John Gabriel Borkman

“ Nothing particular is gained by such a literal observance of the unity of time. For the rest, we feel definitely in John Gabriel Borkman what we already felt vaguely in Little Eyolf—that the poet’s technical staying-power is beginning to fail him. ”

“ So after all, it is not for nothing that I was born a poet. For now she is going forth into the great wide world, that I once yearned so passionately to see. Little Frida sets out in a splendid covered sledge with silver bells on the harness——
BORKMAN.
And runs over her father. ”

“ ELLA RENTHEIM. You cannot give up two or three little months to brighten the close of a poor waning life?
ERHART.
I cannot, Aunt, however much I may wish to.
ELLA RENTHEIM.
Not for the sake of one who loves you so dearly?
MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking sharply at him.] And your mother has no power over you either, any more?
ERHART. I will always love you, mother; but I cannot go on living for you alone. This is no life for me.
BORKMAN. Then come and join with me, after all! For life, life means work, Erhart. Come, we two will go forth into life and work together! ”

“ There was scarcely a theatre in Scandinavia or Finland at which John Gabriel Borkman was not acted in the course of January 1897. Helsingors led the way with performances both at the Swedish and the Finnish Theatres on January 10. Christiania and Stockholm followed on January 25, Copenhagen on January 31; and meanwhile the piece had been presented at many provincial theatres as well. In Christiania, Borkman, Gunhild, and Ella were played by Garmann, Fru Gundersen, and Froken Reimers respectively; in Copenhagen, by Emil Pousen, Fru Eckhardt, and Fru Hennings. ”

“ ELLA RENTHEIM. It is you who have sinned. You have done to death all the gladness of my life in me.
BORKMAN.
[Anxiously.] Do not say that, Ella!
ELLA RENTHEIM. All a woman's gladness at any rate. From the day when your image began to dwindle in my mind, I have lived my life as though under an eclipse. During all these years it has grown harder and harder for me—and at last utterly impossible—to love any living creature. Human beings, animals, plants: I shrank from all—from all but one——
BORKMAN.
What one?
ELLA RENTHEIM.
Erhart, of course. ”

“ ELLA RENTHEIM.
Yes, yes it is.
BORKMAN.
Your own heart is the only thing that exists for you.
ELLA RENTHEIM.
The only thing! The only thing! You are right there.
BORKMAN. But you must remember that I am a man. As a woman, you were the dearest thing in the world to me. But if the worst comes to the worst, one woman can always take the place of another.
ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looks at him with a smile.] Was that your experience when you had made Gunhild your wife?
BORKMAN. No. But the great aims I had in life helped me to bear even that. ”

“ You are a murderer! You have committed the one mortal sin!
BORKMAN.
[Falling back towards the piano.] You are raving, Ella!
ELLA RENTHEIM. You have killed the love-life in me. [Still nearer him.] Do you understand what that means? The Bible speaks of a mysterious sin for which there is no forgiveness. I have never understood what it could be; but now I understand. The great, unpardonable sin is to murder the love-life in a human soul. ”

“ John Blair Erhart, Miss Maude Banks Gunhild, and Miss Ann Warrington Ella. For some reason, which I can only conjecture to be the weakness of the the third act, the play seems nowhere to have taken a very firm hold on the stage.
Dr. Brahm has drawn attention to the great similarity between the theme of John Gabriel Borkman and that of Pillars of Society. "In both," he says, "we have a business man of great ability who is guilty of a crime; in both this man is placed between two sisters ”

“ I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world—out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality! I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew—higher than ever before—in spite of all that lay between. ”

“ BORKMAN. I will work out my own redemption, that is what I will do. I will begin at the bottom again. It is only through his present and his future that a man can atone for his past. Through work, indefatigable work, for all that, in my youth, seemed to give life its meaning—and that now seems a thousand times greater than it did then. Erhart, will you join with me and help me in this new life? ”

“ BORKMAN.
Until what?
ELLA RENTHEIM. Until his mother—his mother in the flesh, I mean—took him from me again.
BORKMAN.
He had to leave you in any case; he had to come to town.
ELLA RENTHEIM. [Wringing her hands.] Yes, but I cannot bear the solitude— the emptiness! I cannot bear the loss of your son's heart!
BORKMAN. [With an evil expression in his eyes.] H'm—I doubt whether you have lost it, Ella. Hearts are not so easily lost to a certain person—in the room below.
ELLA RENTHEIM. I have lost Erhart here, and she has won him back again. Or if not she, some one else. ”

