Chapter 1

E-text prepared by Douglas Levy

THE FEAST AT SOLHOUG.

by

HENRIK IBSEN

From The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume 1 Revised and Edited by William Archer

Translation by William Archer and Mary Morrison

INTRODUCTION*

Exactly a year after the production of _Lady Inger of Ostrat_--that is to say on the "Foundation Day" of the Bergen Theatre, January 2, 1866--_The Feast at Solhoug_ was produced. The poet himself has written its history in full in the Preface to the second edition. The only comment that need be made upon his rejoinder to his critics has been made, with perfect fairness as it seems to me, by George Brandes in the following passage:** "No one who is unacquainted with the Scandinavian languages can fully understand the charm that the style and melody of the old ballads exercise upon the Scandinavian mind. The beautiful ballads and songs of _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_ have perhaps had a similar power over German minds; but, as far as I am aware, no German poet has has ever succeeded in inventing a metre suitable for dramatic purposes, which yet retained the mediaeval ballad's sonorous swing and rich aroma. The explanation of the powerful impression produced in its day by Henrik Hertz's _Svend Dyring's House_ is to be found in the fact that in it, for the first time, the problem was solved of how to fashion a metre akin to that of the heroic ballads, a metre possessing as great mobility as the verse of the _Niebelungenlied_, along with a dramatic value not inferior to that of the pentameter. Henrik Ibsen, it is true, has justly pointed out that, as regards the mutual relations of the principal characters, _Svend Dyring's House_ owes more to Kleist's _Kathchen von Heubronn_ than _The Feast at Solhoug_ owes to _Svend Dyring's House_. But the fact remains that the versified parts of the dialogue of both _The Feast at Solhoug_ and _Olaf Liliekrans_ are written in that imitation of the tone and style of the heroic ballad, of which Hertz was the happily-inspired originator. There seems to me to be no depreciation whatever of Ibsen in the assertion of Hertz's right to rank as his model. Even the greatest must have learnt from some one."

But while the influence of Danish lyrical romanticism is apparent in the style of the play, the structure, as it seems to me, shows no less clearly that influence of the French plot-manipulators which we found so unmistakably at work in _Lady Inger_. Despite its lyrical dialogue, _The Feast at Solhoug_ has that crispiness of dramatic action which marks the French plays of the period. It may indeed be called Scribe's _Bataille de Dames_ writ tragic. Here, as in the _Bataille de Dames_ (one of the earliest plays produced under Ibsen's supervision), we have the rivalry of an older and a younger woman for the love of a man who is proscribed on an unjust accusation, and pursued by the emissaries of the royal power. One might even, though this would be forcing the point, find an analogy in the fact that the elder woman (in both plays a strong and determined character) has in Scribe's comedy a cowardly suitor, while in Ibsen's tragedy, or melodrama, she has a cowardly husband. In every other respect the plays are as dissimilar as possible; yet it seems to me far from unlikely that an unconscious reminiscence of the _Bataille de Dames_ may have contributed to the shaping of _The Feast at Solhoug_ in Ibsen's mind. But more significant than any resemblance of theme is the similarity of Ibsen's whole method to that of the French school--the way, for instance, in which misunderstandings are kept up through a careful avoidance of the use of proper names, and the way in which a cup of poison, prepared for one person, comes into the hands of another person, is, as a matter of fact, drunk by no one but occasions the acutest agony to the would-be poisoner. All this ingenious dovetailing of incidents and working-up of misunderstandings, Ibsen unquestionably learned from the French. The French language, indeed, is the only one which has a word--_quiproquo_--to indicate the class of misunderstanding which, from _Lady Inger_ down to the _League of Youth_, Ibsen employed without scruple.

Ibsen's first visit to the home of his future wife took place after the production of _The Feast at Solhoug_. It seems doubtful whether this was actually his first meeting with her; but at any rate we can scarcely suppose that he knew her during the previous summer, when he was writing his play. It is a curious coincidence, then, that he should have found in Susanna Thoresen and her sister Marie very much the same contrast of characters which had occupied him in his first dramatic effort, _Catilina_, and which had formed the main subject of the play he had just produced. It is less wonderful that the same contrast should so often recur in his later works, even down to _John Gabriel Borkman_. Ibsen was greatly attached to his gentle and retiring sister-in-law, who died unmarried in 1874.

