Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (143 page)
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Authors: Henrik Ibsen
Whatever we may think of the historical or philosophical value of the theory of the “third empire,” there can be little doubt that its effect upon the play has been artistically disastrous. It has led Ibsen to cog the dice against Julian in a way from which even a Father of the Church might have shrunk. He has not only accepted uncritically all the invectives of Gregory, and the other Christian assailants of “Antichrist,” but he has given to many historic events a fictitious twist, and always to Julian’s disadvantage.
It would need a volume to apply to each incident of the Second Part the test of critical examination. I must be content with a rough outline of the distorting effect of the poet’s preoccupation with his “world-historic” idea.
In the first place, he makes Julian much more of a persecutor than even his enemies allege him to have been. Nothing is more certain than that Julian was sincerely convinced of the inefficacy of violence as a means of conversion, and keenly alive to the impolicy of conferring upon his opponents the distinction of martyrdom. Tried by the standards of his age, he was a marvellously humane man. Compared with his uncle, Constantine, his cousin Constantius, his brother Gallus — to go no further back among wearers of the purple — he seems like a being of another race. It is quite true, as his enemies allege, that his clemency was politic as well as humane; but, whatever its motives, it was real and consistent. Gregory, while trying to make him out a monster, explicitly and repeatedly complains that he denied to Christians the crown of martyrdom. Saint Jerome speaks of his “blanda persecutio” — persecution by methods of mildness. The worst that can be alleged against him is a lack of diligence in punishing popular outrages upon the Christians (generally of the nature of reprisals) which occurred here and there under his rule. That he incited to such riots is nowhere alleged; and it is difficult to judge whether his failure to repress them was due to malicious inertia or to actual lack of power. The policing of the empire cannot have been an easy matter, and Julian was occupied, during the whole of his brief reign, in concentrating his forces for the Persian expedition. It cannot be pretended that his tolerance rose to the pitch of impartiality.
He favoured Pagans, and he more or less oppressed Christians; though a considerable part of his alleged oppression lay in the withdrawal of extravagant privileges conferred on them by his predecessors. In his attempt to undo some of the injustices that Christians had committed during their forty years of predominance — such as the seizure of temple glebes and so forth — he was doubtless guilty, on his own account, of more than one injustice. Wrong breeds wrong, and, in a time of religious dissolution and reconstruction, equity is always at the mercy of passion, resentment and greed. There was even, in some of Julian’s proceedings, a sort of perfidy and insolence that must have been peculiarly galling to the Christians. It would not be altogether unjust to accuse him of having instituted against the new religion a campaign of chicanery; but that is something wholly different from a campaign of blood. The alleged “martyrdoms.” of his reign are few in number, are recounted by late and prejudiced authorities, are accompanied by all the manifestly fabulous details characteristic of such stories, and are none of them, with the smallest show of credibility, laid to the account of Julian himself.
But what is the impression we receive from Ibsen?
We are given to understand that Julian drifted into a campaign of sanguinary atrocity, full of horrors as great as those recorded or imagined of the persecutions under Decius or Diocletian. It is made to seem, moreover, that he was personally concerned in some of the worst of these horrors. We are asked to conceive his life as being passed with the mingled shrieks and psalms of his victims ringing in his ears. He is made to gloat in imagination over their physical agonies.
(“Where are the Galileans now? Some under the executioner’s hands, others flying through the narrow streets, ashy pale with terror, their eyes starting from their heads,” &c. &c.; p. 314). He is haunted in his last hours by ghastly visions of whole troops of martyrs. Moreover, his persecutions are made particularly hateful by the fact that they either fall upon or threaten his personal friends. The companion of his childhood, Agathon (a fictitious personage), is goaded by remorseless cruelty to that madness which eventually makes him the assassin of Antichrist.
Gregory of Nazianzus is first made (what he never was)
Julian’s most cherished comrade, and is then shown as doing what he never did — playing a noble and heroic part in personally defying the tyrant. Mad and monstrous designs are attributed to Julian, such as that of searching out (with the aid of tortures) and destroying all the writings of the Christians. This trait appears to be suggested by a letter from Julian to the Prefect of Egypt enjoining him to collect and preserve all the books which had belonged to George, Bishop of Alexandria: “He had many of them concerning philosophy and rhetoric, and many of them that contained the doctrines of the impious Galileans.
