On board a ship in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. Sunset. Stormy weather. PEER, a sturdy old man with ice-grey hair and beard, is standing on the quarter deck. He is dressed partly in the manner of a mariner, with a pea jacket and sea boots. His clothing shows signs of wear. He himself is weatherbeaten, and his expression, over the years, has grown harder. The CAPTAIN is standing next to the HELMSMAN. The CREW are for’ard.
PEER [resting his arms on the ship’s rail, gazing intently towards land]:
And there’s the Halling ridge in his winter coat. He’s putting on
a display, the old fellow, using the last of the sun.
Behind, at an angle, I see there’s the Hardanger glacier, his twin.
He’s not yet shed his mantle of green ice.
Folgefonn, now, she’s always lain,
looking virginal in the purest frozen linen.
Don’t dance about so, two old men with one old woman.
Stand as you’ve always stood, granite peaks firmly in place.
CAPTAIN [shouting to the crew for’ard]:
Two men at the helm! Make ready the signal-lantern.
PEER: It’s a gusting wind.
CAPTAIN: Ay, there’s a storm building.
PEER: Will I
be able to spy Rondane from this far out to sea?
CAPTAIN: Unlikely, I would say; it stands behind Fonnen.
PEER: How about Blåhøi, then?
CAPTAIN: No, but from high in the rigging,
in clear weather, you can just make out Galdhøpiggen …
PEER: And Hårteigen?56
CAPTAIN [pointing]:
Where my finger …
PEER: That’s about right.
CAPTAIN: It seems you know the region.
PEER: When I shipped out
I sailed past here but in the other direction.
[Spits and stares towards the coastline.]
There’s a blueness of light in those black rifts, I’ve remembered,
those deep valleys that are as narrow as trenches, embedded,
and, at the base of it all, the open fjord –
that’s where folk in fact live,
[Looks directly at the captain.]
their biggings scattered.
CAPTAIN: Aye, as they say, far between, far apart.
PEER: Think we’ll be in before dawn?
CAPTAIN: Aye, thereabout,
provided we don’t get storm-force these next hours.
PEER: Cloud’s thickening in the west.
CAPTAIN: So it appears.
PEER: When I settle up with you for my passage
I have in mind a little something for the crew.
CAPTAIN: They’ll appreciate that.
PEER: Nothing much to show,
mind you. I’ve had gold but gold’s disappeared,
for I’ve enjoyed fate’s kinds of usage
more than once. You saw what I brought on board,
reminders of lost wealth.
CAPTAIN: A more than adequate hoard
to set you up in style when we arrive.
PEER: I’ve no kin,
there’s no one waiting for the ugly rich old man.
At least there’ll be no welcoming committee
when we come alongside the quay.
CAPTAIN: Storm’s here!
PEER: Hold on to what I’ve said.
If any of the crew is truly in need
I’ll not grudge my cash.
CAPTAIN: That is handsome indeed.
Most are hard up, with wives and children at home.
The ship’s wages, I fear, barely support them;
so that with a bit of extra cash in pocket
it could be such a homecoming as few would forget.
PEER: They’ve wives and children, have they? They’re wedded!
CAPTAIN: Wedded, ay wedded, the whole crew,
though how could you be expected to know?
The one in the tightest corner is the cook.
Hunger in his house is well and truly at work.
PEER: So, there is always someone watching and waiting
and who rejoices when they come through the door.
CAPTAIN: Indeed, as is the custom among the poor.
PEER: And if they come towards evening, well, what more?
What manner of greeting?
CAPTAIN: Then, I imagine, the wife would bring out
something that’s perhaps a bit tastier to eat,
and a bit more of it.
PEER: The oil lamp would be lit?
CAPTAIN: Two, even; and she’d fetch him a dram of aquavit.
PEER: They sit there, the two of them, side by side; for once
they’ve a decent fire; the children shout and prance,
they interrupt each other happily a lot?
CAPTAIN: Yes, thanks to your benevolence …
PEER [bringing his hands hard down on the ship’s rail]:
They can forget that!
Not a single piece of my coin shall go to the sustenance
of other folks’ children. I’ll not be led that dance!
I’ve done bitter hard labour for the little I’ve got.
Let no man await Peer Gynt with his hand out.
CAPTAIN: But, sir, the money is indeed yours, still
to give or withhold. That is the owner’s right.
PEER: And no one else’s! As soon as we’re berthed, I’ll
give you what I owe: the money
due for my passage from Panama,
sole use of cabin. I’ll grant each man on board
a shot of brandy, soon as the anchor’s heard.
If I give more then hit me on the mouth hard.
CAPTAIN: It’s a receipt you’ll get, sir, not a beating.
Excuse me now: the wind’s at storm-force as we feared.
He moves for’ard. It has become dark; lights are lit in the cabin. The sea-swell increases. Thick clouds and fog.
PEER: Those beggars can work it, keeping a brat-pack in a poor home;
they know how to stay in folks’ minds as a joy to come
after so long a parting,
to voyage tugging the hearts of loved ones in their wake.
There’s never a single soul that I’ve left waiting.
The lighted oil lamp – let it grow bleared,
the room darkening, a malodorous wick.
I’ll think of something richly detrimental
to these wastrels one and all.
I’ll make them drunk: not one of the whole boiling
but shall come home to his wife reeling and yelling,
calling on God to damn him and his heirs,
smashing fist on tabletop and hurling chairs,
driving wife and children out of their wits,
the woman in fear of death, clutching her bairns close,
stumbling out of the house.
[The ship heels heavily; PEER lurches, then has difficulty staying upright.]
The ship has the staggers. The sea heaves as if it’s
in somebody’s pay.
It’s always its old self, cussed and contrary,
in these northern shipping lanes. Now it hits
full across the bows! What’s that I heard?
LOOKOUT [for’ard]:
Wreck ahoy! Wreck to leeward!
CAPTAIN [amidships giving commands]:
Helm hard a’starboard! Hard up against the wind!
HELMSMAN: Are there folk aboard?
LOOKOUT: Can see three through the spray.
PEER: Swing out the stern boat! Lower away!
CAPTAIN: Swamped almost before we’d launched her, she’d be!
Goes for’ard.
PEER: Who’d have that on his mind
at such a time? If you’re human you do it –
so what if you get a bit wet?
BOSUN: Can’t be done, not in this swell.
PEER: They’re screaming yet! I felt the wind, just now, abate!
Cook, there! You’ll dare? Do it, I’ll pay you well.
You need the funds.
COOK: Not if you gave me twenty English pounds!
PEER: Cowards! You fritted curs! You’re all the same!
These poor folk will have wives and children at home
caught between hope and dread. Can’t you think of them?
BOSUN: A bit of patience never did anyone harm.
CAPTAIN: Hold her off from the breakers!
BOSUN: The wreck’s been
swept somewhere astern.
PEER: And now I can hear nothing but wind and sea.
BOSUN: Well, if those poor fellows were wedded, as you say,
there’s three freshly baked widows on the shelf today.
The storm increases. PEER makes his way aft.
PEER: No kind of bond exists between people any more,
certainly not Christianity as it’s now taught everywhere;
little of practical value gets done; and, as for prayer,
as for the ‘everlasting arms’, folk couldn’t care less.
In weather like tonight our Lord is dangerous.
The brutes aboard this ship should consider that:
it’s risky to meddle with forces elephantine
as if you were merely tying back a loose buntline.
Instead they spit
in the face of His commandments. I on the other hand
have a clear conscience about these latest events.
I can prove, if need be, that I pulled cash from my pants
and thrust it in their faces. Save those poor wretches, I cried!
‘An easy conscience makes for an easy bed’,
that certainly holds good while you’re on land,
but it’s not worth a fleck of foam on board,
where a good man is pitched among the thieves.
Privacy, at sea, is something that’s unheard
of; you’re with a rabble, deck to keel.
If God’s judgement – anytime now – strikes down
bosun and cook, why, then, I also drown.
Who notices one sausage when there’s scores to fill?
You go down with the rabble when the vessel dives.
My great mistake in life is that I’ve been
too ready to oblige, too pliable.
Brutish ingratitude repays my trouble.
If I were younger I’d review the course
of my whole life, change to another horse,
or briefly have a go at being boss.
Still time for that, I imagine; will not the word
fly round the village and up the fjord
that Peer’s at last set down from his aery road
over and across the world’s oceans? I’ll
win back the farm by fair means or foul;
I shall rebuild it; it will gleam like a castle.
But no one who spurned me shall come into the hall.
Outside the gate they shall stand, twisting their greasy caps,
whingeing and pleading with their wretched hopes.
But none shall have a shilling of what’s mine.
They saw that I writhed repeatedly under fate’s goad.
There must surely be others whom I can goad in return.
A STRANGE PASSENGER appears beside PEER, out of the darkness, and gives him a friendly greeting.
PASSENGER: Good evening!
PEER: Evening. Don’t believe I’ve seen …
PASSENGER: I am the companion of your voyage.
