by Henrik Ibsen
you were foolish that you bore and shed light on my mother.
The spirit is miserly and nature is prodigal.
It is costly to pay for with your life for your birth. –
I shall climb up high to the steepest peak;
I want once more to see the sun rise,
to look till I’m weary on the promised land,
then I shall make a snow avalanche cover me;
they can write on the top: “Here lies no-one”;
and after that, – then! Let things happen as they will.
And in yours:
GYNT: So unutterably poor a soul can return
to pristine nothingness in the dense grey.
Ah, dearest earth, do not be angry
that I have ravaged you so. Nor you, dear sun,
who gifted your radiance to a locked empty room
because he who owned it was always away.
Inviolable sun and you, dear, violated earth,
was it wise to bear and shed light on her who gave me birth?
The spirit is such a miser, nature so prodigal.
Life’s held to ransom by what began it all.
If I could I would climb Glittertinden
to watch the sunrise as if for the last time,
gazing at what was promised and forbidden,
to have an avalanche drown me in its cry.
‘Here lies no one’ would serve to bury me.
Inconsolably the soul gathers where it is from.
GH: You will see that Ibsen, in Garton’s faithful version, does not name the ‘steepest peak’. I had noticed, however, that Glittertinden is named elsewhere in the play as a metaphor for the highest reach or point of human aspiration; and it seemed to be pertinent rather than impertinent to name it in this elegiac summation. The internal rhyme (‘inconsolably’, ‘soul’) is deliberate. I wanted the melancholy to be aurally unmissable, while at the same time reaching forward with a tone of positive irony to the consolatory cadences of the imminent scene with Solveig. My deviation in this passage from the literal, in order to name Glittertinden explicitly, is an exception to my usual practice, not the rule. I try throughout both plays to remain faithful to the literal versions.
Notes
BRAND
1. Brand: Nordic male name, from the Norse brandr, meaning ‘fire’, ‘torch’ or ‘burning wood’ and ‘sword’. Cf. English ‘firebrand’.
2. miles: The original has one ‘mil’. Before the metrical system was introduced in the 1870s, a Norwegian mile was 18,000 ell, or 11.3 kilometres.
3. Hercules: A demi-god and the greatest hero of Greek mythology. Son of Zeus and Alcmene.
4. Samson in the harlot’s lap: See Judges 16.
5. five loaves and three fishes: See Mark 6, Matthew 14, Luke 9 and John 6.
6. You built on sand: See Matthew 7:24–7 and Luke 6:46–9.
7. the God … of his father’s faith: See Genesis 22.
8. good King Bele’s: King Bele is supposed to have lived in west Norway around 800–900 AD. He appears in the Icelandic Fridthjofs Saga (c.1300).
9. Ulf and Thor: Ulf and Thor are not historical or mythological characters. The name of the god Thor was used as a male name from the Late Middle Ages. Ulf means wolf.
10. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’: The law of retaliation; see Exodus 21:24.
11. ‘Consummatum est!’: ‘It is finished’, Christ’s final words on the cross in the Latin Vulgate; see John 19:30.
12. our tree: The Christmas tree was introduced to Norway in 1822 but was still a city and upper-class phenomenon in the 1860s.
13. ‘The young shall see visions and the old dream dreams’: A reference to the last days, the end of the world; see Acts 2:17.
14. new Zion: Zion was the name of a mountain near Jerusalem, often used as a synonym for the city. The ‘new Zion’ refers to prophecies about the creation of a new Jerusalem.
15. lex talionis: The principle or law of retaliation. Cf. ‘an eye for an eye …’, note 10.
16. pro bono publico: Latin phrase meaning ‘for the public good’.
17. ‘Whoever looks on God shall die’: See Exodus 33:20.
18. A year and a half later: This means that the action takes place around midsummer.
19. Égalité: French for ‘equality’. From the national motto ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, associated with the French Revolution.
20. The Tower of Babel: See Genesis 11.
21. That vision Jacob saw: Jacob had a vision of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven; see Genesis 28:10–19.
22. ‘The meek shall be exalted’: See Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:5.
23. Cain … Abel: The two sons of Adam and Eve; see Genesis 4. Cain was cursed by God for killing his brother.
24. Caudates: The word ‘Caudates’ refers to creatures with a tail. The original has ‘Halenegerlandet’, ‘the land of black people with tails’.
