XVII
WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE
DRAMATIC EPILOGUE
(1899)
Mr. William Archer sees in this closing drama of the social series little else than a resuscitation of the characters and motives that have done duty in his earlier plays. It is true that there is much familiar music, that the themes have been treated in the previous works; nevertheless the variation is of enthralling interest. This epilogue is closely related to The Master Builder. Solness the architect is differentiated from Arnold Rubek, the sculptor in character; but both men are successful artists; both men have failed in the one achievement worth the while—love. As in Brand, Rubek goes to the snow-covered heights with his only love—Brand's was an ideal; Rubek's is a woman—and the avalanche sweeps both to eternity. The Deus caritatis, whose voice thunders in the ears of the dying Brand, is in the epilogue the voice of the sister of mercy who cries, Pax vobiscum, as Rubek and Irene are whirled away.
Ibsen, always disdainful of stage settings, evidently experienced a change of mind, for, following Richard Wagner's example, he makes some exceedingly severe demands upon the ingenuity of the stage manager, beginning with The Lady from the Sea and John Gabriel Borkman.
The story of When We Dead Awake is simplicity itself. Arnold Rubek is a famous sculptor, in middle years married to Maja, a young woman full of the joy of life. The union proves unhappy. She is frivolous; he is failing as an artist. Years before he had designed his masterwork, The Day of Resurrection, and his model was the most beautiful woman in the world. The artist conquered the man and he allowed Irene to leave him, though she adored him. With her departure his fount of inspiration dried up. He made portrait busts and revenged himself on the indifferent world by maliciously modelling resemblances to ignoble animals in the countenances of his sitters—the pig, the goat, the ape, the hawk, were faintly suggested. This very modern trait has been paralleled in the case of a celebrated painter of our times. Henry James, in his own faultless way, has told the story in The Liar.
As is the case with the Ibsen plays, this train of happenings leads up to the first act at a northern watering-place. Rubek and Maja tell each other the truth of their mutual boredom. Then Irene comes upon the scene, a sinister apparition. She is half mad and is watched by a sister of mercy. She encounters Rubek, and the story of her love, which led to insanity, comes out. He sees that his art has blinded him to his real happiness. Like Ella Rentheim in John Gabriel Borkman, Irene accuses him savagely of murdering her love life through neglect. Maja has gone off with Ulfheim, a savage brute of a hunter, and together Rubek and Irene seek to attain the heights. But the inexorable law of their being bars the way. Only once in a lifetime is it vouchsafed to a man or a woman to touch the tall stars, and so they perish, but not before Rubek has cast off his life lie.
Eduard Brandes, the brother of the better known Georg, himself a critic and dramatist, has uttered eloquent words about this drama:—
Unquestionably, there will be many objections made against this magnificent drama because the high-sounding prose at times may seem vulnerable to the attack of logical analysis. And it is quite certain that the objections will gather themselves into the pertinent question, Why did Henrik Ibsen show Irene as insane and why does he let Rubek, who is not insane, prefer the abnormal woman to the beautiful and sensible Maja?