Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (25 page)
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Authors: Henrik Ibsen
*Pronounce
Oaghe
. [Note: “Age” has a ring above the “A”,
”Oaghe” an umlaut above the “e”. — D. L.]
(Goes up and down once or twice; then opens the window.)
How long is it, commonly, ere a body begins to rot? All the
rooms must be aired. ‘Tis not wholesome here till that be done.
(BIORN comes in with two lighted branch-candlesticks, which
he places on the tables.)
LADY INGER (who has begun on the papers again).
It is well. See you forget not what I have said. Many lights on
the table!
What are they about now in there?
BIORN. They are busy screwing down the coffin-lid.
LADY INGER (writing). Are they screwing it down
tight?
BIORN. As tight as need be.
LADY INGER. Ay, ay — who can tell how tight it needs to be? Do you see that ‘tis well done. (Goes up to him with her hand full of papers, and says mysteriously:) Biorn, you are an old man; but
one
counsel I will give you. Be on your guard against all men — both those that
are
dead and those that are still to die. — Now go in — go in and see to it that they screw the lid down tightly.
BIORN (softly, shaking his head). I cannot make her out.
(Goes back again into the room on the left.)
LADY INGER (begins to seal a letter, but throws it down half- closed; walks up and down awhile, and then says vehemently:) Were I a coward I had never done it — never to all eternity! Were I a coward, I had shrieked to myself: Refrain, ere yet thy soul is utterly lost! (Her eye falls on Sten Sture’s picture; she turns to avoid seeing it, and says softly:) He is laughing down at me as though he were alive! Pah! (Turns the picture to the wall without looking at it.) Wherefore did you laugh? Was it because I did evil to your son? But the other, — is not he your son too? And he is
mine
as well; mark that! (Glances stealthily along the row of pictures.) So wild as they are to-night, I have never seen them yet. Their eyes follow me wherever I may go. (Stamps on the floor.) I will not have it! (Begins to turn all the pictures to the wall.) Ay, if it were the Holy Virgin herself ——
—— Thinkest thou
now
is the time —— ? Why didst thou never hear my prayers, my burning prayers, that I might get back my child? Why? Because the monk of Wittenberg is right. There is no mediator between God and man! (She draws her breath heavily and continues in ever-increasing distraction.) It is well that I know what to think in such things. There was no one to see what was done in there. There is none to bear witness against me. (Suddenly stretches out her hands and whispers:) My son! My beloved child! Come to me! Here I am! Hush! I will tell you something: They hate me up there — beyond the stars — because I bore you into the world. It was meant that I should bear the Lord God’s standard over all the land. But I went my own way. It is therefore I have had to suffer so much and so long.
BIORN (comes from the room on the left). My lady, I have to tell you —— Christ save me — what is this?
LADY INGER (has climbed up into the high-seat by the right-hand wall). Hush! Hush! I am the King’s mother. They have chosen my son king. The struggle was hard ere it came to this — for ‘twas with the Almighty One himself I had to strive.
NILS LYKKE (comes in breathless from the right). He is saved!
I have Jens Bielke’s promise. Lady Inger, — know that ——
LADY INGER. Peace, I say! look how the people swarm.
(A funeral hymn is heard from the room within.)
There comes the procession. What a throng! All bow themselves
before the King’s mother. Ay, ay; has she not fought for her son —
even till her hands grew red withal? — Where are my daughters? I
see them not.
NILS LYKKE. God’s blood! — what has befallen here?
LADY INGER. My daughters — my fair daughters! I have none any more. I had
one
left, and her I lost even as she was mounting her bridal bed. (Whispers.) Lucia’s corpse lay in it. There was no room for two.
NILS LYKKE. Ah — it has come to this! The Lord’s vengeance is upon me.
LADY INGER. Can you see him? Look, look! It is the King. It is Inger Gyldenlove’s son! I know him by the crown and by Sten Sture’s ring that he wears round his neck. Hark, what a joyful sound! He is coming! Soon will he be in my arms! Ha-ha! — who conquers, God or I.
(The Men-at-Arms come out with the coffin.)