I would willingly see the last named all destroyed, if I did not fear that some good and useful books might, at the same time, be destroyed by mistake.
Make, therefore, the most minute search concerning them. In this search the secretary of George may be of great help to you.... But if he try to deceive you in this affair, submit him immediately to the torture.” It is needless to remark upon the difference between a rhetorical wish that all the Christian books in a particular library n light be destroyed, and an actual attempt to annihilate all the Christian writings in the world. Thus not only are the dearest evidences of Julian’s abstention from violence disregarded, but all sorts of minor incidents are misrepresented to his disadvantage.
A particularly grave injustice to his character meets us almost on the threshold of the Second Part.
The execution of the Treasurer, Ursulus, by the military tribunal which Julian appointed on coming to the throne, is condemned by all historians and was regretted by Julian himself. No doubt he was culpably remiss in not preventing it; but Ibsen, without the slightest warrant, gives his conduct a peculiarly odious character in making it appear that he deliberately sacrificed the old man to his resentment of a blow administered to his vanity in the matter of the Eastern Ambassadors. There is nothing whatever to connect Ursulus with this incident.
The failure of Julian’s effort to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem is a matter of unquestioned history. It is impossible now to determine, though it is easy to conjecture, what natural accidents were magnified by fanaticism into supernatural intervention. But what does Ibsen do? He is not even content with the comparatively rational account of the matter given by Gregory within a few months of its occurrence. He adopts Ammian’s later and much exaggerated account; he makes Jovian, who had nothing to do with the affair, avouch it with the authority of an eye-witness; and, to give the miracle a still more purposeful significance, he represents it as the instrument of the conversion of Jovian, who was to be Julian’s successor, and the undoer of his work. Under ordinary circumstances, this would be a quite admissible re-arrangement of history, designed to save the introduction of another character. But the very fact that the poet is, throughout the play, so obviously sacrificing dramatic economy and concentration to historic accuracy, renders this heightening of the alleged miracle something very like a falsification of evidence. It arises, of course, from no desire to be unjust to Julian, for whom Ibsen’s sympathy remains unmistakable, but from a determination to make him the tragic victim of a World-Wili pitilessly using him as an instrument to its far-off ends.
But this conception of a vague external power interfering at all sorts of critical moments to baffle designs of which, for one reason or another, it disapproves, belongs to the very essence of melodrama.
Therefore the incident of the Temple of Jerusalem brings with it painful associations of
The Sign of the Cross;
and still more suggestive of that masterpiece is the downfall of the Temple of Apollo at Daphne which brings the second act of the Second Part to a close. Here the poet deliberately departs from history for the sake of a theatrical effect. The temple of Apollo was not destroyed by an earthquake, nor in any way that even suggested a miracle. It was simply burnt to the ground; and though there was no evidence to show how the conflagration arose, the suspicion that it was the work of Christians cannot be regarded as wholly unreasonable.
An incident of which Ibsen quite uncritically accepts the accounts of Julian’s enemies is his edict imposing what we should now call a test on the teachers in public (municipal) schools. This was probably an impolitic act; but an act of frantic tyranny it certainly was not. Homer and Hesiod were in Julian’s eyes sacred books. They were the Scriptures of his religion; and he decreed that they should not be expounded to children, at the public expense, by “atheists” who (unless they were hypocrites as well) were bound to cast ridicule and contempt on them as religious documents. It is not as though Christians of that age could possibly have been expected to treat the Olympian divinities with the decent reverence with which even an agnostic teacher of to-day will speak of the Gospel story. Such tolerance was foreign to the whole spirit of fourth-century Christianity. It was nothing if not intolerant; and the teacher would have been no good Christian who did not make his lessons the vehicle of proselytism. There is something a little paradoxical in the idea that tolerance should go the length of endowing the propagation of intolerance.
It is quite false to represent Julian’s measure as an attempt to deprive Christians of all instruction, and hurl them back into illiterate barbarism. He explicitly states that Christian children are as welcome as ever to attend the schools.
