Shyness And Dignity (2 page)

Ten years ago, he thought, as he too got up, they would at least have let him get to the end of his sentence. But now, as soon as the school bell rang, they closed their books and left the classroom, confidently and blamelessly, because it was beyond doubt that the ringing of the bell signalled the end of the period. The decision was made by the bell, such were the rules whereby the instruction was organised, and one had to follow the rules, they would have said, calmly and convincingly, if he had said it was he who decided when the period was over. They would have looked at him and asked, Why, then, do we have a bell that rings when, after all, it is you
and
not the bell that decides? he thought they would have said. Then it would have been useless for him to mention that the bell was simply a means of reminding a teacher that it was time to stop, in case he became so fervently elated by his teaching that he forgot both time and place. He went towards the staff room. He was a bit irritated. Not least because he had looked forward to the break even more than they, and he certainly needed it more, tired as he was, both beforehand and after talking for three quarters of an hour almost without a stop. He needed a glass of water and he needed a headache pill. And as he stood there in front of the drinking fountain and poured cold water into a glass, sneaked out a pill and swallowed it, he thought that, by Jove, just the way I feel right now, Dr Relling must have felt throughout the play, with a pressure on his forehead, all shivery, slightly weary of body and soul, yes, it was precisely in this condition he found himself as he went about uttering his semi-elegant (yes, he had to admit that was the way he viewed them) lines, of which at least one had been made immortal, and he had to smile to himself. He sat down in his usual place at the large table in the staff room and talked a little with his colleagues about the football results over the weekend etc. Since the teachers were originally from widely different parts of Norway, every team in our two upper divisions was represented by at least one fervent fan, and those who had won over the weekend never failed to make everyone aware of it. He himself was in Division III, at the top of the division, to be sure, with an annual hope of moving up to Division II,
but
when they asked him questions it was still mostly out of politeness and sympathy, which he could not find any fault with. (His female colleagues did not take part in these discussions, though they sat at the same table, beside the men, but they were knitting, as he used to tell his wife with a sly little laugh.)

Then back to the classroom. But why should Ibsen offer this gesture to his mouthpiece? he asked, even before the last pupils had come in, found their seats and closed the door. That I cannot understand, it seems so unnecessary, even self-contradictory, well, almost like poor dramatic thinking, and therefore we have to call into question whether Dr Relling is Ibsen’s mouthpiece at all in this play. One reason for Dr Relling to serve as Ibsen’s mouthpiece must, after all, be to prevent Gregers Werle from getting off too easily. But does Gregers Werle get off so easily? It is he, we know, who asks Hedvig to sacrifice herself, shoot and kill the wild duck, and who thus triggers the tragedy. He triggers the tragedy, and is at the same time preoccupied with the idea that Hjalmar Ekdal grows in moral stature as a result. Grows owing to the tragedy that he, Gregers Werle, is responsible for having triggered. Is that not sufficient? One would certainly think so. No, Dr Relling is needed for Gregers Werle to get his comeuppance. But what, then, is Dr Relling’s function in the play, as a minor figure to whom Ibsen even offers the unnecessary gesture that turns him, in a quivering moment, into a frozen destiny, supposed to be? Well, if one reads the play with one’s eyes open, without thinking of anything but just this, and then asks
the
question, When is Dr Relling necessary? the answer is obvious. Dr Relling is necessary in one place, and that is near the end of the last act. He asked the pupils to leaf forward, and they did, some quickly, others slowly, all sitting in that same dim light which is characteristic of classrooms in a Norwegian school. He also leafed forward and read the scene, in which a shot is heard from inside the attic. A little later it becomes clear that Hedvig has fired the pistol and that the shot has hit herself. What has happened? Has she, at Gregers Werle’s request, gone there to shoot the winged wild duck, fumbled around with the pistol and shot herself? A terrible accident, but profound tragedy? No, this is no accidental shot, the twelve-year-old child has aimed the pistol at herself and pulled the trigger. To show this, to elevate the play from a banal accident to a shocking tragedy, that is, Ibsen needs a character with the authority to confirm that this is the case. In other words, Ibsen needs a physician. Dr Relling, he exclaimed, pounding the table in a flurry of elation. The pupils gave a start, some looking at him in puzzlement, a couple even knitting their brows, as he thought he noticed. Ibsen needs Dr Relling as a natural authority, a witness to the truth, so that he can write this: ‘Dr Relling (goes over to Gregers and says): No-one shall ever fool me into thinking that this was an accident. Gregers (who has stood horror-stricken, twitching convulsively): Nobody can know for certain how this terrible thing happened. Relling: The wadding has burned her bodice. She must have pressed the pistol straight at her breast and fired. Gregers: Hedvig has not
died
in vain. Didn’t you see how grief released the greatness in him?’

