by Henrik Ibsen
every last fibre of your being,
no free will left you, no self-seeing,
utterly subsumed you’ll be,
your midnight tresses spread so free,
and everything that you might name
desirable through space and time,
Babylon’s gardens40 at the heart
of human longing, I’ll convert
into a sultan’s place of sport.
So, basically, it’s no bad thing
your skull has such a hollow ring.
Soul’s an encumbrance, you would find;
self-searching and self-knowledge bind
us to those things that are beyond.
A pretty fetter for your ankle
shall utter its sweet lisp and tinkle.
All that I take, that All you give!
Mine is the soul you’ll never have.
[ANITA snores.]
Ha! More snoring! Has it smitten
addled dreams, my exhortation?
This but reconfirms my powers.
Thoughts most intimately hers
paddle in streams of my desires.
[Stands up and begins to heap jewellery in her lap.]
Here are brooches and more opals.
Sleep, Anitra; dream of Peer
as you’d dream of golden apples.
You have crowned him emperor.
Dream’s the feigner, you unfeigning;
Peer as two in one self-reigning.
SCENE 8
A caravan trail. The oasis is seen far behind. PEER on his white horse is galloping through the desert. He holds ANITRA in front of him, supported by the pommel.
ANITRA: Let me loose, I’m a biter!
PEER: Well, aren’t we the little spit-fire!
ANITRA: What is it you want?
PEER: What? To play hawk and dove!
To kidnap you! Play any old kind of crazy game!
ANITRA: And you a prophet! Don’t you have any feelings of shame?
PEER: Nonsense, the prophet is in his prime, you goose!
Do these tricks suggest age and overuse,
my intermittently attractive love?
ANITRA: Agh, leave me be! I want to get off home!
PEER: Stop playing hard to get, you little coquette!
Home to the in-laws? That would be a fine thing!
We’re two crazy birds let loose and free on the wing.
Daren’t show our faces back there ever again.
Besides, my sweeting, it’s a well-proven fact
that if you stay too long in the same place
what you gain in knowledge you lose in respect;
especially so, if you’ve been in some kind of disguise,
acting the prophet, to cite a recent case.
Best to be ephemeral, like a poem.
That visit’s over, and it was high time!
They are fickle converts, these children of the plain.
Neither frankincense nor progress were much in evidence
by the time we made our farewells. I say good riddance.
ANITRA: Tell truth, now: are you a prophet?
PEER: Emperor
is the choice of title I now prefer.
[Attempts a kiss.]
Just so, the woodpecker jerks back her natty head!
ANITRA: Give me that ring.
PEER: Take the lot; trash to trash, could be said.
ANITRA: Your words are like sweetest music to my ears.
PEER: One’s blest in a love that’s as profound as yours.
Let me dismount and go on foot, as your slave
leading the horse.
[Hands her the whip and dismounts.]
There now, my rose,
my splendiferous flower; I will struggle through the sand
till I’m smitten by sunstroke and get my just deserts.
I’m still young, Anitra; I’d have you keep that in mind.
My antics are performed merely to amuse,
not to be judged in scales that are over-precise.
If your mood had not lately become so grave
you would recognize that I’m a bright lad of parts,
my gracious oleander.
ANITRA: So you’re young, all right? Got any more rings and things?
PEER: Here, take your pick. See, I can leap like a buck!
If there were vine-leaves I should weave myself a garland here.
For indeed I am young! I am about to break into song.
[Dances and sings.]
O I am a jolly cockerel!
Peck me, my biddybaddy hen!
I will prance while you count to ten!
O I am a jolly cockerel!
ANITRA: Prophet, you are sweating; I’m afraid you will melt.
Pass me that heavy weight that’s dangling from your belt.
PEER: Sweet solicitude! Henceforth be custodian of my purse.
Loving hearts delight in each other; gold is a curse.
[Dances and sings again.]
Young Peer Gynt, oh, he’s a madcap.
He doesn’t know which foot is left and which is right.
Pooh, says Peer, I could still dance all night.
Peer Gynt’s a cockerel in its red cap!
ANITRA: Joy to the world! The prophet joins the dance!
PEER: That old fraud? Let us swap gaud for gaud!
Get undressed …
ANITRA: Your kaftan’s
too long; this cummerbund must have been a fat man’s;
I can’t get these stockings on.
PEER: So nothing fits. Eh bien.
[Kneeling]
But grant me, I beg you, an exquisite sorrow.
That is a sweetness that all true hearts should know,
when we return at long last to my castle …
ANITRA: Paradise
you declared it. Is it a long ride?
PEER: Well, yes,
a thousand miles more or less.
ANITRA: Too far for me.
