Henrik Ibsen

“ Lady Inger. I know it even too well, Olaf Skaktavl! But times there be when my thoughts are manifold and strange. I cannot impart them fully either to you or to any one else. Often I know not the right course to choose. And yet—a second time to make a Danish lord my son-in-law,—nought but the uttermost need could drive me to that resource; and heaven be praised—things have not yet come to that!
117Olaf Skaktavl. I am no wiser than before, Lady Inger;—why would you keep Nils Lykke at Östråt? ”

“ You mistake, Elina—’tis no outlaw I look for.
Elina. [Rises.] Then I have understood you ill indeed.
Lady Inger. Listen to me, my child; but think as you listen; if indeed you can tame that wild spirit of yours.
Elina. I am tame, till you have spoken.
Lady Inger. Attend, then, to what I have to tell you.—I have sought, so far as lay in my power, to keep you in ignorance of all our griefs and miseries. What could it avail to fill your young heart with wrath and care? ’Tis not women’s weeping and wailing that can deliver us; we need the courage and strength of men. ”

“ Elina. That can you.
Nils Lykke. ’Tis well;—and it may be that this openness has already in part reconciled us. Ay—my hope is yet bolder. The time may yet come when you will think of the stranger knight without hate or bitterness in your soul. Nay,—mistake me not! I mean not now—but some time, in the days to come. And that this may be the less hard for you—and as I have begun once for all to speak to you plainly and openly —let me tell you——
Elina. ”

“ Two, possibly more than two, of the newspapers promptly discovered that I had borrowed this, that, and the other thing from Henrik Hertz’s play, Svend Dyring’s House.
This is a baseless and indefensible critical assertion. It is evidently to be ascribed to the fact that the metre of the ancient ballads is employed in both plays. But my tone is quite different from Hertz’s; the language of my play has a different ring; a light summer breeze plays over the rhythm of my verse; over that of Hertz’s brood the storms of autumn. ”

“ Olaf Skaktavl. For twenty years have I been homeless. In the mountains of Jæmteland my hair has grown grey. My dwelling has been with wolves and bears.—You see, Lady Inger—I need you not; but both nobles and people stand in sore need of you.
Lady Inger. The old burden.
Olaf Skaktavl. Ay, it sounds but ill in your ears, I know; yet hear it you must, for all that. In brief, then: I come from Sweden: troubles are brewing: the Dales are ready to rise. ”

“ Lady Inger!
Lady Inger. Be calm, Sir Councillor! Your life is safe. But you come not outside the gates of Östråt before victory is ours.
Nils Lykke. Death and destruction!
Lady Inger. It boots not to resist. You come not from this place. So rest you quiet; ’tis your wisest course.
Nils Lykke. [To himself.] Ah,—I am overreached. She has been craftier than I. [A thought strikes him.] But if I yet——?
Lady Inger. [To Olaf Skaktavl.] Ride with Count Sture’s troops to the frontier; then without pause to Peter Kanzler, and bring me back my child. ”

“ Knights and nobles sang your praise in the feast-hall; and even the peasants, far and near, called you the country’s pillar and its hope. All thought that through you the good times were to come again! All thought that through you a new day was to dawn over the land! The night is still here; and I scarce know if through you I dare look for any morning.
Lady Inger. ’Tis easy to see whence you have learnt such venomous words. You have let yourself give ear to what the thoughtless rabble mutters and murmurs about things it can little judge of.
Elina. ”

“ Olaf Skaktavl. Östråt is no place of safety for an outlaw? That I have long known. But you forget that an outlaw is unsafe wheresoever he may wander.
Lady Inger. Speak then; I will not hinder you.
Olaf Skaktavl. ’Tis nigh on thirty years now since first I saw you. It was at Akershus [18] in the house of Knut Alfson and his wife. You were little more than a child then; yet were you bold as the soaring falcon, and wild and headstrong too at times. Many were the wooers around you. I too held you dear—dear as no woman before or since. ”

“ My mood of the moment was more in harmony with the literary romanticism of the Middle Ages than with the deeds of the Sagas, with poetical than with prose composition, with the word-melody of the ballad than with the characterisation of the Saga.
Thus it happened that the fermenting, formless design for the tragedy, The Vikings at Helgeland, transformed itself temporarily into the lyric drama, The Feast at Solhoug. ”

“ Margit.
Ere that may be, I must tell you plain,
You must rid yourself of your ravening train.
You must scour no longer with yell and shout
O’er the country-side in a galloping rout;
You must still the shudder that spreads around
When Knut Gesling is to a bride-ale bound.
Courteous must your mien be when a-feasting you ride;
Let your battle-axe hang at home at the chimney-side—
It ever sits loose in your hand, well you know,
When the mead has gone round and your brain is aglow.
From no man his rightful gear shall you wrest,
You shall harm no harmless maiden ”