LADY INGER (clutches at her head and shrieks). The corpse!
(Whispers.) Pah! It is a hideous dream.
(Sinks back into the high-seat.)
JENS BIELKE (who has come in from the right, stops and cries in astonishment). Dead! Then after all ——
ONE OF THE MEN-AT-ARMS. It was himself ——
JENS BIELKE (with a look at NILS LYKKE). He himself —— ?
NILS LYKKE. Hush!
LADY INGER (faintly, coming to herself). Ay, right; now I
remember it all.
JENS BIELKE (to the Men-at-Arms). Set down the corpse. It is
not Count Sture.
ONE OF THE MEN-AT-ARMS. Your pardon, Captain; — this ring that
he wore round his neck ——
NILS LYKKE (seizes his arm). Be still!
LADY INGER (starts up). The ring? The ring?
(Rushes up and snatches the ring from him.)
Sten Sture’s ring! (With a shriek.) Oh, Jesus Christ — my son!
(Throws herself down on the coffin.)
THE MEN-AT-ARMS. Her son?
JENS BIELKE (at the same time). Inger Gyldenlove’s son?
NILS LYKKE. So it is.
JENS BIELKE. But why did you not tell me —— ?
BIORN (trying to raise her up). Help! help! My lady — what
ails you?
LADY INGER (in a faint voice, half raising herself). What ails
me? I lack but another coffin, and a grave beside my child.
(Sinks again, senseless on the coffin. NILS LYKKE goes hastily
out to the right. General consternation among the rest.)
Translated by William Archer
Written in the summer of 1855 during Ibsen’s time as a dramatist and director of productions at Det Norske Theater in Bergen, this is the playwright’s first publicly successful drama. It is a richly poetic work, celebrated for its inherent melody of the old ballads of Scandinavian lore. As Ibsen had handed in the manuscript in his own name this time, he was made responsible for directing both the roles and the staging.
The play was a great success, with the acting receiving numerous encores from the audiences during its initial run.
Ibsen wrote of the premiere: “Later that evening the orchestra, with many members of the audience, serenaded me outside my windows. I think I was so carried away that I made a sort of speech; at least I know I felt exceedingly happy.”
In the course of 1856 the play was performed six times in Bergen and twice in Trondheim. At that time this was a large number of performances for a play. One of the performances in Bergen was given in honour of Napoleon III, Prince Napoleon, who visited the city in the late summer of 1856.
The play opens on the day of the feast celebrating the third wedding anniversary of the wedding of Bengt Guateson and Margit. Erik of Hogge, a friend of Knut Gesling, the King’s sheriff, and Knut himself are seeking permission for Knut to marry Margit’s sister, Signe. Knut, a warlike man, is advised that he must demonstrate peaceful ways for a year before Margit will support the marriage. They are invited to the feast, under pledge that they will be peaceful that night. They depart to look for Margit’s kinsman, Gudmund Alfson, who they know to be outlawed and suspect to be nearby. Once they depart and her husband leaves, Margit speaks of her regret in marrying Bengt Gauteson, even though he was a wealthy older landowner.
Exactly a year after the production of
Lady Inger of Ostrat
— that is to say on the “Foundation Day” of the Bergen Theatre, January 2, 1866 —
The Feast at Solhoug
was produced. The poet himself has written its history in full in the Preface to the second edition. The only comment that need be made upon his rejoinder to his critics has been made, with perfect fairness as it seems to me, by George Brandes in the following passage:** “No one who is unacquainted with the Scandinavian languages can fully understand the charm that the style and melody of the old ballads exercise upon the Scandinavian mind. The beautiful ballads and songs of
Des Knaben Wunderhorn
have perhaps had a similar power over German minds; but, as far as I am aware, no German poet has has ever succeeded in inventing a metre suitable for dramatic purposes, which yet retained the mediaeval ballad’s sonorous swing and rich aroma. The explanation of the powerful impression produced in its day by Henrik Hertz’s
Svend Dyring’s House
is to be found in the fact that in it, for the first time, the problem was solved of how to fashion a metre akin to that of the heroic ballads, a metre possessing as great mobility as the verse of the
Niebelungenlied
, along with a dramatic value not inferior to that of the pentameter. Henrik Ibsen, it is true, has justly pointed out that, as regards the mutual relations of the principal characters,
Svend Dyring’s House
owes more to Kleist’s
Kathchen von Heubronn
than
The Feast at Solhoug
owes to
Svend Dyring’s House
. But the fact remains that the versified parts of the dialogue of both
The Feast at Solhoug
and
Olaf Liliekrans
are written in that imitation of the tone and style of the heroic ballad, of which Hertz was the happily-inspired originator. There seems to me to be no depreciation whatever of Ibsen in the assertion of Hertz’s right to rank as his model. Even the greatest must have learnt from some one.”
