Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (724 page)

IRENE. Far away in the Ural Mountains. Among all his goldmines.

RUBEK. So he lives there?

IRENE (
shrugs her shoulders).
Lives? Lives? In reality I have killed him.

RUBEK
{starts).
Killed — !

IRENE. Killed him with a fine sharp dagger which I always have with me in bed

Rubek begins to understand that there is some meaning hidden beneath these strange words. He begins to think seriously on himself, his art, and on her, passing in review the course of his life since the creation of his masterpiece, ‘The Resurrection Day1. He sees that he has not fulfilled the promise of that work, and comes to realize that there is something lacking in his life. He asks Irene how she has lived since they last saw each other. Irene’s answer to his query is of great importance, for it strikes the key note of the entire play.

IRENE (
rises slowly from her chair and, says quiveringly).
I was dead for many years. They came and bound me — lacing my arms together at my back. Then they lowered me into a grave-vault, with iron bars before the loophole. And with padded walls, so that no one on the earth above could hear the grave-shrieks.

In Irene’s allusion to her position as model for the great picture, Ibsen gives further proof of his extraordinary knowledge of women. No other man could have so subtly expressed the nature of the relations between the sculptor and his model, had he even dreamt of them.

IRENE. I exposed myself wholly and unreservedly to your gaze
[more softly
] and never once did you touch me ....

* * *

RUBEK
(looks impressively at her).
I was an artist, Irene.

IRENE (darkly).
That is just it. That is just it.

Thinking deeper and deeper on himself and on his former attitude towards this woman, it strikes him yet more forcibly that there are great gulfs set between his art and his life, and that even in his art his skill and genius are far from perfect. Since Irene left him he has done nothing but paint portrait busts of townsfolk. Finally, some kind of resolution is enkindled in him, a resolution to repair his botching, for he does not altogether despair of that. There is just a reminder of the will-glorification of
Brand
in the lines that follow.

RUBEK (
struggling with himself, uncertainly).
If we could, oh, if only we could ....

IRENE. Why can we not do what we will?

In fine, the two agree in deeming their present state insufferable. It appears plain to her that Rubek lies under a heavy obligation to her, and with their recognition of this, and the entrance of Maja, fresh from the enchantment of Ulfheim, the first act closes.

RUBEK. When did you begin to seek for me, Irene?

IRENE
(with a touch of jesting bitterness).
From the time when
I realized that I had given away to you something rather indispensable. Something one ought never to part with.

RUBEK (
bowing his head).
Yes, that is bitterly true. You gave me three or four years of your youth.

IRENE. More, more than that I gave you — spendthrift as I then was.

RUBEK. Yes, you were prodigal, Irene. You gave me all your naked loveliness —

IRENE. To gaze upon —

RUBEK. And to glorify. . . .

* * *

IRENE. But you have forgotten the most precious gift. rubek. The most precious . . . what gift was that? irene. I gave you my young living soul. And that gift left me empty within — soulless [
looks at him with a fixed stare\
It was that I died of, Arnold.

It is evident, even from this mutilated account, that the first act is a masterly one. With no perceptible effort the drama rises, with a. methodic natural ease it develops. The trim garden of the nineteenth-century hotel is slowly made the scene of a gradually growing dramatic struggle. Interest has been roused in each of the characters, sufficient to carry the mind into the succeeding act. The situation is not stupidly explained, but the action has set in, and at the close the play has reached a definite stage of progression.

The second act takes place close to a sanatorium on the mountains. A cascade leaps from a rock and flows in steady stream to the right. On the bank some children are playing, laughing and shouting. The time is evening. Rubek is discovered lying on a mound to the left. Maja enters shortly, equipped for hill-climbing. Helping herself with her stick across the stream, she calls out to Rubek and approaches him. He asks how she and her companion are amusing themselves, and questions her as to their hunting. An exquisitely humorous touch enlivens their talk. Rubek asks if they intend hunting the bear near the surrounding locality. She replies with a grand superiority.

MAJA. You don’t suppose that bears are to be found in the naked mountains, do you?

The next topic is the uncouth Ulfheim. Maja admires him because he is so ugly — then turns abruptly to her husband saying, pensively, that he also is ugly. The accused pleads his age.

RUBEK (
shrugging his shoulders).
One grows old. One grows old, Frau Maja!

This semi-serious banter leads them on to graver matters. Maja lies at length in the soft heather, and rails gently at the Professor. For the mysteries and claims of art she has a somewhat comical disregard.

MAJA
(with a somewhat scornful laugh).
Yes, you are always, always an artist.

and again —

MAJA. . . . Your tendency is to keep yourself to yourself and — think your own thoughts. And, of course, I can’t talk properly to you about your affairs. I know nothing about Art and that sort of thing. [
With an impatient gesture
.] And care very little either, for that matter.

She rallies him on the subject of the strange lady, and hints maliciously at the understanding between them. Rubek says that he was only an artist and that she was the source of his inspiration. He confesses that the five years of his married life have been years of intellectual famine for him. He has viewed in their true light his own feelings towards his art.

RUBEK
(smiling).
But that was not precisely what I had in my mind.

MAJA. What then?

RUBEK
(again serious).
It was this — that all the talk about the artist’s vocation and the artist’s mission, and so forth, began to strike me as being very empty and hollow and meaningless at bottom.