25. the Ark: The Ark of the Covenant, containing the Ten Commandments, also called the Ark of Testimony; see, e.g., Exodus 25:10–22.
26. from Pilate, from Caiaphas: The prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, and the high priest Joseph Caiaphas are both associated with the death of Jesus.
27. Dagon: A Semitic fertility god, part of the pantheon of the Philistines. After the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant, the statue of Dagon was found prostrate before the Ark; see 1 Samuel 5:2–7.
28. manna from Heaven: Manna was the food God gave to the Israelites in the desert; see Exodus 16:1–36 and Numbers 11:1–9.
29. ‘Thou shalt not murder’: One of the Ten Commandments; see Exodus 20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:4–21.
30. Vox populi, vox Dei: Latin for ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God.’
31. that old king of Norway: A reference to Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and his Sami wife Snæfrid.
32. God is God and is for ever: God’s name in Hebrew, Jehovah, is commonly understood to mean ‘I am that I am’.
33. He is the God of Love: The original has the Latin phrase ‘deus caritatis’, ‘God of mercy’. See Afterword.
PEER GYNT
1. Peer Gynt: The first name, ‘Per’, is a version of ‘Peter’, and Ibsen uses the unusual spelling ‘Peer’ in line with the fairy-tale collections of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe from the 1840s. Peer Gynt appears as one of the characters in the former’s tale ‘Reindeer hunting by Rondane’.
2. seter: A ‘seter’ is a Norwegian name for the hut(s) used for summer farming in the mountains.
3. The Troll King: The Troll King is called ‘Dovregubben’ in the original, literally ‘the old man of Dovre’, a high mountain in south Norway.
4. Boyg: The name ‘Bøygen’ is connected to the verb ‘bøye’, to bend, and characterizes something which is bent or crooked. The Boyg appears in the tale of Peer Gynt in ‘Reindeer hunting by Rondane’.
5. Lake Gjendin: Large lake in the eastern part of the Jotunheimen mountain range, most often spelt ‘Gjende’.
6. Gjendin Ridge: Mountain ridge between two lakes in Jotunheimen, Gjende and Bessvatnet, normally called Besseggen.
7. Gudbrand Glesne: A hunter mentioned in the tale ‘Reindeer hunting by Rondane’.
8. a Copenhagen man: After more than 400 years of Danish rule, Norway had been in a union with Sweden since 1814. The official language remained Danish, however, and the class of civil servants were mainly of Danish origins. Until Norway got its first university in 1811, nearly all theologians were educated at Copenhagen University.
9. Lunde: A wealthy farm in Gudbrandsdalen, close to where the mythological Peer Gynt is supposed to have lived.
10. the halling: Norwegian folk dance, originally from the area of Hallingdal.
11. Hedalen: A western side valley of Gudbrandsdalen.
12. the Rondane mountains: A mountain region in the interior of Norway, between the northern parts of the valleys of Gudbrandsdalen and Østerdal
en.
13. Mount Ronden: One of the highest peaks in the Rondane mountain range.
14. Soria Moria: The castle Soria Moria appears in two of Asbjørnsen and Moe’s fairy tales, ‘Soria Moria Castle’ and ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon’.
15. a Weltanschauung, echt und wahr: German for ‘Weltanschauung (world view or philosophy of life), real and true’. (Not in the original.)
16. Ur-natur … Erhebung … Kreis … Krise: ‘Ur-natur’ is German for ‘original nature’. The German words ‘Erhebung’, ‘Kreis’ and ‘Krise’ mean ‘elevation’, ‘circle’ and ‘crisis’ (only ‘Ur-natur’ appears in the original).
17. dolce far niente: This Italian expression literally means ‘sweet doing nothing’, i.e., ‘delicious idleness’.
18. Selbst: German for ‘self’. (Not in the original.)
19. Mein Selbst ist dies: German for ‘my self is this’. (Not in the original.)
20. Lippe-Detmold’s: Lippe had been a German mini-state from 1836. Detmold was its capital.
21. L’État c’est moi, c’est moi en bloc: ‘L’État c’est moi’ is French for ‘I am the state’ or ‘The state, it is I’, often attributed to Louis XIV. The rest of the phrase means ‘it is me altogether (or “all of it”)’. ‘But I want to be myself, en bloc’ is a more literal rendering of the original.
