Peer Gynt and Brand

by Henrik Ibsen

  begin reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

  COOK: I can’t recall … it’s going black …

  PEER: Recite the most important bit!

  COOK: Give us this day … give … give …

  PEER: No, that’s not it.

  What you need you’ll no doubt receive.

  COOK: Give us this day …

  PEER:   Don’t just repeat it.

  No need to tell us you were cook.

  Releases his grip on the COOK, who sinks.

  COOK: Give us this day …

  He goes completely under.

  PEER:   Amen, my lad.

  You were yourself, Sich selbst57 indeed.

  [Swings himself out of the water and sits astride the keel.]

  Well, where there’s life there’s hope. Whatever.

  The STRANGE PASSENGER swims up and takes hold of the keel.

  PASSENGER: Good morning.

  PEER:   Aagh!

  PASSENGER:   I heard you shout.

  How pleasant it will be to chat.

  Well, my prediction hit the spot.

  PEER: Be off. There’s hardly room for one.

  PASSENGER: Using my left leg I can swim

  or I can float just holding on,

  a fingertip stuck in a seam.

  But, apropos, sir, your cadaver …

  PEER: Not now!

  PASSENGER:   It’s all you can bequeath.

  The rest is gutted.

  PEER:   Shut your mouth.

  PASSENGER: Just as you wish.

  Silence.

  PEER:   Well, what?

  PASSENGER:   I didn’t speak.

  PEER: What now?

  PASSENGER:   We wait.

  PEER [tearing at his hair]:

  The devil’s trick.

  You’ll drive me mad in time. So, what

  are you?

  PASSENGER: Friendly.

  PEER:   What happens now?

  PASSENGER: What do you think? Surely you know

  someone, some others, who are not

  wholly unlike me?

  PEER:   Well, there’s Satan.

  PASSENGER [quietly]:

  Is he the one who keeps the light on

  for life’s long trek through dark and dread?

  PEER: How about that! Misunderstood,

  have I? So you’re a spirit lamp!

  PASSENGER: In six months, say, have you known once

  the kind of fear that grips your bones?

  PEER: I do get panicked a fair bit.

  Your words contort and also clamp.

  PASSENGER: And have you once, in your long years,

  experienced victory through such fears?

  PEER [staring]:

  D’you come to ‘ope the narrow door’?

  A shame you weren’t here earlier.

  This truly is a bad old time

  for arguing codicils to doom.

  PASSENGER: Would victory seem more probable

  if you were tucked up in Gynt Hall?

  PEER: Perhaps not; but you scathe and mock.

  D’you really think such tones will work?

  PASSENGER: Where I reside, our practice rates

  smiling equivalent to pathos.

  PEER: ‘Time for all things’ is a factor

  appropriate to a tax collector,

  not to a bishop.

  PASSENGER:   That great

  silent majority in their ash

  have no time for our vain panache.

  PEER: Off, scarecrow, I’m not dying yet.

  PASSENGER: You’re safe for now, at any rate;

  I can assure you, you’ll not die

  before act five’s peripety.

  He glides away.

  PEER: Well, he betrayed himself, at last,

  as just another moralist.

  SCENE 3

  A cemetery in the high mountain area. A funeral procession. PRIEST and MOURNERS. The last verse of a hymn is sung. PEER passes by on the road.

  PEER [at the gate]:

  A man of earth proceeds to his long home.

  Again I must thank God that it won’t be me in the tomb.

  PRIEST [addressing the MOURNERS at the graveside]:

  Now that this soul is on its judgement road

  his body lies here like a bursten pod.

  So now, dear friends, before we shovel earth,

  we speak of his long journey here from birth.

  He was not rich, nor had he the right touch;

  his voice was weak, his posture deemed unmanly;

  when he dealt with ideas they stood ungainly.

  You could not call him master in the home.

  When he attended church he seemed to need

  forgiveness from the priest for having come.

  Hailing from Gudbrandsdalen, as you know,

  when he moved here he’d not long ceased to grow.

  From youth until the very day he died

  there was a thing, of all the things he did,

  we most remember: how it was he hid

  always his right hand deep inside his jacket.

  ‘Right hand in pocket’ is what now commends

  the final memory of him to our minds.

  That, and the ever-awkward, ay, the naked,

  expression of his face to those he met.

  He chose to trudge along his path, a quiet

  stranger among us to the very end.

  And yet, that finger missing from one hand!

  I well remember – many our Lord’s years

  since gone – that day of the conscription board

  in Lunde. We were at war. You heard

  talk of privations, common hopes and fears.

  There was the captain sitting centre-table,

  the sheriff, sergeants, looking stern and able.

  Lad after lad was measured top to toe

  and told ‘that for a soldier he must go’.

  The room was full; from outside, in the yard,

  it was the larking of those lads we heard.

  A new name was called out, and in he came,

  pasty as snow gets when it’s past its prime.

  They told him to come closer; this he did;

  his right hand wrapped in linen and well hid.

