Bildad

“ Binet says that the man who has not every type of imagery almost equally well developed is only the fraction120 of a man. While this no doubt puts the matter too strongly, yet images do play an important part in our thinking.
Images Supply Material for Imagination and Memory.—Imagery supplies the pictures from which imagination builds its structures. Given a rich supply of images from the various senses, and imagination has the material necessary to construct times and events long since past, or to fill the future with plans or experiences not yet reached. ”

“ I have wrought so woeful a play, Soon will her sorrow begin! ALFHILD. O, tell me, Olaf! what people are they Who live in the house I was in? OLAF. Each one who like you is good and kind, Each one who is child-like in spirit and mind. 'Tis the church, God's house,—it belongs to him. ALFHILD. The mighty father! 'Tis only your whim! His house is high over the stars in the sky, Where the white swan sails undefiled, So high 'tis beyond any mortal eye Save that of the dreaming child!— The church that you spoke of! So then it is there We shall ride in festal procession, As bridegroom and bride! ”

“ ASTA. [Shrieking and stopping her ears.] Alfred!
ALLMERS. [Clenching his hand firmly upon the table.] Can you conceive the meaning of a thing like this?
ASTA. [Looks at him.] Of what?
ALLMERS. Of this that has been done to Rita and me.
ASTA. The meaning of it?
ALLMERS. [Impatiently.] Yes, the meaning, I say. For, after all, there must be a meaning in it. Life, existence—destiny, cannot be so utterly meaningless.
ASTA. Oh, who can say anything with certainty about these things, my dear Alfred?
ALLMERS. [Laughs bitterly.] No, no; I believe you are right there. ”

“ MRS. SOLNESS and DR. HERDAL go into the house. HILDA remains standing on the verandah. SOLNESS comes from the garden, up the flight of steps. SOLNESS.
Somebody wants me, I hear.
HILDA.
Yes; it is I, Mr. Solness.
SOLNESS.
Oh, is it you, Hilda? I was afraid it might be Aline or the Doctor.
HILDA.
You are very easily frightened, it seems!
SOLNESS.
Do you think so?
HILDA.
Yes; people say that you are afraid to climb about—on the scaffoldings, you know. ”

“ At the canonization of Saint Henrik Ibsen, you yourself unveiled the monument to him which bears on its pedestal the noble inscription, 'I came not to call sinners, but the righteous, to repentance.' The proof of what I say is that our routine work, and what may be called our ornamental and figure-head work, is being more and more sought after by the English; whilst the thinking, organizing, calculating, directing work is done by yellow brains, brown brains, and black brains, just as it was done in my early days by Jewish brains, Scottish brains, Italian brains, German brains. ”

“ We think in the direction of that which we perceive. The image seems to prepare the adaptation of the individual to his surroundings; it creates the foresight, the preparation of the means, and, in a word, everything which constitutes for us a final cause. Now, it is very necessary that the image appear real to be usefully the substitute of the sensation past or to come. ”

“ But for me she will always be the maiden of nineteen summers,—fair and fresh from the land of the Hrimthursar,—a daughter of gods and Vikings. From the moment of seeing her I wanted to die for her; and I dreamed of Valkyrja and of Vala-maids, of Freyja and of Gerda....
—She is seated, facing me, in an American railroad-car,—a third-class car, full of people whose forms have become indistinguishably dim in memory. She alone remains luminous, vivid: the rest have faded into shadow,—all except a man, sitting beside me, whose dark Jewish face, homely and kindly, is still visible in profile. ”

“ The Bishop smiled and sighed at the little reminiscence. "I think you are right, though, in one way, Ideala," he presently observed. "The powers of Light and Darkness are certainly having a hard fight for it in our day; but we have every reason to hope.
Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill."
"And, granted that the popular literature of the day is corrupt," the young sculptor put in, "and that the standard of society is being yearly lowered by it, still there is Art——"
"But there is so little of it," said Ideala; "I mean so little that elevates. ”

