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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

HENRIK IBSEN

VOLUME III

BRAND

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

HENRIK IBSEN

Copyright Edition. Complete in 12 Volumes.

Crown 8vo, price 4s. each.

ENTIRELY REVISED AND EDITED BY

WILLIAM ARCHER

London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

21 Bedford Street, W.C.

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN

Copyright Edition

VOLUME III

BRAND

TRANSLATED AND WITH INTRODUCTION BY

C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D., M.A.

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1912

First printed (small 4to, 7s 6d) January 1894

New Impressions October 1898, March 1903

COLLECTED EDITION

First printed November 1906

New Impressions December 1908, May 1912

Copyright 1894 by William Heinemann

CONTENTS

BRAND.

INTRODUCTION.[^[1]]

Brand was written in the summer of 1865, at Ariccia, near Rome. Fifteen months before, Ibsen had left Christiania, a voluntary exile, eager to escape from the narrow Scandinavian world, and burning with the sense of national disgrace.[disgrace.] Denmark was in the throes of the heroic but hopeless struggle to which her northern kinsmen had sent only a handful of volunteers. He had travelled southward, almost within hearing of the Prussian guns; and among the passengers on the steamer was that venerable silver-haired mother who, as his sarcastic verses tell, believed so firmly in the safety of her soldier-son, and with such good ground, “for he was a Norwegian soldier.”[^[2]] On arriving at Rome he turned resolutely away from these rankling memories, broke all the bonds that tied him to his country, plunged into the study of the ancient world, and made preparation for that colossal drama on the Emperor Julian which eight years later saw the light.

But the genius of the North held him in too strong a grip. “Never have I seen the Home and its life so fully, so clearly, so near by,” he told the Christiania students in 1873, “as precisely from a distance and in absence.”[^[3]] Under the Italian sky, among the myrtles and aloes of the “Paradise of exiles,” there rose before him more vividly than ever the vision of the stern and rugged Norwegian landscape, the solemn twilight of the fjord, the storm-swept glacier, the peasant-folk absorbed in the desperate struggle for bread, officialdom absorbed in material progress, “intelligence” growing refined, “humane,” and somewhat effeminate; and, emerging here and there, glimpses somewhat futile and forlorn of heroic manhood. A summer tour which he had made among the western fjords in July 1862, on a commission from Government to collect popular legends, supplied a crowd of vivid local and personal reminiscences; a ruined parsonage under a precipice, a little mouldering church, a wild march across Jotunheim in storm and snow, and then the dizzy plunge down into one of those deep lowland valleys that strike up like huge rocky rifts from the fjord-head into the heart of the mountains. A few months of intense labour sufficed to organise these scattered images into a moving world of drama, penetrated through and through with Ibsen’s individuality, and clothed in rich and many-coloured poetry. He had as yet written nothing at once so original, so kindling, and so profusely strewn with the most provocative brilliances of style; nothing which, with all its fierce invective against Norway, was so profoundly and intimately Norwegian in colouring and in spirit. Upon its publication, on March 15, 1866, at Copenhagen, the whole Scandinavian world was taken by storm.

The sale was from the outset immense, and has continued, though at a diminished pace, till the present day. Four editions appeared before the close of 1866; the eleventh in 1889. Ibsen was little accustomed to such success. It is said that immediately after the publication his sister-in-law drank to the “tenth edition”; the poet confidently shook his head and declared that the profits of the tenth edition should be hers. She took him at his word, and has not repented her prophetic gift.[^[4]] Outside Scandinavia, too, the name of the author of Brand rapidly became famous. It was the beginning of his European fame. In Germany, its intellectual suggestiveness and philosophical mysticism were keenly appreciated; it was compared with Hamlet and with Faust. No less than four translations appeared there between 1872 and 1882.

Even on the stage, for which it was never meant, Brand has not been quite unknown. In Christiania the Fourth Act has repeatedly been played; but it was reserved for the Director of the New Theatre at Stockholm, L. Josephson, to undertake the bold experiment of performing the whole. On March 24, 1885, a crowded house sat through a performance which lasted from 6.30 to 1.15. It was repeated fifteen times.[^[5]]

In 1893 a single performance of the Fourth Act, in the present version, was given in London.