Here, and only here, is Dr Relling necessary. It is on account of this scene that he is in the play. But when Ibsen needs a physician, a doctor, at the end of his drama, he cannot simply have him pop up from nowhere, he must have been introduced to us before. And so we have been thinking that he walks in and out of Ibsen’s play as ‘Ibsen’s mouthpiece’. But what does he do, in reality? Well, he offers a continuous commentary on the play. He comes out with characterisations of the dramatis personae, and he also comments on the action. As a commentator, Ibsen has worked him into his drama. And what kind of comments does Dr Relling bring to bear? They all point unequivocally in one and the same direction. That so and so is a fool, that so and so has been a dunce all his life, that so and so is a naive nitwit, that so and so is a pompous and unbearable rich man’s son who suffers from a morbid sense of justice. All of them simple, cynical, even banal truths. And these banal truths are showered upon the characters in Ibsen’s drama, mind you, as this drama is being performed. Dr Relling drags the whole play into the mud. Far from being Ibsen’s mouthpiece, Dr Relling is the play’s enemy, since all he says has only one purpose: to destroy it, to destroy this drama which Henrik Ibsen is writing. Hjalmar Ekdal is a deceived fool, leave him and his family alone. Gregers Werle, however, does not leave him alone, and Dr Relling says that Gregers Werle is a fool as well, morbidly egocentric on other people’s behalf – that is
what
I think anyway, the person sitting on the podium added with a little embarrassed smile, and all that he, Gregers Werle, can manage to create is a dismal misery we should all have been spared. The daughter in the family, a twelve-year-old girl, takes her own life, Hjalmar Ekdal is still a big puffed-up fool, and Gregers Werle is exposed, not unexpectedly, as a cold fish who keeps drooling about ‘the depths of the sea’, he added, almost astounded at himself and his words, so that, when Hedvig is dead, he can only think about whether Hjalmar Ekdal bears his grief with real dignity. Honestly, can this be anything to write a drama about! he cried out, again evoking disapproving glances from some of his pupils, while others were half slumped over, half sitting at their desks in transparent composure and drowsiness. Not if Dr Relling is right, he said, lowering his voice, and Dr Relling is perfectly right, after all, as everybody can see, even Ibsen himself, who can by no means be ignorant of the fact that Dr Relling expresses his own ‘opinions’ of the characters he is writing about. All the same, Ibsen goes on writing, because there is something that Dr Relling
cannot
have seen, and that is what makes the famous fifty-six-year-old dramatist go on writing. Dr Relling is Henrik Ibsen’s antagonist. It is Dr Relling versus Dr Ibsen. Henrik Ibsen writes doggedly on, and he gives Dr Relling everything, he even lets him have the last word, he explained, gesticulating wildly. And why? he quickly added, as he collected himself. Yes, why? We have to remember that it is Dr Relling versus Dr Ibsen, to be sure, but it is Dr Ibsen who invents or creates Dr
Relling
. He exists nowhere else than in the moment Dr Ibsen writes ‘Dr Relling’ on a piece of paper and lets him utter some of those semi-elegant home truths which threaten to tear this whole drama to pieces. Why does Ibsen do this? he asked. Why, why? he asked, looking out at the class, which offered no traceable response; on the contrary, it formed, in a faceted way, by dint of an array of different body languages and facial expressions, a compact and impenetrable hostile entity that once more made him realise that to sit here and let himself be carried away by his interpretation of
The Wild Duck
and of Dr Relling, a minor character, was a torture.