PEER: I have been
the sole passenger throughout the entire trip;
the captain assured me of that.
PASSENGER: A slight misapprehension,
happily resolved between us. I should mention …
PEER: But how, then, did you keep
for so long out of sight?
PASSENGER: I have walked only by night.
PEER: You’ve been ill, is that it?
Even now, you’re as white as a sheet.
PASSENGER: Thank you, but I am perfectly well.
PEER: And we have this terrible storm the while.
PASSENGER: I would call it more glorious than terrible.
PEER: Glorious?
PASSENGER: Yes, my friend; it makes my teeth drool
with the ecstasy of it! The dwellings it could uproot,
the carnage it will consummate this night,
the blue-white corpses that it will fling ashore.
PEER: Heaven protect us!
PASSENGER: Three forms of death excite
our gaze: by water, noose and garrotte.
PEER: Now you go much too far!
PASSENGER: The corpses grin but their laughter is contained;
and most have bitten through their tongues, you’ll find.
PEER: I want no more of this!
PASSENGER: One question, then:
suppose we are wrecked this night and you drown
while I bob up …
PEER: What rubbish!
PASSENGER: Just suppose;
indulge me; if, while you’re halfway down,
you get frantically generous, start to disown,
because of remorse …
PEER [clutching his pocket]:
My money, ha!
PASSENGER: Your money, no. What I would wish of your
largesse is your cadaver, highly respected sir.
PEER: This is disgusting.
PASSENGER: Merely the corpse, no more.
It will inspire my scientific work.
PEER: Vile clown!
PASSENGER: But, my dear man, you too will gain.
I’ll rip up to the light your secret seams;
perhaps in you I shall find the plexus of dreams
believed not to exist …
PEER: Get thee hence, I command!
PASSENGER: … analyse its contents.
Do please agree. With one so freshly drowned …
PEER: Blasphemous tempter, whipper-up of deluge,
or is that thought too wild? Wild winds at large,
towering waves, all among other portents:
you seem intent on bringing death upon us.
PASSENGER: You’re clearly in no mood to discuss plans.
But, then, the whirligig of time’s the thing.
[Takes his leave in a most amiable manner.]
Perhaps, when you’re going down for the third time,
we’ll meet again and do some bargaining.
Perhaps you’ll then be in a better frame
of mind.
Enters the cabin.
PEER: What weird blinkers
these scientists wear; self-obsessed Free-thinkers.
[To the BOSUN, as he goes past]
A word, my friend.
From what madhouse did he abscond,
my strangely disposed fellow passenger?
BOSUN: You are the only stranger here.
PEER: This is going from bad to worse, I fear.
[To an ABLE SEAMAN, who is leaving the cabin]
Who just entered through the cabin door?
SEAMAN: All I saw enter was the ship’s dog, sir.
Continues on his way.
LOOKOUT [screams]:
Breakers ahead!
PEER: My suitcase! My travelling chest!
All my belongings to be saved first!
BOSUN: We’ve worse things to think of. Out of the way!
PEER: Aye aye, bosun, just nonsense, harmless play,
my little joke. Of course I’ll help the cook.
CAPTAIN: The jib’s blown to tatters!
HELMSMAN: The foresail’s in shreds!
BOSUN [yelling]:
She’s aground any minute!
CAPTAIN: The masts will be down on our heads!
The ship drives on to the rocks. Terrible sounds. Dreadful confusion.
Inshore amongst reefs half-covered in surf; the ship is wedged, broken-backed. In the fog you can just make out a ship’s dinghy, which contains two men. A wave capsizes it; a scream is heard; after that a brief silence. Then the keel of the upturned dinghy can be seen. PEER’s head emerges near the boat.
PEER: Ahoy, ashore! Row out and save me!
The Good Book says you must! Believe me!
Clings desperately to the dinghy’s keel. The COOK’s head emerges on the opposite side.
COOK: Lord, spare me for my starving band
of little children! Help me safe to land!
Clings to the keel.
PEER: Let go!
COOK: No, you!
PEER: I’ll break …
COOK: … your neck!
PEER: I’ll drub your bones, I’ll stop your breath!
Let go, this thing won’t bear us both.
COOK: I know! Gerroff!
PEER: No! You gerroff!
They struggle; one of the COOK’s hands is injured; with the other he still clings desperately to the keel.
PEER: Let go, I say!
COOK: Sir, spare my life,
I beg! My children! My poor wife!
PEER: My life’s more valuable than yours,
I haven’t yet begotten heirs.
COOK: You’ve lived your life; I’ve mine to live; I …
PEER: Sink, damn you, sink! You’re too heavy.
COOK: Oh spare me, sir, in the Lord’s name.
You’ve nobody to grieve at home.
[Screams and lets go.]
I’m going!
PEER [seizing a fistful of hair]:
While I’ve got your hair
begin reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
COOK: I can’t recall … it’s going black …
PEER: Recite the most important bit!
COOK: Give us this day … give … give …
PEER: No, that’s not it.
What you need you’ll no doubt receive.
COOK: Give us this day …
PEER: Don’t just repeat it.
No need to tell us you were cook.
Releases his grip on the COOK, who sinks.
COOK: Give us this day …
He goes completely under.
PEER: Amen, my lad.
You were yourself, Sich selbst57 indeed.
[Swings himself out of the water and sits astride the keel.]
Well, where there’s life there’s hope. Whatever.
The STRANGE PASSENGER swims up and takes hold of the keel.
PASSENGER: Good morning.
PEER: Aagh!
PASSENGER: I heard you shout.
How pleasant it will be to chat.
Well, my prediction hit the spot.
PEER: Be off. There’s hardly room for one.
PASSENGER: Using my left leg I can swim
or I can float just holding on,
a fingertip stuck in a seam.
But, apropos, sir, your cadaver …
PASSENGER: It’s all you can bequeath.
The rest is gutted.
PEER: Shut your mouth.
PASSENGER: Just as you wish.
Silence.
PEER: Well, what?
PASSENGER: I didn’t speak.
PEER: What now?
PASSENGER: We wait.
PEER [tearing at his hair]:
The devil’s trick.
You’ll drive me mad in time. So, what
are you?
PASSENGER: Friendly.
PEER: What happens now?
PASSENGER: What do you think? Surely you know
someone, some others, who are not
wholly unlike me?
PEER: Well, there’s Satan.
PASSENGER [quietly]:
Is he the one who keeps the light on
for life’s long trek through dark and dread?
PEER: How about that! Misunderstood,
have I? So you’re a spirit lamp!
PASSENGER: In six months, say, have you known once
the kind of fear that grips your bones?
PEER: I do get panicked a fair bit.
Your words contort and also clamp.
PASSENGER: And have you once, in your long years,
experienced victory through such fears?
PEER [staring]:
D’you come to ‘ope the narrow door’?
A shame you weren’t here earlier.
This truly is a bad old time
for arguing codicils to doom.
PASSENGER: Would victory seem more probable
if you were tucked up in Gynt Hall?
PEER: Perhaps not; but you scathe and mock.
D’you really think such tones will work?
PASSENGER: Where I reside, our practice rates
smiling equivalent to pathos.
PEER: ‘Time for all things’ is a factor
appropriate to a tax collector,
not to a bishop.
PASSENGER: That great
silent majority in their ash
have no time for our vain panache.
PEER: Off, scarecrow, I’m not dying yet.
PASSENGER: You’re safe for now, at any rate;
I can assure you, you’ll not die
before act five’s peripety.
He glides away.
PEER: Well, he betrayed himself, at last,
as just another moralist.
A cemetery in the high mountain area. A funeral procession. PRIEST and MOURNERS. The last verse of a hymn is sung. PEER passes by on the road.
PEER [at the gate]:
A man of earth proceeds to his long home.
Again I must thank God that it won’t be me in the tomb.
PRIEST [addressing the MOURNERS at the graveside]:
Now that this soul is on its judgement road
his body lies here like a bursten pod.
So now, dear friends, before we shovel earth,
we speak of his long journey here from birth.
He was not rich, nor had he the right touch;
his voice was weak, his posture deemed unmanly;
when he dealt with ideas they stood ungainly.
You could not call him master in the home.
When he attended church he seemed to need
forgiveness from the priest for having come.
Hailing from Gudbrandsdalen, as you know,
when he moved here he’d not long ceased to grow.
From youth until the very day he died
there was a thing, of all the things he did,
we most remember: how it was he hid
always his right hand deep inside his jacket.
‘Right hand in pocket’ is what now commends
the final memory of him to our minds.
That, and the ever-awkward, ay, the naked,
expression of his face to those he met.
He chose to trudge along his path, a quiet
stranger among us to the very end.
And yet, that finger missing from one hand!
I well remember – many our Lord’s years
since gone – that day of the conscription board
in Lunde. We were at war. You heard
talk of privations, common hopes and fears.