Together with its still more splendid and various, yet completely dissimilar successor, Peer Gynt, Brand marks an epoch in Scandinavian literature. A large majority of those who know the original believe that it marks an epoch in the literature of Europe. Nothing in English literature in the least resembles a work, which is nevertheless peculiarly fitted to impress and to fascinate the English nature.[^[6]] But those who can imagine the prophetic fire of Carlyle fused with the genial verve and the intellectual athleticism of Browning, and expressed by aid of a dramatic faculty to parallel which we must go two centuries backward, may in some degree understand that fascination.

Primarily, however, Brand was addressed to Norway and to Norway alone. It was the passionate cry—at once invective and appeal—of a Norwegian, to the mother-country, of which, grievous as her failings are, he cannot bring himself to despair. The situation must be recalled. When the Danish King, in November 1863, supported by the King of Sweden, declared Slesvig an integral part of Denmark, there was much loud jubilation in Norway at the extension of “Scandinavian” rule, even among people not at all prepared to allow that the cause of Denmark and of Norway were one; while the more ardent spirits pledged themselves over flowing cups to support their “brothers” in the field. The actual invasion of Denmark by Prussia and Austria which followed (February 1864) was, in Ibsen’s eyes for his own country too, a moral crisis which could be manfully met only in one way; and when the Storthing, by virtually refusing war,[^[7]] forced the King, to his bitter shame, to leave Denmark to her fate, Ibsen’s heroic scorn broke into flame, and found its fiercest and keenest expression in the invectives of his hero, Brand.

Brand was no doubt originally intended to be simply an embodiment of Ibsen’s own heroic ideal of character. He is represented as a priest of modern Norway. But Ibsen has himself declared that this was not at all essential for his purpose. “I could have applied the whole syllogism just as well,” he told Georg Brandes, “to a sculptor, or a politician, as to a priest. I could quite as well have worked out the impulse which drove me to write, by taking Galileo, for instance, as my hero—assuming, of course, that Galileo should stand firm and never concede the fixity of the earth;—or you yourself in your struggle with the Danish reactionaries.”[^[8]] The gist of the whole is therefore ethical, in spite of its theological clothing, and in spite of the theological phraseology in which Ibsen’s own ethical conceptions were as yet habitually entangled. The faith which inspires it is the faith in the spirit of man—“the one eternal thing,” as Brand declares in a splendid outburst, that of which churches and creeds are only passing moods, and which, now dispersed and disintegrated among the torsos of humanity, shall one day gather once more into a whole.

Brand was to be the ideal antitype of the Norwegian people. But Ibsen’s own complexity of nature, and perhaps also his keen dramatic instinct interfered with this simple scheme. The ideal type grew human and individual; the Titan going forth with drawn sword against the world became a struggling and agonised soul, swayed by doubts and entangled by illusion; the vices he denounces are represented by men, drawn mostly with a genial and humorous, and, in the case of the “humane” old Doctor, with a kindly and sympathetic hand. The beautiful creation of Agnes serves the purpose of satire admirably in the Second Act, where her heroism is set off against the “faintheartedness” of the Peasants and Einar; but in the Third and Fourth Acts she has passed into the domain of tragedy; her heroism is no longer an example hurled at the cringing patriots of 1864, but a pathetic sacrifice to the idol which holds her husband in its spell. Thus the tragedy of Brand, the man, struggling in the grip of his formula, disengages itself from the “satire” of Brand, the Titan, subduing the world to his creed.

Brand is written throughout in one or other of two varieties of four-beat verse. “I wanted a metre in which I could career where I would, as on horseback,” Ibsen said to the present translator in 1893. And in his hands the metre develops a versatility of tone, rhythm and rhyme arrangement for which Browning’s Christmas Eve and Easter Day is the only proximate English parallel. But the two varieties—iambic and trochaic, instead of being deftly mingled, as in L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, are kept strictly apart and used with felicitous effect to heighten the distinction between two classes of scene. The iambic is the measure of the more familiar and pedestrian scenes, where the tone is colloquial, argumentative, satirical, or, again, bustling and lively. The swifter and more sensitive trochaic, on the other hand, is used in scenes of passion and poetry, of poignant emotion, of mystic vision, of solitary thought. Thus all the great revealing crises of the action, the points at which the informing fire breaks through—the monologues of Brand, the visions of Agnes (Acts II. V.), and the scenes in which they successively “stand at the crossway” to choose (end of Acts II. III. IV.)—are conveyed in the more lyrical metre, while the more conversational clothes the intervening tracts of common life.[^[9]]

The present translation retains the metres of the original, and follows the text, in general, line for line. But no attempt has been made at exact correspondence in points, such as the use of single or double rhymes, and the sequence and arrangement of rhymes, where the original itself is completely arbitrary.

