there was
nothing else to be done. They had to put a good face on it, and bite the
sour apple. [_Looks at EYOLF, and nods._] The sour apple, little master,
the sour apple.
EYOLF.
[_Involuntarily, a little timidly._] Why did they have to——?
THE RAT-WIFE.
What?
EYOLF.
To bite it?
THE RAT-WIFE.
Why, because they couldn’t keep body and soul together on account of the
rats and all the little rat-children, you see, young master.
RITA.
Ugh! Poor people! Have they so many of them?
THE RAT-WIFE.
Yes, it was all alive and swarming with them. [_Laughs with quiet
glee._] They came creepy-crawly up into the beds all night long. They
plumped into the milk-cans, and they went pittering and pattering all
over the floor, backwards and forwards, and up and down.
EYOLF.
[_Softly, to ASTA._] I shall never go there, Auntie.
THE RAT-WIFE.
But then I came—I, and another along with me. And we took them with us,
every one—the sweet little creatures! We made an end of every one of
them.
EYOLF.
[_With a shriek._] Papa—look! look!
RITA.
Good Heavens, Eyolf!
ALLMERS.
What’s the matter?
EYOLF.
[_Pointing._] There’s something wriggling in the bag!
RITA.
[_At the extreme left, shrieks._] Ugh! Send her away, Alfred.
THE RAT-WIFE.
[_Laughing._] Oh, dearest lady, you needn’t be frightened of such a
little mannikin.
ALLMERS.
But what _is_ the thing?
THE RAT-WIFE.
Why, it’s only little Mopsëman. [_Loosening the string of the bag._]
Come up out of the dark, my own little darling friend.