There was the captain sitting centre-table,
the sheriff, sergeants, looking stern and able.
Lad after lad was measured top to toe
and told ‘that for a soldier he must go’.
The room was full; from outside, in the yard,
it was the larking of those lads we heard.
A new name was called out, and in he came,
pasty as snow gets when it’s past its prime.
They told him to come closer; this he did;
his right hand wrapped in linen and well hid.
His Adam’s apple retched, could not uncork
one word in answer to the captain’s bark.
Then finally he croaked out – his cheeks aflame,
his tongue a-stumble – words that sealed his shame.
He mumbled something none of us believed:
a sickle slipping and a finger cleaved.
The room fell hushed: a miming theatre
of lips a-pursing, mass caricature.
They stoned the lad with their unspoken words;
invisible hail stung. That old grey man,
the captain, stood, spat, pointed and said ‘Go!’
And the lad went. Crowd parted on both sides;
he ran the gauntlet back where he’d crept in;
fumbled the door; shot forth like bolt from bow.
Straight up he went, through grove and meadowland,
up through the stone scree staggering and falling.
Somewhere among the mountains was his home.
Six months later he was back again
with mother, babe-in-arms and the babe’s mother.
And it was said he’d rented some rough ground
between the wilderness’s edge and Lom.58
He made an honest woman of the girl;
built a cabin; did much heavy tilling;
and slowly made his way amid the weather,
as many a little field could testify
with good corn thrusting strongly through good soil.
He came to church, with his right hand concealed
as always, though at home I have no doubt
nine fingers did as well with what they wrought
as other people’s ten. And fortune smiled
until, one spring, the floods swept all away.
They escaped with their lives, barely; day by day
he mured wild land, brought new fertility.
Ere long a pleasant hearth-smoke rose again
from a new farmstead; things stood true and plain.
Two years; and then the glacier’s fresh moraine
buried in rubbled scree, deltas of silt,
his heart’s investment. And he may have wept.
For the third time, as, doggedly, he built
their modest dwelling where rude fate had swept.
They had three sons, three bright boys who were schooled
by different stages on life’s way (I mean
by way of a most arduous terrain).
To reach the district road – a different world! –
perilously stepped father and eldest son,
each roped to each, like practised mountaineers,
which they became, no doubt. He, on his back,
the father, bore the second son; his arms
carried the youngest. So they made their trek
overcoming nature and their own fears.
So he toiled on; the boys grew into men.
Here I must pause. I look around in vain.
Justice may here demand a just return.
Three prosperous gentlemen of the New World,
I do not see them here to meet the claims
he – oh so rightly – had on filial love.
A father, sons, the hard road: that is all.
He was a man near-sighted. Past the small
circle of those closest, he could not move
his range of vision. So for him the names
that resonate for us were not enscrolled.
Our blessed homeland, that ever-glowing term,
was but remote philosophy to him.
He was humble; humble indeed this man
who, from that far conscription day, had borne
his judgement, as he bore the branded shames,
the public scorn, four-fingered hand well hidden
yet known to all. He failed in what was bidden,
indeed he did; and broke his country’s laws.
But there are laws, greater by far than these,
that utter their divine simplicities,
as Glittertinden,59 round its topmost peak,
is crowned by heaven itself when the clouds break.
He was a hapless citizen, God knows;
in terms of state and Church a barren tree.
But back there, grafting order on wild ground,
in compass of the small diurnal round,
there he was great, to his own self was true;
his passage through this world a muted sound
plucked from the homeliest of instruments.
And therefore peace be with you, patient soul
who served, who fell, fighting a peasant’s war.
We will not search his heart for its intents,
nor on his reins our pettiness obtrude.
That task is proper to the Lord of All.
Yet, free and frank, let us in faith declare:
this man’s no cripple where he stands with God.
The MOURNERS disperse. PEER remains.
PEER: Now that’s what I call genuine Christian feeling.
Nothing that could possibly leave a nasty taste in the mind.
I also found the main text of the sermon appealing:
being unshakeably for yourself is where I always stand.
[Looks down into the grave.]
Was this the very same lad, I wonder, who,
all those long years ago,
chopped off a finger that day I was tree-felling?
Who can say? If I were not stood here with my pilgrim’s staff,
looking down at the grave
of someone I truly feel was a kindred spirit,
I could believe it was me lying peacefully there,
hearing my praises sung, a roll-call of merit.
It truly is a most charming Christian habit
to cast a final glance, a totting-up as it were,
back over the lifetime of the dear departed,
but always in the most genial kind of way.
I’d have not the slightest objection to being bade goodbye
by this kind, fair-minded spiritual advocate
when my time comes, which, I trust, is not quite yet,
and when that honest sexton invites me to stay.
For, as the scriptures say, best is still best,
and, in the same vein, sufficient unto the day.
Don’t pay for your funeral in advance
is another good one. All of life at a glance,
the Church remains the one true comforter.
Though I’ve not set great store
by its precepts up to now, they stand the test.
To be assured, by those who really know,
that, as you sow,
so shall you reap, is reinvigorating.
Be true to yourself, they say,
and keep a close eye on your property;
look to yourself in matters great and small.
If, then, from fate you get a final slating,
even so, you know, you’ve lived life by that rule,
and none can steal that from you. Home,
here we come!
Although the way be steep and narrow, fate
at its most unpleasantly jocular,
treading his own path as always, here comes Peer
Gynt, who is, as he always was, poor
but never less than straight.
He leaves the graveyard and returns to the road.
A hill with a dried-up river bed. The ruins of a mill by the river. The ground is churned up; everything around is laid waste. Higher up, a big farmhouse. Up at the farm an auction is in progress. A crowd of common people has gathered; there is drinking and much clamour. PEER is sitting on a heap of gravel down by the mill side.
PEER: Forwards, back, same length of trek.
Out and in, you scrape your skin.
Time corrodes, river abrades.
‘Around,’ said the Boyg; the advice was sound.
A MAN DRESSED IN MOURNING: What’s left is stuff to throw away.
[Catches sight of PEER.]
A stranger in our midst? God’s blessing, friend.
PEER: Well met! The place is lively today.
A christening is it? Or a wedding feast?
MOURNING MAN: You could call it a housewarming of a kind.
The bride is lying in her bed of clay.
PEER: The worms competing among rags of breast.
MOURNING MAN: Let’s end the ballad there. Over and done.
PEER: All the ballads end in the same way;
they’re ancient, too; I knew them as a boy.
A YOUTH [with a casting-ladle]:
Look, here’s a fine thing I was lucky to buy.
Peer Gynt used it to cast silver buttons in.
SECOND YOUTH: And how about this? It’s an old money-chest.
Just a shilling it cost.
THIRD YOUTH: I paid a bit over four for this peddler’s pack.
PEER: ‘Peer Gynt,’ you said; was that the name?
MOURNING MAN: Brother-in-law to death, to the smith Aslak,
the two in one, that’s how they tell it.
MAN IN GREY: Hey, I’m still here! You four can swill it!
MOURNING MAN: You’ve forgot Hæggstad and a locked door.
MAN IN GREY: You also, remember, came out of that game poor!
MOURNING MAN: Let’s hope she doesn’t wrangle
so readily with the recording angel.
MAN IN GREY: Come now, brother-in-law, let’s knock back a dram
for old time’s sake!
MOURNING MAN: I don’t give a damn.
MAN IN GREY: What do they say? However thin
the blood … Like it or not, we’re Gynt’s kin.
They leave together.
PEER [to himself]:
Well, old acquaintance is not forgotten,
not in these parts.
A BOY [shouting after the MAN IN MOURNING]:
Our mother, may she rest in peace,
will haunt you, Aslak, if you get spewing-drunk!
PEER [stands up]:
What the rural economists say,
‘the deeper you dig the sweeter it smells’,
does not hold true of this particular clay,
I think.
BOY [with a bearskin]:
Here’s the skin of the cat that chased the trolls
one Christmas Eve!
SECOND BOY [with a reindeer’s skull]:
Here’s the great reindeer buck
that bore Peer Gynt safely through mist and murk.
THIRD BOY [carrying a hammer calls to the MAN IN MOURNING]:
Hey, Aslak, did you send him reeling –
the devil – once? Knock him through the ceiling?
FOURTH BOY [empty-handed]:
And here’s the cloak that makes you disappear,
Mads Moen, ere you can think twice.
With it Peer Gynt and Ingrid flew through the air.
PEER: Let’s have the brandy, lads, I feel so old.
I’m thinking I might hold
my own auction of odds and ends.
FIRST BOY: What priceless items would you have to hustle?
PEER: To start with, I have a castle.
It stands in Rondane; and it’s of solid build.
SECOND BOY: I bid one button.
PEER: You’ll need to bid more.
You must stretch to a dram.
It would be sin and shame
to let it go for less, even among friends.
THIRD BOY: Well, this old lad’s a great character,
I must say!
They crowd around him eager for more fun.
