Peer Gynt, by Henrik Ibsen (U. Of Minn. Press, transl. By Rolf Fjelde, Copyright by translator 1980) (read winter 2004)

This is a strange and wonderful play by the great Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen. The main theme it explores is what it means to “be yourself.”

Peer Gynt is a bright, ambitious, dreamy young man who lives with his widowed mother, Aase, in a rundown farmhouse in Norway. Peer dreams of future glory, but is a great disappointment to his mother because he tells her tall tales of his grandiose exploits but does nothing to help her out of her dire poverty. When she says he could have married the "Hegstad girl" but missed his chance because she was marrying Mads Moen instead, he says he's going to the wedding.

Mads Moen is a wimpy guy, whom Ingrid Hegstad doesn't want to marry, so she locks herself in her room and won't come out. Peer shows up at the wedding, although uninvited and made fun of by the other guests. He tries to dance with various girls, including Solveig, the older daughter in a very pious family, but is rebuffed and mocked by most of them (but not by Solveig).

Then Peer agrees to help Mads Moen get Ingrid to come down from where she's locked herself away. However, instead he steals her away to the mountains, where he apparently ravishes her and then sends her home despite her pleading to stay with him. He is still thinking of Solveig.

This puts Peer in trouble with the law, and he stays on the run. He meets and ravishes three herd girls, then finds himself following a "woman in green" who is the troll king's daughter. She leads him to her father, the king of the trolls, who agrees to give Peer half of his kingdom if he will marry his daughter. Peer agrees to most of his demands, including having a tail tied onto him and wearing a yellow bow. When Peer still sees the trolls as ugly the king proposes to "make a slit" in his left eye (and apparently to cut out his right eye) so he will see the world as a troll and not as a man. But when the king tells him this operation will be irreversible, and that he will never see the world as a man again, Peer decides the cost is too great and tries to leave. But the king says, in effect, that it's too late -- by lustfully desiring his daughter, he has made her pregnant. Peer then flees, but first has to fight off a pack of young trolls, which he manages to do when they hear the sound of church bells.

In an interesting exchange between Peer and the troll king, the king says there is a basic difference between a troll and a man "down at the root." "Outside,/ Among men, under the shining sky,/ They say: 'Man, to yourself be true!'/ While here, under our mountain roof,/ We say: 'Troll, to yourself be -- enough!'" (p. 55)

Next Peer meets the "great Boyg." But this brief chapter is very difficult to understand. Maybe the "great Boyg" is Peer's conscience. At any rate, just when Peer collapses and appears to be a victim of the great Boyg (and a flock of birds, which may symbolize witches), the Boyg hears church bells and hymns in the distance, and dwingles away to nothing, with the enigmatic words, "He was too strong. There were women behind him." (p. 67)

In the next scene, Peer is in his mother's mountain hut, when Solveig's little sister Helga appears with a basket of food. Solveig is behind her, but runs away after Peer tells her that the Troll Princess had gone after him like a bat, and Solveig says, "It's a good thing, then, that we rang the bells." (p. 68)

Meanwhile the sheriff shows up at his mother's farm and strips it of almost everthing, to pay the debt that Peer owes to the Hegstads.

Peer, in his hut in the woods, is visited again by Solveig, this time to stay. She says she's left her father, mother and sister in order to be with him forever. He welcomes her joyfully, but when he goes out to get some firewood he meets an old-looking woman in a green dress, accompanied by an "ugly brat." It's the troll princess with Peer's son, as the troll king had predicted. Peer refuses to turn Solveig out and let the troll princess in, even though she says she will lose her snout and become beautiful again if he will. The troll princess threatens to keep coming back, and even to slip between Peer and Solveig when they make love, so Peer returns to the hut, tells Solveig that he has to go and get "something heavy," and tells her that she must wait for him.

Peer disappears. He goes to his mother's cottage and finds her dying. He sits by her bed and tells her that he can see her going into heaven. He says, "Saint Peter stands at the main door;/ He's motioning you to come in." To liven up the story, I guess, he says, "Saint Peter, what did you say?/ My mother may not come in?/ ... Ho-ho, there's God the Father!/ Saint Peter, you'll get yours today!/ (in a deep voice) 'An end to this fuss and bother --/ Mother Aase can come in free!'" (pp. 87-89)

The next scene is many years later, when Peer is middle-aged and rich. He sits at dinner with four other men, in Morrocco, while his steam yacht is anchored off-shore. He brags to them about his rise from rags to riches, which involved shipping idols, and later missionaries, to China, and slaves to "Carolina." He reveals to them his grandiose plan to become emperor of the world, through money. However, his dreams come crashing down when his friends seize his yacht and leave him stranded on shore.

Peer then goes through different adventures in the Middle East, including a brief stint masquerading as a prophet after finding robes and a horse stolen from an Arab chieftain. However, when he tries to seduce one of the dancing girls (Anitra) who hail him as a prophet, she takes off on his horse, leaving him again stranded and broke. He then strips off his Turkish costume and reverts to European clothing.