As the drama draws to a close, Ibsen shows his hero at every step more pitifully hoodwinked and led astray by the remorseless World-Wili. He regains, towards the end, a certain tragic dignity, but it is at the or the Byzantine Kingdom. But it would be no less impossible to say, in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thine is the empire and the power and the glory.” In the scene with Maximus in Ephesus, and in several other passages, I have used the word “empire” where “kingdom,” in its Biblical sense, would have been preferable, were it not necessary to keep the analogy or contrast between the temporal and the spiritual “empire” clearly before the reader’s mind. But at the end of the fifth act of
Caesar’s Apostasy,
where the Lord’s Prayer is interwoven with the dialogue, I have been forced to fall back on “kingdom.” The reader, then, will please remember that these two words stand for one word —
Riget
— in the original.
The verse from Homer quoted by Julian in the third act of the second play occurs in the twentieth book of the
Odyssey
(line 18). Ibsen prints the sentence which follows it as a second hexameter line; but either he or one of his authorities has apparently misread the passage in the treatise,
Against the, Cynic Heraelius
, on which this scene is founded. No such line occurs in Homer; and in the attack on Heraclius, the phrase about the mad dog appears as part of the author’s text, not as a quotation. I have ventured, therefore, to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” and print the phrase as Julian’s own.
THE EMPEROR CONSTANTIUS.
THE EMPRESS EUSEBIA.
THE PRINCESS HELENA,
the Emperor’s sister.
PRINCE GALLUS,
the Emperor’s cousin.
PRINCE JULIAN,
Gallus’ younger half-brother.
Memnon,
an Ethiopian, the Emperor’s body-slave.
POTAMON,
a goldsmith.
PHOCION,
a dyer.
EUNAPIUS,
a hairdresser.
A Fruit-seller.
A Captain of the Watch.
A Soldier.
A Painted Woman.
A Paralytic Man.
A Blind Beggar.
AGATHON,
son of a Coppadocian vine-grower.
LlBANIUS,
a Philosopher.
GREGORY of Nazianzus.
BASIL of Caesarea.
SALLUST OF PERUSIA.
HEKEBOLIUS,
a Theologian.
MAXIMUS THE MYSTIC.
EUTHERIUS,
Julian’s chamberlain.
LEONTES,
a Quaestor.
MYRRHA,
a slave.
DECENTIUS,
a Tribune.
SlNTULA,
Julian’s Master of the Horse.
FLORENTIUS and SEVERUS,
Generals.
ORIBASES,
a Physician.
VARRO
MAURUS,
a Standard bearer.
Soldiers, church-goers, heathen onlookers, courtiers
,
priests, students, dancing girls, servants, the Quaestor’s retinue, Gallic warriors. Visions and voices.
Easter night in Constantinople. The scene is an open place, with trees, bushes, and overthrown statues, in the vicinity of the Imperial Palace. In the background, fully illuminated, stands the Imperial Chapel. To the right a marble balustrade from which a staircase leads down to the water. Between the pines and cypresses appear glimpses of the Bosphorus and the Asiatic coast. Service in the church. Soldiers of the Imperial Guard stand on the church steps. Great crowds of worshippers stream in. Beggars, cripples, and blind men at the doors. Heathen onlookers, fruit sellers, and water-carriers Jill up the place.
HYMN OF PRAISE.
[Inside the church
.]
Never-ending adoration
To the Cross of our salvation!
The Serpent is hurled
To the deepest abyss;
The Lamb rules the world;
All is peace, all is bliss.
POTAMON THE GOLDSMITH.
[Carrying a paper lantern, enters from the left, taps one of the soldiers on the shoulder, and asks
:] Hist, good friend — when comes the Emperor?
THE SOLDIER.
I cannot tell.
PHOCION THE DYER.
[In the crowd, turning his head.
| The Emperor? Did not some one ask about the Emperor? The Emperor will come a little before midnight — just before. I had it from Memnon himself.
EUNAPIUS THE BARBER.
[Rushes in hastily and pushes a Fruit-seller aside.]
Out of the way, heathen!
THE FRUIT-SELLER. Softly, sir!
POTAMON.
The swine grumbles!
EUNAPIUS.
Dog, dog!
PHOCION.
Grumbling at a well-dressed Christian — at a man of the Emperor’s own faith!
EUNAPIUS.
[Knocks the Fruit-seller down.]
Into the gutter with you!
POTAMON.
That’s right. Wallow there, along with your gods!
PHOCION.
[
Beating him, with his stick
.] Take that — and that — and that!
EUNAPIUS.
[Kicking him.]