PEER [shouting like an auctioneer]:
Lot two! Grane, my horse! Fine beast!
Who’ll bid?
ONE OF THE CROWD: Where is he?
PEER: Far to the west,
towards the sunset, my lads. That steed can fly
as fast
as Peer Gynt, at the top of his form, could lie.
ONE OF THE CROWD: What more do you have to be rid
of?
PEER: Some golden tawdry.
It cost me too dear. I’m selling far below cost.
FIRST BOY: So, call the lots!
A precious dream of a book with a silver clasp.
That you can have for a hook without an eye.
SECOND BOY: To hell with all dreams.
PEER: Next the unsigned decree
that claimed I was emperor. It’s for free
and you can scramble for it.
THIRD BOY: Can you throw in a crown?
PEER: Yes, of the finest straw. And it will fit
the first person who tries it on.
Hey, there’s still more: an egg without
its shell; a madman’s hair (grey); a prophet’s beard.
You can have the lot if you’re prepared
to take me to the heath and set me right.
The finger-post will read: ‘here is your road’.
SHERIFF [accosting him]:
The way that you’re behaving, I don’t doubt
a spell in prison lies within your grasp.
PEER [with his hat in his hand]:
That may be true. But tell me, who was Peer Gynt?
SHERIFF: Think you’re cut out
to be a comedian?
PEER: No, no, it’s facts I want.
SHERIFF: They say he was a damnable fabricator,
fabulator, whatever the right word is.
PEER: A teller of tall tales?
SHERIFF: Whatever was great or
extraordinary,
he invented a story
claiming that he was the genius of such absurdities.
But, look here, Grandad, I have other duties.
Strides officiously away.
PEER: So where is he, this extraordinary creature?
AN ELDERLY MAN: He went overseas to some heathen land or other,
and fared ill; he had a skewed nature.
Whatever it was he did, he swung for it
many years since.
PEER: Hanged was he? Well, he was that sort,
true to himself.
[Prepares to be on his way.]
My thanks, I’ve enjoyed this rather.
[Walks a short distance, then stops.]
But there again, I’ve – hey-ho, lads and lasses,
would you like a tall story of high enterprises?
ONE OF THE CROWD: Yes, do you know any?
PEER: As it happens, this old man does.
[Comes nearer; he adopts a strange, vatic expression.]
In San Francisco, where I worked as a gold miner,
everyone was putting on some kind of an act.
If one of them played a violin with his toes
another would dance the halling but – it’s a fact –
do it while kneeling, ‘Spanish style’. Another shiner
I heard about would compose verses extempore,
‘off the top of his head’, I suppose you could say,
while someone else was drilling through his skull.
Well, at this charlatans’ convention there arrived,
on one occasion, the devil, just to try his luck.
As it turned out, his one and only trick
was to grunt like a pig and do it lifelike.
He had a good sales pitch and so contrived
to fetch in a fair crowd for his first and only appearance.
Expectations ran high, and the theatre was full.
So, on to the stage he strode, an enormous cloak
billowing around him: ‘man muss sich drapieren’,60
as that German proverb says. Of all the confounded cheek!
He’s smuggled in a live pig, swathed in the folds.
So, the performance starts: the devil gives a squeeze,
and the pig gives voice, a bit like a bagpipe scolds.
Its billing was ‘symbolical fantasy
depicting porcine existence bound and free’.
The coup de théâtre was a kind of wheeze
as though the pig had felt the butcher’s knife.
And that was that; the artiste took a bow
and left the stage. Opinion was not wanting.
Some found the range of voice too narrow,
others thought the death-squeal untrue to life;
but all were agreed: as a display of grunting
the whole performance was quite over the top.
You can all draw the lesson from that, I hope.
The devil got ‘thumbs down’ for his insolent stunt
because he did not take public sentiment into account.
He takes his leave. An uneasy silence descends on the crowd.
Whitsunday Eve. We are at the heart of the forest. Some way off, in a clearing, there is a cabin with reindeer antlers above the door frame. PEER is on his knees in the undergrowth. He is gathering wild onions.
PEER: If this is seeing things from a new angle, I can hardly
wait for the next. The Good Book says to try
all things, make sure you pick the best.
Well, I’ve done all that, top to bottom, you could say,
from Caesar to Nebuchadnezzar, the man who crawled,
who ‘from among his own people was made outcast’.
The Good Book also says, make sure your guts are filled
with things of the earth out of which you were pulled.
Fill my belly with wild onions? Can’t say I fancy them.
Hang snares to catch thrushes
among the high bushes?
That’s a much better scheme.
There’s plenty of nice fresh water in the beck;
I shan’t go thirsty. And if I have to live
like an animal I mean to be lord of the pack.
When I die – I can’t live indefinitely
however many japes I may contrive –
I shall make my last hideout under a fallen tree,
rake a great mound of leaves and crawl into it
just like a bear when it’s time to hibernate.
And I’ll carve somehow my epitaph for all to see:
‘Here lies Peer Gynt; he was a decent fellow,
emperor of the forest creatures’.
[Laughs quietly to himself.]
You old fool, though!
You’re not an emperor; you’re an onion,
in need of peeling, my friend Peer.
You can weep all you like; it still has to be done.
[Picks an onion and begins to peel it.]
Here is the outermost split layer.
Call it the shipwrecked man on the dinghy’s keel.
Here’s the skin I’ll call ‘Strange Passenger’,
not yielding much, though with a whiffy scent,
somehow, of slick Gynt.
What do we have next as I continue to peel?
Inside here we have the gold-digger’s spoil,
no longer worth tasting, if it ever was.
The tough part here, with a sharpish edge, must be
the fur-trader section up at Hudson’s Bay.
Inside that again, a skin that looks like a crown.
Well, that’s something I’m quite happy to disown.
The archaeologist: a strong taste still it has.
And here we uncover the prophet; the strongest taint,
I must say, of the entire peeling –
he stinks of wickedness, as the Good Book says,
so that an honest man can get tears in his eyes.
We’re coming closer to the final unveiling.
This next layer, which is soft and self-infurled,
represents, I imagine, the wealthy man of the world.
The next, inlaid with black stripes, seems diseased,
black representing either Negro or priest.
[Pulls off several layers at once.]
What a tiresome quantity of the things!
When will I uncover the core within these rings?
[Pulls the whole onion apart in a burst of irritation.]
Well, I’ll be damned! I’ve pulled the thing apart
and, what d’you know? it doesn’t have a heart.
Nature is exceedingly witty, is she not?
[Throws the mess away.]
So, let the devil brood on what this means.
The introspective man who walks alone
can do himself some harm, but since I’ve gone
on all fours for some time, it should be safe
enough, I’d say, even to scoff.
[Scratching his neck]
Life’s a strange business, though; rarely explains.
It has a fox behind its ear, but try
to grab it and the creature’s pretty spry.
You’re left with something else between your fingers
you’d be better without and which lingers.
[He has been getting closer, during his onion picking, to the cabin, which he now takes note of for the first time. He appears disconcerted.]
That cabin, there! House on the heath? It seems
like a vivid recollection of old claims.
The reindeer skull that stands out on the gable,
a mermaid formed like a fish below the waist,
what fantasies I spin myself! What trouble
I invent. There’s no mermaid. But old planks nailed with rust,
yes, there are those; locks to keep out troll dreams.
SOLVEIG [heard singing inside the cabin]:
Now all is made ready for the Whitsun Eve.
And oh, my dearest boy, my blessèd one,
those logs that you have,
are they a great burden?
Take all the time you need.
Whether late or soon,
I shall wait as I said.
PEER [gets to his feet, quiet and deathly pale]:
Ah! One who remembered and one who forgot.
One who lost faith while the other did not.
Dire gravitational pull of things never to be reversed.
Here was my right true empire but I was self-deposed.
He stumbles away along the forest path.
Night. Among the pine barrens. The area has been devastated by a forest fire. Charred tree trunks as far as the eye can see. Clouds of grey mist here and there over the forest floor. PEER hastens through this wilderness.
PEER: Ash and fog and dust a-smother.
Blighted plenitude to build on.
Stench and rottenness together,
whited sepulchre. Beholden,
I, to dreams and stillborn knowledge,
bad foundations mired in fullage,
see a pyramid arising
based on lies and false appraising;
vacant truth and void repentance
topping out my life’s self-sentence,
crowing like the Petrine rooster
pinnacled upon disaster.
Petrus Gyntus Caesar fecit.61
[Listens.]
There’s a sound of children weeping
might yet be their singing gladly.
Self-projection, as I take it,
of my guilty un-self-keeping.
Balls of yarn, now, rolling madly
at my feet …
[Kicks out.]
… troll thoughts a-gripping.
BALLS OF YARN [on the ground]:
Thoughts we are not.
You should have thought us;
babes unbegot,
you did not beget us.
PEER [steps aside]:
Him I fathered was a troll-child,
brain askew, his body crippled.
