by Henrik Ibsen
[He bellows at the Sphinx.]
Hey, Boyg, who are you?
A VOICE FROM BEHIND THE SPHINX: Ach, Sfinx, wer bist du?43
PEER: ‘Echo employs the German tongue. A significant fact.’
VOICE: Wer bist du?
PEER: And fluently, too.
I must set my own stamp on this observation:
[Enters in his notebook.]
‘Albeit employing the Berliner dialect.’
BEGRIFFENFELDT [appears from behind the Sphinx]:
What you thought an echo was the man you see.
PEER: H’m. Him? Scholarly record requires modification.
[Makes a second notebook entry.]
‘Further observation suggests a different category.’
BEGRIFFENFELDT [making various nervous gestures]:
I beg you forgive this intrusion, mein Herr!
I have to put to you the following Lebensfrage:44
‘What precisely is the purpose of your journey here?’
PEER: I’ve come to visit a friend from long ago.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: How splendid! And after such a night!
My head’s being pounded by a pile-driver!
You know him? Speak! Answer! Can you name
was er ist?45
PEER: What he is? Yes, I can do that
easily enough. He is him-
self.
BEGRIFFENFELDT [with a little skip and jump]:
I see the mystery of things quiver,
flashing before my eyes.
I have your absolute
assurance on this?
PEER: That’s what he says.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Himself! The Revolution’s now in motion!
[Taking off his hat]
May I have the honour of knowing your name, mein Herr?
PEER: My family name is Gynt. My baptismal name is Peer.
BEGRIFFENFELDT [in hushed admiration]:
Peer Gynt beginnt! Which, as I interpret,
signifies ‘the coming one’, ‘the new man’;
‘he whose coming was foretold by the prophet’.
PEER: No, really? And now you are here to get …?
BEGRIFFENFELDT: ‘Peer Gynt beginnt.’ Profound, mysterious, searching,
each word unfathomable yet profound teaching.
I ask again, who are you?
PEER [modestly]: I have always sought
to be myself. You may examine my passport.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Again that prophetic name. It is the Sign!
[Taking hold of PEER’s wrist]
To Cairo we must go. The divine
revelator is come!
PEER: Who?
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Make haste!
PEER: And am I truly known …?
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Selbstgrundlage!46 The divine self-revelator! Him!
SCENE 13
In Cairo. A large courtyard with high walls. Buildings with barred windows. Metal cages. Three GUARDS in the courtyard. A fourth enters.
FOURTH GUARD: The Herr Direktor, Schafmann? Where has he gone?
GUARD: He left this morning, well before dawn.
FOURTH GUARD: Something deeply disturbing must have happened, then?
Last night …
GUARD: Be quiet; he’s back; he’s at the gate.
BEGRIFFENFELDT leads PEER in, locks the gate and puts the key in his pocket.
PEER [to himself]:
Truly, an extremely gifted mind.
His words fly above my head, at any rate.
[Looking around]
So this is the Scholars’ Club?
BEGRIFFENFELDT: I think you’ll find
they’re all alive and able.
‘Septuagint’ was the original label
but numbers have increased to more than double
in recent weeks.
[Calling the guards]
Schlingelberg, Fuchs,
Schafmann, Mikkel,
into the cages with you, schnell!47
GUARDS: Us, Herr Direktor?
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Who else? Off you go!
While the world is spinning we must spin too!
[Pushes them into a cage.]
Our most recent arrival is the grand Gynt.
Work it out for yourselves. I shall be silent.
Locks the cage and throws the key down a well.
PEER: Herr Direktor, Herr Doktor, whichever you prefer …?
BEGRIFFENFELDT: I am not now entitled to such nomenclature.
I bore them once. Can you keep secrets, Herr Peer?
I need to make a confession.
PEER [increasingly uneasy]:
Well, I …
BEGRIFFENFELDT: You must promise not to tremble.
PEER: I shall try.
BEGRIFFENFELDT [drags him into a corner and whispers]:
I must inform you that I witnessed Absolute Reason
expire last night: eleven o’clock, on the dot.
PEER: Great heavens!
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Indeed. Most deeply I wish he had not.
For a professional
in my position
it is especially painful.
This institution,
heretofore, stood in high repute
as a madhouse.
PEER: A madhouse?
BEGRIFFENFELDT: No longer so, of course.
PEER [pale and quiet]:
How well, now, I understand.
This fellow is raving, and the sane are blind.
Moves away.
BEGRIFFENFELDT [following him around]:
By the way, I trust you have understood:
when I say he’s dead I am speaking in code.
He’s not in his right mind;
he’s leaped out of his own skin
as the fox leaps out of its pelt in Münchhausen.48
PEER: Excuse me a moment.