But while the influence of Danish lyrical romanticism is apparent in the style of the play, the structure, as it seems to me, shows no less clearly that influence of the French plot-manipulators which we found so unmistakably at work in
Lady Inger
. Despite its lyrical dialogue,
The Feast at Solhoug
has that crispiness of dramatic action which marks the French plays of the period. It may indeed be called Scribe’s
Bataille de Dames
writ tragic. Here, as in the
Bataille de Dames
(one of the earliest plays produced under Ibsen’s supervision), we have the rivalry of an older and a younger woman for the love of a man who is proscribed on an unjust accusation, and pursued by the emissaries of the royal power. One might even, though this would be forcing the point, find an analogy in the fact that the elder woman (in both plays a strong and determined character) has in Scribe’s comedy a cowardly suitor, while in Ibsen’s tragedy, or melodrama, she has a cowardly husband. In every other respect the plays are as dissimilar as possible; yet it seems to me far from unlikely that an unconscious reminiscence of the
Bataille de Dames
may have contributed to the shaping of
The Feast at Solhoug
in Ibsen’s mind. But more significant than any resemblance of theme is the similarity of Ibsen’s whole method to that of the French school — the way, for instance, in which misunderstandings are kept up through a careful avoidance of the use of proper names, and the way in which a cup of poison, prepared for one person, comes into the hands of another person, is, as a matter of fact, drunk by no one but occasions the acutest agony to the would-be poisoner. All this ingenious dovetailing of incidents and working-up of misunderstandings, Ibsen unquestionably learned from the French. The French language, indeed, is the only one which has a word —
quiproquo
— to indicate the class of misunderstanding which, from
Lady Inger
down to the
League of Youth
, Ibsen employed without scruple.
Ibsen’s first visit to the home of his future wife took place after the production of
The Feast at Solhoug
. It seems doubtful whether this was actually his first meeting with her; but at any rate we can scarcely suppose that he knew her during the previous summer, when he was writing his play. It is a curious coincidence, then, that he should have found in Susanna Thoresen and her sister Marie very much the same contrast of characters which had occupied him in his first dramatic effort,
Catilina
, and which had formed the main subject of the play he had just produced. It is less wonderful that the same contrast should so often recur in his later works, even down to
John Gabriel Borkman
. Ibsen was greatly attached to his gentle and retiring sister-in-law, who died unmarried in 1874.
The Feast at Solhoug
has been translated by Miss Morison and myself, only because no one else could be found to undertake the task. We have done our best; but neither of us lays claim to any great metrical skill, and the light movement of Ibsen’s verse is often, if not always, rendered in a sadly halting fashion. It is, however, impossible to exaggerate the irregularity of the verse in the original, or its defiance of strict metrical law. The normal line is one of four accents: but when this is said, it is almost impossible to arrive at any further generalisation. There is a certain lilting melody in many passages, and the whole play has not unfairly been said to possess the charm of a northern summer night, in which the glimmer of twilight gives place only to the gleam of morning. But in the main (though much better than its successor,
Olaf Liliekrans
) it is the weakest thing that Ibsen admitted into the canon of his works. He wrote it in 1870 as “a study which I now disown”; and had he continued in that frame of mind, the world would scarcely have quarrelled with his judgment. At worst, then, my collaborator and I cannot be accused of marring a masterpiece; but for which assurance we should probably have shrunk from the attempt.