_The Feast at Solhoug_ has been translated by Miss Morison and myself, only because no one else could be found to undertake the task. We have done our best; but neither of us lays claim to any great metrical skill, and the light movement of Ibsen's verse is often, if not always, rendered in a sadly halting fashion. It is, however, impossible to exaggerate the irregularity of the verse in the original, or its defiance of strict metrical law. The normal line is one of four accents: but when this is said, it is almost impossible to arrive at any further generalisation. There is a certain lilting melody in many passages, and the whole play has not unfairly been said to possess the charm of a northern summer night, in which the glimmer of twilight gives place only to the gleam of morning. But in the main (though much better than its successor, _Olaf Liliekrans_) it is the weakest thing that Ibsen admitted into the canon of his works. He wrote it in 1870 as "a study which I now disown"; and had he continued in that frame of mind, the world would scarcely have quarrelled with his judgment. At worst, then, my collaborator and I cannot be accused of marring a masterpiece; but for which assurance we should probably have shrunk from the attempt.

W. A.

*Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons. **_Ibsen and Bjornson_. London, Heinmann, 1899, p.88

THE FEAST AT SOLHOUG (1856)

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

PREFACE

I wrote _The Feast at Solhoug_ in Bergen in the summer of 1855--that is to say, about twenty-eight years ago.

The play was acted for the first time on January 2, 1856, also at Bergen, as a gala performance on the anniversary of the foundation of the Norwegian Stage.

As I was then stage-manager of the Bergen Theatre, it was I myself who conducted the rehearsals of my play. It received an excellent, a remarkably sympathetic interpretation. Acted with pleasure and enthusiasm, it was received in the same spirit. The "Bergen emotionalism," which is said to have decided the result of the latest elections in those parts, ran high that evening in the crowded theatre. The performance ended with repeated calls for the author and for the actors. Later in the evening I was serenaded by the orchestra, accompanied by a great part of the audience. I almost think that I went so far as to make some kind of speech from my window; certain I am that I felt extremely happy.

A couple of months later, _The Feast of Solhoug_ was played in Christiania. There also it was received by the public with much approbation, and the day after the first performance Bjornson wrote a friendly, youthfully ardent article on it in the _Morgenblad_. It was not a notice or criticism proper, but rather a free, fanciful improvisation on the play and the performance.

On this, however, followed the real criticism, written by the real critics.

How did a man in the Christiania of those days--by which I mean the years between 1850 and 1860, or thereabouts--become a real literary, and in particular dramatic, critic?

As a rule, the process was as follows: After some preparatory exercises in the columns of the _Samfundsblad_, and after the play, the future critic betook himself to Johan Dahl's bookshop and ordered from Copenhagen a copy of J. L. Heiberg's _Prose Works_, among which was to be found--so he had heard it said--an essay entitled _On the Vaudeville_. This essay was in due course read, ruminated on, and possibly to a certain extent understood. From Heiberg's writings the young man, moreover, learned of a controversy which that author had carried on in his day with Professor Oehlenschlager and with the Soro poet, Hauch. And he was simultaneously made aware that J. L. Baggesen (the author of _Letters from the Dead_) had at a still earlier period made a similar attack on the great author who wrote both _Axel and Valborg_ and _Hakon Jarl_.

A quantity of other information useful to a critic was to be extracted from these writings. From them one learned, for instance, that taste obliged a good critic to be scandalised by a hiatus. Did the young critical Jeronimuses of Christiania encounter such a monstrosity in any new verse, they were as certain as their prototype in Holberg to shout their "Hoity-toity! the world will not last till Easter!"