BALLS OF YARN: We should have risen
as voices in song;
we were not chosen;
snarled here our wrong.
PEER [tripping over them]:
Yarn ball, misbegotten cruddle,
more like man-trap than cat’s cradle.
He extricates himself and attempts to leave them behind.
WITHERED LEAVES [blown by the wind]:
We’re a conundrum
too long unsolved.
We heard the wind drum
while rain delved.
Worms have reduced us
to our small skeletons;
when in right justice
we are your laureate crowns.
PEER: I don’t think you’ve done too badly.
Make good compost; do it gladly.
A RUSHING IN THE AIR: We are the rhymes
you did not sing us.
A thousand times
you chose to wrong us.
In your heart’s chamber
we’ve lain, mute song,
years without number.
May your throat ever be wrung!
PEER: I should have stifled such complaining
long years since; damned poetic whining.
Attempts to take a short cut.
DROPS OF DEW [dripping from the branches]:
We are the tears
that were never shed.
Ice-daggers through the years
we would have melted.
The deepest ice-wound
is in your heart yet,
over the heart.
PEER: I was imprisoned by the trolls;
wept; but no one came to my calls.
BROKEN STRAWS: We are the deeds
you failed to deliver.
Doubt with its many heads
the sole receiver.
We shall come in a swarm
on Judgement Day
and speak you harm.
You will blench at what we say.
PEER: Nasty tricksters, adding the final sum
to my account, but in the debit column.
He hurries away.
AASE’S VOICE [heard as though from a great distance]:
Shame on you, such dreadful driving,
almost tipped me out you did, lad!
There’s been fresh deep snow arriving.
Well, you’ve bruised me pretty bad.
Driven me the wrong way, have you?
Where’s the castle we were close to?
Devil’s made you misbehave – you! –
with that stick out of the closet.
PEER: Think it wise and think it needful
for this lost soul just to vanish.
Carrying the devil’s spadeful,
and your own, spells heavy finish.
Runs off.
Another part of the heath.
PEER [singing]:
A gravedigger! A gravedigger! Where are you, curs?
I must be one who hears
I need a mourning ribbon round the brim of my hat.
I have so many dead I must follow through the lychgate.
The BUTTON MOULDER appears from a pathway to one side. He carries a tool chest and a large casting-ladle.
BUTTON MOULDER: Greetings to you, old sir!
PEER: And to you, friend.
BUTTON MOULDER: Gentleman’s in a hurry. Whither does he wend?
PEER: To a wake.
BUTTON MOULDER: To a wake, is it? I don’t see too well.
Forgive the question; might your name be Peer?
PEER: Peer, yes. Peer Gynt.
BUTTON MOULDER: Peer Gynt. I call
that luck! For I am to meet you here
this very night.
PEER: Are you indeed? And why the need?
BUTTON MOULDER: You’re to go in this ladle o’mine.
PEER: And to what end?
BUTTON MOULDER: To be melted down.
PEER: Melted?
BUTTON MOULDER [shows the ladle]:
It’s freshly scoured,
ready, waiting; grave dug, the coffin ordered,
the worms have whetted appetites for the feast.
And I am bid to find you with all speed,
and in the Master’s name to fetch your soul.
PEER: And I must tell you that’s not possible.
To be called like this, at some stranger’s behest …
BUTTON MOULDER: There is a quaint old custom in these parts,
for christenings and for funerals
to be somewhat arbitrary in their dates;
these to be settled without due regard
to diaries of those new born or newly dead.
PEER: That may be so, but – ach, my head!
Tell me again; you are …
BUTTON MOULDER: You heard me the first time. A button moulder.
PEER: I suppose it hardly matters what one calls
you: a cherished child has many names,
the saying is. So, Peer, you’ll not grow older.
But look’ee here, my man, it’s a low trick
you’ve played me, with these sudden games.
I deserve gentler handling; although some make
out I’m a scoundrel, I have done much good
during my time on earth. At worst a fool.
My sins, I’d say, were unremarkable.
BUTTON MOULDER: And that’s the nub of the problem, you see, squire:
the fact that you’re so middling. Worst kinds of torture
you’re likely to be spared, that’s understood.
Like most, your prize is my old casting-ladle.
PEER: Well, call it what you will; whether brimstone lake
or your big spoon, it’s nothing but a fiddle.
Home-brewed and import are both kinds of beer.
Get thee behind me!
BUTTON MOULDER: I’m quite shocked to hear
such coarseness from your lips. No one believes,
in these enlightened times, that where you’ve feet I’ve hooves.
PEER: Horse’s hoof or fox’s claw, be gone,
pick your way back over stock and stone.
BUTTON MOULDER: Once more I have to say how sorry
I am to hear you speak so. We must hurry,
the pair of us, and take a few shortcuts.
I shall but briefly reason with your doubts.
You have, as you have said, not greatly sinned.
In the judgement of your own mind
you are somewhat of middling kind.
PEER: I approve your thoughts
as here expressed.
BUTTON MOULDER: Be patient yet awhile.
But to call you a minor saint would go too far?
PEER: I’ve no claim to the highest style
BUTTON MOULDER: You are,
then, we’re agreed, a kind of entrepreneur,
an opportunist, a middle man.
Old monstrous heroic sinners one doesn’t meet
with, these days, on your average street.
Their kind of sin demands high seriousness;
great willpower, grand design.
PEER: That’s near enough, I’d guess.
With them it was full pelt, like the old berserkers.
BUTTON MOULDER: You, on the other hand, were among the workers
of expedient things.
PEER: Yes, a quick dabble
when chance allowed; tried to keep out of trouble.
BUTTON MOULDER: There we agree. The brimstone lake of fire
is not for toe-dippers, such as you were and are.
PEER: That’s very good to hear.
Now may I go?
BUTTON MOULDER: No!
It’s been decreed that you’ll be melted down,
here, in my spoon.
PEER: So that’s the trick you’ve come up with, you devils,
while I’ve been on my travels.
BUTTON MOULDER: The process dates back to the first creation
of living things; and is an essential link
in the grand economy. You’ll have a fair notion
of what I mean: you could trim a button mould
in your young days. Many castings are spoiled;
sometimes a button is without its shank.
What did you do with a spoiled button?
PEER: Tossed it as junk.
BUTTON MOULDER: Ay, so you did. You were Jon Gynt’s lad.
Everyone rooted around in his grand pile
just so long as it lasted, with the ale-casks full.
But the master I serve is economical;
he doesn’t throw out what can be reused.
You, dear sir, he meant for a shining button
on the world’s waistcoat; but somehow a loop broke.
Even so, you were never forgotten.
You shall be fused
into the lump that he’ll rework.
PEER: Re-smelt me, you mean? Not that, surely?
Like Askeladden’s failed brothers,62 and all?
BUTTON MOULDER: Upon my soul, you’ve hit the nail entirely!
It’s happened to thousands. At the Royal Mint
in Kongsberg63 they melt down and then re-coin
whatever’s been defaced or has worn thin.
PEER: But this is torture, not economy.
I beg you, beg your master to relent.
One shankless button or one battered shilling,
what’s that to him? What could he possibly want
from me? I won’t be melted down for ready money.
I’m shocked that he so lacks all decent feeling.
BUTTON MOULDER: According to, dependent on, and by and large,
all things considered, with appended clause,
just as the spirit takes you, tit for tat,
the metal in itself is worth a bit,
you must admit.
PEER: No, and again no! It’s physical abuse!
With tooth and nail I’ll fight my case.
You can’t detain me without charge!
BUTTON MOULDER: But we must do the best with what we’re given.
You’re not ethereal enough for heaven.
PEER: Obviously not. And I don’t aim that high.
I hope I’ve my fair share of modesty.
But of my Selbstgrundlage I’ll not yield
one farthing’s worth to rivals in that field.
Let me be judged by the old rules of law.
I’ll take my punishment – yes, that I vow!
I’ll do my stretch with Old Nick, him with hooves,
a hundred years if need be. Modern thought believes
there’s no real fire and brimstone, and that all
the torment’s merely metaphysical.
So, things won’t be too bad, more quarantine
than torture-chamber: ‘transition’, the fox said,
admittedly while being flayed.
But there we are. We wait and stand in line;
redemption’s bell peals out. One doesn’t thrust
ahead of others, waits one’s turn in trust.
This other scheme, though, is ghastly: to be fused
into the beings of a thousand strangers
without distinction; Selbstgrundlage abused;
this utter travesty of the Gyntian Whole.
This is what angers,
this is what makes my innermost self rebel!
BUTTON MOULDER: My dear sir, you’ve no call
to make such protests. Never in the past,
even for a moment, have you been yourself,
so what does it matter? And on whose behalf
do you bewail this lost identity?
PEER: Have not I been? I weep with merriment.
Something else he has been – that’s it? – this fellow Gynt?
No, button moulder, you stand in blind judgement
against me. Could you but see into my heart and soul
you would discover
Peer, Peer, the one and only Peer,
the irreducible entity
indissoluble to mere quantity.