“ Nils Lykke. Be sure I shall need all my guile here, if I am to face my foe with even weapons. And let me tell you, ’tis of the utmost moment to me that I acquit me of my mission secretly and well. You must know that when I set forth I was scarce in favour with my lord the King. He held me in suspicion; though I dare swear I have served him as well as any man could, in more than one ticklish charge.
Jens Bielke. That you may safely boast. God and all men know you for the craftiest devil in all the three kingdoms.
Nils Lykke. I thank you! Though, after all, ’tis not much to say. ”

“ Elina. Bethink you: this half year past my dearest sister Lucia has been sleeping in the vault below.
Biörn. That is not all, Mistress Elina—it is not that alone that makes you now thoughtful and white and silent, now restless and ill at ease, as you are to-night.
Elina. Not that alone, you think? And wherefore not? Was she not gentle and pure and fair as a summer night? Biörn,—I tell you, Lucia was dear to me as my life. Have you forgotten how many a time, when we were children, we sat on your knee in the winter evenings? You sang songs to us, and told us tales——
Biörn. ”

“ Then—to chase him away like a dog; to drive him off with jibes and scorn; to make it known over all the land that Nils Lykke had come a-wooing to Östråt in vain—! I tell you I would give ten years of my life but to see that day!
Olaf Skaktavl. In faith and truth, Inger Gyldenlöve—is this your purpose towards him?
Lady Inger. This and nought else, as sure as God lives! Trust me, Olaf Skaktavl, I mean honestly by my countrymen; but I am in nowise my own mistress. Things there be that must be kept hidden, or ’twere my death-blow. ”

“ There is, it is clear, an element of unsolved contradiction in Ibsen’s thought;—Love is at once so precious and so deadly, a possession so glorious that all other things in life are of less worth, and yet capable of producing only disastrously illusive effects upon those who have entered into the relations to which it prompts. But with Ibsen—and it is a grave intellectual defect—there is an absolute antagonism between spirit and form. An institution is always, with him, a shackle for the free life of souls, not an organ through which they attain expression ”

“ How far the details of that drama then took shape, I am no longer able to say. But I remember perfectly that the two figures of which I first caught sight were the two women who in course of time became Hiördis and Dagny. There was to be a great banquet in the play, with passion-rousing, fateful quarrels during its course. Of other characters and passions, and situations produced by these, I meant to include whatever seemed to me most typical of the life which the Sagas reveal. In short, it was my intention to reproduce dramatically exactly what the Saga of the Volsungs gives in epic form. ”

“ We need go no further than the end of the first act to understand the reason. On an audience which knows nothing of the play, the sudden appearance of a “Stranger,” to whose identity it has not the slightest clue, can produce no effect save one of bewilderment. To rely on such an incident for what was evidently intended to be a thrilling “curtain,” was to betray extreme inexperience; and this single trait is typical of much in the play. Nevertheless Lady Inger marks a decisive advance in Ibsen’s development. It marks, one may say, the birth of his power of invention. ”

“ But Olaf Skaktavl was too swift of hand.
[Olaf Skaktavl comes silently into the hall.
Lady Inger. [After a pause, without looking at him.] Is it done?
Olaf Skaktavl. You need fear him no more; he will betray no one.
Lady Inger. [As before.] Then he is dumb?
Olaf Skaktavl. Six inches of steel in his breast. I felled him with my left hand.
Lady Inger. Ay, ay—the right was too good for such work.
Olaf Skaktavl. That is your affair;—the thought was yours.—And now to Sweden! Peace be with you meanwhile! When next we meet at Östråt, I shall bring another with me. ”

“ Lady Inger. And how did the others keep their promise? I speak not of you, Olaf Skaktavl, but of your friends, all Norway’s nobles? Not one of them, in all these years, has had the courage to be a man; yet they lay it to my charge that I am a woman.
Olaf Skaktavl. I know what you would say. Why have they bent to the yoke, and not defied the tyrants to the last? ’Tis but too true; there is base metal enough in our noble houses nowadays. ”

“ Peace, I say! look how the people swarm.
[A funeral hymn is heard from the room within. There comes the coronation train. What a throng! All men bow themselves before the King’s mother. Ay, ay; has she not fought for her son—even till her hands grew red withal?—Where are my daughters? I see them not.
Nils Lykke. God’s blood!—what has befallen here?
Lady Inger. My daughters—my fair daughters! I have none any more. I had one left, and her I lost even as she was mounting her bridal bed. [Whispers.] In it lay Lucia dead. There was no room for two.
Nils Lykke. ”

