Shyness And Dignity (3 page)

But the young people who were now, on this particular day, a rainy Monday in early October, sitting opposite him, in this damp classroom in Norway’s capital city, and were bored by his exegesis of Henrik Ibsen’s drama
The Wild Duck
, were bored in an entirely different way than previously. He could not recognise his own boredom from secondary school in them, not at all, and he could not recognise the boredom of drowsy class hours on Henrik Ibsen that had marked previous sets of pupils, down to just a few years ago. The young people who now sat here in all their immaturity, being bored by his elated interest in Dr Relling’s function in
The Wild Duck
, did not look at their boredom as a natural consequence of being a pupil; on the contrary, they were indignant at actually having to spend this Monday morning being bored in Norwegian class at Fagerborg Secondary School, despite the fact, which they could not disregard, that they were, after all, pupils in this school and accordingly had to turn up. There they sat with their soft, puppyish, youthful faces, their – as they thought – horrible pimples, and with a confused and inadequate inner life filled as likely as not with the most soapy daydreams, actually feeling offended because they were bored, and he was the one they were offended by, because it was he, the teacher, who was boring them. And that was an affront that could not be blown away by a friendly remark like, Oh, don’t act so
offended
, Cathrine, or, Try to pretend you’re interested anyway, Anders Christian. For they were deeply offended. It was not just skin-deep but had completely saturated them, having become their dominant and fundamental attitude towards him, and thus their fundamental attitude as pupils in a classroom in which one of the foremost dramatic works of our literature was being studied. They quite simply felt victimised, and that was not to be disposed of lightly. Being bored was such an unendurable experience to them that their bodies, the bodies of absolutely everyone, and their faces, those of boys and girls alike, whether bright or less so, those good in school as well as those who just sat (or lay) there to pass the time, expressed a pent-up indignation. Why should they put up with this? How long should they put up with it? Does he have the right to do this to us? That, he could see, was what they were thinking.

There were, no doubt, some among them who were more tolerant than others and who, while sharing their fellow pupils’ sense of being treated unfairly, nevertheless tried to take a broad view and thus had a moderating effect on the others. They expressed the view that it was only a matter of time before such a method of teaching Ibsen would be a thing of the past, that in other words he was hopelessly old-fashioned and that, consequently, they ought to stretch a point and wink at him, and thanks to these pupils the pent-up indignation was mitigated in favour of a more traditional expression of general tedium, in any case seemingly. But although the classroom situation could in this way appear ever so
jovial
in all its drowsiness, he knew he was in reality unwanted as a teacher among his pupils, which in itself caused him no more pain than an average emotional hurt experienced by anyone not feeling expressly welcome somewhere; but since, in addition, those who did not welcome him as a teacher considered themselves perfectly justified, he felt deeply depressed now and then, because it made him look like someone who just stuck around, though his time was up, a hopeless, old-fashioned teacher, obsolete and spent, whereas at other times this irritation made him feel a certain ardour stir inside him that positively gave him courage. He would stand the way he stood, erect, and let his pupils have a chance to stretch towards Ibsen and the rest of their cultural heritage; while falling short at present, they would do better later in life.

His pupils behaved the way they did as a matter of course. They were not for a moment in doubt that when they did not rise to protest against his instruction, it was due exclusively to their own kind-heartedness and magnanimity. They were convinced without question that he could continue on his course solely at their pleasure. He sat there at their pleasure. Of this, his young, immature pupils were convinced, and if they were capable of such a conviction, it could not possibly be due to their own incomplete life and inadequate level of development, but to something wholly outside themselves. And so they were not themselves to blame, but in any case it was a quite detestable situation to be in for a well-educated grown man, with twenty-five years of experience in
teaching
his country’s mother tongue. Dr Relling. Dr Relling, the minor figure. Naturally, there were among the best pupils some who not only reacted to the fact that his teaching did not concern them, but also to his permitting himself to waste their precious time, as pupils with an eye on their final examination, by forcing them to occupy themselves with a minor figure in a play by Henrik Ibsen, though as required reading the play was otherwise relevant enough. Just as, among the brightest of them, there were some who felt that the teacher
could
have made it more interesting by paying attention to the literary history they were also reading. There it said that Henrik Ibsen anticipated the detective novel by his retrospective technique in shaping the dramatic action. Anticipating the detective story, could not that have been something? In any case, it would have been something for them. Others felt it was odd that he did not seize his chance to make Ibsen a little more relevant to the topics of the day, such as suicide, since, after all, Hedvig did commit suicide, as far as they understood. Why could he not have taken that as his starting point, since today it is a real problem that so many young people commit suicide? But not even that. Dr Relling. Dr Relling, the minor figure. Oh, if only the teacher could have said, It’s not true that Ibsen is a dusty old classic. The truth is that he is almost as suspenseful as a detective story. And then he could have explained in what way Ibsen was almost as suspenseful as a detective novel. Then he would have given them something of potential concern to them.