BUTTON MOULDER: Such is not possible. I have my orders set out in print.
Look, they’re here; and I shall read them aloud.
‘You must claim back Peer Gynt.
He has defied our determination for his road
through life. Into the casting-ladle with him; he is skint.’
PEER: Do they indeed say ‘Peer Gynt’, those words you read?
Should you not truly have said ‘Rasmus’ or ‘Jon’?
BUTTON MOULDER: It’s a long while since they were melted down.
Come along with you, now; you’re trying to buy time.
PEER: I jolly well won’t.
Suppose that someone else is meant,
and tomorrow you find that out, and it’s too late?
Have a care, my good man!
Be slow to deliver this verdict as your own.
You’d be complicit in a crime.
BUTTON MOULDER: It is written.
PEER: Grant me some time of grace.
BUTTON MOULDER: How would you use it?
PEER: I shall get you proof
that I have been myself the whole of my life.
That’s what we’re wrangling over.
BUTTON MOULDER: What would the proof comprise?
PEER: Eye-witnesses, notarized referees.
BUTTON MOULDER: I say
that, even so, my lord’s judgement will stand.
PEER: No, that’s impossible; and, anyway,
sufficient unto the day!
Give me the chance to borrow myself against
my self remortgaged. I’ll soon be back, you’ll find.
You’re born once only and, even if you’re trounced,
you grow attached to yourself as you’ve been made.
Can we agree on that?
BUTTON MOULDER: It’s so agreed.
You have until the next crossroads. Take heed.
PEER hurries away.
Another part of the heath.
PEER [running hard]:
Time is money, time is money, time is money, so it’s said.
Where the next crossroads are, I do not know.
Near? Far? I register earth’s heat
through the soles of my feet.
Witness! Must get a witness to show.
But how?
Surely not now, not on this desolate run.
The world is a botched job, the way things are done.
One’s rights should be self-evident as the sun!
A bent OLD MAN, staff in hand, around his neck a bag, is shuffling along, slightly ahead of PEER.
OLD MAN [pausing]:
Good sir, for charity! A shilling for the deserving poor.
PEER: Alas, I have no ready money.
OLD MAN: Prince Peer,
so we meet again, you see, after many a long year.
PEER: Who the devil are you?
OLD MAN: The old man of Rondane; you can’t
have forgotten the Dovre King, even in his condition of want?
PEER: You’re truly him?
DOVRE KING: On evil days though fallen, evil times.
PEER: Hard to believe …
DOVRE KING: And left to beg my way while hunger clems.
PEER: Witnesses like this don’t grow on trees!
DOVRE KING: The prince also has grown grey since last we met.
PEER: We both have cause to recall things with regret,
the wear and tear of the years.
But let us draw a line under private affairs,
the family feud.
Back then I was a footloose madcap lad.
DOVRE KING: That’s true enough. The prince was young,
and youth is full of folly and does wrong.
But fortune smiled on him when he put aside
his bride.
In so doing he spared himself a lifetime
of grief and shame.
These many years she’s run a dissolute course.
PEER: Is that so? You don’t say?
DOVRE KING: Lives off cold water and lye;
what’s as bad, or worse,
she’s taken up with that Trond.
PEER: Which Trond?64
DOVRE KING: Why, him from Valfjeldet!65
PEER: Once, he found
I’d run three girls he thought were his to ground.
DOVRE KING: My grandson, though, has become tall and fat
and is a stud. There’s scores can vouch for that.
PEER: May we put by nostalgia for a while,
I have something quite other to reveal
about a trifling problem: I require
a reference, a testimonial,
which you could well provide, father-in-law.
An honorarium or a pourboire66
could be arranged.
DOVRE KING: If I can meet his wish
the prince may care to offer me, in turn,
a written affidavit duly signed.
PEER: With pleasure, as I’m slightly strapped for cash.
I’ll tell you now the thing that’s on my mind.
You must remember well my brief sojourn
in Rondane when I came to claim my bride …
DOVRE KING: An unforgettable occasion, prince.
PEER: No need for titles here … and how you made
an unprovoked attack on my eyeball
in an attempt to change me to a troll;
how resolutely then I fought,
swore I would stand firm on my own two feet,
abjuring love, renouncing power and glory,
in order to retain my self and soul.
I need you now to swear to that in court,
there’s an all-prying judge I must convince.
DOVRE KING: I’m sorry; can’t be done.
PEER: Why on earth not?
DOVRE KING: The prince would not demand such perjury.
He donned the nether garment of a troll,
he will recall,
and quaffed our mead.
PEER: While you all tried
to lure me with troll arts which I rejected.
my humanity:
that’s how you recognize a man, indeed.
It’s all there in the last line of that song.
DOVRE KING: Your lifetime’s recollections heard it wrong.
PEER: What utter nonsense!
DOVRE KING: When you fled my hall
you went with the troll’s commandment stuck in your soul.
PEER: Commandment?
DOVRE KING: Strong and divisive that command
which utterly divides our two worlds, trolls and men:
‘Troll, be to yourself sufficient!’
PEER [taking a step backwards]:
Enough! No more!
DOVRE KING: And with your utmost strength of mind
that is exactly how you’ve lived since then.
PEER: I am Peer Gynt!
DOVRE KING [lachrymose]:
Oh, what ingratitude!
You have lived like a troll but taken care to hide
the debt. The motto, the commandment, that I gave
has helped you to become a man of power.
And yet you come along and toss your head
at me and mine, who best deserve
your thanks.
PEER: Enough, I said.
You’re but a mountain troll equipped with ego’s goad.
What you’ve been saying is a load
of old rubbish.
DOVRE KING [pulling out a bundle of old newspapers from his bag]:
Do you suppose that in Dovre they lack
news and newspapers? Here it all is, in black
and red; so hearken. Hear the Blocksberg Post applaud,
the Heklefjeld Times67 resounding with your praises,
all since the winter that you left us, Peer.
Perhaps there’s something else you’d want to hear.
One writes under the byline ‘Stallion-hoof’
and someone – here it is – outlines the thesis
‘Concerning National Trolldom’. He offers proof
that trolldom, rightly understood, is not
a matter of horns and tails exactly, but
possession of a vital strip of skin.
The troll’s motif ‘Enough’ can of itself donate
essential trolldom’s powers to any man.
He cites you as an instance.
PEER: Me? A troll?
DOVRE KING: That’s how it stands; and how things stand as well.
PEER: I could have stayed, then, where you had me,
and, in a kind of peace, let you degrade me;
spared toil and trouble, many pairs of shoes.
Peer Gynt a troll? Your image I refuse.
Here, take a shilling for a bit of baccy.
DOVRE KING: My dear Prince Peer – for prince I do still take ye –
PEER: Shog off, old man, you seem bewildered,
confuse plain facts; you’re in your second childhood.
Some hospital for paupers may admit you
and be more lenient with your vacant chat. You …
DOVRE KING: A pauper hospital is what I’m seeking.
But, sad to say, my grandson’s many offspring
have gained such power in national politics;
they claim that I exist only in books.
‘Kinsman to kinsman’, as folk say,
‘is worst’; and that’s a proverb few can deny.
I’ve proved it, skin and bones. It’s very hard
to find yourself dismissed as tricks and trumpery.
PEER: Many can vouch for that, you will have heard.
DOVRE KING: And in Rondane itself we’re much in need
of charities and charitable aid,
poor boxes and the like. I’m told they have no place.
PEER: Among your ‘self-or-nothing’ populace.
DOVRE KING: The prince can hardly disagree with that.
Indeed he’s sharp enough to follow suit.
PEER: Look, gaffer, you are wrong. Wrong track entirely.
I myself stand upon the barren scarp, or …
DOVRE KING: Surely this cannot be! The prince a pauper?
PEER: A pauper through and through. My princely ego
long since pawned, though it still goes where I go.
What’s worse, I owe it all to you damned trolls.
Bad precedents can’t be soaped away like smells.
DOVRE KING: Well, there’s another hope dropped off its perch.
I’ll limp on into town.
PEER: And when you reach
town, what will you do?
DOVRE KING: Think I’ll audition.
They’re putting on The Character of the Nation68
in the theatre there; it’s widely advertised.
PEER: Good luck go with you. I may do the same
if I can solve my problem in good time.
I have a farce in mind; crazy, yet deep;
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,69 deep though crazed.
Perhaps Enough To Make the Angels Weep?
He hurries off along the path. The DOVRE KING hobbles after, shouting something unintelligible.
At a crossroads.
PEER: Now things are urgent, Peer, as never before!
The Dovrean ‘enough’ pronounces sentence.
My vessel’s wrecked, the flotsam drifts to shore,
and I’ll float with it; hope yet for remittance.
BUTTON MOULDER: So, Peer Gynt, present your affidavit,
always supposing that you have it.
PEER: This is the crossroads then? It got here fast!