“ Hush!
[Lady Inger Gyldenlöve enters rapidly from the hall, without noticing the others; she goes to the window, draws the curtain, and gazes out as if watching for some one on the high road; after a while, she turns and goes slowly back into the hall.
Elina. [Softly, following her with her eyes.] White, white as the dead——!
[An uproar of many voices is heard outside the door on the right.
Biörn. What can this be?
Elina. Go out and see what is amiss.
[Einar Huk, the bailiff, appears in the anteroom, with a crowd of Retainers and Peasants.
Einar Huk. [In the doorway.] Straight in to her! ”

“ I cannot!
[Steals a glance towards the Banquet Hall, but turns away again as if in dread, and whispers:
I can see them in there now. Pale spectres—dead ancestors—fallen kinsfolk.—Ah, those eyes that pierce me from every corner!
[Makes a gesture of repulsion, and cries: Sten Sture! Knut Alfson! Olaf Skaktavl! Back—back!—I cannot do this!
[A Stranger, strongly built, and with grizzled hair and beard, has entered from the Banquet Hall. He is dressed in a torn lambskin tunic; his weapons are rusty.
The Stranger. [Stops in the doorway, and says in a low voice.] Hail to you, Inger Gyldenlöve! ”

“ Nils Lykke. I? Well, in so far that I am Lady Inger’s guest this evening.
Nils Stensson. A guest?—Is not to-night the third night after Martinmas?
Nils Lykke. The third night after—? Ay, right enough.—Would you seek the lady of the house at once? I think she is not yet gone to rest. But might not you sit down and rest awhile, dear young Sir? See, here is yet a flagon of wine remaining, and doubtless you will find some food. Come, fall to; you will do wisely to refresh your strength. ”

“ I have been unloving to my mother. To-morrow will I go to her; she must forgive me where I have erred.
Nils Lykke. And give her consent to our bond.
156Elina. That will she. Oh, I am sure she will. My mother is kind; all the world is kind;—I can no longer feel hatred for any living soul—save one.
Nils Lykke. Save one?
Elina. Ah, ’tis a mournful history. I had a sister——
Nils Lykke. Lucia?
Elina. Did you know Lucia?
Nils Lykke. No, no; I have but heard her name.
Elina. She too gave her heart to a knight. He betrayed her;—now she is in Heaven.
Nils Lykke. And you——
Elina. ”

“ I have never been your enemy,—though, as a subject of the King of Denmark, I lacked not good cause.
Lady Inger. I understand you. I have not been pliant enough. It has not proved so easy as some of you hoped to lure me over into your camp.—Yet methinks you have nought to complain of. My daughter Merete’s husband is your countryman—further I cannot go. My position is no easy one, Nils Lykke!
Nils Lykke. That I can well believe. Both nobles and people here in Norway think they have an ancient claim on you—a claim, ’tis said, you have but half fulfilled. ”

“ Finn. An empty helmet, a sword with no edge, a shield with no grip—so it has all come to that. Who can blame Lady Inger if she leaves such weapons to hang scoured and polished on the walls, instead of rusting them in Danish blood? ”

“ But if the people were now to rise all over Norway’s land?—if we all rose as one man, nobles and peasants together?—Ay, Lady Inger Gyldenlöve, the time we have waited for is surely come. We have but to rise now to drive the strangers from the land. ”

“ We will join them! We will help. We will free ourselves!
Lady Inger. [To herself.] Can the time be come?
Einar Huk. From all our borderlands the peasants are pouring across to the Dales. Even outlaws that have wandered for years in the mountains are venturing down to the homesteads again, and drawing men together, and whetting their rusty swords.
Lady Inger. [After a pause.] Tell me, men—have you thought well of this? Have you counted the cost, if King Gustav’s men should win?
Biörn. [Softly and imploringly to Lady Inger.] Count the cost to the Danes if King Gustav’s men should lose. ”

“ At this moment, maybe, I had been standing at your side as the champion of all that suffer wrong in Norway’s land. For this I believe: a woman is the mightiest power in the world, and in her hand it lies to guide a man whither God Almighty would have him go.
Elina. [To herself.] Can it be as he says? Nay, nay; there is falsehood in his eyes and deceit on his lips. And yet—no song is sweeter than his words.
Nils Lykke. [Coming closer, speaks low and more intimately.] As you have dwelt here at Östråt, alone with your changeful thoughts, how often have you felt your bosom stifling ”

“ Falk.
The poet, yes; for poets all men are
Who see, thro’ all their labours, mean or great,
In pulpit or in schoolroom, church or state,
The Ideal’s lone beacon-splendour flame afar.
Yes, upward is my flight; the winged steed
Is saddled; I am strung for noble deed.
And now, farewell!
Svanhild.
Farewell!
Falk [embracing her] .
One kiss!
Svanhild.
The last!
[Tears herself free.
Now I can lose thee gladly till life’s past!
453Falk.
Tho’ quenched were all the light of earth and sky,—
The thought of light is God, and cannot die.
Svanhild [withdrawing towards the background] . ”