“ Acting as a substitute, the image not only appears as real as the sensation, it appears to be of the same nature; and the proof is that they are confounded one with the other, and that those who are not warned of the fact take one for the other. Every time a body is perceived, as I previously explained, there are images which affix themselves to the sensation unnoticed. We think we perceive when we are really remembering or imagining. This addition of the image to the sensation is not a petty and insignificant accessory; it forms the major part, perhaps nine-tenths, of perception. ”

“ What cannot human wisdom and art effect! The learned artist who hath prepared us this show is certainly right in some things; the deep insight into human nature, which the great Pater Roger hath attained unto in our time, will probably in after times actually change the aspect of the world, and all which we now deem great and noble will perhaps seem but as dreaming and child's play to posterity: but how mutable all things are, my Ingeborg! ”

“ Two words of answer are necessary to this curious argument, which is nothing less than an effort to define the mental by the unreal, and to suppose that an appearance cannot be physical. No doubt, we say, every image, fantastical as it may seem as signification, is real in a certain sense, since it is the perception of a physical impression; but this physical nature of images does not prevent our making a distinction between true and false images. ”

“ Lafcadio Hearn.
TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
New York, 1887.
Dear Miss Bisland,—Thanks for the gracious little letter. I wish I could see you, and see other friends; but fate forbids. Distances are too enormous; engagements imperative; preparations for coming journey made my head whirl. For I return to the tropics, dear Miss Bisland,—probably forever: I imagine that civilization will behold me no more, except as a visitor at very long intervals. I would like to write you sometimes, praying only that my letters be not ever shown unto newspaper people. ”

“ SOLNESS.
Too late. These powers—these—these—
HILDA. —devils—
SOLNESS.
Yes, these devils! And the troll within me as well—they have drawn all the life-blood out of her. [Laughs in desperation.] They did it for my happiness! Yes, yes! [Sadly.] And now she is dead—for my sake. And I am chained alive to a dead woman. [In wild anguish.] I—I who cannot live without joy in life!
[HILDA moves round the table and seats herself on the bench, with her elbows on the table, and her head supported by her hands. HILDA.
[Sits and looks at him awhile.] What will you build next? ”

“ Now I am with the Latin; I live in a Latin city;—I seldom hear the English tongue except when I enter the office for a few brief hours. I eat and drink and converse with members of the races you detest like the son of Odin that you are. I see beauty here all around me,—a strange, tropical, intoxicating beauty. I consider it my artistic duty to let myself be absorbed into this new life, and study its form and colour and passion. And my impressions I occasionally put into the form of the little fantastics which disgust you so much, because they are not of the Æsir and Jötunheim. ”

“ SOLNESS.
Open the door?
HILDA.
Yes. Let them come in to you on friendly terms, as it were.
SOLNESS.
No, no, no! The younger generation—it means retribution, you see. It comes, as if under a new banner, heralding the turn of fortune.
HILDA.
[Rises, looks at him, and says with a quivering twitch of her lips.] Can I be of any use to you, Mr. Solness?
SOLNESS.
Yes, you can indeed! For you, too, come—under a new banner it seems to me. You marshalled against youth—!
DR. HERDAL comes in by the hall-door. DR. HERDAL.
What—you and Miss Wangel here still? ”

“ A mind of great depth, a soul of prophetic vision has passed away; yet not without leaving its powerful impress—for Henrik Ibsen stood upon the heights, and from their loftiest peaks we beheld, with him, the heavy fogs of the present, and through the rifts we saw the bright rays of a new sun, the promise of the dawn of a freer, stronger Humanity. ”

“ ALFHILD. And where is the home, the house of God, Where the dead dream only of mirth? OLAF. Behold! Now they place him beneath the sod And cover him over with earth. ALFHILD. [Quiet and thoughtful, after a pause.] Not so was death in the song—not so. OLAF. 'Tis true; but no such joy and pleasure Has any one felt here below.— Have you never heard of the mountain king's treasure, Which night after night like gold would glow; But if you would seize the gold in your hand, You nothing would find save gravel and sand; And listen, Alfhild! it often is true That life turns out in the selfsame way ”