And this — and this! I’ll baste your god-detested skin for you!
[The Fruit-seller hastens away.
PHOCION.
[
With the evident intention of being heard by the Captain of the Guard.]
It is much to be desired that some one should bring this scene to our blessed Emperor’s ears. The Emperor has lately expressed his displeasure at the way in which we Christian citizens consort with the heathen, just as if no gulf divided us —
POTAMON.
You refer to that placard in the market-places? I too have read it. And I hold that, as there is both true and false gold in the world —
EUNAPIUS.
— we ought not to clip every one with the same shears; that is my way of thinking. There are still zealous souls among us, praise be to God!
PHOCION.
We are far from being zealous enough, dear brethren! See how boldly these scoffers hold up their heads. How many of this rabble, think you, bear the sign of the cross or of the fish on their arms?
POTAMON.
Not many — and yet they actually swarm in front of the Imperial Chapel —
PHOCION.
— on such a thrice-sacred night as this —
EUNAPIUS.
— blocking the way for true sons of the Church — A Painted Woman.
[In the crowd.
| Are Donatists true sons of the Church?
PHOCION.
What? A Donatist? Are you a Donatist?
EUNAPIUS.
What then? Are not you one?
PHOCION.
I? I? May the lightning blast your tongue! Potamon.
[Making the sign of the
cross.] May plague and boils — !
PHOCION.
A Donatist! You carrion! You rotten tree! Potamon. Right, right!
PHOCION.
You brand for Satan’s furnace!
POTAMON.
Right! Give it him; give it him, dear brother
PHOCION.
[Pushing the Goldsmith away
.] Hold your tongue get you behind me. I know you now; — you are Potamon the Manichæan!
EUNAPIUS.
A Manichæan? A stinking heretic! Faugh, faugh!
POTAMON.
[Holding up his paper lantern
.] Heyday! Why, you are Phocion the Dyer, of Antioch! The Cainite
EUNAPIUS.
Woe is me, I have held communion with falsehood!
PHOCION.
Woe is me, I have helped a son of Satan!
EUNAPIUS.
[Boxing his ear.]
Take that for your help!
PHOCION.
[
Returning the blow.]
Oh, you abandoned hound
POTAMON.
Accursed, accursed be ye both!
[A general fight; laughter and derision among the onlookers.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD.
[Calls to the soldiers.]
The Emperor comes!
[The combatants are parted and carried with the stream of other worshippers into the church.
HYMN OF PRAISE.
[From the high altar.]
The Serpent is hurled
To the deepest abyss; —
The Lamb rules the world, —
All is peace, all is bliss!
The Court enters in stately procession from the left. Priests with censers go before; after them menatarms and torch-bearers, courtiers and bodyguards. In their midst the
Emperor Constantius,
a man of thirty-four, of distinguished appearance, beardless, with brown curly hair; his eyes have a dark, distrustful expression; his gait and whole deportment betray uneasiness and debility. Beside him, un his left, walks the
Empress Eusebia,
a pale, delicate woman, the same age as the Emperor. Behind the imperial pair follows
Prince Julian,
a not yet fully developed youth of nineteen. He has black hair and the beginnings of a beard, sparkling brown eyes with a rapid glance; his court-dress sits badly upon him; hut manners are notably awkward and abrupt. The Emperor’s sister, the
Princess Helena,
a voluptuous beauty of twenty-five, follows, accompanied by maidens and older women. Courtiers and men-at-arms close the procession. The Emperor s body-slave,
Memnon,
a heavily-built, magnificently-dressed Ethiopian, is among them.
THE EMPEROR.
[Stops suddenly, turns round to
Prince Julian,
and asks sharply
.] Where is Gallus?
JULIAN.
[
Turning pale.]
Gallus? What would you with Gallus?
THE EMPEROR.
There, I caught you!
JULIAN.
Sire — !
THE EMPRESS.
[Seizing the
Emperor’s
hand.]
Come; come!
THE EMPEROR.
Conscience cried aloud. What are you two plotting?
JULIAN.
We?
THE EMPEROR.
You and he!
THE EMPRESS.
Oh, come; come, Constantius!
THE EMPEROR.
So black a deed! What did the oracle answer?
JULIAN.
The oracle! By my Holy Redeemer —
THE EMPEROR.
