Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (149 page)

BASIL.
Yes; that inscrutable man. He has appeared once more; this time in Ephesus. All the region around is in a ferment. Maximus is on all lips. Either he is a juggler or he has made a baleful compact with certain spirits. Even Christians are strangely allured by his impious signs and wonders.

JULIAN.
More, more; I entreat you!

BASIL.
There is no more about him. Makrina only writes that she sees in the coming again of Maximus a proof that we are under the wrath of the Lord. She believes that great afflictions are in store for us, by reason of our sins.

JULIAN.
Yes, yes, yes! — Tell me, Basil: your sister is surely a remarkable woman.

BASIL.
She is, indeed.

JULIAN.
When you repeat to me passages from her letters, I seem to be listening to something full and perfect, such as I have long sighed for. Tell me, is she still bent on renouncing this world, and living in the wilderness?

BASIL.
That is her steadfast intent.

JULIAN.
Is it possible? She on whom all gifts seem to have been lavished? She who, ‘tis known, is both young and beautiful; she, who has riches in prospect, and in possession such learning as is very rare in a woman! Do you know, Basil, I long to see her? What has she to do in the wilderness?

BASIL.
I have told you how her affianced lover died. She regards him as her expectant bridegroom, to whom she owes her every thought, and whom she is pledged to meet unsullied.

JULIAN.
Strange, how many feel the attraction of solitude in these times. — When you write to Makrina, you may tell her that I too —

BASIL. — She knows that, Julian; but she does not believe it.

JULIAN.
Why not? What does she write?

BASIL.
I pray you, friend, spare me —

JULIAN.
If you love me, do not hide from me one word she writes.

BASIL.
[Giving him the letter
.] Read, if you must — it begins there.

JULIAN.
[Reads.]
“Whenever you write of the Emperor’s young kinsman, who is your friend, my soul is filled with a great and radiant joy—” O Basil! lend me your eyes; read for me.

BASIL.
[Reading.]
“Your account of the fearless confidence wherewith he came to Athens was to me as a picture from the ancient chronicles. Yes, I see in him David born again, to smite the champions of the heathen. God’s spirit watch over him in the strife, now and for ever.”

JULIAN.
[Grasping his arm.]
Enough of that! She too? What is it that you all, us with one mouth, demand of me? Have I scaled you a bond to do battle with the lions of power — ?

BASIL.
How comes it that all believers look towards you in breathless expectation?

JULIAN.
[Paces once or twice up and down the colonnade, then slops and stretches out his hand for the letter
.] Give it to me; let me see.
[Reading.] “
God’s spirit watch over him in the strife, now and for ever.” — Oh, Basil, if I could — ! But I feel like Daedalus, between sky and sea. An appalling height and an abysmal depth. — What sense is there in these voices calling to me, from cast and west, that I must save Christendom? Where is it, this Christendom that I am to save? With the Emperor or with Caesar? I think their deeds cry out,
“
No, no!” Among the powerful and high-born; — among those sensual and effeminate courtiers who fold their hands over their full bellies, and quaver:
“
Was the Son of God created out of nothing?” Or among the men of enlightenment, those who, like you and me, have drunk in beauty and learning from the heathen fountains? Do not most of our fellows lean to the Arian heresy, which the Emperor himself so greatly favours? — And then the whole ragged rabble of the Empire, who rage against the temples, who massacre heathens and the children of heathens! Is it for Christ’s sake? Ha-ha! see how they fall to fighting among themselves for the spoils of the slain. — Ask Makrina if Christendom is to be sought in the wilderness, — on the pillar where the stylite-saint stands on one leg? Or is it in the cities? Perhaps among those bakers in Constantinople who lately took to their fists to decide whether the Trinity consists of three individuals or of three hypostases! — Which of all these would Christ acknowledge if he came down to earth again? — Out with your Diogenes-lantern, Basil! Enlighten this pitchy darkness. — Where is Christendom?

BASIL.
Seek the answer where it is ever to be found in evil days.

JULIAN.
Hold me not aloof from the well of your wisdom! Slake my thirst, if you can. Where shall I seek and find?

BASIL.
In the writings of holy men.

JULIAN.
The same despairing answer. Books, — always books! When I came to Libanius, it was: books, books! I come to you, — books, books, books! Stones for bread! I cannot live on books; — it is life I hunger for, — face-to-face communion with the spirit. Was it a book that made Saul a seer? Was it not a flood of light that enveloped him, a vision, a voice — ?