He decides to become a wandering scholar. In a flashback scene, a middle-aged woman, fair and still lovely, sits outside a hut in the forest, spinning. She sings, “God give you strength if you wander alone!/ God give you joy if you stand at His throne!/ I'll wait for you here till you're home again, love;/ And if heaven has you, we'll meet up above!” (p. 133)

Meanwhile Peer is visiting the Great Sphinx and other monuments of antiquity in Egypt. He meets the German director of an insane asylum in Cairo, who seems crazy himself. Herr Begriffenfeldt brings Peer to the asylum and introduces him as the “Emperor.” Peer says to the director that he just tries to “be himself” but in the insane asylum “... as far as I can see, here you/ Have to be beside yourself to rate.” The director replies, “Beside yourself? What a huge mistake!/ Everyone here is himself to the gills,/ Completely himself and nothing else –/ So far in himself he can't come back./ Everyone's shut in his cask of skin;/ He dives inthe self's fermenting murk,/ Hermetically sealed by a self-made cork –/ Shrinking his staves down a well of brine./ No one has tears for the others' griefs,/ Or feels at all for the others' beliefs./ We're ourselves in every thought and tone,/ Ourselves to the farthest margin out –/” (p. 142)

Act 5 begins with Peer as a “ragged old man with grizzled hair and beard,” standing on the deck of a ship in the North Sea. He's heading home, but there's on one to greet him there. In a conversation with the captain he offers to give an extra gift to the crew, but then when the captain says they all have wives and children waiting for them at home, he changes his mind and decides to just get them drunk so that when they go home “They'll break in drunk on those family groups!/ They'll curse and hammer the table tops –/ And stiffen their own with the breath of fear!/ The wives'll scream and bolt from the house –/ And the children too! Now let ‛em rejoice!” (p. 154)

Then comes a fierce storm and they see three men from another boat drowning. Peer yells, “Save them” and offers money to the crew, but none will risk their lives. Peer condemns them in his heart and thinks he's righteous because he offered to pay for the rescue. Then he fights off the cook to occupy a one-man lifeboat while the cook drowns.

Back in Norway Peer seems to wander among people who keep reminding him of his central quest: to know himself. Digging for wild onions near a hut in the forest, he stops to peel the layers of an onion, seeing each one as a phase in his life. He keeps looking for the “kernel” but finds that the onion, like life, “To the innermost filler,/ It's nothing but layers – smaller and smaller –“ (p. 177) He approaches the hut and hears Solveig singing about her “dearest boy, in some far land” and promising to keep waiting. He runs away, realizing that “Here's where my empire lay.” As he runs he is tormented by thoughts of all the good he didn't do in his life.

He meets the “button-molder,” who says he's come to “melt down” Peer: “The ladle's empty and clean./ Your grave is dug; your coffin's made;/ The worms in your body'll be well fed –/ But the Master has instructed me/ To bring in your soul without delay.” (p. 183) The button-molder threatens to melt Peer down and mingle him with others to make someone new; he says Peer has never been “himself”, as he claims; his orders say, “Peer Gynt; to be claimed/ For setting his life's definition at odds;/ Consigned to the ladle as damaged goods.” (p. 187) But he agrees to give Peer another chance to come up with proof that (I guess) Peer has really lived as himself in the world.

Peer meets up with an old man begging on the road. It turns out to be the Troll King. Peer tries to get him to vouch that he has always been true to himself, but the Troll King says no, you really became a troll, even though you didn't allow the eye surgery, and lived that way all your life following the motto of trolldom: “Troll, to yourself be enough!” (p. 192)

Peer then comes across the button-molder again, and again pleads for another chance. He asks the button-molder, “What is it, ‛to be yourself,' in truth?” The button-molder says, “To be yourself is to slay yourself.” Cf. Lk. 9:24. He says Peer cannot understand that, so he gives another definition, “So let's say: to make your life evolve/ From the Master's meaning to the last detail.” Peer argues with him, then concedes that maybe in that sense he has not been himself. Instead he acknowledges that he has committed great sins, “Not only in deeds, but thoughts and plans ....” He asks for time to find a priest, confess, and bring a declaration (of forgiveness?). The button-molder says okay, bring me that and you won't have to face the casting ladle. He gives Peer time until the next crossroads to find a priest. (pp. 195-197)

He finds a “lean person” dressed in a priest's cassock, but he turns out to be the devil or one of his servants. Peer broaches the idea of a short stay in hell until he can “transfer out,” but he tells Peer his sins aren't bad enough to warrant a stay in hell; that's reserved for the kind of person who had “been himself in every respect.” When Peer expresses surprise the Lean One explains that its like a photographic print and negative – if a person records his life in a “negative way,” he comes to hell and is transformed into a “positive state.” (pp. 200-203)

When the Lean One discloses that he's after one “Peter Gynt,” who swears that he is himself, Peer sends him off looking for him while he himself undergoes some kind of soul crisis. He hears churchgoers on a forest path singing a hymn. He cries out, “Don't look! It's desert there inside –/ I fear I was dead long before I died.” (p. 205)

He then meets the button-molder for the last time, and as the button-molder is saying, “Well, your time is up,” Peer hears a woman singing from a hut, and says, “Yes, there's the meaning/ To all my sins.? (p. 206) The button-molder gives him one more chance to put his “house in order,” but after he leaves Peer heads for the hut, sees Solveig coming out with a hymnbook wrapped in her kerchief, and he throws himself at her feet. He tries to tell her what a terrible sinner he's been, but she says “You've made my whole life a beautiful song.” (p. 207) Peer says no, he is lost and doomed unless she can solve a riddle: “Where have I been myself, whole and true?” Solveig says, “In my faith, in my hope, and in my love.” Peer says, “What are you saying ‛'? Don't play with words!/ To the boy inside you're mother and nurse.” Solveig says, “I am, yes -- but who is his father?/ It's He who grants the prayers of the mother.” He then lays his head in her lap til the sun rises, while she sings softly over him, saying “I'll watch over thee.” (pp. 208-209)

This is a book to read over and over. What does it mean to “be yourself”? Ibsen seems to be saying that it means to be the person you were meant to be in God's eyes, not necessarily the person who fulfills his own desires for himself.