If any one maligns you, he shall pay for it at the stake.
[Draws the
Prince
aside.]
Oh, let us hold together, Julian! Dear kinsman, let us hold together! —
JULIAN.
Everything lies in your hands, my beloved lord!
THE EMPEROR.
My hands — !
JULIAN.
Oh, stretch them in mercy over us
THE EMPEROR.
My hands? What was in your mind as to my hands?
JULIAN.
[Grasps his hands and kisses them.]
The Emperor’s hands are white and cool.
THE EMPEROR.
What else should they be? What was in your mind? There I caught you again!
JULIAN.
[Kisses them again.
] They are like rose-leaves in this moonlight night.
THE EMPEROR.
Well, well, well, Julian!
THE EMPRESS.
Forward; it is time.
THE EMPEROR.
To go in before the presence of the Lord! I — I! Oh, pray for me Julian! They will offer me the consecrated wine. I see it! It glitters in the golden chalice like serpents’ eyes —
[Shrieks.]
Bloody eyes — ! Oh, Jesus Christ, pray for me!
THE EMPRESS.
The Emperor is ill — !
THE PRINCESS HELENA.
Where is Caesarius? The physician, the physician — summon him!
THE EMPRESS.
[
Beckons
.] Memnon, good Memnon!
speaks in a low voice to the slave.
JULIAN.
[Softly.]
Sire, have pity, and send me far from here.
THE EMPEROR.
Where would you go?
JULIAN.
To Egypt. I would fain go to Egypt, if you think fit. So many go thither — into the great solitude.
THE EMPEROR.
Into the great solitude? Ha! In solitude one broods. I forbid you to brood.
JULIAN.
I will not brood, if only you will let me. Here my anguish of soul increases day by day. Evil thoughts flock around me. For nine days I have worn a hair shirt, and it has not protected me; for nine nights I have lashed myself with thongs, but scourging does not banish them.
THE EMPEROR.
We must be steadfast, Julian! Satan is very busy in all of us. Speak with Hekebolius —
THE SLAVE MEMNON.
[To the
Emperor.] It is time now —
THE EMPEROR.
No, no, I will not —
MEMNON.
[Seizing him by the wrist.]
Come, gracious lord; — come, I say.
THE EMPEROR.
[Draws himself up, and says with dignity
.] Forward to the house of the Lord!
MEMNON.
[Softly.]
The other matter afterwards —
THE EMPEROR.
[To
Julian.] I must see Gallus. [Julian
folds his hands in supplication to the
Empress
behind the
Emperor’s
back.
THE EMPRESS.
[Hastily and softly.]
Fear nothing!
THE EMPEROR.
Remain without. Come not into the church with those thoughts in your mind. When you pray before the altar, it is to call down evil upon me. — Oh, lay not that sin upon your soul, my beloved kinsman!
[The procession moves forward towards the church. On the steps
,
beggars, cripples, and blind men crowd round the
Emperor.
A Paralytic. Oh, mightiest ruler on earth, let me touch the hem of thy garment, that I may become whole. A Blind Man. Pray for me, anointed of the Lord, that my sight may be restored!
THE EMPEROR.
Be of good cheer, my son! — Memnon, scatter silver among them. In, in! [
The Court moves forward into the church, the doors of which are closed; the crowd gradually disperses,
Prince Julian
remaining behind in one of the avenues.
JULIAN.
[Looking towards the church
.] What would he with Gallus? On this sacred night he cannot think to — ! Oh, if I did but know —
[He turns
and jostles against the blind man, who is departing
.] Look where you go, friend!
THE BLIND MAN.
I am blind, my lord!
JULIAN Still blind! Can you not yet see so much as yonder glittering star? Fie! man of little faith! Did not God’s anointed promise to pray for your sight?
THE BLIND MAN.
Who are you that mock at a blind brother?
JULIAN.
A brother in unbelief and blindness.
[He is about to go off to the left.
A Voice.
[Softly, among the bushes behind him.]
Julian, Julian!
JULIAN.
[
With a cry
.] Ah!
THE VOICE.
[Nearer.]
Julian!
JULIAN.
Stand, stand; — I am armed. Beware a Young Man.
[Poorly clad, and with a traveller’s staff, appears among the trees.]
Hush! It is I —
JULIAN.
Stand where you are! Do not come near me, fellow!