BASIL.
Do you forget the vision and the voice which that Agathon of Makellon — ?

JULIAN.
An enigmatic message; an oracle I cannot interpret. Was
I
the chosen one? The
“
heir to the empire,” it said. And what empire — ? That matter is beset with a thousand uncertainties. Only this I know: Athens is not the lion’s den. But where, where? Oh, I grope like Saul in the darkness. If Christ would have aught of me, he must speak plainly. Let me touch the nail wound —

BASIL.
And yet it is written —

JULIAN.
[With a gesture of impatience
.] I know all that is written. This “it is written” is not the living truth. Do you not feel disgust and nausea, as on board ship in a windless swell, heaving to and fro between life, and written doctrine, and heathen wisdom and beauty? There must come a new revelation. Or a revelation of something new. It must come, I say; — the time is ripe. — Ah, a revelation! Oh, Basil, could your prayers call down that upon me! A martyr’s death, if need be — ! A martyr’s death — ah, it makes me dizzy with its sweetness; the crown of thorns on my brow — !
[He clasps his head with hath hands
,
feels the wreath of roses, which he tears off, bethinks himself long, and says softly
:] That! I had forgotten that!
[Casting the wreath away
.] One thing alone have I learnt in. Athens.

BASIL.
What, Julian?

JULIAN.
The old beauty is no longer beautiful, and the new truth is no longer true. Libanius
enters hastily through the colonnade on the right.

LIBANIUS.
[Still in the distance
.] Now we have him; now we have him!

JULIAN.
Him? I thought you would have had them both.

LIBANIUS.
Both of whom?

JULIAN.
Milo’s sons.

LIBANIUS.
Ah, yes, I have them too. But we have him, my Julian!

JULIAN.
Whom, dear brother?

LIBANIUS.
He has caught himself in his own net!

JULIAN.
Aha — a philosopher then?

LIBANIUS.
The enemy of all wisdom.

JULIAN.
Who, who, I ask?

LIBANIUS.
Do you really not know? Have you not heard the news about Maximus?

JULIAN.
Maximus? Oh, pray tell me —

LIBANIUS.
Who could fail to see whither that restless visionary was tending, — step by step towards madness — ?

JULIAN.
In other words, towards the highest wisdom.

LIBANIUS.
Ah, that is a figure of speech. But now is the time to act, to seize the opportunity. You, our dearly-prized Julian, you are the man. You are the Emperor’s near kinsman. The hopes of all true friends of wisdom are fixed upon you, both here and in Nikomedia —

JULIAN.
Listen, oh excellent Libanius, — seeing I am not omniscient —

LIBANIUS.
Know, then, that Maximus has lately made open avowal of what lies at the bottom of his teaching.

JULIAN.
And do you blame him for that?

LIBANIUS.
He has averred that he has power over spirits and shades of the dead.

JULIAN.
[Grasping his cloak
.] Libanius!

LIBANIUS, All on board the ship were full of the most marvellous stories, and here —
[He shows a
letter
], here, my colleague, Eusebius, writes at length on the subject.

JULIAN, Spirits and shades —

LIBANIUS.
At Ephesus lately, in a large assembly both of his partisans and his opponents, Maximus applied forbidden arts to the statue of Hecate. It took place in the goddess’s temple. Eusebius writes that he himself was present, and saw everything from first to last. All was in pitch-black darkness. Maximus uttered strange incantations; then he chanted a hymn, which no one understood. Then the marble torch in the statue’s hand burst into flame —

BASIL.
Impious doings!

JULIAN.
[Breathlessly.]
And then — ?

LIBANIUS.
In the strong bluish light, they all saw the statue’s face come to life and smile at them.

JULIAN.
What more?

LIBANIUS.
Terror seized on the minds of most. All rushed towards the doors. Many have lain sick or raving ever since. But he himself — would you believe it, Julian? — in spite of the fate that befell his two brothers in Constantinople, he goes boldly forward on his reckless and scandalous way.

JULIAN.
Scandalous? Call you that way scandalous? Is not this the end of all wisdom. Communion between spirit and spirit —

BASIL.
Oh, dear, misguided friend — !