MAJA. Then what would you put in its place?

RUBEK. Life, Maja.

The all-important question of their mutual happiness is touched upon, and after a brisk discussion a tacit agreement to separate is effected. When matters are in this happy condition Irene is descried coming across the heath. She is surrounded by the sportive children and stays awhile among them. Maja jumps up from the grass and goes to her, saying, enigmatically, that her husband requires assistance to ‘open a precious casket’. Irene bows and goes towards Rubek, and Maja goes joyfully to seek her hunter. The interview which follows is certainly remarkable, even from a stagey point of view. It constitutes, practically, the substance of the second act, and is of absorbing interest. At the same time it must be added that such a scene would tax the powers of the mimes producing it. Nothing short of a complete realization of the two
roles
would represent the complex ideas involved in the conversation. When we reflect how few stage artists would have either the intelligence to attempt it or the powers to execute it, we behold a pitiful revelation.

In the interview of these two people on the heath, the whole tenors of their lives are outlined with bold steady strokes. From the first exchange of introductory words each phrase tells a chapter of experiences. Irene alludes to the dark shadow of the Sister of Mercy which follows her everywhere, as the shadow of Arnold’s unquiet conscience follows him. When he has half-involuntarily confessed so much, one of the great barriers between them is broken down. Their trust in each other is, to some extent, renewed, and they revert to their past acquaintance. Irene speaks openly of her feelings, of her hate for the sculptor.

IRENE (
again vehemently).
Yes, for you — for the artist who had so lightly and carelessly taken a warm-blooded body, a young human life, and worn the soul out of it — because you needed it for a work of art.

Rubek’s transgression has indeed been great. Not merely has he possessed himself of her soul, but he has withheld from its rightful throne the child of her soul. By her child Irene means the statue. To her it seems that this statue is, in a very true and very real sense, born of her. Each day as she saw it grow to its full growth under the hand of the skilful moulder, her inner sense of motherhood for it, of right over it, of love towards it, had become stronger and more confirmed.

IRENE
(changing to a tone full of warmth and feeling
). But that statue in the wet, living clay, that I loved — as it rose up, a vital human creature out of these raw, shapeless masses — for that was our creation, our child. Mine and yours.

It is, in reality, because of her strong feelings that she has kept aloof from Rubek for five years. But when she hears now of what he has done to the child — her child — all her powerful nature rises up against him in resentment. Rubek, in a mental agony, endeavours to explain, while she listens like a tigress whose cub has been wrested from her by a thief.

RUBEK. I was young then — with no experience of life. The Resurrection, I thought, would be most beautifully and exquisitely figured as a young unsullied woman — with none of a life’s experience — awakening to light and glory without having to put away from her anything ugly and impure.

With larger experience of life he has found it necessary to alter his ideal somewhat, he has made her child no longer a principal, but an intermediary figure. Rubek, turning towards her, sees her just about to stab him. In a fever of terror and thought he rushes into his own defence, pleading madly for the errors he has done. It seems to Irene that he is endeavouring to render his sin poetical, that he is penitent but in a luxury of dolour. The thought that she has given up herself, her whole life, at the bidding of his false art, rankles in her heart with a terrible persistence. She cries out against herself, not loudly, but in deep sorrow.

IRENE (
with apparent self-control).
I should have borne children into the world — many children — real children — not such children as are hidden away in grave-vaults. That was my vocation. I ought never to have served you — poet.

Rubek, in poetic absorption, has no reply, he is musing on the old, happy days. Their dead joys solace him. But Irene is thinking of a certain phrase of his which he had spoken unwittingly. He had declared that he owed her thanks for her assistance in his work. This has been, he had said, a truly blessed
episode
in my life. Rubek’s tortured mind cannot bear any more reproaches, too many are heaped upon it already. He begins throwing flowers on the stream, as they used in those bygone days on the lake of Taunitz. He recalls to her the time when they made a boat of leaves, and yoked a white swan to it, in imitation of the boat of Lohengrin. Even here in their sport there lies a hidden meaning.

IRENE. You said I was the swan that drew your boat.

RUBEK. Did I say so? Yes, I daresay I did [
absorbed in the game].
Just see how the sea-gulls are swimming down the stream! irene
{laughing).
And all your ships have run ashore. rubek
(throwing more leaves into the brook).
I have ships enough in reserve.

While they are playing aimlessly, in a kind of childish despair, Ulfheim and Maja appear across the heath. These two are going to seek adventures on the high tablelands. Maja sings out to her husband a little song which she has composed in her joyful mood. With a sardonic laugh Ulfheim bids Rubek good-night and disappears with his companion up the mountain. All at once Irene and Rubek leap to the same thought. But at that moment the gloomy figure of the Sister of Mercy is seen in the twilight, with her leaden eyes looking at them both. Irene breaks from him, but promises to meet him that night on the heath.

RUBEK. And you will come, Irene? i rene. Yes, certainly I will come. Wait for me here. rubek (
repeats dreamily).
Summer night on the upland. With you. With you.
[His eyes meet hers
.] Oh, Irene, that might have been our life. And that we have forfeited, we two.

IRENE. We see the irretrievable only when
[breaks short off].
rubek (
looks itiquiringly at her).
When? . . . irene. When we dead awaken.