BEGRIFFENFELDT [holding on to him tightly]:
More like an eel
than a fox. With a pin through his eye
he squirmed on the wall.
PEER: I must escape, and soon!
BEGRIFFENFELDT: A snip round the neck and then –
presto! – he was up and away!
PEER: Tragic, obscene …
BEGRIFFENFELDT: It’s plain to see, it’s impossible to conceal.
This ‘from-oneself-going’ will have as a result
something resembling a geological fault.
Those who previously had been labelled ‘mad’
at eleven o’clock last night suddenly became fit to plead,
in conformity with reason in its new phase.
And if you look at the matter correctly, furthermore
it is evident that, from the aforementioned hour,
all so-called sane people have become crazy.
PEER: You spoke of a clock striking. My time is short.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Your time? You compel me to speak. Come forth,
I say, Time’s Future is upon us,
reason is dead, Peer Gynt answers the summons.
Good new dawn to you all, well met.
The dawn of the new dispensation is indeed sweet.
Your emperor has this moment arrived.
PEER: Emperor?
I am not worthy of such an honour, I fear.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Do not let senseless modesty degrade
this moment.
PEER: But I’m stupefied.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: One who has solved that dire conundrum
posed by the Sphinx? Who is selfhood’s self? None worthier
than thou to be our grand panjandrum.
PEER: I am indeed myself in toto;49 but therein,
if I correctly read your mind, we snag.
Self here, you say, is absolute Nonself. I must beg
to stand down, to abdicate, to be left
alone.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: No one’s himself, emperor, don’t you see,
but here: each is himself, here, to the nth degree.
Each to himself, impurities excised,
himself at sea with all the canvas raised.
Bunged in the barrel of himself, fermenting,
hermetically sealed-in with self-cementing.
Wood-preservative-selfhood’s all the rage;
no tears for others’ woes from selfhood’s cage;
no tolerance for what’s judged alien;
self at the limit of the diving board,
self on display, unchallenged, self-admired:
none but you so perfectly fits that bill.
PEER: God! No!
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Let neither modesty nor dismay
prevent acceptance. We’re making a new start
and that can be unsettling. Tell you what!
I’ll pick someone at random, put him before your eye.
You’ll see how things can stand open-and-shut.
[To a shrouded figure]
Good day to you, Huhu, my lad; are you still
of the mind that modern things go ill?
HUHU: Can I otherwise conclude?
Generations, now, have died
nameless, uninterpreted.
[To PEER]
You’re the stranger who’s been thrust
upon us. D’you want the list?
PEER [bows]:
Please, by all means.
HUHU: Lend me your ear.
Look at the coasts of Malabar50
far to the east; its wreaths of flowers
clapped on the skulls of foreign powers.
The Portuguese, the Dutch, arrive.
Culture’s merchandisings thrive.
Native Malabarians also
make their mark – that’s something else tho’!
Portuguese, Dutch, Malibari
mix their languages like curry;
together, in some sort, proclaim
such lordships as God’s paradigm.
Yet, in a lost primeval age,
the orang-outang was in charge;
child of the forest and its master;
fought and hunted; yawned at rest there;
screams of triumph, screams of pain,
reverberant in his domain,
primeval and primordial,
till Man conveyed his murder-deal.
Four hundred years of commerce-making51
gave darkness to the orang-outang;
little indigenous survives;
the forest closes on its lives,
the growls, the murmurations, all,
the language of the common soul.
If we’re to speak of these, our tongues’
emancipation’s fettered things,
compulsion must assign us freedom;
Portuguese, Dutch, pure bred, mixed race,
must self-dissolve in a grand Ur-dom,
the purest song of our distress.
I have endeavoured with truth’s blade
to preach the aboriginal;
tried to resuscitate the corpse;
maintained the people’s right to curse;
and, in my isolation, tried
variants of that ancient call.
We must revive the folk-song if
the truth of things is to survive,
but none will hearken. You may feel
now, your highness, why I grieve.
Thank you for listening. If you have
any suggestions I will listen.
PEER [quietly]:
It is written, one must howl
when wolves are running, just to live.
[Aloud]
My friend, I seem to recollect,
Morocco had some bushes packed
with orang-outangs: they appeared
to be without a single bard.
Their language, I’ve no doubt, is full
of sounds on which your skills could fasten;
to me it sounded Malabarian
but I’m no expert. With your brain
and expertise and colleagues, could
you not arrange to take the Word
to where such gifts might work great good?
HUHU: Words most persuasively precise.
I’ll act on your advice.
[With a grand gesture]
The bard
rejected in his own land’s heard
by apes upon a foreign strand!
He leaves.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: Was his the Nonself’s selfhood? Could you understand?
I say it was, in some remote kind.