BUTTON MOULDER: I can read on your face, as on a ‘Wanted’ fly-sheet,
what your document says, even before I scry it.
PEER: I was hot and bothered and then lost.
BUTTON MOULDER: Quite so, quite so; and, after all, what’s the point?
PEER: What indeed, stuck in this lousy forest.
BUTTON MOULDER: Here comes an old man trudging his poor stint.
Let’s call him over.
PEER: Pah! Let him go; he’s squiffed.
BUTTON MOULDER: But yet, perhaps …
PEER: I’ve told you: squiffy, daft.
BUTTON MOULDER: Shall we proceed, then?
PEER: Just one question, please.
To ‘be oneself’: I’m not sure what that is.
BUTTON MOULDER: Astounding, such a question, coming from one
who only lately …
PEER: Answer me, if you can.
BUTTON MOULDER: To be oneself is to do away with oneself.
That explanation, though, is wasted on you.
So let’s rephrase: it is to treat as pelf
the master’s treasures, and to smear with glue
his best intentions, plaster them on the wall
of your self-adulation and desire to sell.
PEER: But what if that man could simply never learn,
however much he tried, the master plan
of purpose and salvation?
BUTTON MOULDER: Why, then, he must
‘intuit’ it.
PEER: But intuition-on-trust
is enigmatic and our aims misfire;
we find ourselves ad undas,70 in despair.
BUTTON MOULDER: Ah yes, Peer Gynt, you strike exactly, there.
Failure of intuition: there the bloke
with the hoof finds the best bait for his hook.
PEER: A complex business, I think you’ll agree.
Say I renounce my right to autonomy,
how do I find convincing evidence
that I have done so? I’ve lost it in advance,
I see that now. Stuck on this ashen heath
I felt my conscience like a catch of breath;
said, almost without thinking, ‘I have sinned’.
BUTTON MOULDER: You seem to run round
in circles the whole time.
PEER: This is different. I felt it as a web of crime,
not in act only, in desire and word.
I was a cunning, violent man abroad.
BUTTON MOULDER: It may be as you say; but, for the record?
PEER: I beg you for some further time of grace.
I shall seek out a priest and, to his face,
make my confession; return with my signed pass.
BUTTON MOULDER: Provided you do that, I think it’s clear
ordeal by casting-spoon will not occur.
But the general order is not yet annulled.
PEER: The paper that you wave about is old;
it must originate
in those things of an earlier date,
when I lived a life that was effete,
and played the prophet and believed in fate.
So, may I try to find the priest?
BUTTON MOULDER: But I …
PEER: You are not all that burdened with your duty.
This district has an enviable atmosphere.
The people live long lives who live round here.
Remember him, the priest of Jostedal:71
‘Death’s an infrequent visitor to our vale’?
BUTTON MOULDER: To the next crossroads; but then grace expires.
PEER: A priest I shall have, if I have to seize him with pliers!
He departs hurriedly.
A hillside clad in heather. The road winds, following the contours of the land.
PEER: That may come in handy for something,
as the man said who picked up the magpie’s wing.
Who would have thought that volunteering your sins
might buy you time on your last evening?
Even so, it’s touch-and-go,
it’s jumping out of the ash into the fire.
‘So long as there’s life there’s no call to despair’:
a decent old saying; it’s so, I trust.
A THIN MAN wearing a priest’s cassock hitched up high and with a bird-catcher’s net over his shoulder runs across the slope of the hill.
PEER: As if on cue, who is it that runs
into the picture? Yes, a priest,
a priest with a bird net over his shoulder.
Ha! Fortune’s favourite, aren’t I, though?
Good evening, Herr Pfarrer, the path is rough.
THIN MAN: One does not grudge it; there’s a soul at call.
PEER: You’re seeing someone off on the road to heaven?
THIN MAN: I pray that he’s safely on the road to hell.
PEER: Herr Pfarrer, may I bring you on your way?
THIN MAN: I shall be grateful for the company.
PEER: There’s something on my mind.
THIN MAN: So, shoot.
PEER: You see in me a decent man who’s lost
his way; not seriously; but
needs to get back on track before he’s older.
Laws of the state he honestly has striven
to keep in line with; has never occupied
a prison cell. Sometimes a foot has slid
where it should not have gone.
THIN MAN: I’ve often said
‘happens to the best people all the time’.
PEER: These peccadilloes, in no sense a crime …
THIN MAN: Peccadilloes? Is that all?
PEER: Why, yes,
absolutely nothing gross.
THIN MAN: Then, my dear fellow, let me be.
I’m not the one you took me for.
You’re looking at my hands. What is it you find there?
PEER: Quite extraordinary, your fingernails.
THIN MAN: My feet, too. Curiosity prevails.
You’d better speak of what it is you see.
PEER [pointing]:
Is that hoof natural?
THIN MAN: It certainly feels so to me.
PEER [raising his hat]:
Well, well, well! I could have sworn
you were a priest; but now, instead,
I have the pleasure, honour indeed …
If the hall door stands open, don’t fret for a latch-key.
If the king will see you, don’t stop for the lackey.
THIN MAN: So good to find
you keep an open mind.
How may I be of service? I should warn
you, nonetheless, that there are certain
matters I cannot deal with: money, power.
My sources have dried up and I’m quite poor.
You’ll scarcely credit how slack business is
at the present time; our turnover is down.
Souls are in short supply. Just now and then
a suitable one shows up.
PEER: So, would you say
the human race
is in a state of grace
for things to have shifted so disastrously?
THIN MAN: Quite the contrary. There is a vast amount
of petty wickedness, but what I might term the saint
of evil, the consummate sinner, has had his demise.
It’s the casting-ladle not the burning lake
for the vast majority of Christian folk.
PEER: The casting-ladle, now you mention it,
has been on my mind lately, just a bit.
It is, to be frank, the reason that I’m here.
THIN MAN: Speak freely.
PEER: If it’s not presumptuous
to ask, I should be grateful for the use …
THIN MAN: Of a spare room in which you can lie low?
PEER: You guessed my request, even before I made it.
If, as you say, business is slow,
then maybe you’d be willing to provide it.
THIN MAN: But, my dear man …
PEER: You wouldn’t know I’m there.
My needs are modest and I don’t require
financial support. Just the companionship.
THIN MAN: And a warm room?
PEER: Not too warm. And prior consent
to take my leave of you without restraint,
‘free and saved’, to speak it like the folk,
when things start picking up.
THIN MAN: What I have to say will come as a shock.
My desk is buried under applications
from thousands such as yourself, soon to shake
off, as you also must shake it off, this earthly yoke.
PEER: When I survey the scroll of my late conduct
I am impressed by my high qualifications.
THIN MAN: But as you said yourself, the merest trifles.
PEER: There was some pettiness, I grant you, but
I profited from the slave trade quite a bit.
THIN MAN: Some applicants have dealt exclusively
with minds and wills,
all at the highest levels –
I speak, you must understand, allusively –
but their logistics were shaky: we’re not talking here
of a blocked sin-duct.
Well, they were turned down.
PEER: I plied a lucrative slave trade. I shipped to China
thousands of shoddy copies of some figurine, a
travesty of Buddha, as I recall.
THIN MAN: Profiteering in mock piety, not a big deal!
There are those who profit from much nastier habits,
sermons, belles-lettres, objets d’art, exhibits
of dubious kinds. And they haven’t got in.
PEER: I’ve kept the worst till last. Listen to this:
I played at being a prophet …
THIN MAN: But overseas:
that’s just as we expect.
The ‘blue yonder’ excites ‘ins Blaue hinein’,72
faith’s mystery tour.
All candidates for the ladle; nothing more.
If this is what your evidence amounts to,
I have to tell you frankly, it discounts you.
PEER: No, wait – ‘peril at sea’! I almost forgot:
I was sitting astride the keel of a capsized boat
and, as it is written, was grasping at a straw,
and, as it says also, was being ‘intensely myself’ –
well, I was half-
responsible for ridding a cook of his life.
THIN MAN: If you’d half brought a kitchen wench to grief
I’d be equally unimpressed.
What a species of half-gabble, now, is this?
What reason is there to light the furnaces,
turn up the heat, burning expensive fuel,
for such a bunch of mediocrities.
Please don’t be angry: at the worst or best
your sins attract a sneering condescension.
Take my advice, abandon thoughts of hell,
become inured to thoughts of reinfusion
into the base metals of the ladle.
If I gave board and lodging what would you gain?
Think about it; you’re a reasonable man.
True, you would keep your memory, some old saw
might be applicable; but passing in review
your lifelong mediocrity would not
be, in that Swedish phrase, ‘a lot of fun’.
You’ve nothing over which to laugh or howl;
nothing to make you either cold or hot;
no joy and no despair squat cheek by jowl.
Your limbo would begin to irritate
and aeon upon aeon
would pass in a mild form of chagrin.
Read Revelation, three, sixteen.