[1]. For a more detailed discussion of Brand the reader may be referred to the Introduction prefixed to the original edition of the present translation (London, 1894).

[2]. The poem Troens grund. It is translated by Mr. Wicksteed, Lect., p. 24. This admirable little volume is indispensable to the English student of Ibsen’s poetry.

[3]. Speech to the students, printed in full in Halvorsen, Norsk Forfatter-lexikon, art. “Ibsen.”

[4]. Halvorsen, Forfatter-lexikon, u.s.

[5]. The Stockholm Ny ill. Tidning, 1885, Nos. 14, 15, gives an interesting account of the performance, with several illustrations. Brand was played by E. Hillberg. Ibsen congratulated the Director in a letter printed by Halvorsen, u.s.

[6]. Mr. Gosse has, however, pointed out that it has points of likeness, striking rather than important, to Dobell’s dramatic poem Balder (1854).

[7]. They accepted the King’s demand that the army should be placed absolutely in his hands, but coupled the condition that he was to make war only in alliance with England or France.

[8]. First published by Brandes in his Gjennembrudtsmænd, partially quoted by Jæger, H. Ibsen (Eng. Tr. p. 155).

[9]. In Spain, conversely, the trochaic was the normal metre, the iambic a comparatively rare variation in situations of exceptional dignity.

BRAND

(1865)

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

• Brand.
• His Mother.
• Einar, a painter.
• Agnes.
• The Mayor.
• The Doctor.
• The Dean.
• The Sexton.
• The Schoolmaster.
• Gerd.
• A Peasant.
• His Young Son.
• Another Peasant.
• A Woman.
• Another Woman.
• A Clerk.
• Priests and Officials.
• Crowd: Men, Women and Children.
• The Tempter in the Desert.
• The Invisible Choir.
• A Voice.

The action takes place in our own time, at various points around a fjord-hamlet on the west coast of Norway.

BRAND.

ACT FIRST.

High up in the mountain snowfields. The mist lies thick and close; it is raining, and nearly dark.[dark.]

Brand in black, with stick and wallet, is struggling on westward. A Peasant and his Young Son, who have joined him, are a little way behind.

The Peasant.

[Calling after Brand.]

Hullo, you stranger fellow, stay!

Where are you?

Brand.

Here!

The Peasant.

You’ve got astray!

The fog’s so thick, my sight it passes

To see a staff’s-length ’fore or back——

The Son.

Father, here’s clefts!

The Peasant.

And here crevasses!

Brand.

And not a vestige of the track.

The Peasant.

[Crying out.]

Hold, man! God’s death—! The very ground

Is but a shell! Don’t stamp the snow!

Brand.

[Listening.]

I hear the roaring of a fall.

The Peasant.

A beck has gnawed its way below;

Here’s an abyss that none can sound;

’Twill open and engulf us all!

Brand.

As I have said, I must go on.

The Peasant.

That’s past the power of any one.

I tell you—the ground’s a rotten crust—

Hold, hold, man! Death is where it’s trod.[trod.]

Brand.

A great one gave me charge; I must.

The Peasant.

What is his name?

Brand.

His name is God.

The Peasant.

And what might you be, pray?

Brand.

A priest.

The Peasant.

Maybe; but one thing’s clear at least;

Though you were dean and bishop too

Death will have laid his grip on you

Ere daybreak, if you dare to breast

The glacier’s cavern-cloven crest.

[Approaching warily and insinuatingly.]

Hark, priest, the wisest, learned’st man

Cannot do more than what he can.

Turn back; don’t be so stiff and stout!

A man has but a single life;—

What has he left if that goes out?

The nearest farm is two leagues off,

And for the fog, it’s thick enough

To hack at with a hunting-knife.

Brand.