“ SOLNESS.
But not such a good thing for me. For then I shall have nobody to help me.
HILDA.
Can't you get hold of some one else who will do just as well?
SOLNESS.
Perhaps you would stay here and—and write in the ledger?
HILDA.
[Measures him with a glance.] Yes, I daresay! No, thank you—nothing of that sort for me.
[She again strolls across the room, and sits down on the rocking-chair. SOLNESS too goes to the table. HILDA.
[Continuing.] For there must surely be plenty of other thing to be done here. [Looks smilingly at him.] Don't you think so, too? ”

“ A figure was stealing along in the not very distinct moonlight; a human figure or—was it? Suddenly it stopped, half in shadow.
“Hi! Hallo! Who’s that,” I sung out.
There was no answer. Then I remembered that with my mind running upon Hensley I had used English. Yet the figure was that of a native. It wanted not the blackness of it in the uncertain light; the stealthy, sinuous movement of it was enough to show that. Yet, this certainty only enhanced the mystery. Natives are not wont to prowl about after dark with no apparent object, especially alone. ”

“ To the foreign student Bilderdijk is a singularly uninviting and unpleasing figure. He unites in himself all the unlovely and provincial features which deform the worst of his countrymen. He was violent, ignorant and dull; his view of art was confined to its declamatory and least beautiful side, and perhaps no writer of equal talent has shown so complete an absence of taste and tact. Ten Brink has summed up the character of Bilderdijk’s writings in an excellent passage:—“As an artist,” he says, “he can perhaps be best described in short as the cleverest versemaker of the 18th century. ”

“ Hurrah for Master Builder Solness!
[The shout is taken up. Then a shriek of horror. A human body, with planks and pieces of wood, is vaguely seen crashing down behind the trees.
Hilda: My Master Builder!
A Voice: Mr. Solness is dead. He fell right into the quarry.
Ragnar: So, after all, he could not do it.
Hilda: But he mounted right up to the top. And I heard harps in the air. (Waves her shawl, and shrieks with wild intensity) My—my Master Builder!
FOOTNOTES:
[N] Henrik Ibsen, poet and the creator of a new type of drama, was born at Skien, in South Norway, on March 20, 1828. ”

“ Have you any notion what Society really is? NoraWhat do I care about tiresome Society? I am laughing at something quite different, something extremely amusing. Tell me, Doctor Rank, are all the people who are employed in the Bank dependent on Torvald now? RankIs that what you find so extremely amusing? Nora [smiling and humming] That's my affair! [Walking about the room.] It's perfectly glorious to think that we have—that Torvald has so much power over so many people. [Takes the packet from her pocket.] Doctor Rank, what do you say to a macaroon? RankWhat, macaroons? ”

“ The beauty of Blasco Ibáñez's descriptions—a beauty by no means confined to the pictures he summons to the mind—is that, at their best, they rise to interpretation. He not only brings before the eye a vivid image, but communicates to the spirit an intellectual reaction. ”

“ The compression found necessary in order to yield room for the letters, which I think will bear comparison with the most famous letters in literature, has forced me to content myself with depicting the man merely in profile and giving a bare outline of his work as an artist. It has obliged me to abandon all temptation to dwell upon his more human side, his humour, tenderness, sympathy, eccentricity, and the thousand queer, charming qualities that made up his many-faceted nature. ”

“ How excited he was the first time he placed a palette in his hand and allowed him to copy on an old canvas a child St. John which he had finished for a society!... While the boy with his forehead wrinkled in his eagerness, tried to imitate his master's work, he [Pg 28] listened to the good advice that the master gave him without looking up from the canvas over which his angelic brush was running.
Painting must be religious; the first pictures in the world had been inspired by religion; outside of it, life offered nothing but base materialism, loathsome sins. ”

“ Do you want to kill me? To take from me what is more than my life?
SOLNESS.
And what is that?
HILDA.
The longing to see you great. To see you, with a wreath in your hand, high, high up upon a church-tower. [Calm again.] Come, out with your pencil now. You must have a pencil about you?
SOLNESS.
[Takes out his pocket-book.] I have one here.
HILDA.
[Lays the portfolio on the sofa-table.] Very well. Now let us two sit down here, Mr. Solness. [SOLNESS seats himself at the table. HILDA stands behind him, leaning over the back of the chair.] And now we well write on the drawings. ”