But no. The teacher dealt with classical Norwegian
literature
on the express premise that it was classical Norwegian literature they were now being given, within the framework of a Norwegian public school, which was to lead them, eighteen-year-olds with round cheeks, to the highest level of general education the country was able to give its youth. He talked. About Dr Relling, a minor figure in the play
The Wild Duck
he was now absorbed by, as – if he might say so – he had a right to be as a senior master in Norwegian to a graduating class at Fagerborg Secondary School. This was the third of four plays by Ibsen they had to study. They had read
Peer Gynt
and
Brand
already, and after
The Wild Duck
they would read either
Ghosts
or
Hedda Gabler
(he had not yet decided which, taking great pleasure every year in weighing pros and cons of any fourth play of Ibsen’s to be included in the syllabus,
Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, Rosmersholm
, or
When We Dead Awaken
). As a result his pupils got a lot of Ibsen, more than those who had other teachers, who as a rule stopped at one play (
Peer Gynt
), or at most two. That did not mean that he passed over Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Kielland, Jonas Lie. Well, he did pass over Lie a bit, being of the opinion that the ravages of time had so severely eroded Jonas Lie that he could no longer defend his place among the Four Greats, and so he would rather not let his pupils read him but gave Lie’s place to Garborg, so that one (i.e., he) could still talk about the Four Greats, who now, accordingly, were Bjørnson, Ibsen, Kielland, Garborg (though when all was said and done he considered neither Bjørnson, Kielland or Garborg really to be among the Four Greats, the four really great being Ibsen, Hamsun,
Vesaas
, Mykle, but these were thoughts and ideas which carried him far away from the classroom where he had his day’s work and did his duty, although he had actually wished all along that one of his pupils would pose precisely this question. That, after he had mentioned that the Four Greats in Norwegian literature must now probably be said to be Ibsen, Bjørnson, Kielland, Garborg, when for almost one hundred years one had considered it to be Ibsen, Bjørnson, Kielland, Lie, the time having come for letting Garborg occupy Lie’s place in order to prevent the breakdown of the very concept of the Four Greats, some bright eighteen-year-old would hold up his hand and ask, But master, master, does that mean that the Four Greats are your favourites? which he then would have had the opportunity to deny: No, no, my favourites are Ibsen, Hamsun, Vesaas, Mykle. But as [in his daydreams] he would have a chance to say exactly this, he would have hastened to add, But you must not attach great importance to that, because when I express myself that way I speak like a limited person, like a captive of my own time; my statement betrays how easily my heart is moved by literature from my own century rather than how good my judgment is at rendering valid appraisals of our national literature in general, he would say if he had been posed this question by a bright, extremely eager eighteen-year-old, and by this reply he hoped he would have been able to convey an aspect of himself that the pupils might be surprised he had, for he could vividly imagine [he dreamed] that it would astonish his pupils that he too, after all, let himself be moved more easily by contemporary
literature
than by the literature of earlier periods – that was what he imagined they thought when he was giving a sincere answer to a question asked by a bright and interested hypothetical eighteen-year-old pupil, and then they would perhaps understand that when there was such a dearth of contemporary literature in his classes, it was not due to his personal taste, but to an overarching plan, the nature of which would now, right now, he thought as he was thinking about this hypothetical situation, dawn on them, like a sudden glimpse of something that was of greater importance than both they themselves, the pupils, and the one who was teaching them, the master). So, Bjørnson, Kielland, Garborg, beside Ibsen. One work by each, every year. These were the Four Greats. Next, the great writers before them. Norse literature. Folk ballads. Petter Dass. Holberg. Wessel. Wergeland and Welhaven (and not the way it has usually been: Wergeland [and Welhaven]). Ivar Aasen. Vinje. Amalie Skram. From the twentieth century: Olaf Bull. Kinck. Hamsun. Vesaas. Not Mykle; one must at least die before making one’s entry into the schools. That was all. Nobody forgotten? Yes, Obstfelder. No-one else? He could not entirely bypass Sigrid Undset, but his appetite for going through
Kristin Lavransdatter
was rather limited; he preferred Cora Sandel. But then full stop. No contemporary literature, except to exemplify classical literature, language development, thematic changes, etc., throughout the ages.