It was not that they were bored, it was rather that look of injury through which their boredom became manifest. There was nothing strange about being bored in a Norwegian class where a drama by Henrik Ibsen was being studied. They were, after all, eighteen-year-olds who were supposed to acquire a liberal education. They were youths who could not be viewed as fully developed individuals. To characterise them as immature, therefore, would not offend anyone, neither themselves nor those with authority over them, at any rate when considered from a sober and objective viewpoint. These immature individuals were placed in school in order to obtain knowledge about classical Norwegian literature, which it was his job to offer them. He was, in fact, officially appointed to do just that. The main problem with such a job was that they were incapable of receiving what he was supposed to give them. Immature individuals, at that in and of itself exciting stage between child and adult, are not
in
a position to understand
The Wild Duck
by Henrik Ibsen; to maintain anything else would be an insult to the old master, and for that matter to every grown-up person who has managed to obtain some knowledge of the shared cultural heritage of humanity. That was why, at this educational level, one spoke of pupils, not students. They were not students who were supposed to study, they were pupils who were there to learn. He was the teacher, they were pupils. However, since this was the highest level of general education in Norway, certain demands were made on the quality of what was to be taught there. This meant that what was to be conveyed was not always immediately adapted to the pupils’ uncultivated intellectual and emotional life, but was often of a kind that went over their heads, so that they actually had to stretch, and vigorously too, simply in order to see what was being communicated to them. There was general agreement that pupils who had completed the highest level of general education offered in Norway ought to have a certain knowledge of the Norwegian cultural heritage, not least as it has been preserved in literature, and so, here he was this rainy Monday morning at the Fagerborg school, dutifully going through a drama by Henrik Ibsen. They were to become familiar with it, but since this work obviously went over their heads at the immature stage of their lives where they found themselves, it was unavoidable that tedium settled on the classroom. That was how it had always been, it was built into the instruction, its method and goal – indeed, he had himself been bored in his
gymnasium
Norwegian classes, and as soon as he had stepped into the classroom
as
a fledgling teacher, seven years later, he had immediately recognised the same boredom among the pupils, whom he now was to teach a subject which he himself had considered boring when he was in school, a situation that, accordingly, is part and parcel of the conditions which govern the acquisition of general knowledge in youth, and which the one who is to communicate this knowledge must relate to with, as it were, a cheerful heart, just as he had done for at least the first fifteen or twenty years of his tenure in secondary school. He had even been amused at the thought that his teaching bored the pupils, thinking, Well, such is life, that’s the way it is, and must be, to teach in secondary school in a civilised country. The very thought of the contrary situation sufficed to make one quickly understand how impossible it would have been if it had not been the way it, as a matter of fact, was. Just try to imagine what things would be like if the cultural heritage awakened an enormous enthusiasm among the coming generation, so that they devoured it greedily, because it had both the questions and the answers to what they had secretly been preoccupied with – a sweet thought in a way, but not if one considers the reality of the situation, namely, that it is a question of immature people with a rather confused, incomplete, even at times directly commonplace emotional and intellectual life. If the literature handed down to us through our cultural heritage really took hold of our youth, at the mental and psychological level where it finds itself, that would, if true, throw a painful light on the very culture which called this literature ‘our cultural heritage’.
