“Behold him—a happy husband and father. But, look how dully and strangely the candle-light glimmers, as if its yellowed flame were withering, trembling from the cold and hiding itself. And the wax is wasting, following the burning. The wax is wasting.
“Behold him—an old man, sickly and weak. Already the steps of life are ending, and a black chasm is in the place of them—but, spite of that, his trembling feet are drawn forwards. Bending towards the earth, the flame, now blue, droops powerlessly, trembles and falls, trembles and falls—and slowly expires.
“So Man will die. Coming out of the night he will return to the night and vanish without traces into the boundless time, unthought of, unfelt, known by none. And I, then, named by all He, remain the true fellow-traveller of Man in all the days of his life, in all his ways. Unseen by Man and near him, I shall be unfailingly beside him when he wakes and when he sleeps, when he prays or when he curses. In the hours of pleasure when he breathes freely and bravely, in the hours of despondency and grief, when the languor of death darkens his soul and the blood grows cold about his heart, in the hours of victory and of defeat, in the hours of the great struggle with the inevitable, I shall be with him. I shall be with him.
“And you come hither for amusement, you, the devoted of death, behold and listen. With this far-off and phantasmal figure there unfolds itself to your gaze, with its sorrows and its joys, the quickly passing life of Man.”
The voice from the grey figure ceased, and in the dark a curtain came down over the scene.
The play was as foreshadowed. In the first act a Man is born, in the second he is a struggling young man, in the third he is a successful man, in the fourth he is in decline, and in the fifth he dies. The figure in grey appears at the birth of Man, and is visible to the audience throughout the five acts. He holds a burning candle, which is radiantly bright in Act iii., but which gutters out at the end of Act v. Fates, old women, nornas, are in attendance at the birth, and they are again in attendance at death.
The story is delicately told and affecting. Man is young and happy and the obstacles in his life are only means of happiness; he succeeds and all the world does homage to him; he passes the prime of life and new obstacles appear, and these serve only to bring him unhappiness; he is brought low and he dies.
The actor who played Man’s part was a robust, handsome man with flashing eyes and long hair. Whilst he played the young Man he was careless, brave, free, and when he became old he was dignified, proud and obstinate. His destiny, it seemed to me, was comprised between a challenge and a curse. In his despair in Act ii., when life seemed a feast to which he was not bidden, he was stung to anger and defiance against Fate. He turned to where the ikon stood and flung a challenge at the Unknown.
“—Hi you! you there! what d’you call yourself? Fate, devil or life, there’s my glove; I’ll fight you! Wretched, poor-spirited folk curse themselves before your enigmatical power: thy stone face moves them to terror, in thy silence they hear the beginning of calamities and their own terrible ruin. But I am brave and strong and I challenge you to battle. With bright swords, with sounding shields, we will fall at one another’s heads with blows at which the earth will tremble. Hi! Come out and fight.
“To thy ominous slow movement I shall oppose my living, vigilant strength; to thy gloom my gay sounding laugh! Hi! Take that blow, ward it off if you can! Your brow is stone, your reason lost. I throw into it the red-hot shot of my bright sense; you have a heart of stone that has lost all pity, give way! I shall pour into it the burning poison of my rebellious cries! By the black cloud of thy fierce anger the sun is obscured; we shall light up the gloom with dreams! Hi! Take that!