“ MRS. BORKMAN.
[Scornfully.] H'm, happiness, happiness——
MRS. WILTON. I have never before known happiness in life. And I cannot possibly drive happiness away from me, merely because it comes so late.
MRS. BORKMAN.
And how long do you think this happiness will last?
ERHART. [Interrupting.] Whether it lasts or does not last, mother, it doesn't matter now!
MRS. BORKMAN. [In anger.] Blind boy that you are! Do you not see where all this is leading you?
ERHART. I don't want to look into the future. I don't want to look around me in any direction; I am only determined to live my own life—at last! ”

“ BORKMAN.
Out into the storm of life, I tell you. Let me go, Ella!
ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Holding him back.] No, no, I won't let you out! You are ill.
I can see it in your face!
BORKMAN.
Let me go, I tell you!
[He tears himself away from her, and goes out by the hall.
ELLA RENTHEIM.
[In the doorway.] Help me to hold him, Gunhild!
MRS. BORKMAN. [Coldly and sharply, standing in the middle of the room.] I will not try to hold any one in all the world. Let them go away from me—both the one and the other! As far—as far as ever they please. [Suddenly, with a piercing shriek.] Erhart, don't leave me! ”

“ My illness will never be cured, Borkman.
BORKMAN.
Oh, you must not believe that, Ella.
ELLA RENTHEIM. It is a disease that there is no help or cure for. The doctors can do nothing with it. They must just let it take its course. They cannot possibly check it; at most, they can allay the suffering. And that is always something. ”

“ You can't think how lonely I feel since Frida left home.
BORKMAN.
Oh, come—you have plenty left.
FOLDAL. Yes, God knows I have—five of them. But Frida was the only one who at all understood me. [Shaking his head sadly.] The others don't understand me a bit.
BORKMAN. [Gloomily, gazing straight before him, and drumming on the table with his fingers.] No, that's just it. That is the curse we exceptional, chosen people have to bear. The common herd— the average man and woman—they do not understand us, Vilhelm. ”

“ I have never known pity, since you deserted me. I was incapable of feeling it. If a poor starved child came into my kitchen, shivering, and crying, and begging for a morsel of food, I let the servants look to it. I never felt any desire to take the child to myself, to warm it at my own hearth, to have the pleasure of seeing it eat and be satisfied. And yet I was not like that when I was young; that I remember clearly! It is you that have created an empty, barren desert within me—and without me too! ”

“ MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking at him with deep solemnity.] Have you forgotten what you have consecrated your life to, Erhart?
ERHART. [With an outburst.] Oh, say rather what you have consecrated my life to. You, you have been my will. You have never given me leave to have any of my own. But now I cannot bear this yoke any longer. I am young; remember that, mother. [With a polite, considerate glance towards BORKMAN.] I cannot consecrate my life to making atonement for another—whoever that other may be.
MRS. BORKMAN. [Seized with growing anxiety.] Who is it that has transformed you, Erhart? ”

“ MRS. BORKMAN.
You are going to the Hinkels', Erhart!
ERHART. [Impatiently.] Well, really, mother, I don't think I can well get out of it. What do you say, Aunt?
ELLA RENTHEIM.
I should like you to feel quite free, Erhart.
MRS. BORKMAN.
[Goes up to her menacingly.] You want to take him away from me!
ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Rising.] Yes, if only I could, Gunhild!
[Music is heard from above.
ERHART. [Writhing as if in pain.] Oh, I can't endure this! [Looking round.] What have I done with my hat? [To ELLA RENTHEIM.] Do you know the air that she is playing up there? ”

“ BORKMAN stands for a moment gazing at the closed door; makes a movement as though to call FOLDAL back, but changes his mind, and begins to pace the floor with his hands behind his back. Then he stops at the table beside the sofa and puts out the lamp. The room becomes half dark. After a short pause, there comes a knock at the tapestry door. ”

“ The actual drama is over long before the curtain falls on either play, and in the one case we have Rita and Allmers, in the other Ella and Borkman, looking back over their shattered lives and playing chorus to their own tragedy. For my part, I set the highest value on these choral odes, these mournful antiphones, in which the poet definitely triumphs over the mere playwright. They seem to me noble and beautiful in themselves, and as truly artistic, if not as theatrical, as any abrupter catastrophe could be. ”

