Henrik Ibsen

“ Agnes.
A burial.
Einar.
You? Why, who is dead?
Brand.
The God who was your God, you said.
Agnes.
[Shrinking back.]
Come, Einar!
Einar.
Brand!
Brand.
With cerements wound
The God of each mechanic slave,
Of each dull drudger, shall be laid
By broad day in his open grave.
End of the matter must be made;
And high time is it you should know
He ail’d a thousand years ago.
Einar.
Brand, you are ill!
Brand.
No, sound and fresh
As juniper and mountain-pine!
It is our age whose pining flesh
Craves burial at these hands of mine. ”

“ The Multitude.
Ay, woe on us,—his words are true!
The Sexton.
And yet, when from the dale we drew,
Upon ourselves we locked the door;
We have no home there, as before.
The Schoolmaster.
No, he has open’d all our eyes,
Laid bare sins, sicknesses, and lies;
The sleepy people sleeps no more;
And deadly to our waking seems
The life that satisfied our dreams.
The Dean.
Ah, trust me, that will soon pass over.
All will return to the old state,
If you will just be still and wait.
These folks, I’ll wage, will soon recover
The wonted calm they have foregone.
Brand.
Choose, men and women! ”

“ With devilish craft, where will is frail,
Men lay Love over, as a veil,
And cunningly conceal thereby
That all their life is coquetry.
Whose path’s the steep and perilous slope,
Let him but love,—and he may shirk it;
If he prefer Sin’s easy circuit,
Let him but love,—he still may hope;
If God he seeks, but fears the fray,
Let him but love,—’tis straight his prey;
If with wide-open eyes he err,
Let him but love,—there’s safety there!
Agnes.
Yes, it is false: yet still I fall
Questioning: Is it, after all?
Brand.
One point’s omitted: First the Will
Law’s thirst for righteousness must still. ”

“ Man’s work is what he’s fashion’d for,
And Paradise, for him, lies there.
’Twixt him and it though oceans swell,
And close at hand lie Satan’s quarter,
May he for that cry “Toil, farewell—
The way to hell’s distinctly shorter!”?
The Mayor.
To that I answer: Yes and No.
Some final haven man must win;—
If all our toil brings nothing in,
Who on a barren quest will go?
The fact stands thus: we want reward
For every labour, light or hard;
And if in arms we miss the prize,—
We gain our point by compromise.
Brand.
But black will never turn to white! ”

“ Brand.
[Carried away.]
Say, what further!
Agnes.
[Laying her hand on her breast.]
In my soul
I can feel new powers awaking,
I can see a dayspring breaking,
I can feel full floods that roll,
And my heart grows larger, freer,
Clasps the world within its girth,
And a voice interprets: Here
Shalt thou people a new earth!
All the thoughts that men shall utter,
All the deeds men shall achieve,
Waken, whisper, quiver, mutter,
As if now they were to live ”

“ Brand.
You are going west,
I northward. To the fjord from here
Two pathways lead,—both alike near.
Farewell!
Einar.
Farewell.
Brand.
[Turning round again.]
Light learn to part
From vapour.—Know that Life’s an art!
Einar.
[Waving him off.]
Go, turn the universe upside down;
Still in my ancient God I trust!
Brand.
Good; paint his crutches and his crown,—
I go to lay him in the dust!
[Disappears over the pass.
[Einar goes silently to the edge and looks after him.]
Agnes.
[Stands a moment lost in thought; then starts, looks about her uneasily, and asks:]
Is the sun set already? ”

“ Brand.
[Sinking in anguish upon the bench.]
Guilt-wrung or dying, still that lie
That every soul is ruin’d by!
[Hides his face in his hands.
111The Doctor.
[Goes towards him, looks at him, and shakes his head.]
You seek, a day that is no more,
In one and all things to restore.
You think, God’s venerable pact
With man is still a living fact;—
Each Age in its own way will walk;
Ours is not scared by nurses’ talk
Of hell-bound soul and burning brand;—
Humanity’s our first command!
Brand.
[Looking up.]
Humanity!—That sluggard phrase
Is the world’s watchword nowadays. ”

“ Brand.
To a man’s feet his native haunt
Is as unto the tree the root.
If there his labour fill no want
His deeds are doomed, his music mute.
The Mayor.
Success means just: Self-adaptation
To the requirements of the nation.
Brand.
Which from the heights you best o’erlook,
Not from the crag-encompass’d nook.
The Mayor.
That talk is fit for citizens,
Not for poor peasants of the glens.
Brand.
O, still your limitation vain
Between the mountain and the plain!
World-citizens you’d be of right,
While every civic claim you slight ”

“ 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. ”

“ Agnes.
And that God, who was to fall?
Brand.
He shall, none the less, be fell’d,—
But in secret, unbeheld,
Not before the eyes of all.
Now I see, I judged astray
Where the Folk’s salvation lay.
Not by high heroic charges
Can you make the People whole;
That which faculty enlarges
Does not heal the fissured soul. ”