The origin of another peculiar characteristic of the criticism then prevalent in the Norwegian capital was long a puzzle to me. Every time a new author published a book or had a little play acted, our critics were in the habit of flying into an ungovernable passion and behaving as if the publication of the book or the performance of the play were a mortal insult to themselves and the newspapers in which they wrote. As already remarked, I puzzled long over this peculiarity. At last I got to the bottom of the matter. Whilst reading the Danish _Monthly Journal of Literature_ I was struck by the fact that old State-Councillor Molbech was invariably seized with a fit of rage when a young author published a book or had a play acted in Copenhagen.

Thus, or in a manner closely resembling this, had the tribunal qualified itself, which now, in the daily press, summoned _The Feast at Solhoug_ to the bar of criticism in Christiania. It was principally composed of young men who, as regards criticism, lived upon loans from various quarters. Their critical thought had long ago been thought and expressed by others; their opinions had long ere now been formulated elsewhere. Their aesthetic principles were borrowed; their critical method was borrowed; the polemical tactics they employed were borrowed in every particular, great and small. Their very frame of mind was borrowed. Borrowing, borrowing, here, there, and everywhere! The single original thing about them was that they invariably made a wrong and unseasonable application of their borrowings.

It can surprise no one that this body, the members of which, as critics, supported themselves by borrowing, should have presupposed similar action on my part, as author. Two, possibly more than two, of the newspapers promptly discovered that I had borrowed this, that, and the other thing form Henrik Hertz's play, _Svend Dyring's House_.

This is a baseless and indefensible critical assertion. It is evidently to be ascribed to the fact that the metre of the ancient ballads is employed in both plays. But my tone is quite different from Hertz's; the language of my play has a different ring; a light summer breeze plays over the rhythm of my verse: over that or Hertz's brood the storms of autumn.

Nor, as regards the characters, the action, and the contents of the plays generally, is there any other or any greater resemblance between them than that which is a natural consequence of the derivation of the subjects of both from the narrow circle of ideas in which the ancient ballads move.

It might be maintained with quite as much, or even more, reason that Hertz in his _Svend Dyring's House_ had borrowed, and that to no inconsiderable extent, from Heinrich von Kleist's _Kathchen von Heilbronn_, a play written at the beginning of this century. Kathchen's relation to Count Wetterstrahl is in all essentials the same as Tagnhild's to the knight, Stig Hvide. Like Ragnhild, Kathchen is compelled by a mysterious, inexplicable power to follow the man she loves wherever he goes, to steal secretly after him, to lay herself down to sleep near him, to come back to him, as by some innate compulsion, however often she may be driven away. And other instances of supernatural interference are to be met with both in Kleist's and in Hertz's play.

But does any one doubt that it would be possible, with a little good--or a little ill-will, to discover among still older dramatic literature a play from which it could be maintained that Kleist had borrowed here and there in his _Kathchen von Heilbronn_? I, for my part, do not doubt it. But such suggestions of indebtedness are futile. What makes a work of art the spiritual property of its creator is the fact that he has imprinted on it the stamp of his own personality. Therefore I hold that, in spite of the above-mentioned points of resemblance, _Svend Dyring's House_ is as incontestably and entirely an original work by Henrick Hertz as _Katchen von Heilbronn_ is an original work by Heinrich von Kleist.

I advance the same claim on my own behalf as regards _The Feast at Solhoug_, and I trust that, for the future, each of the three namesakes* will be permitted to keep, in its entirety, what rightfully belongs to him.

In writing _The Feast of Solhoug_ in connection with _Svend Dyring's House_, George Brandes expresses the opinion, not that the former play is founded upon any idea borrowed from the latter, but that it has been written under an influence exercised by the older author upon the younger. Brandes invariably criticises my work in such a friendly spirit that I have all reason to be obliged to him for this suggestion, as for so much else.

Nevertheless I must maintain that he, too, is in this instance mistaken. I have never specially admired Henrik Hertz as a dramatist. Hence it is impossible for me to believe that he should, unknown to myself, have been able to exercise any influence on by dramatic production.

As regards this point and the matter in general, I might confine myself to referring those interested to the writings of Dr. Valfrid Vasenius, lecturer on Aesthetics at the University of Helsingfors. In the thesis which gained him his degree of Doctor of Philosophy, _Henrik Ibsen's Dramatic Poetry in its First stage_ (1879), and also in _Henrik Ibsen: The Portrait of a Skald_ (Jos. Seligman & Co., Stockholm, 1882), Valsenious states and supports his views on the subject of the play at present in question, supplementing them in the latter work by what I told him, very briefly, when we were together at Munich three years ago.

But, to prevent all misconception, I will now myself give a short account of the origin of _The Feast at Solhoug_.

I began this Preface with the statement that _The Feast at Solhoug_ was written in the summer 1855.

In 1854 I had written _Lady Inger of Ostrat_. This was a task which had obliged me to devote much attention to the literature and history of Norway during the Middle Ages, especially the latter part of that period. I did my utmost to familiarise myself with the manners and customs, with the emotions, thought, and language of the men of those days.

The period, however, is not one over which the student is tempted to linger, nor does it present much material suitable for dramatic treatment.

Consequently I soon deserted it for the Saga period. But the Sagas of the Kings, and in general the more strictly historical traditions of that far-off age, did not attract me greatly; at that time I was unable to put the quarrels between kings and chieftains, parties and clans, to any dramatic purpose. This was to happen later.

In the Icelandic "family" Sagas, on the other hand, I found in abundance what I required in the shape of human garb for the moods, conceptions, and thoughts which at that time occupied me, or were, at least, more or less distinctly present in my mind. With these Old Norse contributions to the personal history of our Saga period I had had no previous acquaintance; I had hardly so much as heard them named. But now N. M. Petersen's excellent translation-- excellent, at least, as far as the style is concerned--fell into my hands. In the pages of these family chronicles, with their variety of scenes and of relations between man and man, between woman and woman, in short, between human being and human being, there met me a personal, eventful, really living life; and as the result of my intercourse with all these distinctly individual men and women, there presented themselves to my mind's eye the first rough, indistinct outlines of _The Vikings at Helgeland_.

How far the details of that drama then took shape, I am no longer able to say. But I remember perfectly that the two figures of which I first caught sight were the two women who in course of time became Hiordis and Dagny. There was to be a great banquet in the play, with passion-rousing, fateful quarrels during its course. Of other characters and passions, and situations produced by these, I meant to include whatever seemed to me most typical of the life which the Sagas reveal. In short, it was my intention to reproduce dramatically exactly what the Saga of the Volsungs gives in epic form.

I made no complete, connected plan at that time; but it was evident to me that such a drama was to be my first undertaking.

Various obstacles intervened. Most of them were of a personal nature, and these were probably the most decisive; but it undoubtedly had its significance that I happened just at this time to make a careful study of Landstad's collection of Norwegian ballads, published two years previously. My mood of the moment was more in harmony with the literary romanticism of the Middle Ages than with the deeds of the Sagas, with poetical than with prose composition, with the word-melody of the ballad than with the characterisation of the Saga.

Thus it happened that the fermenting, formless design for the tragedy, _The Vikings at Helgeland_, transformed itself temporarily into the lyric drama, _The Feast at Solhoug_.

The two female characters, the foster sisters Hiordis and Dagny, of the projected tragedy, became the sisters Margit and Signe of the completed lyric drama. The derivation of the latter pair from the two women of the Saga at once becomes apparent when attention is drawn to it. The relationship is unmistakable. The tragic hero, so far only vaguely outlined, Sigurd, the far-travelled Viking, the welcome guest at the courts of kings, became the knight and minstrel, Gudmund Alfson, who has likewise been long absent in foreign lands, and has lived in the king's household. His attitude towards the two sisters was changed, to bring it into accordance with the change in time and circumstances; but the position of both sisters to him remained practically the same as that in the projected and afterwards completed tragedy. The fateful banquet, the presentation of which had seemed to me of the first importance in my original plan, became in the drama the scene upon which its personages made their appearance; it became the background against which the action stood out, and communicated to the picture as a whole the general tone at which I aimed. The ending of the play was, undoubtedly, softened and subdued into harmony with its character as drama, not tragedy; but orthodox aestheticians may still, perhaps, find it indisputable whether, in this ending, a touch of pure tragedy has not been left behind, to testify to the origin of the drama.