This was how he taught the literature of his mother tongue. This was how it went from year to year. For the pupils a steady grind, which in some might arouse a bit of
curiosity
, if only to understand why a grown-up, well-educated man could have, as his official occupation, the job of sitting behind a desk in a classroom bidding young people to read all these books they were neither particularly interested in nor understood to any great extent, not the way this officially appointed educator tried to make them read them anyway, books that were intended for everybody regardless of whether they were grazed by such a curiosity, which could of course be the first condition for
making an effort
, so that those who, despite everything, had received their society’s highest general education as nineteen-year-olds would not later in life in their everyday conversation – the sum of which, with its different nuances and under- and overtones, forms society’s own self-understanding – serve up private gush and loose talk about topics worthy of a more seemly demeanour, thereby demonstrating that even among those who had received society’s highest education there were downright uncivilised individuals who did not even have sufficient breeding to hide it, let alone be ashamed of it, he had thought; but this was before the present situation had dawned on him. He had taken his teaching seriously, and often the routine aspect of it had been trying for him, but short of making him feel it was no longer meaningful to teach your mother tongue, and especially its belles-lettres, its beautiful literature, as he jokingly called it at times to his colleagues, and not on account of the few classes in which he seemed to succeed in getting on to something new in the work he was presenting to his pupils, for they were the exceptions, no
matter
how stimulating, joyful, even brilliant, if he might say so, and they were not a condition for finding his existence to be meaningful. All the more enjoyable it was when such classes occurred. Like now. In this double period on a rainy day in early October, for the graduating seniors. He was on the track of something now. Something having to do with what Ibsen was really struggling with when he wrote
The Wild Duck
, well, what he was actually looking for. Based on the assumption that Dr Relling is Ibsen’s antagonist and that Dr Relling is right, or ‘right’. No, right. He once more asked the pupils to turn their pages to the end of the play. They did, automatically, grudgingly, without a murmur. He asked one of the pupils to read from where it says, ‘Relling (goes up to Gregers and says): ‘No-one shall ever fool me into thinking …’ The pupil, an overgrown boy dressed in the latest fashion and enveloped in the most profound boredom, read tonelessly and so carelessly that he did not even bother to caricature his own voice to create a bit of ‘life’ or ‘mood’, a little ‘fun and laughter’ in the classroom – not for a moment did he succumb to the temptation to respond to the boredom with a touch of tomfoolery, which would have been natural and often happened in earlier days, he recalled; no, he preferred, as a striking expression of the attitude of his class, to suffer in silence, secure in his conviction, his faith in the future, that it was only a question of time when exhausted and extinct phenomena would no longer form part of the required curriculum for a liberal education, not on this side of the globe at any rate. ‘Relling (goes up 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 say 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? Relling: Most people show a certain greatness when the stand grieving over a dead body. But how long, do you think, this nobility of his will last? Gregers: Why shouldn’t it last and grow all his life! Relling: Within nine months little Hedvig will be nothing more to him than a fine pretext for speechifying. Gregers: You dare say that about Hjalmar Ekdal! Relling: We’ll talk again when the first grass has withered on her grave. Then you will hear him spouting phrases like ‘the child prematurely torn from the paternal bosom’, then you can watch him wallowing in sentiment, self-admiration and self-pity. Wait and see! Gregers: If
you
are right and
I
am wrong, life is not worth living.’ Thanks, he said, and the pupil instantly stopped his toneless reading. That’s it, he burst out. What we’ve been looking for. Don’t you see, Dr Relling is right, you can see that! Of course, Dr Relling is right, we could all of us have said the same thing, it’s to the point. And yet, the drama is that of Gregers Werle. It’s what
he
says that makes the play tick, he said, for some reason or other, he had perhaps meant to say kick or stick. He grew slightly embarrassed at this ‘tick’, which had fallen out of his mouth. Yes, ‘tick,’ he repeated, for what does Gregers
Werle
say? Well, he says, If Dr Relling is right, what we are doing here is not worthwhile, and Dr Relling is right, after all, but so what? Well, what he says, damn it, he exclaimed. What Gregers Werle says is the drama, after all! What has Gregers Werle not done? He has killed Hedvig, lured her, seduced her with words, to carry out this sacrifice. Hedvig, this half-blind child, in puberty, with a pistol in her hand inside an absurd dark attic to make a sacrifice, suddenly understands that it is not the wild duck, but
herself
she must give to her father, about whom she too has her doubts, being uncertain whether he
is
her father or not, but she is his daughter unto death all the same, about that she has no doubts, so why the wild duck when she has herself, unto death herself, to give away? And then she does it! The shot is fired. Now he certainly must understand that he is her father and that she loves him. What cruelty is hidden in the depths of this play, he exclaimed. An elder brother driving his little sister to her death, and afterwards he needs to see the imagined father experience a
sincere
sorrow, for otherwise life is not worth living. Gregers Werle is shuddering, both at his own deed and at the possibility that Dr Relling is right. And Dr Relling is right, but it is Gregers Werle’s shudders which are … which are … He searched desperately for words. He was on the track now, but he could not find the right word for it. He had it on the tip of his tongue, but did not find it. He was in despair, but not because, as a teacher, he was unable to give so brilliant an interpretation of
The Wild Duck
as he thought he could
see
in his mind’s eye. That, he felt, was
fully
compensated for by the fact that the pupils had now had the rare opportunity, he would not hesitate to say good fortune, of observing, in close-up, a grown man struggle with the absolutely essential questions of our cultural legacy in an acceptable, though imperfect, way, making him stammer, perspire, follow certain trains of thought as far as he, in his incomplete manner, was capable of doing, and if that was not sufficient to cause the nostrils of at least some of his pupils to start
sensing
some of the conditions which their lives, too, would build on, as a foundation, and even if they might never read this play by Henrik Ibsen again, they would still understand the reasons why this play was present here, now. No, his despair was due solely to his not finding the words he was searching for, which he thought were so near, but when he wanted to get at them, and pronounce them, they were not there, except for a rather useless, miserable surrogate, which might be somewhat similar, as far as it went, but not at all what he had been looking for and even thought he had found. Terrible, he burst out, we will have to do it once more.