PEER: But listen, when we arrive
you will be granted the soul that I said I would give …
ANITRA: Thanks for nothing, then. I shall get by without it.
That sorrow you so desired?
PEER: That sorrow, right,
short but intense, not more than two or three days …
ANITRA: The prophet’s wish is my command! Farewell!
She delivers a stinging blow to his fingers and gallops furiously away, towards the distant oasis.
PEER: Well, I’ll …
SCENE 9
The same place, an hour later. PEER, appearing thoughtful and composed, is taking off his Arab garments piece by piece. Finally he takes his little travelling hat out of his coat pocket and puts it on. He is once more clad à l’européenne.
PEER [throwing his turban as far as he can]:
There lies the Ottoman, and I am still standing!
This un-Christian way of life is not me at all.
I’m lucky that it was in the clothes and the smell,
not gashes in my flesh and not branding.
What was I doing sweating on that galley?
I believe one should live the Christian life fully,
with sober self-judging, not peacocking about,
but basing your actions on the moral law,
thinking ‘I am what I am’; and, when you’ve had your lot,
deserving a final eulogy, a few decent wreaths on show.
[Walks a few steps, cogitating.]
That little tart, she came as near as dammit
to turning my head. Call me ‘troll’ if you will,
her hold over me is incomprehensible
now. Staggering-drunk I was with – you name it.
I’m well rid of her. If the joke had been carried
a step farther I’d have had good cause to b
e worried.
My error was issue of the situation;
it wasn’t the essential Peer who succumbed
to temptation;
it’s the prophetic career that should be blamed,
lounging around in tents all day and all night,
no wonder one becomes utterly sick of it.
Prophesying – anywhere – is thoroughly unrewarding;
you’re in a fog officially and at the fog’s bidding.
If you’re wide awake, sober, you’re not a prophet.
In the ways I knew best I was being true to my role
in slobbering over that chit and playing the fool.
But, even so—
[Bursts into laughter.]
Oh, but you have to laugh; it
is, after all, priceless: vying to halt time
by prancing and dancing or trying to swim
against the stream,
by monkeying and tail-flunkeying,
harping, throwing the occasional fit,
strutting like a cockerel. Pfui! I was plucked all right!
Good thing I do have a little bit of cash,
lucky I hid it; and back in the States a small stash.
I’m not totally destitute,
the ‘golden mean’ and all that!
I’m no longer dependent on the vagaries of servants,
grooms, coaches, porters losing your luggage;
in short, as they say, I’m henceforth my own master;
choice is all mine; there are many ways to choose from.
Bad choice, good choice, is what divides fools from savants.
My business life is buried in its vault,
my love-life galloped off with Anitra, the sweet baggage!
The crayfish may walk backwards, in his wisdom,
but I don’t have to follow him by default.
Bitter experience is the best loss-adjuster.
‘Forwards or backwards the distance is the same,
in or out, whichever way, a tight fit.’
That brilliant text – such a pleasure to recite!
So, pastures new, and a new programme,
a cause well worth the cost of taking up.
Authorship, then? The story of my life,
‘full and frank’, ‘holds nothing back’, ‘shocking’.
Moral reflections, stages on life’s way?
Perhaps not. Or, since my time’s my own,
a travelling ‘independent scholar’ type
might be my métier. Forms of depraved belief
in pagan times? Yes, I’d enjoy working
on that: historiography,
the study of facts, keeping close to the bone.
As a boy I loved the old chronicles,
the facts and figures of historical cycles.
I will swim like a feather on the stream of history,
knowing that the story of greatness is my story;
heroic battling for what is great and good,
though at a safe distance, as an observer merely;
see philosophers perish, martyrs in their own blood,
see kingdoms rise and fall, vast epochs emerge
from small beginnings on time’s verge.
It’s history’s finest cream I’ll skim off for myself surely!
I must get hold of an odd volume of Becker,41
going back in time as far as I can trek there.
The inner mechanisms of history are elusive,
but – oddsbodkins! – where the point of departure
best evades commonsense plodding, the nature
of things is such that ingeniously persuasive
results are obtained. How energizing it is
to set yourself a goal and to win the prize
against every obstacle that’s set in the path
of truth—
[Appears quietly moved.]
To break, thoroughly and completely, the bonds
that bind you to home, parents and friends,
to dynamite your worldly goods, scatter them to the sky,
and, if necessary,
to bid farewell to the happiness of love
in order that truth may live –
[wiping away a tear]
that is what drives forward all research!
My present joy defies
measure; I have solved the insoluble riddle
of the true nature of my life’s vocation.