He is his Nonself’s maestro, that alone,
in everything he pours forth, Archimedean point,
beside himself, both in and out of joint.
Attend, please, for I have another patient
who, since last night, has been indisputably sane.
[To a FELLAH carrying a mummy on his back]
King Apis,52 how do you do, my noble lord?
FELLAH [wildly, to PEER]:
Am I King Apis?
PEER [hiding behind the doctor]:
I am obliged to confess
that I do not possess the full details of your case;
but, judging by your symptoms, I would diagnose …
FELLAH: You too are a liar!
BEGRIFFENFELDT: It would help us to achieve
a diagnosis if, Your Highness, you could give
a full account of things; perhaps relive …
FELLAH [turning to address PEER]:
This fellow I’m here carrying,
King Apis was his name.
He’s what they call a mummy.
He’s as dead as they come.
Pyramids were his buildings.
He chiselled the great Beast.
As the Doc says, he battled
those Turks from the east.
So, by the whole of Egypt
he was worshipped as a god.
They stood him in their temples,
an ox as he stood.
Now I’m him with that power,
I see it clear as day.
If you are blind, listen;
I’ll tell it my way.
King Apis he went hunting
and he was caught short,
went on great-grandad’s property
for to take a shit.
The field that he manured,
it has fed me with corn.
If final proof’s needed
I’ve got invisible horns.
Is it not most damnable
no one speaks of my power?
By rights I am King Apis
though I’m damned poor.
If you know any remedies –
let’s have no deceit –
tell me how I might be becoming
King Apis the great.
PEER: Your Highness must build pyramids
and sculpt a bigger Sphinx;
and battle, as the Doc has told you,
a Turkish phalanx.
FELLAH: Ah well, that’s some fine talkin’:
that’s as far as it gets.
I’ve enough keeping my lean-to
free of rats.
Come up with something better
is my plea and desire,
to have me feel as good as
King Apis here.
PEER: What if you hanged yourself,
Your Highness, and then,
snug in that old coffin,
have a grand time on your own?
FELLAH: Yessir! A rope to take me,
both my skin and my bone.
At first I’ll not look like him,
but later on …
Walks away and prepares to hang himself.
BEGRIFFENFELDT:
So there was one well stuck on himself, Herr Peer,
mit Methode.
PEER: I suppose I must concur.
But – he can’t be going to hang himself from that hook?
Oh, my God, he is! This is terrible!
My thoughts are spinning beyond my self-will!
I’m becoming ill!
BEGRIFFENFELDT: A very brief transitional phase of shock.
PEER: Transition to what, God help me? I have to be gone!
BEGRIFFENFELDT [grasping him and speaking overbearingly]:
What? Leaving? Are you mad?
PEER [quietly]:
That judgement’s not yet made.
A general agitation, people milling about. MINISTER HUSSEIN forces his way through the crowd.
HUSSEIN: An emperor’s arrival’s now officially made known.
[To PEER]
That is you, excellency?
PEER [desperately]:
Everyone seems agreed that I am he.
HUSSEIN: Very good. Here are some notes that need your
immediate answer.
PEER [tugging at his hair, in a kind of frantic gaiety]:
High jinks at the nadir!
HUSSEIN: Will you honour me with a dip?
[Bows deeply.]
I am a quill.
PEER [bowing even more deeply]:
And I have the honour of being a fully inscribed
imperial parchment.
HUSSEIN: My history, Excellency, I shall briefly tell.
I am used as a sand-shaker when in fact I’m a pen.
PEER: My history, Chief Minister Quill, appears to have been scrubbed.
I am a sheet of paper on which nothing is written.
HUSSEIN: I have capacities that no one can comprehend.
I wish to write well, and yet I scatter sand.
PEER: I was a book with a silver clasp53 in a woman’s hand.
Whether sane or insane we are the same printer’s error.
HUSSEIN: But pray bear in mind my debilitated life:
I am a quill pen that has never tasted the knife.
PEER [giving a high kick, as in the halling]:
Just think – to be that reindeer buck! He plunges
into a void of air, exquisite terror,
no hoof-print is ever found.
HUSSEIN: I am a blunt knife. My edge must be reground.
The world will die for want of such changes.
PEER: That’s a great shame for the world, which, like all other
self-made things, our Lord believed to be sound.
BEGRIFFENFELDT: A knife, Freiherr!
HUSSEIN [snatching it]:
How I shall slather
myself with red ink! The ecstasy of that wound!
He slashes his own throat.
BEGRIFFENFELDT [turning sharply away]:
Don’t splash! Tch!
PEER [clearly appalled]:
Hold him!
HUSSEIN: Hold! A good word to have found!
I am a dulled edge ground
down. Put paper. Hold pen.
Let there be a postscript, a ‘last inscribed work’.
You set it down: