Books: The Master Builder
H >>
Henrik Ibsen >> The Master Builder
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 This Etext was produced by Douglas Levy.
THE MASTER BUILDER
by Henrik Ibsen
Translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer
Introduction by William Archer
INTRODUCTION.
With _The Master Builder_--or _Master Builder Solness_, as the title
runs in the original--we enter upon the final stage in Ibsen's career.
"You are essentially right," the poet wrote to Count Prozor in March
1900, "when you say that the series which closes with the Epilogue
(_When We Dead Awaken_) began with _Master Builder Solness_."
"Ibsen," says Dr. Brahm, "wrote in Christiania all the four works
which he thus seems to bracket together--_Solness_, _Eyolf_,
_Borkman_, and _When We Dead Awaken_. He returned to Norway in July
1891, for a stay of indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over
Europe was destined to leave his home no more. . . . He had not
returned, however, to throw himself, as of old, into the battle of
the passing day. Polemics are entirely absent from the poetry of his
old age. He leaves the State and Society at peace. He who had
departed as the creator of Falk [in _Love's Comedy_] now, on his
return, gazes into the secret places of human nature and the wonder
of his own soul."
Dr. Brahm, however, seems to be mistaken in thinking that Ibsen
returned to Norway with no definite intention of settling down.
Dr. Julius Elias (an excellent authority) reports that shortly before
Ibsen left Munich in 1891, he remarked one day, "I must get back to
the North!" "Is that a sudden impulse?" asked Elias. "Oh no," was
the reply; "I want to be a good head of a household and have my
affairs in order. To that end I must consolidate may property, lay
it down in good securities, and get it under control--and that one
can best do where one has rights of citizenship." Some critics will
no doubt be shocked to find the poet whom they have written down an
"anarchist" confessing such bourgeois motives.
After his return to Norway, Ibsen's correspondence became very scant,
and we have no letters dating from the period when he was at work on
_The Master Builder_. On the other hand, we possess a curious
lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892.
It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on a play,
to "crystallise in a poem the mood which then possessed him;" but the
following is the only one of these keynote poems which has been
published. I give it in the original language, with a literal
translation:
DE SAD DER, DE TO--
De sad der, de to, i saa lunt et hus
ved host og i venterdage,
Saa braendte huset. Alt ligger i grus.
De to faar i asken rage.
For nede id en er et smykke gemt,--
et smykke, som aldrig kan braende.
Og leder de trofast, haender det nemt
at det findes af ham eller hende.
Men finder de end, brandlidte to,
det dyre, ildfaste smykke,--
aldrig han finder sin braendte tro,
han aldrig sin braendte lykke.
THEY SAT THERE, THE TWO--
They sat there, the two, in so cosy a house, through autumn
and winter days. Then the house burned down. Everything
lies in ruins. The two must grope among the ashes.
For among them is hidden a jewel--a jewel that never can burn.
And if they search faithfully, it may easily happen that he
or she may find it.
But even should they find it, the burnt-out two--find this
precious unburnable jewel--never will she find her burnt faith,
he never his burnt happiness.
This is the latest piece of Ibsen's verse that has been given to the
world; but one of his earliest poems--first printed in 1858--was also,
in some sort, a prelude to _The Master Builder_. Of this a literal
translation may suffice. It is called
BUILDING-PLANS
I remember as clearly as if it had been to-day the evening
when, in the paper, I saw my first poem in print. There I
sat in my den, and, with long-drawn puffs, I smoked and I
dreamed in blissful self-complacency.
"I will build a cloud-castle. It shall shine all over the
North. It shall have two wings: one little and one great.
The great wing shall shelter a deathless poet; the little
wing shall serve as a young girl's bower."
The plan seemed to me nobly harmonious; but as time went on
it fell into confusion. When the master grew reasonable, the
castle turned utterly crazy; the great wing became too little,
the little wing fell to ruin.
Thus we see that, thirty-five years before the date of _The Master
Builder_, Ibsen's imagination was preoccupied with a symbol of a
master building a castle in the air, and a young girl in one of its
towers.
There has been some competition among the poet's young lady friends
for the honour of having served as his model for Hilda. Several, no
doubt, are entitled to some share in it. One is not surprised to
learn that among the papers he left behind were sheaves upon sheaves
of letters from women. "All these ladies," says Dr. Julius Elias,
"demanded something of him--some cure for their agonies of soul,
or for the incomprehension from which they suffered; some solution
of the riddle of their nature. Almost every one of them regarded
herself as a problem to which Ibsen could not but have the time
and the interest to apply himself. They all thought they had a claim
on the creator of Nora. . . . Of this chapter of his experience, Fru
Ibsen spoke with ironic humour. 'Ibsen (I have often said to him),
Ibsen, keep these swarms of over-strained womenfolk at arm's length.'
'Oh no (he would reply), let them alone. I want to observe them
more closely.' His observations would take a longer or shorter time
as the case might be, and would always contribute to some work of art."
The principal model for Hilda was doubtless Fraulein Emilie Bardach,
of Vienna, whom he met at Gossensass in the autumn of 1889. He was
then sixty-one years of age; she is said to have been seventeen. As
the lady herself handed his letters to Dr. Brandes for publication,
there can be no indiscretion in speaking of them freely. Some
passages from them I have quoted in the introduction to _Hedda
Gabler_--passages which show that at first the poet deliberately put
aside his Gossensass impressions for use when he should stand at a
greater distance from them, and meanwhile devoted himself to work
in a totally different key. On October 15, 1889, he writes, in
his second letter to Fraulein Bardach: "I cannot repress my summer
memories, nor do I want to. I live through my experiences again
and again. To transmute it all into a poem I find, in the meantime,
impossible. In the meantime? Shall I succeed in doing so some time
in the future? And do I really wish to succeed? In the meantime,
at any rate, I do not. . . . And yet it must come in time." The
letters number twelve in all, and are couched in a tone of sentimental
regret for the brief, bright summer days of their acquaintanceship.
The keynote is struck in the inscription on the back of a photograph
which he gave her before they parted: _An die Maisonne eines
Septemberlebens--in Tirol_,(1) 27/9/89. In her album he had written
the words:
Hohes, schmerzliches Gluck--
um das Unerreichbare zu ringen!(2)
in which we may, if we like, see a foreshadowing of the Solness
frame of mind. In the fifth letter of the series he refers to her
as "an enigmatic Princess"; in the sixth he twice calls her "my dear
Princess"; but this is the only point at which the letters quite
definitely and unmistakably point forward to _The Master Builder_.
In the ninth letter (February 6, 1890) he says: "I feel it a matter of
conscience to end, or at any rate, to restrict, our correspondence."
The tenth letter, six months later, is one of kindly condolence on
the death of the young lady's father. In the eleventh (very short)
note, dated December 30, 1890, he acknowledges some small gift, but
says: "Please, for the present, do not write me again. . . . I will
soon send you my new play [_Hedda Gabler_]. Receive it in friendship,
but in silence!" This injunction she apparently obeyed. When _The
Master Builder_ appeared, it would seem that Ibsen did not even send
her a copy of the play; and we gather that he was rather annoyed when
she sent him a photograph signed "Princess of Orangia." On his
seventieth birthday, however, she telegraphed her congratulations,
to which he returned a very cordial reply. And here their relations
ended.
That she was right, however, in regarding herself as his principal
model for Hilda appears from an anecdote related by Dr. Elias.(3)
It is not an altogether pleasing anecdote, but Dr. Elias is an
unexceptionable witness, and it can by no means be omitted from an
examination into the origins of _The Master Builder_. Ibsen had come
to Berlin in February 1891 for the first performance of _Hedda Gabler_.
Such experiences were always a trial to him, and he felt greatly
relieved when they were over. Packing, too, he detested; and Elias
having helped him through this terrible ordeal, the two sat down to
lunch together, while awaiting the train. An expansive mood descended
upon Ibsen, and chuckling over his champagne glass, he said: "Do you
know, my next play is already hovering before me--of course in vague
outline. But of one thing I have got firm hold. An experience: a
woman's figure. Very interesting, very interesting indeed. Again
a spice of the devilry in it." Then he related how he had met in the
Tyrol a Viennese girl of very remarkable character. She had at once
made him her confidant. The gist of her confessions was that she
did not care a bit about one day marrying a well brought-up young
man--most likely she would never marry. What tempted and charmed
and delighted her was to lure other women's husbands away from them.
She was a little daemonic wrecker; she often appeared to him like a
little bird of prey, that would fain have made him, too, her booty.
He had studied her very, very closely. For the rest, she had had no
great success with him. "She did not get hold of me, but I got hold
of her--for my play. Then I fancy" (here he chuckled again) "she
consoled herself with some one else." Love seemed to mean for her
only a sort of morbid imagination. This, however, was only one side
of her nature. His little model had had a great deal of heart and
of womanly understanding; and thanks to the spontaneous power she
could gain over him, every woman might, if she wished it, guide some
man towards the good. "Thus Ibsen spoke," says Elias, "calmly and
coolly, gazing as it were into the far distance, like an artist
taking an objective view of some experience--like Lubek speaking of
his soul-thefts. He had stolen a soul, and put it to a double
employment. Thea Elvsted and Hilda Wangel are intimately related--
are, indeed only different expressions of the same nature." If
Ibsen actually declared Thea and Hilda to be drawn from one model,
we must of course take his word for it; but the relationship is hard
to discern.
There can be no reasonable doubt, then, that the Gossensass episode
gave the primary impulse to _The Master Builder_. But it seems
pretty well established, too, that another lady, whom he met in
Christiania after his return in 1891, also contributed largely to the
character of Hilda. This may have been the reason why he resented
Fraulein Bardach's appropriating to herself the title of "Princess
of Orangia."
The play was published in the middle of December 1892. It was acted
both in Germany and England before it was seen in the Scandinavian
capitals. Its first performance took place at the Lessing Theatre,
Berlin, January 19, 1893, with Emanuel Reicher as Solness and Frl.
Reisenhofer as Hilda. In London it was first performed at the
Trafalgar Square Theatre (now the Duke of York's) on February 20,
1893, under the direction of Mr. Herbert Waring and Miss Elizabeth
Robins, who played Solness and Hilda. This was one of the most
brilliant and successful of English Ibsen productions. Miss Robins
was almost an ideal Hilda, and Mr. Waring's Solness was exceedingly
able. Some thirty performances were give in all, and the play was
reproduced at the Opera Comique later in the season, with Mr. Lewis
Waller as Solness. In the following year Miss Robins acted Hilda in
Manchester. In Christiania and Copenhagen the play was produced on
the same evening, March 8, 1893; the Copenhagen Solness and Hilda
were Emil Poulsen and Fru Hennings. A Swedish production, by
Lindberg, soon followed, both in Stockholm and Gothenburg. In Paris
_Solness le constructeur_ was not seen until April 3, 1894, when it
was produced by "L'OEuvre" with M. Lugne-Poe as Solness. The company,
sometimes with Mme. Suzanne Despres and sometimes with Mme. Berthe
Bady as Hilda, in 1894 and 1895 presented the play in London,
Brussels, Amsterdam, Milan, and other cities. In October 1894
they visited Christiania, where Ibsen was present at one of their
performances, and is reported by Herman Bang to have been so
enraptured with it that he exclaimed, "This is the resurrection of
my play!" On this occasion Mme. Bady was the Hilda. The first
performance of the play in America took place at the Carnegie Lyceum,
New York, on January 16, 1900, with Mr. William H. Pascoe as Solness
and Miss Florence Kahn as Hilda. The performance was repeated in the
course of the same month, both at Washington and Boston.
In England, and probably elsewhere as well, _The Master Builder_
produced a curious double effect. It alienated many of the poet's
staunchest admirers, and it powerfully attracted many people who had
hitherto been hostile to him. Looking back, it is easy to see why
this should have been so; for here was certainly a new thing in drama,
which could not but set up many novel reactions. A greater contrast
could scarcely be imagined than that between the hard, cold, precise
outlines of _Hedda Gabler_ and the vague mysterious atmosphere of _The
Master Builder_, in which, though the dialogue is sternly restrained
within the limits of prose, the art of drama seems for ever on the
point of floating away to blend with the art of music. Substantially,
the play is one long dialogue between Solness and Hilda; and it would
be quite possible to analyse this dialogue in terms of music, noting
(for example) the announcement first of this theme and then of that,
the resumption and reinforcement of a theme which seemed to have been
dropped, the contrapuntal interweaving of two or more motives, a
scherzo here, a fugal passage there. Leaving this exercise to some
one more skilled in music (or less unskilled) than myself, I may note
that in _The Master Builder_ Ibsen resumes his favourite retrospective
method, from which in _Hedda Gabler_ he had in great measure departed.
But the retrospect with which we are here concerned is purely
psychological. The external events involved in it are few and
simple in comparison with the external events which are successively
unveiled in retrospective passages of _The Wild Duck_ or _Rosmersholm_.
The matter of the play is the soul-history of Halvard Solness,
recounted to an impassioned listener--so impassioned, indeed, that
the soul-changes it begets in her form an absorbing and thrilling
drama. The graduations, retardations, accelerations of Solness's
self-revealment are managed with the subtlest art, so as to keep the
interest of the spectator ever on the stretch. The technical method
was not new; it was simply that which Ibsen had been perfecting from
_Pillars of Society_ onward; but it was applied to a subject of a
nature not only new to him, but new to literature.
That the play is full of symbolism it would be futile to deny; and
the symbolism is mainly autobiographic. The churches which Solness
sets out building doubtless represent Ibsen's early romantic plays,
the "homes for human beings" his social drama; while the houses
with high towers, merging into "castles in the air," stand for those
spiritual dramas, with a wide outlook over the metaphysical
environment of humanity, on which he was henceforth to be engaged.
Perhaps it is not altogether fanciful to read a personal reference
into Solness's refusal to call himself an architect, on the ground
that his training has not been systematic--that he is a self-taught
man. Ibsen too was in all essentials self-taught; his philosophy
was entirely unsystematic; and, like Solness, he was no student of
books. There may be an introspective note also in that dread of
the younger generation to which Solness confesses. It is certain
that the old Master-Builder was not lavish of his certificates of
competence to young aspirants, though there is nothing to show that
his reticence ever depressed or quenched any rising genius.
On the whole, then, it cannot be doubted that several symbolic
motives are inwoven into the iridescent fabric of the play. But it
is a great mistake to regard it as essentially and inseparably a
piece of symbolism. Essentially it is a history of a sickly
conscience, worked out in terms of pure psychology. Or rather, it
is a study of a sickly and a robust conscience side by side. "The
conscience is very conservative," Ibsen has somewhere said; and here
Solness's conservatism is contrasted with Hilda's radicalism--or
rather would-be radicalism, for we are led to suspect, towards the
close, that the radical too is a conservative in spite or herself.
The fact that Solness cannot climb as high as he builds implies, I
take it, that he cannot act as freely as he thinks, or as Hilda would
goad him into thinking. At such an altitude his conscience would
turn dizzy, and life would become impossible to him. But here I am
straying back to the interpretation of symbols. My present purpose
is to insist that there is nothing in the play which has no meaning
on the natural-psychological plane, and absolutely requires a symbolic
interpretation to make it comprehensible. The symbols are harmonic
undertones; the psychological melody is clear and consistent without
any reference to them.(4) It is true that, in order to accept the
action on what we may call the realistic level, we must suppose
Solness to possess and to exercise, sometimes unconsciously, a
considerable measure of hypnotic power. But time is surely past
when we could reckon hypnotism among "supernatural" phenomena.
Whether the particular forms of hypnotic influence attributed to
Solness do actually exist is a question we need not determine. The
poet does not demand our absolute credence, as though he were giving
evidence in the witness-box. What he requires is our imaginative
acceptance of certain incidents which he purposely leaves hovering on
the border between the natural and the preternatural, the explained
and the unexplained. In this play, as in _The Lady from the Sea_ and
_Little Eyolf_, he shows a delicacy of art in his dalliance with the
occult which irresistibly recalls the exquisite genius of Nathaniel
Hawthorne.(5)
The critics who insist on finding nothing but symbolism in the play
have fastened on Mrs. Solness's "nine lovely dolls," and provided the
most amazing interpretations for them. A letter which I contributed
in 1893 to the _Westminster Gazette_ records an incident which throws
a curious light on the subject and may be worth preserving. "At a
recent first night," I wrote, "I happened to be seated just behind a
well-known critic. He turned round to me and said, 'I want you to
tell me what is YOUR theory of those "nine lovely dolls." Of course
one can see that they are entirely symbolical.' 'I am not so sure
of that,' I replied, remembering a Norwegian cousin of my own who
treasured a favourite doll until she was nearer thirty than twenty.
'They of course symbolise the unsatisfied passion of motherhood in
Mrs. Solness's heart, but I have very little doubt that Ibsen makes
use of this "symbol" because he has observed a similar case, or
cases, in real life.' 'What!' cried the critic. 'He has seen a
grown-up, a middle-aged woman continuing to "live with" her dolls!'
I was about to say that it did not seem to me so very improbable,
when a lady who was seated next me, a total stranger to both of us,
leant forward and said, 'Excuse my interrupting you, but it may
perhaps interest you to know that I HAVE THREE DOLLS TO WHICH I AM
DEEPLY ATTACHED!' I will not be so rude as to conjecture this lady's
age, but we may be sure that a very young woman would not have had
the courage to make such an avowal. Does it not seem that Ibsen knows
a thing or two about human nature--English as well as Norwegian--
which we dramatic critics, though bound by our calling to be subtle
psychologists, have not yet fathomed?" In the course of the
correspondence which followed, one very apposite anecdote was quoted
from an American paper, the _Argonaut_: "An old Virginia lady said
to a friend, on finding a treasured old cup cracked by a careless
maid, 'I know of nothing to compare with the affliction of losing a
handsome piece of old china.' 'Surely,' said the friend, 'it is not
so bad as losing one's children.' 'Yes, it is,' replied the old lady,
'for when your children die, you do have the consolations of religion,
you know.'"
It would be a paradox to call _The Master Builder_ Ibsen's greatest
work, but one of his three or four greatest it assuredly is. Of all
his writings, it is probably the most original, the most individual,
the most unlike any other drama by any other writer. The form of
_Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_ was doubtless suggested by other dramatic
poems--notably by _Faust_. In _The Wild Duck_, in _Rosmersholm_,
in _Hedda Gabler_, even in _Little Eyolf_ and _John Gabriel Borkman_,
there remain faint traces of the French leaven which is so strong in
the earlier plays. But _The Master Builder_ had no model and has no
parallel. It shows no slightest vestige of outside influence. It
is Ibsen, and nothing but Ibsen.
W.A.
*FOOTNOTES.
(1)"To the May-sun of a September life--in Tyrol."
(2)"High, painful happiness--to struggle for the unattainable!"
(3)_Neus deutsche Rundschau_, December, 1906, p.1462.
(4)This conception I have worked out at much greater length in an
essay entitled _The Melody of the Master Builder_, appended to
the shilling edition of the play, published in 1893. I there
retell the story, transplanting it to England and making the hero
a journalist instead of an architect, in order to show that (if
we grant the reality of certain commonly-accepted phenomena of
hypnotism) there is nothing incredible or even extravagantly
improbable about it. The argument is far too long to be included
here, but the reader who is interested in the subject may find it
worth referring to.
(5)For an instance of the technical methods by which he suggested
the supernormal element in the atmosphere of the play, see
Introduction to _A Doll's House_, p. xiv.
THE MASTER BUILDER.
PLAY IN THREE ACTS.
CHARACTERS.
HALVARD SOLNESS, Master Builder.
ALINE SOLNESS, his wife.
DOCTOR HERDAL, physician.
KNUT BROVIK, formerly an architect, now in SOLNESS'S employment.
RAGNAR BROVIK, his son, draughtsman.
KAIA BROVIK, his niece, book-keeper.
MISS HILDA WANGEL.
Some Ladies.
A Crowd in the street.
The action passes in and about SOLNESS'S house.
ACT FIRST.
A plainly-furnished work-room in the house of HALVARD SOLNESS.
Folding doors on the left lead out to the hall. On the right
is the door leading to the inner rooms of the house. At the
back is an open door into the draughtsmen's office. In front,
on the left, a desk with books, papers and writing materials.
Further back than the folding door, a stove. In the right-
hand corner, a sofa, a table, and one or two chairs. On the
table a water-bottle and glass. A smaller table, with a
rocking-chair and arm-chair, in front on the right. Lighted
lamps, with shades, on the table in the draughtmen's office,
on the table in the corner, and on the desk.
In the draughtsmen's office sit KNUT BROVIK and his son RAGNAR,
occupied with plans and calculations. At the desk in the outer
office stands KAIA FOSLI, writing in the ledger. KNUT BROVICK
is a spare old man with white hair and beard. He wears a
rather threadbare but well-brushed black coat, with spectacles,
and a somewhat discoloured white neckcloth. RAGNAR BROVIK is
a well-dressed, light-haired man in his thirties, with a
slight stoop. KAIA FOSLI is a slightly built girl, a little
over twenty, carefully dressed, and delicate-looking. She has
a green shade over her eyes.--All three go on working for some
time in silence.
KNUT BROVIK.
[Rises suddenly, as if in distress, from the table; breathes heavily
and laboriously as he comes forward into the doorway.] No, I can't
bear it much longer!
KAIA.
[Going up to him.] You are feeling very ill this evening, are you
not, Uncle?
BROVIK.
Oh, I seem to get worse every day.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7