“ FOLDAL. [Clasping his hands.] To think that my little Frida was in that magnificent sledge!
BORKMAN. [Nodding.] Yes, yes, Vilhelm, your daughter has come to drive in her carriage. And Master Erhart, too. Tell me, did you notice the silver bells?
FOLDAL. Yes, indeed. Silver bells did you say? Were they silver? Real, genuine silver bells?
BORKMAN. You may be quite sure of that. Everything was genuine—both outside and in.
FOLDAL. [In quiet emotion.] Isn't it strange how fortune can sometimes befriend one? It is my—my little gift of song that has transmuted itself into music in Frida. ”

“ BORKMAN. [With cold self-control.] How well I recognise your passionate, ungovernable spirit, Ella. No doubt it is natural enough that you should look at the thing in this light. Of course, you are a woman, and therefore it would seem that your own heart is the one thing you know or care about in this world. ”

“ Aunt,
aunt! Is it possible? Are you here?
ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Throws her arms round his neck.] Erhart! My dear, dear boy!
Why, how big you have grown! Oh, how good it is to see you again!
MRS. BORKMAN. [Sharply.] What does this mean, Erhart? Were you hiding out in the hallway?
MRS. WILTON.
[Quickly.] Erhart—Mr. Borkman came in with me.
MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking hard at him.] Indeed, Erhart! You don't come to your mother first?
ERHART. I had just to look in at Mrs. Wilton's for a moment—to call for little Frida.
MRS. BORKMAN.
Is that Miss Foldal with you too? ”

“ Well and good, Ella. I am man enough to bear my own name alone.
ELLA RENTHEIM. [Seizing and pressing his hand.] Thank you, thank you! Now there has been a full settlement between us! Yes, yes, let it be so! You have made all the atonement in your power. For when I have gone from the world, I shall leave Erhart Rentheim behind me!
[The tapestry door is thrown open. MRS. BORKMAN, with the large shawl over her head, stands in the doorway.
MRS. BORKMAN. [In violent agitation.] Never to his dying day shall Erhart be called by that name!
ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Shrinking back.] Gunhild! ”

“ ERHART. [With laboured defiance.] I am in my own power, mother! And working my own will!
BORKMAN. [Advancing towards ERHART.] Then perhaps my hour has come at last.
ERHART. [Distantly and with measured politeness.] How so! How do you mean, sir?
MRS. BORKMAN.
[Scornfully.] Yes, you may well ask that.
BORKMAN. [Continuing undisturbed.] Listen, Erhart—will you not cast in your lot with your father? It is not through any other man's life that a man who has fallen can be raised up again. These are only empty fables that have been told to you down here in the airless room. ”

“ ELLA RENTHEIM. [Slowly.] I wanted to smooth the way for Erhart to happiness in life.
MRS. BORKMAN. [Contemptuously.] Pooh—people situated as we are have something else than happiness to think of.
ELLA RENTHEIM.
What, then?
MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking steadily and earnestly at her.] Erhart has in the first place to make so brilliant a position for himself, that no trace shall be left of the shadow his father has cast upon my name—and my son's.
ELLA RENTHEIM. [Searchingly.] Tell me, Gunhild, is this what Erhart himself demands of his life? ”

“ BORKMAN.
[With a look towards ELLA.] In atonement for my blackest sin.
MRS. BORKMAN. [Repelling the idea.] A sin towards a stranger only. Remember the sin towards me! [Looking triumphantly at them both.] But he will not obey you! When I cry out to him in my need, he will come to me! It is with me that he will remain! With me, and never with any one else. [Suddenly listens, and cries.] I hear him! He is here, he is here! Erhart!
[ERHART BORKMAN hastily tears open the hall door, and enters the room. He is wearing an overcoat and has his hat on.
ERHART. [Pale and anxious.] Mother! ”

“ ELLA RENTHEIM.
[With surprise.] Erhart! How can Erhart have done that?
MRS. BORKMAN. He has taken an interest in Foldal's youngest daughter. He has taught her things, and put her in the way of getting employment, and some day providing for herself. I am sure that is a great deal more than her father could ever have done for her.
ELLA RENTHEIM.
Yes, I daresay her father can't afford to do much.
MRS. BORKMAN.
And then Erhart has arranged for her to have lessons in music.
She has made such progress already that she can come up to—to
him in the gallery, and play to him. ”