LIBANIUS.
More than scandalous, I call it! What is Hecate? What are the gods, as a whole, in the eyes of enlightened humanity? We have happily left far behind us the blind old singer’s days. Maximus ought to know better than that. Has not Plato — and we others after him — shed the light of interpretation over the whole? Is it not scandalous now, in our own days, to seek to enshroud afresh in riddles and misty dreams this admirable, palpable, and, let me add, this laboriously constructed edifice of ideas and interpretations which we, as lovers of wisdom, as a school, as —

JULIAN.
[
Wildly.]
Basil, farewell! I see a light on my path!

BASIL.
[Flinging his arms around
him.] I will not let you go; I will hold you fast!

JULIAN.
[Extricating himself from his grasp
.] No one shall withhold me; — kick not against the pricks —

LIBANIUS.
What frenzy is this? Friend, brother, colleague, whither would you go?

JULIAN.
Thither, thither, where torches light themselves and where statues smile!

LIBANIUS.
And you can do this! You, Julian, our pride, our light, our hope, — you can think of rushing to bewildered Ephesus, to give yourself into a juggler’s power! Know that in the hour you so deeply debase yourself, in that same hour you throw away all that bright renown for learning and eloquence which, during these years in Pergamos and Nikomedia, and especially here in the great school of Athens —

JULIAN.
Oh, the school, the school! Do you pore over your books; — you have pointed my way to the man for whom I have been seeking.
[He goes off hastily through the colonnade to the left.

LIBANIUS.
[Looking after him awhile
.] This princely youth is a menace to enlightenment.

BASIL.
[Half to himself.]
Prince Julian is a menace to more than that.

ACT THIR
D

In Ephesus. A brightly lighted hall in
Prince Julian’s
dwelling. The entrance from the vestibule is on the right side; further back, a smaller door, covered by a curtain. On the left, a door, which leads to the inner part of the house. The nail in the back is pierced with an archway, through which a small enclosed court is visible, decked with small statues. Servants prepare a festal supper, and lay cushions round the table. The Chamberlain,
Eutherius,
stands at the entrance, and, with much ceremony, half forces
Gregory of Nazianzus
and
Basil of Caesarea
to enter.

EUTHERIUS.
Yes, yes; I assure you it is as I say.

GREGORY.
Impossible! Do not make sport of us.

BASIL.
You are jesting, friend! How can your master expect us? Not a creature knew of our leaving Athens; nothing has detained us on our way; we have kept pace with the clouds and the wild cranes.

EUTHERIUS.
Look around; see yonder table. His daily fare is herbs and bread.

GREGORY.
Ay, truly; all our senses bear you witness; — wine-flagons, wreathed with flowers and leaves; lamps and fruits; incense filling the hall with its odour; flute-players before the door —

EUTHERIUS.
Early this morning he sent for me. He seemed unwontedly happy, for he paced the room to and fro, rubbing his hands. “Prepare a rich banquet,” said he,
“
for before evening I look for two friends from Athens—”
[He glances towards the door on the left, is suddenly silent, and draws back respectfully.

BASIL.
Is he there? [Eutherius
nods in answer; then gives a sign to the servants to withdraw; they go out by the larger door on the right; he follows
.
Prince Julian
shortly afterwards enters from the left. He is dressed in long, Oriental garb; his whole demeanour is vivacious, and betrays strong inward excitement.

JULIAN.
[Going towards them, and greeting them with great warmth]
I see you! I have you! Thanks, thanks, for sending your spirits to herald your bodies!

GREGORY.
Julian!

BASIL.
My friend and brother!

JULIAN.
I have been like a lover, languishing for the pressure of your hands. The court vermin, eager for certain persons’ applause, called me an ape; — oh, would I had an ape’s four hands, to squeeze yours all at once!

GREGORY.
But explain — ; your servants meet us with flutes before the door, want to lead us to the bath, to anoint our hair and deck us with roses —

JULIAN.
I saw you last night. The moon was full, you see, — and then is the spirit always strangely alert within me. I sat at the table in my library, and had fallen asleep, weary, oh! so weary, my friends, with research and writing. Of a sudden it seemed as though a storm-wind filled the house; the curtain was swept flapping aloft, and I looked out into the night, far over the sea. I heard sweet singing; and the singers were two large birds, with women’s faces. They flew slanting towards the shore; there they dropped gently earthwards; the bird-forms melted away like a white mist, and, in a soft, glimmering light, I saw you two.