“ Agnes.
I tremble Brand. You seem a Sword
Swung flaming by a wrathful Lord!
95Brand.
[With tears in his voice.]
Does not the world face me no less
With swordless sheath upon its thigh?
Am I not torn and baffled by
Its dull defiant stubbornness?
Agnes.
A hard condition you demand.
Brand.
Dare you impose a lighter?
Agnes.
Lay
That stern demand on whom you may,
And see who, tested so, will stand.
Brand.
Nay, you have reason for that fear.
So base, distorted, barren, sere,
The aspiring soul in men is grown.
’Tis thought a marvel,—by bequest
To give away one’s wealth unknown. ”

“ Brand.
Aught else: but this ye must not ask!
I’m summoned to a greater task.
The great world’s open ear I seek;
Through Life’s vast organ I must speak.
What should I here? By mountains pent
The voice of man falls impotent.
The Man.
By mountains echoed, longer heard
Is each reverberating word.
Brand.
Who in a cavern would be bound,
When broad meads beckon all around?
Who’ll sweat to plough the barren land
When there are fruitful fields at hand?
Who’ll rear his fruitage from the seed
When orchards ripen to the skies?
Who’ll struggle on with daily need
When vision gives him wings and eyes? ”

“ A storm is rising and chasing the clouds heavily over the snow-slopes; black peaks and summits appear here and there, and are veiled again by the mist.
Brand comes, bleeding and broken, up the mountain. ”

“ All or Nothing I will have;
If that call you disobey,
You have flung your life away.
No abatement in distress,
And for sin no tenderness,—
If life’s service God refuse,
Life you joyfully must lose.
Einar.
Fly this wild insensate play!
Spurn the sullen Doomer’s sway;
Live the life you know you may!
Brand.
At the crossway standst thou:—choose.
[Goes.
Einar.
Choose the stillness or the strife!
For the choice to go or stay
Is a choice of calm or fray,
78Is a choice of Night or Day,
Is a choice of Death or Life!
Agnes.
[Rises, and then says slowly:]
On through Death. ”

“ Earth has enslaved all earthly things;—
96Over Life’s precipices cast,
Each to its mouldering branches clings,
And, if they crumble, clutches fast
With tooth and nail to straws and bast
Agnes.
And, while they helpless, hopeless fall,
You cry: Give nothing or give all!
Brand.
He who would conquer still must fight,
Rise, fallen to the highest height. ”

“ Brand.
Man can’t be used, unless he perish!
The Dean.
Good God! How can you think I cherish
Any such purpose?
Brand.
Ay, indeed,
That’s the condition! First to bleed!
Your bloodless spirit to put on
Man must be first a skeleton! ”

“ But every man who fights in front
Must perish in the battle’s brunt;
If that he dares not, let him lay
His arms down ere the battle-day
The flag’s predestined to surrender
That has a timorous defender;
232And he that shudders at the cost,
Ere he is wounded, he is lost.
The Multitude.
He insolently bids us die
To serve unborn posterity!
Brand.
Through thorny steeps of sacrifice,
The way unto our Canaan lies.
Triumph through death! I call you all,
As Champions of God to fall!
The Sexton.
Well, we are in a pretty plight!
No mercy to expect below——
The Schoolmaster. ”

“ Which of the men who paint and rhyme
Dare fail when social claims importune?
Look at our soldiers! Why, the gleam
Of sabres is become a dream!
And wherefore? Since a law commands:
Postpone thy own need to the Land’s!
Let each his own excrescence pare,
Neither uplift him, nor protrude,
But vanish in the multitude.
208“Humane the age is,” says the Mayor:
And if humanely it be met
Will bring you fame and fortune yet.
But all your angles must be rounded,
Your gnarls and bosses scraped and pounded!
You must grow sleek as others do,
All singularities eschew,
If you would labour without let.
Brand. ”

“ Brand.
[Wildly clutching his head as if to gather his thoughts.]
Am I now blind? Or was I?
The Doctor.
Nay,
A father has no other way;
Don’t fancy that your act I blame;
I hold you greater, clipt and tame,
Than in your giant strength secure.—
Farewell! I’ve held you up a glass;
Use it and sigh: “Alas, alas,
Is this a Titan’s portraiture?” ”

“ 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;—
11But help is idle for the man
Who nothing wills but what he can. ”

“ Each a Man and each a Priest,
Stamp anew the outworn brand,
Make a Temple of the land.
[The multitude, including the Sexton and Schoolmaster, throng around him. Brand is lifted on to their shoulders.
Many Voices.
’Tis a great Time! Visions fair
Dazzle through the noontide glare.
[The great mass of the assemblage streams away up the valley; a few remain.
The Dean.
[To the departing crowd.]
O, ye blinded ones, what would you?
Lo! behind his seeming sooth
Satan scheming to delude you!
The Mayor.
Ho there! Turn! Folks born to track
Safe home-waters still and smooth! ”

“ Oh, what riches have I still! A sharp knock at the outer door; Agnes turns with a cry, and at the same moment sees Brand. The door is burst open, and a Woman, raggedly dressed, enters hastily, with a child in her arms. ”

“ 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?
5Brand.
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? ”

“ 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.” ”