22. La belle Hélène, un grand désir: French for ‘The beautiful Helen (of Troy), a great desire.’ The original has ‘To possess the world’s greatest beauty’.
23. Johannisberger: A wine from the Rhine region.
24. Ne comprenez-vous pas?: French for ‘You don’t understand?’ (Not in the original.)
25. Niente: Italian for ‘no’, ‘nothing’. (Not in the original.)
26. Mon Dieu: French for ‘My God’. (Not in the original.)
27. Sans honneur: French for ‘without honour’. (Not in the original.)
28. Coup de tonnerre: French for a ‘thunderclap’. (Not in the original.)
29. Machtübernahme: German for ‘takeover’ or ‘seizure of power’. (Not in the original.)
30. Et alors: French expression meaning ‘and then?’ or ‘so what?’. (Not in the original.)
31. A dam: In the original Peer also uses the word ‘Kanal’, an allusion to the Suez Canal, which was being planned and constructed in the 1860s (it was officially opened in 1869).
32. Mount Atlas: Mountain in northwestern Africa.
33. costa del sol: Spanish for ‘coast of the sun’ or ‘sun coast’.
34. Abyssinia: The historical name in English (now outdated) for Ethiopia. In the original Ibsen uses the Arabic term Habes.
35. Atlantis: A mythological island said to have belonged to Poseidon, the Greek god of the ocean.
36. ab esse ad posse: A principle from logic. The full phrase is ab esse ad posse valet consequentia, meaning that one can deduce a thing’s possibility from its existence. The opposite is not the case.
37. the simoom: A scorching desert wind, particularly in North Africa and West Asia.
38. Kaba: The holy temple in Mecca, the goal of Muslim pilgrimage.
39. ‘Das Ewig-Weibliche ziehet uns an’: Peer slightly misquotes the ending of Goethe’s Faust II (‘ziehet uns an’ rather than ‘zieht uns hinan’), so that the meaning becomes ‘the ever womanly attracts us’ rather than ‘draws us upwards’ (to God).
40. Babylon’s gardens: The Gardens of Babylon were known as one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
41. Becker: Karl Friedrich Becker (1777–1806) was a German historian responsible for Die Weltgeschichte für die Jugend (World History for the Young) in twelve volumes. The first edition appeared in 1801.
42. Leonidas: Greek warrior king of the city-state of Sparta. He died in 480 BC.
43. Ach, Sfinx, wer bist du?: German for ‘Oh, Sphinx, who are you?’
44. Lebensfrage: The German ‘Lebensfrage’ literally means ‘question of life’, a vital issue.
45. was er ist: German for ‘what he is’. (Not in the original.)
46. Selbstgrundlage: German for ‘the foundation of the self’. (Not in the original.)
47. schnell: German for ‘fast’. (Not in the original.)
48. as the fox leaps out of its pelt in Münchhausen: The fox appears in the tales of the German officer and huntsman Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Münchhausen (1720–97). These were translated into English in 1786 by the German archaeologist Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737–94).
49. in toto: Latin for ‘in total’ or ‘completely’. (Not in the original.)
50. Malabar: A district in Deccan, India. Used as synonymous with incomprehensible language, gibberish.
51. Four hundred years of commerce-making: An allusion to the time of the union with Denmark, by Norwegians often called ‘The four hundred years’ night’. The satire is directed against those who wanted another direction in the Norwegian language question than Ibsen, namely towards what became ‘New Norwegian’.
52. King Apis: The Egyptian bull-deity Apis was considered the incarnation of the god Ptah.
53. a silver clasp: Hymnals were often shut with a clasp.
54. Ausser sich: German for ‘to be beside oneself’ (Not in the original.)
55. Es lebe hoch der grosse Peer: German for ‘Hurrah for (or long live) the great Peer’.
56. Halling ridge … Blåhøi … Galdhøpiggen … Hårteigen: Mountains in the interior of south Norway, Galdhøpiggen being Norway’s highest mountain (2,469 metres). Hardanger glacier (Hardangerjøkulen) and Folgefonn, here also referred to as Fonnen, are large glaciers in the west of Norway. Some of the names have been slightly modernized.