GREGORY.
Are you sure of all this?

JULIAN.
Were you thinking of me? Were you speaking of me last night?

BASIL.
Yes, yes — forward in the prow —

JULIAN.
What time of the night was it?

GREGORY.
What was the time of your vision?

JULIAN.
An hour after midnight.

GREGORY.
[
With a look at
Basil.] Strange!

JULIAN.
[
Rubbing his hands, and walking up and down the room
.] You see! Ha-ha; you see?

BASIL.
[Following him with his eyes.]
Ah, then it is true —

JULIAN.
What? What is true?

BASIL.
The rumour of the mysterious arts you practise here.

JULIAN.
Oh, what will not rumour exaggerate? — But tell me, what has rumour found to say? I am told there are many reports afloat concerning me. If I could believe some people’s assurances, it would seem that there are few men in the empire so much talked about as I.

GREGORY.
That you may safely believe.

JULIAN.
And what says Libanius to all this? He could never endure that the multitude should be busied with any one but himself. And what say all my never-to-be-forgotten friends in Athens? They know I am in disgrace with the Emperor and the whole court?

GREGORY.
You? I have frequent intelligence from the court; but my brother Caesarius makes no mention of that.

JULIAN.
I cannot interpret it otherwise, good Gregory! From all sides they think it needful to watch me. The other day, Gallus Caesar sent his chaplain Aetius hither, to find out whether! Hold fast to the orthodox faith.

BASIL.
Well —— ?

JULIAN.
I am seldom absent from matins in the church. Moreover, I reckon the martyrs among the noblest of men; for truly it is no light matter to endure so great torments, ay, and death itself, for the sake of one’s creed. On the whole, I believe Aëtius departed well content with me.

BASIL.
[Grasping his hand
.] Julian, — for the sake of our true friendship, — open your heart fully to us.

JULIAN.
I am the happiest man on earth, dear friends! And Maximus — ay, he is rightly named — Maximus is the greatest man that has ever lived.

GREGORY.
[Preparing to depart.]
We only wished to see you, my lord!

JULIAN.
Can this estrange brother from brother? You shrink in affright from the inexplicable. Oh, I do not wonder. So I, too, shrank before my eyes were opened, and I divined that which is the kernel of life.

BASIL.
What do you call the kernel of life?

JULIAN.
Maximus knows it. In him is the new revelation.

BASIL.
And it has been imparted to you?

JULIAN.
Almost. I am on the eve of learning it. This very night Maximus has promised me ——

GREGORY.
Maximus is a visionary, or else he is deceiving you — !

JULIAN.
How dare you judge of these hidden things? They are beyond your learning, my Gregory! Fearful is the way into the glory of glories. Those dreamers in Eleusis were near the right track; Maximus found it, and I after him — by his help. I have wandered through chasms of darkness. A dead swampy water lay on my left — I believe it was a stream that had forgotten to flow. Piercing voices shrilled through the night confusedly, suddenly, and, as it were, without cause. Now and then I saw a bluish light; dreadful shapes floated past me; — I went on and on in deathly fear; but I endured the trial to the end. — Since then — oh, beloved ones — with this my body transformed to spirit, I have passed far into the land of paradise; I have heard the angels chant their hymns of praise; I have gazed at the midmost light —

GREGORY.
Woe to this ungodly Maximus! Woe to this devil-devoted heathen juggler!

JULIAN.
Blindness, blindness! Maximus pays homage to his precursor and brother — to both his great brothers, the law-giver of Sinai and the seer of Nazareth. — Would you know how the spirit of realisation filled me? — It happened on a night of prayer and fasting. I perceived that I was wafted far — far out into space, and beyond time; for there was broad and sun-shimmering day around me, and I stood alone on a ship, with drooping sails, in the midst of the glassy, gleaming Aegean sea. Islands towered aloft in the distance, like dim, still banks of clouds, and the ship lay heavily, as though sleeping, upon the wine-blue plain. — Then behold! the plain became more and more transparent, lighter, thinner; at last, it was no longer there, and my ship hung over a fearful, empty abyss. No verdure down there, no sunlight, — only the dead, black, slimy bottom of the sea, in all its ghastly nakedness. — But above, in the boundless dome, which before had seemed to me empty, — there was life; there invisibility clothed itself in form, and silence became sound. — Then I grasped the great redeeming realisation.