PEER: ‘The reasons why a pair of shoes
is agony, only the wearer knows.’
THIN MAN: More from the Good Book? And of course it’s true.
Praise be to Him of No Name,
it was my luck to come
into the world requiring only one shoe.
And that reminds me, I must hie abroad
to pick up the steak I’ve ordered, running red.
I can’t waste further time in idle chatter.
PEER: And what, may I ask, did that steak feed on
to turn him out so juicy, a raw-red ’un?
THIN MAN: He fed on himself entirely, days and nights,
and, in the end, that set him in my sights.
PEER: Selbstgrundlage, that’s what gives you entry
to hell’s pantry?
THIN MAN: Well, yes and no; you could say the door is ajar.
You can be Urselbst in either of two ways
as you might wear
a coat
rightside – or inside out.
Or here’s an analogy that might work better.
You’ll know that, in Paris, they recently hit upon
ways to make portraits with the aid of the sun.
You can do either a positive or a negative one,
the latter having its light and dark parts reversed,
which makes it appear weird to normal eyes.
But nonetheless the likeness is inherent
and what they have to do is to draw it forth.
If it so happens that a soul from birth
has photographed itself, its acts recurrent,
but only in a negative likeness, its nature
is not the cause of the plate’s being refused.
It is sent on to me, by me immersed
and steamed and soaked and scorched and rinsed –
sulphur and mercury (some might say ‘censed’) –
until the original likeness is sealed and held;
the positive, as it is rightly to be called.
But with a case such as yours, already mauled,
then neither sulphur, mercury, nor potash can
revive the sodden image of a man.
PEER: So one can’t come, or be brought, here as a black raven
and issue forth as white as a winter ptarmigan.
Then may I inquire, reverend, whose name now stands
on that negative image which, in your hands,
will attain a positive value?
THIN MAN: Name’s Peter Gynt.
PEER: Peter Gynt. Does this Herr Gynt affirm
that he’s himself, beyond all argument?
THIN MAN: He does so affirm.
PEER: You can accept his claim.
THIN MAN: Your tone suggests that you’re acquainted with him.
PEER: Slightly, yes. One meets so many people.
THIN MAN: Time passes. Where did you see him last?
PEER: It was down at the Cape.
THIN MAN: Di buona speranza?73
PEER: Yes,
but he leaves there shortly; gives no new address.
THIN MAN: Then I must start immediately, travel fast,
and trust to arrive in time.
That Cape Province has always spelled trouble.
Stavanger missionaries74 are there; they’re a bad lot.
He sets off towards the south.
PEER: So, off he goes at a bound and a trot,
and with his tongue hanging out.
Well, he’ll find he’s been had!
I enjoyed cheating the idiot.
And him so jargon-proud.
pretending he’s the boss.
He’ll be out of business;
he’ll fall off his perch with the whole caboodle.
Though I’m not all that secure in the saddle,
come to think of it.
The self-possessed gentry, of course, would say I don’t fit.
[A shooting star can be seen; he nods amicably towards it.]
Greetings from Bror Gynt, brother shooting star!
To shine, to be put out, to be simply not there …
[Hugs himself as if suddenly chilled with fear. He walks deeper into the misty landscape. After a moment of silence he cries out.]
Is there none out there to respond? No one at all?
No one in the abyss? Nor under the heavens’ shell?
[Re-emerges from the mists at a point farther along the path; he throws his hat on to the road and, as so often in the past, tugs and tears at his hair. Gradually his mood becomes calmer; finally he is still.]
So unutterably poor a soul can return
to pristine nothingness in the dense grey.
Ah, dearest earth, do not be angry
that I have ravaged you so. Nor you, dear sun,
who gifted your radiance to a locked empty room
because he who owned it was always away.
Inviolable sun and you, dear, violated earth,
was it wise to bear and shed light on her who gave me birth?
The spirit is such a miser, nature so prodigal.
Life’s held to ransom by what began it all.
If I could I would climb Glittertinden
to watch the sunrise as if for the last time,
gazing at what was promised and forbidden,
to have an avalanche drown me in its cry.
‘Here lies no one’ would serve to bury me.
Inconsolably the soul gathers where it is from.
CHURCHGOERS [singing along the forest path]:
O sacred morning light
when each appointing flame
let us, our words made right,
re-gift the gifted Name
to whence it came, redeeming pain and sin.
PEER [cowering, well-nigh prostrate with terror]:
For you, now, Grace is the last wilderness.
Don’t seek there some ease from your distress.
I’m so afraid I was dead long before I died.
He tries to creep in among the bushes but finds that he has stumbled upon a crossroads.
BUTTON MOULDER: Greetings, Peer Gynt. So where’s that grand confession?
PEER: D’you think I haven’t chased it hither and yon?
BUTTON MOULDER: Run across anybody on your trek?
PEER: A travelling photographer with his trade on his back.
BUTTON MOULDER: Your period of grace has now expired.
PEER: So’s everything. The owl, that wise old bird,
can smell the slow-burning fuse. I heard,
just now, its call.
BUTTON MOULDER: That was the matins bell.
PEER [pointing]:
Whatever is it that can so transmit
such radiance?
BUTTON MOULDER: A lamp inside a hut.
PEER: That sound I hear so vibrant on the air?
BUTTON MOULDER: A woman’s song as strong as any choir.
PEER: As well I know. She is my sins’ recorder.
BUTTON MOULDER [taking hold of him]:
Go to her then. Set your own house in order.
They have come out from among the trees and are standing in front of the ‘reindeer’ cabin. Dawn is breaking.
PEER: My house in order, you say. Well, here it is. Be off, man!
I tell you, if your ladle were as big as a coffin
it would still be too small for me and my sins to grieve in.
BUTTON MOULDER: Until the third crossroads, we agreed; but then …
He moves away.
Forwards, back,
same length of trek.
Both out and in
you scrape your skin.
[Stops.]
But what I hear is a wild ceaseless lament
for hearth and home, and dreadfully lost content.
[Walks a few steps; stops again.]
‘Go around’, said the Boyg.
[Hears singing from within the cabin.]
No, this time arrow-straight
however narrow the gate!
He runs towards the cabin. At that moment SOLVEIG appears in the doorway, dressed for church and carrying a psalter wrapped in a cloth. She has a staff in her hand. She stands erect and benign.
PEER [throws himself down on the threshold]:
If you’ve passed judgement upon me, speak it now!
SOLVEIG: He is here, he is here, I know.
She fumbles for him; it is now evident that she is almost blind.
PEER: Put it on record how grievous have been the wrongs!
SOLVEIG: You have not wronged me in any way,
my dearest boy.
Fumbles again and finds him.
BUTTON MOULDER’S VOICE [behind the cabin]:
Your sins are numbered.
PEER: Ay, numbered in wild throngs.
SOLVEIG [sitting down beside him]:
You have made my life a sequence of love’s songs.
Blessed it is that, at the last, you are home
and that ‘the day of Pentecost is fully come’.
PEER: Oh, Solveig, I am lost.
SOLVEIG: But surely to be found
in Him who holds all things at His command.
PEER [laughing abruptly]:
Unless you can solve riddles I am done for.
SOLVEIG: So tell me what they are, and let us see.
PEER: What cannot I tell? So, what was I made man for?
So where has Peer Gynt been since you and he
last met?
SOLVEIG: Where been?
PEER: Ay, with the birthmark of his destiny
stark on his forehead, as he first sprang out
of some divine thought?
Can you answer such questions? If you cannot,
I must now gravitate to where I belong
in the limbo of mists where there’s no guiding song.
SOLVEIG [smiling]:
Oh, that riddle is easy.
PEER: Then explain it to me.
Where has it been, my true self, all this time?
As though with ‘the father’s name
written in his forehead’?
SOLVEIG: In my faith, in my hope, and in my love you have been carried.
PEER [stepping back from her in his astonishment]:
I cannot believe what I hear.
Are you saying it is I whom you bear,
and have borne, within you, this many a long year?
SOLVEIG: That is what I am saying. And who might the father be?
It is the one who answers his mother’s plea
with full forgiveness.
PEER [as a gleam of light falls across him, cries out]:
Mother, wife, dear maiden,
keep me near your heart safe-hidden.
He clings to her and hides his face in her lap. There is a long silence. The sun rises in its full glory.
SOLVEIG [sings quietly]:
Sleep, my love, my own sweet child,
I shall rock thee free from guilt.
The child’s safe in its mother’s lap.
The livelong day they play and sleep.
The child’s at rest; his mother’s breast
protects him; and in God they’re blest.
The boy-child lay, close to my heart,
the livelong day. Now he is tired.
Sleep, my love, my own sweet child,
I have rocked thee free from guilt.
BUTTON MOULDER’S VOICE [from behind the cabin]:
Last crossroads, Peer? Our final meeting?
We’ll see. Till then, I shall say nothing.
SOLVEIG [singing more loudly in the clear light of day]:
I have borne thee freed from guilt.