57. Sich selbst: German for ‘himself’, as in ‘to be himself’. (Not in the original.)
58. Lom: Small mountain village on the north side of Jotunheimen.
59. Glittertinden: The second-highest mountain in Norway (2,451 metres). Part of the Jotunheimen mountain range.
60. man muss sich drapieren: Not a set phrase in German, but meaning that one must dress up.
61. Petrus Gyntus Caesar fecit: The First three words are Latin for ‘Emperor Peer Gynt’. ‘Fecit’ is Latin for ‘he has made it’, the signature or artist’s name on a work of art.
62. Askeladden’s failed brothers: Askeladden (The Ash Lad) is a character from Norwegian fairy tales. His brothers Per and Pål are failures, but he, the youngest, succeeds against the odds.
63. Kongsberg: The town of Kongsberg in south Norway was known for its silver mines. The Royal Mint was founded there in 1686.
64. Trond: Ibsen has taken the story of Trond and the three girls from ‘Reindeer hunting by Rondane’.
65. Valfjeldet: A mountain.
66. pourboire: French for ‘tip’.
67. Blocksberg Post … Heklefjeld Times: Blocksberg is the mountain Brocken in northern Germany where witches were said to congregate, and Heklefjeld refers to the Icelandic volcanic mountain Hekla, also associated with witchcraft.
68. The Character of the Nation: Fictive play title. (Not in the original.)
69. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi: Latin for ‘Thus passes the glory of the world’. The phrase was used during papal coronation ceremonies.
70. ad undas: Latin for ‘to (or in) the waves’, often used in Norwegian to mean ‘[to go] down the drain’, ‘to the dogs’, ‘to hell’.
71. Jostedal: A valley in the west of south Norway, below the glacier Jostedalsbreen. It is associated with the tale of Jostedalsrypa (a woman called the ‘Jostedal grouse’) during the Black Death.
72. ‘ins Blaue hinein’: Looking out into the blue, the sky. An allusion to Either–or (part two) by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55).
73. Di buona speranza: Italian for ‘of Good Hope’.
74. Stavanger missionaries: The first Norwegian mission association was founded in Stavanger in 1826. The town was associated with a strong missionary activity from this time onwards, particularly after the founding of Det Norske Missionsselskab
(The Norwegian Mission Society) in 1842.
AFTERWORD: TRANSLATING AND RECREATING IBSEN
1. The Oxford Ibsen, vol. 3: Brand, Peer Gynt, ed. James Walter McFarlane, trans. James Kirkup and Christopher Fry (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 22.
2. Michael Meyer, Ibsen: A Biography (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 245, quoted by Hill in the Preface to his Brand: A Version for the Stage by Geoffrey Hill (London: Penguin, 1996), p. viii.
3. Ibsen made the remark to C. H. Herford, who recorded it in the introduction to his translation, Brand: A Dramatic Poem in Five Acts (London: Heinemann, 1894).
4. Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (London: Chatto and Windus, 1965 [1952]).
5. Ibsen, Brand, op. cit., p. viii. See Ibsen’s letter to Georg Brandes of 26 June 1869 (Henrik Ibsen, Letters and Speeches, trans. Evert Sprinchorn (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), pp. 83–4).
6. Ibsen, Brand, op. cit., p. ix.
7. Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Eliot, p. 55.
8. John Haffenden, ‘Geoffrey Hill’, pp. 76–99 of Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation with John Haffenden (London: Faber and Faber 1981), p. 97.
9. This is apothecary’s Latin for a sufficient quantity of a particular drug.
Chronology
1828 Henrik Johan Ibsen born to Marichen and Knud Ibsen, a retailer and timber trader, in the town of Skien, 100 km south of Oslo (then Christiania).
1833 Starts school at Skien borgerskole (borgerskoler were schools for the bourgeoisie of the towns).
1835 Knud Ibsen is declared bankrupt. The family’s property is auctioned off, and they move to the farm Venstøp in the parish of Gjerpen, just east of Skien.
1843 Travels to the coastal town of Grimstad, about 110 km south of Skien, where he is made apprentice in an apothecary’s shop.
1846 Hans Jacob Hendrichsen is born to Else Sophie Jensdatter, the apothecary’s maid, on 9 October. Ibsen accepts patrimony and is required to pay maintenance for the next fourteen years.
1849 Writes Catilina, his first play, as well as poetry, during the winter. Has his first poem, ‘I høsten’ (‘In Autumn’), published in a newspaper at the end of September.