Adventures in Criticism Part 18

For indeed it is not possible to name any book out of which a perverted mind will not draw food for its disease. The whole fallacy lies in supposing literature the cause of the disease. Evil men are not evil because they read bad books: they read bad books because they are evil: and being evil, or diseased, they are quickly able to extract evil or disease even from very good books. There is talk of disseminating the works of our best authors, at a cheap rate, in the hope that they will drive the Penny Dreadful out of the market. But has good literature at the cheapest driven the middle cla.s.ses from their false G.o.ds? And let it be remembered, to the credit of these poor boys, that they do buy their books. The middle cla.s.ses take _their_ poison on hire or exchange.

But perhaps the full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-cla.s.s tickets. I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all would not long survive that experiment.

IBSEN'S "PEER GYNT"

Oct. 7, 1892. A Masterpiece.

"_Peer Gynt_ takes its place, as we hold, on the summits of literature precisely because it means so much more than the poet consciously intended. Is not this one of the characteristics of the masterpiece, that everyone can read in it his own secret? In the material world (though Nature is very innocent of symbolic intention) each of us finds for himself the symbols that have relevance and value for him; and so it is with the poems that are instinct with true vitality."

I was glad to come across the above pa.s.sage in Messrs. William and Charles Archer's introduction to their new translation of Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_ (London: Walter Scott), because I can now, with a clear conscience, thank the writers for their book, even though I fail to find some of the things they find in it. The play's the thing after all. _Peer Gynt_ is a great poem: let us shake hands over that. It will remain a great poem when we have ceased pulling it about to find what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths.

Not a Pamphlet.

_Peer Gynt_ is an extremely modern story founded on old Norwegian folk-lore--the folk-lore which Asbjornsen and Moe collected, and Dasent translated for our delight in childhood. Old and new are curiously mixed; but the result is piquant and not in the least absurd, because the story rests on problems which are neither old nor new, but eternal, and on emotions which are neither older nor newer than the breast of man. To be sure, the true devotee of Ibsen will not be content with this. You will be told by Herr Jaeger, Ibsen's biographer, that _Peer Gynt_ is an attack on Norwegian romanticism.

The poem, by the way, is romantic to the core--so romantic, indeed, that the culminating situation, and the page for which everything has been a preparation, have to be deplored by Messrs. Archer as "a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen had not outgrown when he wrote _Peer Gynt_." But your true votary is for ever taking his G.o.d off the pedestal of the true artist to set him on the tub of the hot-gospeller; even so genuine a specimen of impressionist work as _Hedda Gabler_ being claimed by him for a sermon. And if ever you have been moved by _Ghosts_, or _Brand_, or _Peer Gynt_ to exclaim "This is poetry!" you have only to turn to Herr Jaeger--whose criticism, like his namesake's underclothing, should be labelled "All Pure Natural Wool"--to find that you were mistaken and that it is really pamphleteering.

Yet Enforcing a Moral.

To be sure, in one sense _Peer Gynt_ is a sermon upon a text. That is to say, it is written primarily to expound one view of man's duty, not to give a mere representation of life. The problem, not the picture, is the main thing. But then the problem, not the picture, is the main thing in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, _Faust_. In _Peer Gynt_ the poet's own solution of the problem is presented with more insistence than in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, or _Faust_: but the problem is wider, too.

The problem is, What is self? and how shall a man be himself? And the poet's answer is, "Self is only found by being lost, gained by being given away": an answer at least as old as the gospels. The eponymous hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, "the incarnation of a compromising dread of self-committal to any one course," a fellow who says,

"Ay, think of it--wish it done--_will_ it to boot, But _do_ it----. No, that's past my understanding!"

--who is only stung to action by pique, or by what is called the "instinct of self-preservation," an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is the very last that will preserve self.

The Story.

This fellow, Peer Gynt, wins the love of Solveig, a woman essentially whole-hearted, who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders self. Solveig, in short, stands in perfect ant.i.thesis to Peer. When Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to his hut in the forest. The scene in which she presents herself before Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed romantic I must own to thinking Solveig one of the most beautiful figures in poetry. Peer deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and grows an old woman while her lover roams the world, seeking everywhere and through the wildest adventures the satisfaction of his Self, acting everywhere on the Troll's motto, "To thyself be enough," and finding everywhere his major premiss turned against him, to his own discomfiture, by an ironical fate. We have one glimpse of Solveig, meanwhile, in a little scene of eight lines. She is now a middle-aged woman, up in her forest hut in the far north. She sits spinning in the sunshine outside her door and sings:--

_"Maybe both the winter and spring will pa.s.s by, And the next summer too, and the whole of the year; But thou wilt come one day....