Further
, it would have to mean that the essays the pupils presented to their teacher, in this instance the one sitting at his desk in a classroom at Fagerborg Secondary School in Oslo this rainy, leaden Monday morning, were veritable literary dissertations, which he could barely refrain from pouncing on until he had got home, not to correct but to
read
, which was so far from the actual state of affairs as anything could be, indeed it was a phantom, a figment of the imagination, to put it mildly, something he knew very well after dutifully struggling through his pupils’ unfinished intellectual creations for all of twenty-five years, with at least three piles of essays every single month. No, the literature of the cultural heritage did not succeed in awakening the enthusiasm of the young, and their essays were not dissertations on a level with the outstanding achievements of the cultural heritage. And so we were left with the actual situation: the tedium that envelops Norwegian classrooms when the teacher goes through a dramatic work by Henrik Ibsen with his pupils. A tedium which does not even spare the teacher. For twenty-five years he had taught the same works by Ibsen, by and large, and it cannot be denied that he often felt as though he were regurgitating the same stuff, over and over again. He abhorred the first words in
Peer Gynt
, with the lines, ‘Peer, you’re lying’, ‘No, I’m not’, similarly ‘The Buckride’, something he was careful not to let his pupils in on. Only rarely did he derive as much personal pleasure from teaching as he did today. On the whole, what he presented to his pupils were quite well-known and, to him, elementary exegeses which were not capable of arousing
his
interest. True, it would happen that he began with a rather well-known thesis, for example, the similarity between Hjalmar Ekdal and Peer Gynt, and between Brand and Gregers Werle, and that he managed to express himself in a way that once more made him take an interest in this double comparison, felt inspired and had a sense that he glimpsed something, said something he had never thought before, but it was very seldom. But today he had. Quite unexpectedly. Oh, this Dr Relling, he had thought, with a deep mental sigh, when he asked his pupils to open their school editions of
The Wild Duck
to page forty-three and did the same himself. That perpetual mouthpiece. But then, just because Dr Relling in this scene on page forty-three, through the parenthetical ‘with a slight tremor in his voice’, had become part of Ibsen’s drama, it had suddenly dawned on him that Dr Relling was not the play’s rather uninteresting mouthpiece, because then, then Ibsen, the old master, would not have stooped so low as to give his voice a slight tremor and thus worked him into this little scene with Mrs Sørbye, where he appears as a dramatic character, with his bitter fate as a perpetual admirer of this, for the reader’s part, not all-too-attractive widow Mrs Sørbye, and he had again felt inspired. But naturally his eloquence and inspiration had no chance of awakening his pupils, who were, after all in no position to understand him. His eloquence could only inspire himself, while his pupils were bound, by their very nature, to continue partly to slump over, partly to sit at their desks, enduring the usual tedium of their instruction in the literature of their mother tongue. It was he alone, the
teacher
, who for once escaped the suffocating tedium of Norwegian class, making him feel very satisfied with himself at the end of the period. But it was an entirely trifling feeling which applied only to himself and not them, who were, after all, in no position to be happy about it, although he might hope that some were at least surprised to hear him so elated in the midst of this tedious grind of going through a work by Ibsen. But even if a few individuals among the immature group really were thus surprised, that too was, in the big scheme of things, a trifling (though happy) event. His task was plainly not that of producing inspiring exegeses of the great works of the national literature, his task was quite simply, within the framework of this classroom and through a certain number of repeated periods a week over three years, to form these immature pupils of his and enable them to understand certain requirements which this nation, and this civilisation, was based on, and which both he, the adult teacher, and they, his young and rather confused and unfinished pupils, were part of. It was the fact that he, a grown, very well-educated man, had been placed in this classroom, at public expense, in order to go through, for the twenty-fifth year, a certain number of literary works from our common cultural heritage, whether the pupils were bored or not: it was this that directed his efforts. It was this that made him, the occasional radiance or lack of radiance of his humble person, his ability to inspire or his deficient ability to inspire notwithstanding, into a commanding presence who, in the short or long run, effected that formation of them which society had placed
him
there to accomplish. For that reason the pupils’ boredom had not touched him, not until now, lately, because it was caused merely by the fact that they were immature and inadequate, and this boredom was experienced both by him and the pupils (until
now
) as a lack. And this lack would mark them later in life. Either because they eliminated it or, and this applied to the majority, because unconsciously it marked their educated speech, which showed a socially determined lack in their full-grown personality. He had often experienced this when, for example, he met old friends from the
gymnasium
and told them in the course of conversation that he was studying Norwegian literature at the university – this was when they were in their twenties, the period in which he had most often come across old friends from high school – or he told them that he was a senior master at Fagerborg and made a point of studying Ibsen’s plays with his pupils; it was then that the other would say, Oh, Ibsen, well, I’m afraid he’s over my head, or, Hm, you know, I never became interested in literature, and in this there was a regret, and it was not their own, for they, after all, were so little interested in literature and in Ibsen’s plays that they saw no reason to regret anything; what in heaven’s name was there to regret, as far as they were concerned? No, it was as social beings that they found it necessary to express this regret, namely, a regret that was a necessary expression of the cultural background which every civilised society seeks to impart to its citizens and which, as one can see, it had in this instance succeeded in doing. That simple conversations between old acquaintances who
meet
by chance after some years turn out like that and not in the exactly opposite way, on this every civilised society builds its foundations, he had often thought, not least in the last few years.