by Henrik Ibsen
ELLA RENTHEIM’S VOICE [heard in the woods to the right]: Where are we going, John? I don’t know where I am.
BORKMAN’S VOICE [higher up]: Just follow my footprints in the snow!
ELLA RENTHEIM’S VOICE: But why do we have to climb so high?
BORKMAN’S VOICE [closer]: We have to go up the winding path.
ELLA RENTHEIM [still out of sight]: Oh, but I can’t go on much longer.
BORKMAN [at the edge of the wood to the right]: Come on, come on! We’re not far from the look-out point now. There used to be a bench up there –
ELLA RENTHEIM [emerges through the trees]: Do you remember it?
BORKMAN: You can rest there.
They have reached a small clearing high in the wood. The slope rises steeply behind them. To the left, far below, a vast landscape with fjords and high ridges that tower over each other in the distance. In the clearing, to the left, a dead pine tree with a bench underneath it. Deep snow over the clearing.
BORKMAN and, after him, ELLA RENTHEIM enter from the right, trudging laboriously through the snow.
BORKMAN [stops by the sheer drop to the left]: Come here, Ella, and you’ll see.
ELLA RENTHEIM [next to him]: What do you want to show me, John?
BORKMAN [pointing outwards]: Do you see how free and open the land lies before us – far into the distance?
ELLA RENTHEIM: We would often sit on this bench – and look out, much, much further out.
BORKMAN: It was a dreamland we looked out over, back then.
ELLA RENTHEIM [nodding gravely]: Yes, the dreamland of our life. And now that land is buried in snow. – And the old tree is dead.
BORKMAN [without listening to her]: Can you make out the smoke from the big steamships on the fjord?
ELLA RENTHEIM: No.
BORKMAN: I can. – They come and they go, connecting lives all over the world.2 They create light and warmth for people in thousands of homes. That is what I dreamed of creating.
ELLA RENTHEIM [softly]: And it stayed a dream.
BORKMAN: It stayed a dream, yes. [Listens] Just listen – down by the river! The factories are working! My factories! All the factories I would have built! Just listen to them! The night shift. They work night and day. Listen, listen! Wheels whirring – rollers flashing round – round and round! Can’t you hear it, Ella?
ELLA RENTHEIM: No.
BORKMAN: I can hear it.
ELLA RENTHEIM [anxiously]: I think you’re mistaken, John.
BORKMAN [more and more fired up]: Oh, all of this, you know – it’s nothing more than the outworks3 on the periphery of the kingdom!
ELLA RENTHEIM: The kingdom, did you say? What kingdom –?
BORKMAN: My kingdom, of course! The kingdom I was about to take possession of when I – when I died.
ELLA RENTHEIM [shaken, in a low voice]: Oh, John, John!
BORKMAN: And now it’s lying there – with no ruler, defenceless – vulnerable to looters and plunderers. Ella, can you see the mountain ranges there – far away? One behind the other. They rise. They tower up! There lies my vast, infinite, inexhaustible kingdom!
ELLA RENTHEIM: Oh, but there’s an icy blast coming from that kingdom, John!
BORKMAN: That blast is like a breath of life to me. That blast comes over me like a greeting from my spirit subjects. I sense them, the trapped millions; I feel the veins of metal ore stretching out their arms to me, branching, beckoning, coaxing. That night when I stood down in the bank vault holding the lantern in my hand, I saw them before me like shadows come to life. You all wanted to be liberated then. And I tried to do it. But I lacked the power. The treasure sank back into the depths.4 [With outstretched hands] But I’ll whisper this to you here in the still of the night: I love you, as you lie there deep in the darkness with the look of death! I love you, life-craving riches – I love you, and all your blazing retinue of power and glory! I love, love, love you!
ELLA RENTHEIM [in quiet mounting agitation]: Yes, your love is still down there, John. Has always been there. But up here, in the light of day – was a warm, living human heart, throbbing and beating for you. And that heart you crushed. Oh, more than that! Ten times worse! You sold it for – for –
BORKMAN [trembles, as if the cold has gone straight through him]: For the kingdom – and the power – and the glory5 – you mean?
ELLA RENTHEIM: Yes, that is what I mean. I’ve said it once before tonight. You murdered the vital capacity for love in the woman who loved you. And whom you loved in return. To the extent that you could love someone. [With uplifted arm] And so I predict this for you – John Gabriel Borkman – you will never collect the prize you demanded for that murder. There will be no triumphal procession for you into your cold, dark kingdom!
BORKMAN [staggers to the bench and sits down heavily]: I almost fear that your prediction will come true, Ella.
ELLA RENTHEIM [next to him]: Don’t fear it, John. That is precisely the best thing that could happen to you.
BORKMAN [with a cry; clutches his chest]: Ah –! [Feebly] Now it’s let go of me.
ELLA RENTHEIM [shakes him]: What was it, John?
BORKMAN [sinks against the bench]: A hand of ice, gripping my heart.
ELLA RENTHEIM: John! Was that the ice-hand now?
BORKMAN [murmurs]: No. – No ice-hand. – It was an iron hand.
He slides right down into the bench.
ELLA RENTHEIM [tears off her coat and covers him with it]: Lie still, where you are! I’m going to fetch help.
She takes a couple of steps to the right; stops, goes back and carefully feels his pulse and his face.
ELLA RENTHEIM [softly and firmly]: No. It’s for the best, John Borkman. Best for you.
She tucks the coat more tightly around him and sits down in the snow in front of the bench.
A short silence.
MRS BORKMAN wearing an overcoat, comes through the woods on the right. In front of her, the MAID carrying a lantern.
MAID [shining the light on the snow]: Yes, yes, ma’am. Here are their tracks –
MRS BORKMAN [looking around]: Yes, here they are! They’re sitting over there on the bench. [Calls out] Ella!
ELLA RENTHEIM [stands up]: Are you looking for us?
MRS BORKMAN [sternly]: Yes, I have no choice.
ELLA RENTHEIM [pointing]: Look, he’s lying here, Gunhild.
MRS BORKMAN: Asleep!
ELLA RENTHEIM [nods]: A long, deep sleep, I think.
MRS BORKMAN [in an outburst]: Ella! [Controls herself and asks in a subdued voice] Did it happen – of his own free will?
ELLA RENTHEIM: No.
MRS BORKMAN [relieved]: So not by his own hand?
ELLA RENTHEIM: No. An ice-cold iron hand gripped his heart.
MRS BORKMAN [to the MAID]: Fetch help. Get the people from the estate to come up.
MAID: Yes, ma’am. [To herself] Holy Jesus –
She goes out through the wood to the right.
MRS BORKMAN [stands behind the bench]: So the night air killed him –
ELLA RENTHEIM: So it would seem.
MRS BORKMAN: – him, the strong man!
ELLA RENTHEIM [walks round to the front of the bench]: Aren’t you going to look at him, Gunhild?
MRS BORKMAN [with a gesture of aversion]: No, no, no. [Lowers her voice] He was a miner’s son, the banker. He couldn’t survive in the fresh air.
ELLA RENTHEIM: It was really the cold that killed him.
MRS BORKMAN [shakes her head]: The cold, you say? The cold – that killed him long ago.
ELLA RENTHEIM [nods to her]: And turned the two of us into shadows.
MRS BORKMAN: Yes, you’re right.
ELLA RENTHEIM [with a painful smile]: A dead man and two shadows – that is what the cold has done.
MRS BORKMAN: Yes, the cold that lies in the heart. – The two of us can surely join hands now, Ella?
ELLA RENTHEIM: I think we can now.
MRS BORKMAN: We twin sisters – over the man we both lo
ved.
ELLA RENTHEIM: We two shadows – over the dead man.
MRS BORKMAN behind the bench and ELLA RENTHEIM in front, reach out to one another and join hands.
WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN
A DRAMATIC EPILOGUE IN THREE ACTS
* * *
CHARACTERS
PROFESSOR ARNOLD RUBEK, sculptor
MRS1MAJA RUBEK, his wife
SPA MANAGER
SQUIRE ULFHEIM2
A TRAVELLING LADY3
A SISTER OF MERCY4
SERVANTS AND WAITERS
VISITORS TO THE SPA
CHILDREN
The first act takes place at a coastal spa; the second and third acts in the vicinity of the spa and a sanatorium, high up in the mountains.5
Act One
Outside the spa hotel. The main building is partially visible to the right.1 An open area resembling a park, with a fountain and clusters of tall mature trees and shrubs. To the left a small pavilion, almost completely covered in ivy and Virginia creeper. Outside it, a table and chair. In the background views over the fjord all the way down to the sea, with headlands and small islets in the distance. It is a quiet late morning in summer, warm and bright.
PROFESSOR RUBEK and his wife MAJA2are sitting in wicker chairs at a table laid on the lawn outside the hotel. They have finished breakfast and are now drinking champagne and seltzers;3 each reading a newspaper. The PROFESSOR is a distinguished older gentleman4 wearing a black velvet jacket, but otherwise dressed in summer clothes. MAJA is relatively youthful, with an animated face and cheerful, mischievous eyes, albeit with a hint of weariness in them. Dressed in an elegant travelling suit.
MAJA [sits for a while as though expecting the professor to say something. She then lets her newspaper fall and sighs]: Oh no, no –!
RUBEK [looks up from his newspaper]: Now, what’s the matter with you, Maja?
MAJA: Just listen to how silent it is here.
RUBEK [smiles indulgently]: You can hear that, can you?
MAJA: What?
RUBEK: The silence?
MAJA: Yes, I most certainly can.
RUBEK: You might be right, mein Kind.5 You really can hear silence.6
MAJA: Yes, God knows you can. When it’s as utterly overwhelming as it is here, then –
RUBEK: As here at the spa, you mean?
MAJA: I mean everywhere here at home. There was noise and disquiet enough in town. But even so – I thought that noise and disquiet itself had something dead about it.
RUBEK [with a searching look]: So you’re not particularly happy to be back home, Maja?
MAJA [looks at him]: Are you?
RUBEK [evasively]: Am I –?
MAJA: Yes. You’ve been away so much, much longer than I have. Are you genuinely happy to be home again?
RUBEK: No – to be honest – not, as it were, genuinely happy –
MAJA [animated]: There, you see! I knew it!
RUBEK: Perhaps I’ve been away too long. Have become completely detached from everything – everything here at home.
MAJA [eager, pulls her chair up]: There, you see, Rubek! Why don’t we just go off again? As soon as we can?
RUBEK [a little impatient]: Yes, yes, that is the idea, Maja dear. You know that.
MAJA: But why not now, right away? Think how cosy and comfortable we could be down there in our lovely new house –
RUBEK [smiles indulgently]: Our lovely new home, shouldn’t you say?
MAJA [curt]: I prefer to say house. Let’s leave it at that.
RUBEK [his eye lingers on her]: You really are a peculiar little person.
MAJA: Am I that peculiar?
RUBEK: Yes, I think so.
MAJA: But why? Because I have no great desire to be traipsing around up here, perhaps –?
RUBEK: Which one of us was it who absolutely insisted that we travel north this summer?
MAJA: That, I suppose, would be me.
RUBEK: Yes, well it certainly wasn’t me.
MAJA: But, God! – who could have guessed that everything would have changed so horribly back here! And in such a short time too! Just think – it’s a little over four years since I left –
RUBEK: – as a married woman, yes.
MAJA: Married? What’s that got to do with it?
RUBEK [goes on]: – became Frau Professor7 and got yourself a fine home – I’m sorry – a grand house, I should say. And a villa on Taunitzer See,8 in what has become the most elegant part –. Yes, and I dare say it is all fine and elegant, Maja. It’s spacious too. So we don’t have to get under each other’s feet all the time –
MAJA [casually]: No, no, no – there’s no shortage of living space and that kind of thing –
RUBEK: And there’s the fact that you found yourself in more elegant and less restricted circumstances in general. Moving in more elevated circles than you were used to back home.
MAJA [looks at him]: Oh, so you think that it’s me who’s changed?
RUBEK: Yes, Maja, I do think that.
MAJA: Just me? Not the people here?
RUBEK: Oh, yes, them too. A tiny bit, perhaps. Not in any very endearing direction either. I’ll certainly concede that.
MAJA: Yes, you really should concede that.
RUBEK [changes the subject]: When I look at the way people live round here, do you know what frame of mind that puts me in?
MAJA: No? Tell me.
RUBEK: It reminds me of that night we travelled up here on the train –
MAJA: But you were just sitting in the compartment sleeping.
RUBEK: Not all the time. I noticed how silent it became when we stopped at all the little stations –. I heard the silence – just like you, Maja –
MAJA: Hm – yes, just like me.
RUBEK: – and then I realized that we’d crossed the border. That we really were home. Because the train would stop and wait at all the little stations, even though there were no passengers.
MAJA: Why did it wait for so long? When there was nothing there?
RUBEK: Don’t know. No passengers left the train, no one boarded. And even so, the train would wait an endlessly long time. And at each station, I heard two railway workers walking along the platform – one of them had a lantern in his hand – and talking to each other, out in the night, their voices subdued and toneless, saying nothing.
MAJA: You’re right. There’s always a couple of men walking and talking to each other –
RUBEK: – about nothing. [Switches to a livelier tone] But just wait till tomorrow. Then we’ll have the big luxury steamer coming into harbour. And we’ll board it and sail all round the coast – right up north9 – as far as the Arctic Ocean.
MAJA: Yes, but that way you won’t get to see anything of the country – of life. And that after all was precisely what you wanted.
RUBEK [curt, disobliging]: I’ve seen more than enough.
MAJA: Do you think that a sea voyage would be better for you?
RUBEK: It’s always a change.
MAJA: Yes, yes, as long as it does you good, then –
RUBEK: Me? Does me good? There’s nothing in the world the matter with me.
MAJA [stands up and walks over to him]: Yes, there is, Rubek. You must feel it yourself.
RUBEK: But, dearest Maja – what do you suppose that might be?
MAJA [behind him, leaning forward over the back of his chair]: Why don’t you tell me? You’ve started walking about restlessly, relentlessly. You can’t find peace anywhere. Not at home, not abroad. You’ve become a total recluse of late.
RUBEK [lightly sarcastic]: No, really – and you’ve noticed this, have you?
MAJA: No one who knows you could fail to notice. And I think it’s so sad that you’ve lost all appetite for work.
RUBEK: Oh, have I? That too?
MAJA: Just think, you, who used to work so tirelessly – all hours of the day and night!
RUBEK [darkly]: Used to, yes –
MAJA: But as soon as you finished your gr
eat masterpiece –
RUBEK [nods thoughtfully]: Resurrection Day10 –
MAJA: – the one that toured the world. That made you so famous –
RUBEK: Perhaps that was my misfortune, Maja.
MAJA: Why?
RUBEK: When I completed my masterpiece – [with a violent gesture of his hand] – because Resurrection Day is a masterpiece! Or was, at first. No, it still is. And it shall, shall, shall be a masterpiece!
MAJA [looks at him in astonishment]: Yes, Rubek, but the whole world knows that.
RUBEK [curt, dismissive]: The whole world knows nothing! Understands nothing!
MAJA: Well, it must have some idea at least –
RUBEK: About something that simply isn’t there, yes. Something that has never been in my thoughts. See, that’s something they go into raptures over! [Growls to himself.] It’s not worth the effort, going around exhausting yourself for the sake of the mob and the masses – and for the ‘whole world’.
MAJA: So you think it’s better – or that it’s more worthy of you to go around knocking off the occasional portrait bust?
RUBEK [smiles genially]: They’re not really portrait busts, the ones I go around making, Maja.
MAJA: Yes, they are – God knows they are – for the last two or three years – since you had your large group sculpture finished and out of the house –
RUBEK: They’re still not strictly portrait busts, I tell you.
MAJA: Then what are they?
RUBEK: There’s something secret, something concealed in and behind those busts – something hidden that people can’t see –
MAJA: Really?
RUBEK [decisive]: Only I can see it. And it amuses me greatly. – On the surface they’ve got that so-called ‘striking resemblance’ that people stand there gawping at in such amazement – [lowers his voice] but at the deepest level they’re all worthy, respectable horse faces, stubborn donkey muzzles, low-slung, lop-eared dog skulls and fatted swine heads – as well as the occasional brutish, flabby likenesses of oxen –.
MAJA [indifferent]: – all the best-loved farmyard animals, then.11
RUBEK: Only the best-loved farmyard animals, Maja. All those creatures man has corrupted in his image. And which in turn have corrupted man. [Drains his champagne glass and laughs.] And it’s these underhand works of art the great and the good come and commission me to produce. And they pay for them in good faith – and hard cash. Almost worth their weight in gold, as they say.