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 Button-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 God'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 God'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 passage 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."