GREGORY.
What realisation do, you mean?

JULIAN.
That which is, is not; and that which is not, is.

BASIL.
Oh, you are going to wreck and ruin in this maze of mists and gleams!

JULIAN.
I? Do not miracles happen? Do not both omens and certain strange appearances among the stars declare that the divine will destines me to issues yet unrevealed?

GREGORY.
Do not believe such signs; you cannot know whose work they are.

JULIAN.
Am I not to believe in fortunate omens which events have already borne out? |
He draws them nearer to him, and says softly.
Know, my friends, that a great revolution is at hand. Gallus Caesar and I shall ere long share the dominion of the earth — he as Emperor, and I as — what shall I call it? the unborn cannot be called by a name, for it has none. So no more of this till the time be fulfilled. But of Caesar I dare speak. — Have you heard of the vision for’ which Apollinaris, a citizen of Sidon, has been imprisoned and put to the torture?

BASIL.
No, no; how can we know — ?

JULIAN.
Apollinaris declared that he heard some one knocking many times at his door by night. He arose, and went out from his house; and lo! there he saw an apparition — whether man or woman, he could not tell. And the apparition spoke to him, and bade him make ready a purple robe, such as newly-chosen rulers wear. But when Apollinaris, in affright, would have declined so dangerous a task, the apparition vanished, and only a voice cried: “Go, go, Apollinaris, and speedily prepare the purple robe.”

GREGORY.
Was this the sign that you said events had borne out?

JULIAN.
[Nodding slowly.]
Seven days later Caesar’s wife died in Bithynia. Constantina has always been his bad angel; therefore she had to be removed, in accordance with the change in the divine will. Three weeks after Constantina’s death, the Emperor’s emissary, the tribune Scudilo, came with a great retinue to Antioch, greeted Gallus Caesar with imperial honours, and invited him, in the Emperor’s name, to visit the imperial camp at Rome. — Caesar’s journey from province to province is now like a conqueror’s progress. In Constantinople he has held races in the hippodrome, and the multitude loudly acclaimed him when he, though as yet but Caesar by title, stood forth after the manner of the earlier Emperors, and gave the crown to Corax, the winner in the race. Thus marvellously does God again exalt our house, which had sunk under sin and persecution.

GREGORY.
Strange! In Athens other reports were abroad.

JULIAN.
I have certain information. The purple robe will soon be needed, Gregory! How, then, can I doubt as to the things which Maximus has foretold as near at hand for me? To-night the last veil falls. Here shall the great enigma be made manifest. Oh, stay with me, my brothers — stay with me through this night of anxiety and expectation! When Maximus comes you shall witness ——
 
——
 
—

BASIL.
Never!

GREGORY.
It cannot be; we are on our way home to Cappadocia.

JULIAN.
And what has driven you in such haste from Greece?

BASIL.
My mother is a widow, Julian!

GREGORY.
My father is feeble, both in body and mind; he needs my support.

JULIAN.
Oh, at least remain at the hostelry; only until to-morrow — !

GREGORY.
Impossible; our travelling companions start at daybreak.

JULIAN.
At daybreak? Before midnight the day might dawn for you.

BASIL.
Julian, let me not set forth in too great sorrow of soul. Tell me, — when Maximus has interpreted all riddles for you, — what then?

JULIAN.
Do you remember that river whereof Strabo writes — that river which rises in the Lybian mountains? It grows, and grows in its course; but when it is at its greatest, it oozes into the desert sands, and buries itself in the entrails of the earth, whence it arose.

BASIL.
Say not that you long for death, Julian!

JULIAN.
What you slavishly hope for after death, ‘tis the aim of the great mystery to win for all the initiated, here in our earthly life. ‘Tis regeneration that Maximus and his disciples seek,—’tis our lost likeness to the godhead. Wherefore so full of doubt, my brothers?. Why do you stand there as though before something insurmountable?, I know what I know. In each successive generation there has been one soul wherein the pure Adam has been born again; he was strong in Moses the lawgiver; in the Macedonian Alexander he had power to subdue the world; he was well-nigh perfect in Jesus of Nazareth. But see, Basil
— [He grasps him by the arm
I — all of them lacked what is promised to me — the pure woman!