G.o.d strengthen thee, whereso thou goest in the world!

G.o.d gladden thee, if at His footstool thou stand!

Here will I await thee till thou comest again; And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend!"_

At last Peer, an old man, comes home. On the heath around his old hut he finds (in a pa.s.sage which the translators call "fantastic,"

intending, I hope, approval by this word) the thoughts he has missed thinking, the watchword he has failed to utter, the tears he has missed shedding, the deed he has missed doing. The thoughts are thread-b.a.l.l.s, the watchword withered leaves, the tears dewdrops, etc.

Also he finds on that heath a b.u.t.ton-Moulder with an immense ladle.

The b.u.t.ton-Moulder explains to Peer that he must go into this ladle, for his time has come. He has neither been a good man nor a st.u.r.dy sinner, but a half-and-half fellow without any real self in him. Such men are dross, badly cast b.u.t.tons with no loops to them, and must go, by the Master's orders, into the melting-pot again. Is there no escape? None, unless Peer can find the loop of the b.u.t.ton, his real Self, the Peer Gynt that G.o.d made. After vain and frantic searching across the heath, Peer reaches the door of his own old hut. Solveig stands on the threshold.

As Peer flings himself to earth before her, calling out upon her to denounce him, she sits down by his side and says--

"_Thou hast made all my life as a beautiful song.

Blessed be thou that at last thou hast come!

Blessed, thrice-blessed our Whitsun-morn meeting_!"

"But," says Peer, "I am lost, unless thou canst answer riddles." "Tell me them," tranquilly answers Solveig. And Peer asks, while the b.u.t.ton-Moulder listens behind the hut--

"_Canst thou tell me where Peer Gynt has been since we parted_?"

Solveig.--_Been_?

Peer.-- _With his destiny's seal on his brow; Been, as in G.o.d's thought he first sprang forth?

Canst thou tell me? If not, I must get me home_,-- _Go down to the mist-shrouded regions_.

Solveig (smiling).--_Oh, that riddle is easy_.

Peer.-- _Then tell what thou knowest!

Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?

Where was I, with G.o.d's sigil upon my brow_?

Solveig.--_In my faith, in my hope, in my love_.

A Shirking of the Ethical Problem?

"This," says the Messrs. Archer, in effect, "may be--indeed is--magnificent: but it is not Ibsen." To quote their very words--

"The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrote _Peer Gynt_. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a pa.s.sage of the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) that _No man can save his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt_."

In a footnote to the italicized words Messrs. Archer add the quotation--

"No, nor woman, neither."

Oct. 22, 1892. The main Problem.

"Peer's return to Solveig is surely a shirking, not a solution of the ethical problem." Of what ethical problem? The main ethical problem of the poem is, What is self? And how shall a man be himself? As Mr.

Wicksteed puts it in his "Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen," "What is it to be one's self? G.o.d _meant something_ when He made each one of us.

For a man to embody that meaning of G.o.d in his words and deeds, and so become, in a degree, 'a word of G.o.d made flesh' is to be himself. But thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and must strive to find his true orbit, and swing, self poised, round the great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out what G.o.d _did_ mean when He made him? Why, then he must _feel_ it. But how often your 'feeling' misses fire! Ay, there you have it. The devil has no stancher ally than _want of perception_."

And its Solution.

This is a fair statement of Ibsen's problem and his solution of it. In the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we may say. Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, who never sacrifices his Self generously for another's good, nor surrenders it to a decided course of action. Diagram II. is Solveig, a woman who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders Self and is, in short, Peer's perfect ant.i.thesis. When Peer is an outlaw she forsakes all and follows him to his hut in the forest. Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo. But though his own theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one. To find this he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted wife. There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the answer. "Where," he asks, "has Peer Gynt's true self been since we parted:--

"Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?

Where was I with G.o.d's sigil upon my brow?"

And Solveig answers:--