  His Adam’s apple retched, could not uncork

  one word in answer to the captain’s bark.

  Then finally he croaked out – his cheeks aflame,

  his tongue a-stumble – words that sealed his shame.

  He mumbled something none of us believed:

  a sickle slipping and a finger cleaved.

  The room fell hushed: a miming theatre

  of lips a-pursing, mass caricature.

  They stoned the lad with their unspoken words;

  invisible hail stung. That old grey man,

  the captain, stood, spat, pointed and said ‘Go!’

  And the lad went. Crowd parted on both sides;

  he ran the gauntlet back where he’d crept in;

  fumbled the door; shot forth like bolt from bow.

  Straight up he went, through grove and meadowland,

  up through the stone scree staggering and falling.

  Somewhere among the mountains was his home.

  Six months later he was back again

  with mother, babe-in-arms and the babe’s mother.

  And it was said he’d rented some rough ground

  between the wilderness’s edge and Lom.58

  He made an honest woman of the girl;

  built a cabin; did much heavy tilling;

  and slowly made his way amid the weather,

  as many a little field could testify

  with good corn thrusting strongly through good soil.

  He came to church, with his right hand concealed

  as always, though at home I have no doubt

  nine fingers did as well with what they wrought

  as other people
’s ten. And fortune smiled

  until, one spring, the floods swept all away.

  They escaped with their lives, barely; day by day

  he mured wild land, brought new fertility.

  Ere long a pleasant hearth-smoke rose again

  from a new farmstead; things stood true and plain.

  Two years; and then the glacier’s fresh moraine

  buried in rubbled scree, deltas of silt,

  his heart’s investment. And he may have wept.

  For the third time, as, doggedly, he built

  their modest dwelling where rude fate had swept.

  They had three sons, three bright boys who were schooled

  by different stages on life’s way (I mean

  by way of a most arduous terrain).

  To reach the district road – a different world! –

  perilously stepped father and eldest son,

  each roped to each, like practised mountaineers,

  which they became, no doubt. He, on his back,

  the father, bore the second son; his arms

  carried the youngest. So they made their trek

  overcoming nature and their own fears.

  So he toiled on; the boys grew into men.

  Here I must pause. I look around in vain.

  Justice may here demand a just return.

  Three prosperous gentlemen of the New World,

  I do not see them here to meet the claims

  he – oh so rightly – had on filial love.

  A father, sons, the hard road: that is all.

  He was a man near-sighted. Past the small

  circle of those closest, he could not move

  his range of vision. So for him the names

  that resonate for us were not enscrolled.

  Our blessed homeland, that ever-glowing term,

  was but remote philosophy to him.

  He was humble; humble indeed this man

  who, from that far conscription day, had borne

  his judgement, as he bore the branded shames,

  the public scorn, four-fingered hand well hidden

  yet known to all. He failed in what was bidden,

  indeed he did; and broke his country’s laws.

  But there are laws, greater by far than these,

  that utter their divine simplicities,

  as Glittertinden,59 round its topmost peak,

  is crowned by heaven itself when the clouds break.

  He was a hapless citizen, God knows;

  in terms of state and Church a barren tree.

  But back there, grafting order on wild ground,

  in compass of the small diurnal round,

  there he was great, to his own self was true;

  his passage through this world a muted sound

  plucked from the homeliest of instruments.

  And therefore peace be with you, patient soul

  who served, who fell, fighting a peasant’s war.

  We will not search his heart for its intents,

  nor on his reins our pettiness obtrude.

  That task is proper to the Lord of All.

  Yet, free and frank, let us in faith declare:

  this man’s no cripple where he stands with God.

  The MOURNERS disperse. PEER remains.

  PEER: Now that’s what I call genuine Christian feeling.

  Nothing that could possibly leave a nasty taste in the mind.

  I also found the main text of the sermon appealing:

  being unshakeably for yourself is where I always stand.

  [Looks down into the grave.]

  Was this the very same lad, I wonder, who,

  all those long years ago,

  chopped off a finger that day I was tree-felling?

  Who can say? If I were not stood here with my pilgrim’s staff,

  looking down at the grave

  of someone I truly feel was a kindred spirit,

  I could believe it was me lying peacefully there,

  hearing my praises sung, a roll-call of merit.

  It truly is a most charming Christian habit

  to cast a final glance, a totting-up as it were,

  back over the lifetime of the dear departed,

  but always in the most genial kind of way.

  I’d have not the slightest objection to being bade goodbye

  by this kind, fair-minded spiritual advocate

  when my time comes, which, I trust, is not quite yet,

  and when that honest sexton invites me to stay.

  For, as the scriptures say, best is still best,

  and, in the same vein, sufficient unto the day.

  Don’t pay for your funeral in advance

  is another good one. All of life at a glance,

  the Church remains the one true comforter.

  Though I’ve not set great store

  by its precepts up to now, they stand the test.

  To be assured, by those who really know,

  that, as you sow,

  so shall you reap, is reinvigorating.