It surely will be thought excusable
if I stand here overcome by emotion,
knowing myself to be once more in touch
with Gynthood as it truly is,
Gyntism, alias
Imperialism of the New Humanity;
to have repossessed
the key that had been lost,
this is to be the prize that’s mine alone.
Of research into the present age there shall be none.
The present age is not worth the sole of my shoe.
Mankind at present is rich only in puny excesses;
it is earthbound yet lacks gravity. I will take no excuses!
[Shrugs his shoulders.]
And womankind? Well, womankind is worthless too.
He leaves.
SCENE 10
A summer’s day in the far north. A cabin deep in the forest. An open door with a large wooden latch. Reindeer horns over the door. A flock of goats is grazing alongside the cabin wall. A middle-aged woman, fair-haired and comely, is spinning and singing. The sun is radiant.
SOLVEIG: Perchance there will pass both the winter and spring
and next summer too, what the whole year will bring;
but one day you will come; I know that in my heart;
I shall wait as I promised on that day we drew apart.
May God give you strength in this world that is so strong.
May God give you joy if with Him you belong.
As my thread I have spun, so in prayer I have striven.
We shall meet, O my love, on this earth or in heaven.
SCENE 11
Egypt. Dawn. The statue of Memnon massive amid the sands. PEER enters on foot and stands for a while, surveying the scene.
PEER: Here we might fittingly begin our quest: Peer Gynt
now in the guise of an Egyptian gent
who yet manifests the pure Gyntian thesis
in the land of Isis.
Afterwards I shall make tracks for Assyria,
but I’ll leave well alone the Creation-era;
push the Bible story completely to one side;
it’s always available if there’s a need.
And to niggle at it with a fine-tooth comb
seems to me a recipe for boredom.
[Sits on a stone.]
I shall rest and, with the patience I can command,
await Memnon’s much-advertised aubade to the sand.
Breakfast over, I shall ascend the Pyramid;
if there’s time, turn next to examine what’s hid-
den in the bowels of that grand edifice.
A trip by land to the Red Sea will next take place;
King Potiphar’s grave I might easily discover.
Assyria then, as noted. Babylon of course;
the famous hanging gardens and the famous whores,
with other features of cultural merit.
Next to Troy which has been famous for ever.
Thence to Athens by the direct sea route.
Near Athens is located the world-famous pass
so expertly defended by Leonidas,42
which I will closely examine stone by stone;
as I shall the place where they made Socrates fatally drunk.
But – that’s not possible, why didn’t I think?
I can’t visit Greece at present; there’s a war going on.
Hellenism must be postponed.
[Looks at his watch.]
One waits
far too long for sunrise in Egypt; there
are limits
to the free time one has. Where had I got to?
[Stands up, startled, and listening attentively.]
What’s that peculiar humming I can hear?
Sunrise.
THE STATUE OF MEMNON [sings]:
From the ashes of one not wholly a god arises
the birds’ war-chorus.
All-knowing Zeus
created them thus.
O Wisdom’s owl,
where shall they all
sleep? Resolve it, or die,
my riddling monody.
PEER: I seriously believe it was the statue!
That sound came from the statue, I do declare.
The rising and falling of a stone voice is what I heard.
I shall submit my notes to a learned society
of proven sobriety.
[Makes notes in a small pocket book.]
‘The statue distinctly sang. I could not grasp a word
of its song. Doubtless some illusion.
Nothing else today worthy of mention.’
He walks away.
SCENE 12
Near the settlement of Giza. The great Sphinx. In the far distance Cairo’s spires and minarets are just visible. PEER enters; he examines the Sphinx with increasingly close attention. He peers through his pince-nez; he employs the hollow of a hand, like a viewing-tube.
PEER: Where on earth have I met, before and elsewhere, this monstrosity?
Something, somewhere, half-remembered, half-forgotten …
A human being, was it? And, if so, which one?
Back in the far north? Or later? The thought now occurs
that Memnon resembled the old so-called courtiers
of the Dovre King (such disgusting ferocity!).
The way he sat there, solid and rigid,
with his backside
a fixture on the stumps of broken columns.
And, now, this thing, this weird half-breed, changeling,
stuck part way between lion and woman: it’s a strange thing
but this also strikes chords. Folk tales? Old rhymes?
Something from real life? Something from my past?
That’s it! I met this old fellow first
when I clouted the Boyg (or did I dream the Boyg
in my fever sleep?).
[Gets closer.]
Yes, same eyes,
same lips, a little more cunning and a bit less slug-
gish; but, generally speaking, the same otherwise.
So here we are then, Boyg, old fellow. You resemble a lion
when met in broad daylight and rear-end-on.
Are you still doing riddles? Let’s try one out.
If you know the answer just give a shout.