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Peer Gynt and Brand

Page 4

by Henrik Ibsen


  to that poor Holy One

  sweating blood to atone,

  your dear Christ hurt with thorns,

  the saviour of your dance.

  Dance on, dance to the end,

  dance yourselves deaf and blind!

  EINAR: You’re good at breathing fire,

  a real hot-gospeller;

  that fear-and-trembling school

  has taught you very well!

  BRAND: Einar, I leave the new

  fashions in faith to you.

  I’ve not come here to preach

  for any sect or church.

  Not as a formal Christian

  even, but as my own man,

  I tell you this: I know

  the nature of the flaw

  that has so thinned and drained

  the spirit of our land.

  EINAR [smiling]:

  We’re not the kind to drink

  deep of life’s cup, you think?

  BRAND: No. If only you would,

  high-stepping meek-and-mild!

  Sin if you dare, but have the grace,

  at least, to be fulfilled in vice.

  At least live up to what you claim;

  don’t water your good wine with shame!

  Among our people I observe

  such littleness and loss of nerve.

  A little show of holiness

  strictly reserved for Sunday use;

  little charity, but much talk

  of simple, plain, God-fearing folk.

  A middling this, a middling that,

  never humble, never great.

  Above the worst, beneath the best,

  each virtue vicious to the rest.

  EINAR: Bravo, Brand! Have your say,

  just as you will. I’ll play

  ‘Amen’ in the right place:

  I’m quite ready to please.

  I’m wholly unperturbed;

  my God is still my God.

  BRAND: Indeed He’s yours! You’ve even

  been favoured by heaven

  with that vision of Him –

  it brought you some small fame –

  the picture that you did

  of your old, pampered God:

  white-haired, moist-eyed with age,

  his comic turns of rage

  send children off to bed

  giggling and half-afraid.

  EINAR [angry]:

  This is …

  BRAND:    ‘No joke’, you’d say?

  Do you want sympathy?

  You trim off life from faith,

  haver from birth to death,

  self-seekers who refuse

  man’s true way-of-the-Cross,

  which is: wholly to be

  the all-enduring ‘I’.

  My God is the great god of storm,

  absolute arbiter of doom,

  imperious in His love!

  He is the voice that Moses heard,

  He is the pillar of the cloud,

  He is the hand that stayed the sun

  for Joshua in Gibeon.

  Your God can hardly move;

  he’s weak of mind and heart,

  easy to push about.

  But mine is young: a Hercules,3

  not fourscore of infirmities.

  Though you may smile and preen,

  Einar; though you bow down

  to your own brazenness,

  I shall heal this disease

  that withers heart and brain,

  and make you all new men!

  EINAR: [shakes his head]:

  You’ll blow the old lamps out

  before new lamps are lit;

  abandon the known word

  for speech as yet unheard.

  BRAND: Why must you misconstrue

  so much? I seek for nothing new.

  I know my mission: to uphold

  truths long forgotten by the world;

  eternal truths. I have not come

  to preach dogmatics or proclaim

  the right of some exclusive sect

  to rule through pain of interdict.

  For every church and creed

  is something that this world has made;

  and everything that’s made must end.

  I speak of what endures,

  of what is lost and found

  eternally. Faith did not climb

  slowly from the primeval slime,

  nor burst from the volcanic fires.

  It is incarnate through recourse

  of spirit to our spirit’s source.

  Though hucksters in and out of church

  make tawdry everything they touch,

  hawking the relics of their trade,

  their bits of dogma, parts

  of broken creeds and hearts,

  that spirit shines amid the void,

  amid the travesties

  of things that are, the truth that is.

  And truth-begotten, God’s true heir,

  the new Adam …

  EINAR:     We should part here,

  I think. It’s for the best.

  BRAND: Here are two paths: the west

  for you; for me the north.

  Different ways, yet both

  end at the fjord. Farewell,

  butterflies!

  [Turning as he starts the descent]

        Learn to tell

  true from false. Don’t forget

  life’s the real work of art!

  EINAR: [waving him away]:

  Though you may shake my world

  my God stands firm!

  BRAND:      He’s old,

  Einar; don’t worry Him.

  Leave me to bury Him!

  He goes down the path. EINAR walks silently across and looks down after BRAND. AGNES stands for a moment as if lost in thought; then she starts, looks about her uneasily.

  AGNES: It’s all so gloomy. Where’s the sun?

  EINAR: Behind that cloud, there. Things will soon

  look bright again.

  AGNES:     And there’s a fierce

  wind out of nowhere. It’s like ice.

  EINAR: Some freak gust hurtling through the pass,

  I’d say. It’s much too cold for us

  to linger here. Come on!

  AGNES:       How black

  and forbidding that great south peak

  seems now. It wasn’t always so,

  surely?

  EINAR: You’ve let Brand frighten you

  with his dour face and talk of doom.