Upon this subject, however, I shall not enter at present. My object has simply been to maintain and prove that the play under consideration, like all my other dramatic works, is an inevitable outcome of the tenor of my life at a certain period. It had its origin within, and was not the result of any outward impression or influence.

This, and no other, is the true account of the genesis of _The Feast at Solhoug_.

Henrik Ibsen. Rome, April, 1883.

*Heinrich von Kleist, Henrik Hertz, Henrik Ibsen.

THE FEAST AT SOLHOUG

CHARACTERS

BENGT GAUTESON, Master of Solhoug. MARGIT, his wife. SIGNE, her sister. GUDMUND ALFSON, their kinsman. KNUT GESLING, the King's sheriff. ERIK OF HEGGE, his friend. A HOUSE-CARL. ANOTHER HOUSE-CARL. THE KING'S ENVOY. AN OLD MAN. A MAIDEN. GUESTS, both MEN and LADIES. MEN of KNUT GESLING'S TRAIN. SERVING-MEN and MAIDENS at SOLHOUG.

The action passes at Solhoug in the Fourteenth Century.

PRONUNCIATION OF NAMES: Gudmund=Goodmund. The g in "Margit" and in "Gesling" is hard, as in "go," or in "Gesling," it may be pronounced as y--"Yesling." The first o in Solhoug ought to have the sound of a very long "oo."

Transcriber's notes:

--Signe and Hegge have umlauts above the e's, the ultimate e only in Hegge. --Passages that are in lyric form are not indented and have the directorial comments to the right of the character's name.

THE FEAST AT SOLHOUG

PLAY IN THREE ACTS

ACT FIRST

A stately room, with doors in the back and to both sides. In front on the right, a bay window with small round panes, set in lead, and near the window a table, on which is a quantity of feminine ornaments. Along the left wall, a longer table with silver goblets and drinking-horns. The door in the back leads out to a passage-way,* through which can be seen a spacious fiord-landscape.

BENGT GAUTESON, MARGIT, KNUT GESLING and ERIK OF HEGGE are seated around the table on the left. In the background are KNUT's followers, some seated, some standing; one or two flagons of ale are handed round among them. Far off are heard church bells, ringing to Mass.

*This no doubt means a sort of arcaded veranda running along the outer wall of the house.

ERIK.

[Rising at the table.] In one word, now, what answer have you to make to my wooing on Knut Gesling's behalf?

BENGT.

[Glancing uneasily towards his wife.] Well, I--to me it seems-- [As she remains silent.] H'm, Margit, let us first hear your thought in the matter.

MARGIT.

[Rising.] Sir Knut Gesling, I have long known all that Erik of Hegge has told of you. I know full well that you come of a lordly house; you are rich in gold and gear, and you stand in high favour with our royal master.

BENGT.

[To KNUT.] In high favour--so say I too.

MARGIT.

And doubtless my sister could choose her no doughtier mate--

BENGT.

None doughtier; that is what _I_ say too.

MARGIT.

--If so be that you can win her to think kindly of you.

BENGT.

[Anxiously, and half aside.] Nay--nay, my dear wife--

KNUT.

[Springing up.] Stands it so, Dame Margit! You think that your sister--

BENGT.

[Seeking to calm him.] Nay, nay, Knut Gesling! Have patience, now. You must understand us aright.

MARGIT.

There is naught in my words to wound you. My sister knows you only by the songs that are made about you--and these songs sound but ill in gentle ears.

No peaceful home is your father's house. With your lawless, reckless crew, Day out, day in, must you hold carouse-- God help her who mates with you. God help the maiden you lure or buy With gold and with forests green-- Soon will her sore heart long to lie Still in the grave, I ween.

ERIK.

Aye, aye--true enough--Knut Gesling lives not overpeaceably. But there will soon come a change in that, when he gets him a wife in his hall.

KNUT.