If the fog’s thick, no glimmering ray

Of marsh-light lures our feet astray.

The Peasant.

All round lie ice-tarns in a ring,

And an ice-tarn’s an ugly thing.

Brand.

We’ll walk across.

The Peasant.

On waves you’ll walk!

Your deeds will hardly match your talk.

Brand.

Yet one has proved,—whose faith is sound

May walk dry-footed on the sea.

The Peasant.

Yes, men of olden time, maybe;

But nowadays he’d just be drowned.

Brand.

[Going.]

Farewell!

The Peasant.

You throw your life away!

Brand.

If God should haply need its loss,——

Then welcome chasm, and flood, and foss.

The Peasant.

[To himself.]

Nay, but his wits are gone astray!

The Son.

[Half-crying.]

Come away, Father! see how black

With coming tempest is the wrack!

Brand.

[Stopping and approaching again.]

Hear, peasant; you at first profess’d,

Your daughter by the fjordside lying,

Had sent you word that she was dying,

But could not with a gladsome breast,

Until she saw you, go to rest?

The Peasant.

That’s certain, as I hope for bliss!

Brand.

And as her last day mentioned—this?

The Peasant.

Yes.

Brand.

Not a later?

The Peasant.

No.

Brand.

Then come.[come.]

The Peasant.

The thing’s impossible—turn home!

Brand.

[Looking fixedly at him.]

Listen! Would you give twenty pound

If she might have a blest release?

The Peasant.

Yes, parson!

Brand.

Forty?

The Peasant.

House and ground

I’d very gladly sign away

If so she might expire in peace!

Brand.

But would you also give your life?

The Peasant.

What? life? My good friend——!

Brand.

Well?

The Peasant.

[Scratching his head.]

Nay, nay,

I draw the line somewhere or other——!

In Jesus’ name, remember, pray,

At home I’ve children and a wife.

Brand.

He whom you mention had a mother.

The Peasant.

Ay, that was in the times of yore;—

Then marvels were of every day;

Such things don’t happen any more.

Brand.

Go home. You travel in death’s track.

You know not God, God knows not you.

The Peasant.

Hoo, you are stern!

The Son.

[Pulling him away.]

Come back! come back![back!]

The Peasant.

Ay, ay; but he must follow too!

Brand.

Must I?

The Peasant.

Ay, if I let you bide

Up here in this accursed weather,

And rumour told, what we can’t hide,

That you and we set out together,

I’m haul’d some morning to the dock,—

And if you’re drown’d in flood and fen,

I’m sentenced to the bolt and lock——

Brand.

You suffer in God’s service, then.

The Peasant.

Nor his nor yours is my affair;

My own is hard enough to bear.

Come then!

Brand.

Farewell!

[A hollow roar is heard in the distance.

The Son.

[Shrieking.]

An avalanche roar!

Brand.

[To the Peasant who has seized his collar.]

Off!

The Peasant.

Nay!

Brand.

This instant!

The Son.

Stay no more!

The Peasant.

[Struggling with Brand.]

Nay, devil take me——!

Brand.

[Shakes him off and throws him down in the snow.]

That, depend

On it, he will do in the end!

[Goes.

The Peasant.

[Sitting and rubbing his arm.]

Ow, ow; his arm’s an iron rod;

And that’s what he calls serving God.[God.]

[Calling as he gets up.]

Ho, priest!

The Son.

He’s gone athwart the hill.

The Peasant.

Ay, but I see him glimmer still.

[Calling again.]

Hear me,—if you remember, say,

Where was it that we lost the way?

Brand.

[In the mist.]

You need no cross to point you right;—

The broad and beaten track you tread.

The Peasant.

God grant it were but as he said,

And I’d sit snug at home to-night.

[He and his Son retire eastwards.

Brand.

[Reappears higher up, and listens in the direction in which the Peasant went.]

Homeward they grovel! Thou dull thrall,

If but thy feeble flesh were all,

If any spark of living will

Sprang in thee, I had help’d thee still.

With breaking back, and feet way-worn,

Lightly and swift I had thee borne;—

But help is idle for the man

Who nothing wills but what he can.

[Goes further on.]

Ah life! ah life! Why art thou then

So passing sweet to mortal men?

In every weakling’s estimation

His own life does as grossly weigh