Peer Gynt

PEER
I am, as I've already said,
exclusively a self-taught man.
Methodically naught I've learned;
but I have thought and speculated,
and done much desultory reading.
I started somewhat late in life,
and then, you know, it's rather hard
to plough ahead through page on page,
and take in all of everything.
I've done my history piecemeal;
I never have had time for more.
And, as one needs in days of trial
some certainty to place one's trust in,
I took religion intermittently.
That way it goes more smoothly down.
One should not read to swallow all,
but rather see what one has use for.
...
The essence of the art of daring,
the art of bravery in act,
is this: To stand with choice-free foot
amid the treacherous snares of life, -
to know for sure that other days
remain beyond the day of battle, -
to know that ever in the rear
a bridge for your retreat stands open.

- from Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, IV.i

I've read the first passage before, though I cannot think where. When I read it in my copy of the work (a worn but handsome hardcover that we bought in Australia - definitely also older than Singapore!) a breathless vertiginous feeling crept up over me, like when you step back from the brink of tumbling over a precipice. I can't perceive where I read this before; that lies at the bottom of a fathomless memory. But I can hear the echoes emanating upwards, and perhaps this is the voice of Time speaking in borrowed words.

But enough purple prose. Started reading Peer Gynt last Sunday, and I'm only halfway through it, but it's become clear to me that this work deserves its reputation at the top of the range of Ibsen's writing. Somehow or other, it's more accessible than the other Ibsen plays I've read - though the trend is for each play to appeal to me more than the last, so it could just be that I'm growing into them, or that they require an element of experience to fully reveal their meaning. But even though it's in meter (a feature that has put me off before), its themes and ideas are startlingly clear, not only surviving the translation into English, but positively thriving on the new linguistic landscape that it finds itself in (though, perhaps, that's as much to do with the translators as with the playwright).

At this point, the play seems like a fairy-tale; it certainly has the structural elements of a rags-to-riches story, the signature of a force of Fate or Luck that is particularly playful, and the imagery of fantastical realms and castles populated by fantastical creatures. There's even a lingering shadow of what seems like a moral. But all the characters are decidedly human, or "fallen", to (mis?)use a technical term. Still working on this idea, but roughly it's the notion of a human heart in a fantastical body, or perhaps a fantastical idea anchored (or weighed down) by a human heart.

And in Peer, too, you have that idea. I think he's a dreamer, but also a fantasist who's continually surprised at how many of his dreams keep coming true. Then there's the pragmatist in him, in the way that he is willing to compromise every belief and reason that he has to exploit the current situation, up to the point where all he has left is a way out of the situation at hand, an escape route in case things turn sour (I am reminded, here, of the gangster godfather in Michael Mann's Heat). So on the one hand Peer finds himself having his dreams come true in the most improbable ways, and on the other hand he can't bring himself to fully believe his luck, and skeptically keeps one toe on solid ground, even as he fantasises (drunkenly, dreamily, or wide awake).

And there's this scene, with him in the forest chopping down a tree and pretending he's a mighty warrior fighting a worthy opponent. Then, a farm boy comes up near him and chops his own finger off. Peer, watching from behind the felled trunk, is horrified at the thought that someone could have the willpower to commit himself to an irreversible decision like that. "Ay, think of it - wish it done - will it to boot, - but to do it!" he marvels. "No, that's past my understanding!" But the irony lies in the fact that this act of self-maiming was because the boy didn't want to be drafted into the King's army. So while Peer is busy playing at a pretend battle, this random boy actually takes a real decision - with irrevocable consequences - to avoid fighting a real battle. In this comparison are too many dichotomies and meanings to unravel now, I think - but it's moments like this that keep me flipping page after yellowed page.