When We Dead Awaken | Page 2

may say with perfect sincerity that
there is more fascination in the dregs of Ibsen's mind than in the "first
sprightly running" of more common-place talents. But to his sane
admirers the interest of the play must always be melancholy, because it
is purely pathological. To deny this is, in my opinion, to cast a slur over
all the poet's previous work, and in great measure to justify the
criticisms of his most violent detractors. For When We Dead Awaken is
very like the sort of play that haunted the "anti-Ibsenite" imagination in
the year 1893 or thereabouts. It is a piece of self-caricature, a series of
echoes from all the earlier plays, an exaggeration of manner to the pitch

of mannerism. Moreover, in his treatment of his symbolic motives,
Ibsen did exactly what he had hitherto, with perfect justice, plumed
himself upon never doing: he sacrificed the surface reality to the
underlying meaning. Take, for instance, the history of Rubek's statue
and its development into a group. In actual sculpture this development
is a grotesque impossibility. In conceiving it we are deserting the
domain of reality, and plunging into some fourth dimension where the
properties of matter are other than those we know. This is an
abandonment of the fundamental principle which Ibsen over and over
again emphatically expressed--namely, that any symbolism his work
might be found to contain was entirely incidental, and subordinate to
the truth and consistency of his picture of life. Even when he dallied
with the supernatural, as in The Master Builder and Little Eyolf, he was
always careful, as I have tried to show, not to overstep decisively the
boundaries of the natural. Here, on the other hand, without any
suggestion of the supernatural, we are confronted with the wholly
impossible, the inconceivable. How remote is this alike from his
principles of art and from the consistent, unvarying practice of his
better years! So great is the chasm between John Gabriel Borkman and
When We Dead Awaken that one could almost suppose his mental
breakdown to have preceded instead of followed the writing of the
latter play. Certainly it is one of the premonitions of the coming end. It
is Ibsen's Count Robert of Paris. To pretend to rank it with his
masterpieces is to show a very imperfect sense of the nature of their
mastery.

WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN.
A DRAMATIC EPILOGUE.

CHARACTERS.
PROFESSOR ARNOLD RUBEK, a sculptor. MRS. MAIA RUBEK,
his wife. THE INSPECTOR at the Baths. ULFHEIM, a landed
proprietor. A STRANGER LADY. A SISTER OF MERCY.
Servants, Visitors to the Baths, and Children.
The First Act passes at a bathing establishment on the coast; the Second

and Third Acts in the neighbourhood of a health resort, high in the
mountains.

ACT FIRST.
[Outside the Bath Hotel. A portion of the main building can be seen to
the right. An open, park-like place with a fountain, groups of fine old
trees, and shrubbery. To the left, a little pavilion almost covered with
ivy and Virginia creeper. A table and chair outside it. At the back a
view over the fjord, right out to sea, with headlands and small islands
in the distance. It is a calm, warm and sunny summer morning.
[PROFESSOR RUBEK and MRS. MAIA RUBEK are sitting in basket
chairs beside a covered table on the lawn outside the hotel, having just
breakfasted. They have champagne and seltzer water on the table, and
each has a newspaper. PROFESSOR RUBEK is an elderly man of
distinguished appearance, wearing a black velvet jacket, and otherwise
in light summer attire. MAIA is quite young, with a vivacious
expression and lively, mocking eyes, yet with a suggestion of fatigue.
She wears an elegant travelling dress.
MAIA.
[Sits for some time as though waiting for the PROFESSOR to say
something, then lets her paper drop with a deep sigh.] Oh dear, dear,
dear---!
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
[Looks up from his paper.] Well, Maia? What is the matter with you?
MAIA.
Just listen how silent it is here.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
[Smiles indulgently.] And you can hear that?
MAIA.
What?
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
The silence?
MAIA.
Yes, indeed I can.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
Well, perhaps you are right, mein Kind. One can really hear the silence.
MAIA.

Heaven knows you can--when it's so absolutely overpowering as it is
here---
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
Here at the Baths, you mean?
MAIA.
Wherever you go at home here, it seems to me. Of course there was
noise and bustle enough in the town. But I don't know how it is-- even
the noise and bustle seemed to have something dead about it.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
[With a searching glance.] You don't seem particularly glad to be at
home again, Maia?
MAIA.
[Looks at him.] Are you glad?
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
[Evasively.] I---?
MAIA.
Yes, you,