  Be true to yourself, they say,

  and keep a close eye on your property;

  look to yourself in matters great and small.

  If, then, from fate you get a final slating,

  even so, you know, you’ve lived life by that rule,

  and none can steal that from you. Home,

  here we come!

  Although the way be steep and narrow, fate

  at its most unpleasantly jocular,

  treading his own path as always, here comes Peer

  Gynt, who is, as he always was, poor

  but never less than straight.

  He leaves the graveyard and returns to the road.

  SCENE 4

  A hill with a dried-up river bed. The ruins of a mill by the river. The ground is churned up; everything around is laid waste. Higher up, a big farmhouse. Up at the farm an auction is in progress. A crowd of common people has gathered; there is drinking and much clamour. PEER is sitting on a heap of gravel down by the mill side.

  PEER: Forwards, back, same length of trek.

  Out and in, you scrape your skin.

  Time corrodes, river abrades.

  ‘Around,’ said the Boyg; the advice was sound.

  A MAN DRESSED IN MOURNING: What’s left is stuff to throw away.

  [Catches sight of PEER.]

  A stranger in our midst? God’s blessing, friend.

  PEER: Well met! The place is lively today.

  A christening is it? Or a wedding feast?

  MOURNING MAN: You could call it a housewarming of a kind.

  The bride is lying in her bed of clay.

  PEER: The worms competing among rags of breast.

  MOURNING MAN: Let’s end the ballad there. Over and done.

  PEER: All the ballads end in the same way;

  they’re ancient, too; I knew them as a boy.

  A YOUTH [with a casting-ladle]:

  Look, here’s a fine thing I was lucky to buy.

  Peer Gynt used it to cast silver buttons in.

  SECOND YOUTH: And how about this? It’s an old money-chest.

  Just a shilling it cost.

  THIRD YOUTH: I paid a bit over four for this peddler’s pack.

  PEER: ‘Peer Gynt,’ you said; was that the name?

  MOURNING MAN: Brother-in-law to death, to the smith Aslak,

  the two in one, that’s how they tell it.

  MAN IN GREY: Hey, I’m still here! You four can swill it!

  MOURNING MAN: You’ve forgot Hæggstad and a locked door.

  MAN IN GREY: You also, remember, came out of that game poor!

  MOURNING MAN: Let’s hope she doesn’t wrangle

  so readily with the recording angel.

  MAN IN GREY: Come now, brother-in-law, let’s knock back a dram

  for old time’s sake!

  MOURNING MAN: I don’t give a damn.

  MAN IN GREY: What do they say? However thin
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  the blood … Like it or not, we’re Gynt’s kin.

  They leave together.

  PEER [to himself]:

  Well, old acquaintance is not forgotten,

  not in these parts.

  A BOY [shouting after the MAN IN MOURNING]:

  Our mother, may she rest in peace,

  will haunt you, Aslak, if you get spewing-drunk!

  PEER [stands up]:

  What the rural economists say,

  ‘the deeper you dig the sweeter it smells’,

  does not hold true of this particular clay,

  I think.

  BOY [with a bearskin]:

  Here’s the skin of the cat that chased the trolls

  one Christmas Eve!

  SECOND BOY [with a reindeer’s skull]:

  Here’s the great reindeer buck

  that bore Peer Gynt safely through mist and murk.

  THIRD BOY [carrying a hammer calls to the MAN IN MOURNING]:

  Hey, Aslak, did you send him reeling –

  the devil – once? Knock him through the ceiling?

  FOURTH BOY [empty-handed]:

  And here’s the cloak that makes you disappear,

  Mads Moen, ere you can think twice.

  With it Peer Gynt and Ingrid flew through the air.

  PEER: Let’s have the brandy, lads, I feel so old.

  I’m thinking I might hold

  my own auction of odds and ends.

  FIRST BOY: What priceless items would you have to hustle?

  PEER: To start with, I have a castle.

  It stands in Rondane; and it’s of solid build.

  SECOND BOY: I bid one button.

  PEER:   You’ll need to bid more.

  You must stretch to a dram.

  It would be sin and shame

  to let it go for less, even among friends.

  THIRD BOY: Well, this old lad’s a great character,

  I must say!

  They crowd around him eager for more fun.

  PEER [shouting like an auctioneer]:

  Lot two! Grane, my horse! Fine beast!

  Who’ll bid?

  ONE OF THE CROWD: Where is he?

  PEER:   Far to the west,

  towards the sunset, my lads. That steed can fly

  as fast

  as Peer Gynt, at the top of his form, could lie.

  ONE OF THE CROWD: What more do you have to be rid

  of?

  PEER: Some golden tawdry.

  It cost me too dear. I’m selling far below cost.

  FIRST BOY: So, call the lots!

  PEER:   And be prompt to bid.

  A precious dream of a book with a silver clasp.

  That you can have for a hook without an eye.

  SECOND BOY: To hell with all dreams.

  PEER:   Next the unsigned decree

  that claimed I was emperor. It’s for free

  and you can scramble for it.