  Look here, I’ll race you! You’ll get warm!

  AGNES: I can’t. I’m tired.

  EINAR:       To tell the truth,

  love, so am I. This downhill path

  is tricky too. But we’ll be safe

  on terra firma soon enough.

  And, Agnes, now the sun’s come back

  the world no longer looks so bleak.

  What a picture! Such harmony

  of sky with sea and sea with sky;

  deep azure lit by silver streaks,

  suffused with golden lights and darks,

  out to the far horizon’s edge,

  the boundless main! And, look, that smudge

  of smoke – the steamer coming in,

  the very ship we go to join.

  By early evening we shall be

  clear of this place, well out to sea.

  We’ll dance on deck and sing; our games

  will make Brand giddy if he comes.

  AGNES: [without looking at him and in a hushed voice]:

  Tell me, are we awake,

  Einar? When that man spoke

  he burned! It seemed each feature

  changed! He grew in stature!

  She goes down the path. EINAR follows.

  SCENE 2

  A path along the mountain wall with a wild valley on the right-hand side. Above and behind the mountain one can see glimpses of great heights with
peaks and snow. BRAND appears high up on the path, starts to descend, stops midway on a rock which juts out, and looks down into the valley.

  BRAND: Now I see where I am:

  strangely close to home.

  Everything I recall

  from childhood here still

  but smaller now and much

  shabbier; and the church

  looks in need of repair.

  The cliffs loom; the glacier

  juts and hangs: it is an

  ice wall concealing the sun.

  And for all their rough gleam

  the fjord waters look grim

  and menacing. A small

  boat pitches in a squall.

  Down there’s the timber wharf

  and nearby – iron-red roof,

  red-flaking walls – the house

  to which I would refuse

  the name ‘home’ if I could;

  the place where I endured

  harsh kinship, an alien

  life that was called mine.

  Solitude and desire

  magnified what was there.

  As though in recompense

  to my own soul, a sense

  of greatness visited me,

  made even a poverty-

  stricken smallholding shine,

  a visionary demesne.

  All that has faded. Now

  there is nothing to show

  what my child-soul once made

  out of such solitude.

  Returning, I am shorn

  of all strength: Samson

  in the harlot’s lap.4

  [Looks again down into the abyss.]

  It seems they have woken up.

  Men, women, children come

  from the cottages, climb

  slowly among the outcrops

  of rock, the lowest slopes;

  now lost from sight and now

  seen again, on the brow

  by the church. Slaves to both

  day labour and the sloth

  of their own souls; their need

  crawls and is not heard

  in the courts of heaven;

  and their prayers are craven:

  ‘Give us bread! give us bread!’

  So they still eat their God.

  Nothing else matters

  to them: tossed on storm waters

  of the age, the merest flotsam,

  or rotting in a foul calm.

  BRAND is about to go; a stone is thrown from above and rolls down the slope just missing him. GERD, a fifteen-year-old girl, runs along the ridge with stones in her apron.

  GERD: Hey! Now he’s really wild!

  BRAND: Who’s there? Ah – stupid child!

  GERD: Look, he’s not a bit hurt,

  though I’m sure he was hit.

  [Throws more stones and cries out.]

  Oh … he’s back … swooping down …

  his claws … I’m all torn!

  BRAND: Tell me, in God’s name, what …

  GERD: Stay there and keep quiet

  if you want to be safe.

  It’s all right, he’s flown off.

  BRAND: Who has flown off?

  GERD:         You

  didn’t see the hawk?

  BRAND:      No.

  GERD: Not that great ugly thing

  with some sort of red ring

  round his eye?

  BRAND:     I did not.

  GERD: And with his crest all flat

  against his head?

  BRAND:      No. Which

  way are you going?

  GERD:      To church.

  BRAND: But the church is down there.

  GERD: [looking at him with a scornful smile and pointing downwards]:

  Not that one. That’s a poor

  tumbledown little place.

  BRAND: You know a better?

  GERD:        Yes,

  yes, yes! Follow me up

  these mountains, to the top.

  That’s where my own church is,

  in the heart of the ice.

  BRAND: Ah, now I understand.

  I’d forgotten that legend

  of the Ice Church: a great cleft

  in the rock, where the drift-

  ing snow and ice have built

  the roof of a huge vault.

  The church floor is a lake

  frozen as hard as rock,

  so all the stories say.

  GERD: Well, they’re true!

  BRAND:       Stay away

  from there. It’s sure to fall.

  A gust of wind, a call,

  or a gunshot, could bring

  the end of everything.

  GERD [not listening]:

  I’ll show you where a herd

  of dead reindeer appeared

  out of the glacier last

  spring, when it thawed.

  BRAND:       You must

  never go there. I’ve told

  you why.

  GERD [pointing downwards]:

      That musty old

  church of yours! Stay away

  from it. I’ve told you why.

  BRAND: God bless you. Go in peace.

  GERD: Oh, do come! Hear the ice

  sing mass, and the wind make

  sermons over the rock.

  Oh, how you’ll burn and freeze!

  It’s safe from the hawk’s eyes.

  He settles on Black Peak

  just like a weathercock.

  BRAND [aside]:

  Her spirit struggles to be heard;

  flawed music from a broken reed.

  God in His judgement sometimes draws

  evil to good. Not from these thraws.

  GERD: O the hawk, O the whirr

  of his wings! Help me, sir!

  I must hide. In my church

  it’s safe. Hey! hey! can’t catch

  me! O but he’s angry. Now

  what shall I do? I’ll throw

  things. Ugh! keep off me, keep

  off me with those great sharp

  claws! Strike me, I’ll strike you!

  She runs off up the mountain.

  BRAND: So that’s churchgoing too;

  those howls are hymns of praise.

  But is she worse than those

  who seek God in the valley?

  And is her church less holy?

  Who sees? And who is blind?

  Who wanders? Who is found?

  Feckless, with his garlands on,

  dances till he plunges down

  into the terrible abyss.

  Dullness mutters ‘thus and thus’,

  his catechism’s sleepy rote,

  and treads the old, deep-trodden rut.

  Madness wanders from itself,

  half shadowing the other half;

  immortal longings gone astray,

  confusing darkness with the day.

  My way is clear, now. Heaven calls.

  I know my task. When those three trolls

  are dead, mankind shall breathe again,

  freed from old pestilence and pain.

  Arm, arm, my soul! Take up your sword!

  Fight now for every child of God!

  He descends into the populated valley.

  Act Two

  SCENE 1

  Down by the fjord with sheer mountains rising on three sides. The old dilapidated church stands on a small knoll nearby. A storm is gathering. The PEASANTS, men, women and children, are gathered in groups, some on the shore, some on the slopes. The MAYOR is sitting in the midst of them on a stone; a SCRIVENER is helping him; grain and other provisions are being distributed. EINAR and AGNES are standing surrounded by a group of people, farther towards the background. A few boats are lying off the shore. BRAND appears on the slope by the church without being noticed by the crowd.

  A MAN [bursting through the crowd]:

  Let me pa
st! Let me past!

  A WOMAN: Hey you, we was first!

  MAN [pushing her aside]:

  Get out of the way, or …

  See to me first, mayor!

  MAYOR: Give me time, give me time …

  MAN: I must have my share;

  I’ve bairns back at home,

  starving, all four, five …

  MAYOR: [jokingly]:

  You don’t sound too sure.

  MAN: One was barely alive

  when I left.

  MAYOR:    Here, hold on,

  have I got your name down?

  [Leafs through his papers.]

  H’m … h’m … you’re in luck.

  Twenty-nine … in the sack.

  [To the SCRIVENER]

  Whoa there, whoa there,

  that’s enough, that’s his lot.

  Nils Snemyr?

  SNEMYR:    I’m here.

  MAYOR: Your ration’s been cut.

  Well, you’ve one less to feed.

  SNEMYR: My wife, ay, she’s dead;

  passed on yesterday.

  MAYOR: It’s an ill wind they say …

  she’ll need no more porridge.

  [To SNEMYR, who is leaving]

  Forget about marriage;

  just give it a rest.

  SCRIVENER: Hee, hee!

  MAYOR:      What’s the joke?

  SCRIVENER: Just hearing you talk,

  Mr Mayor, it’s a treat.

  MAYOR: Hold your jaw shut!

  I don’t find this funny.

  But ‘laugh or you’ll cry’,

  it’s the only way.

  EINAR [coming out of the crowd with AGNES]:

  They’ve had my last crust,

  and all my money.

  Never mind, I can pawn

  my watch, or my stick

  and my haversack.

  I’ll rake up the fare

  for the boat, never fear!

  MAYOR: My word, you arrived

  not a moment too soon.

  These folk are half-starved.

  And they’re plump and thriving

  compared to the starving!

  [Catches sight of BRAND and points upwards.]

  Bravo! Welcome, friend!

  You’ve heard, too, no doubt,

  of our deluge and drought.

  We’ll be glad to receive

  any gift you can give,

  in cash or in kind.

  I tell you this parish is

  chewing on air.

  ‘We need miracles, mayor!’

  A fat lot of help,

  five loaves and three fishes!5

  They’d go at one gulp!

  BRAND: Feed the five thousand in the name

  of Mammon and you’d famish them.

  MAYOR: Spare us your homilies.

  Fine words fill no bellies.

  EINAR: Brand, Brand, use your eyes!

  Look, famine and disease

  all around us. They’re

  dying by the score.

  BRAND: Yes, I can recognize

  all the dread signs.

  I know the lord who reigns

  here, and his tyrannies.

 

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