PEER GYNT (Illustrated Edition). Henrik Ibsen

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СКАЧАТЬ BEGRIFFENFELDT, Dr. Phil., director of the madhouse at Cairo.

      HUHU, a language-reformer from the coast of Malabar.

      HUSSEIN, an eastern Minister.

      A FELLAH, with a royal mummy.

      SEVERAL MADMEN, with their KEEPERS.

      A NORWEGIAN SKIPPER and HIS CREW.

      A STRANGE PASSENGER.

      A PASTOR.

      A FUNERAL–PARTY.

      A PARISH–OFFICER.

      A BUTTON–MOULDER.

      A LEAN PERSON.

      [The action, which opens in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and ends around the 1860’s, takes place partly in Gudbrandsdalen, and on the mountains around it, partly on the coast of Morocco, in the desert of Sahara, in a madhouse at Cairo, at sea, etc.]

      Act First

      Table of Contents

      Scene First

      [A wooded hillside near ÅSE’s farm. A river rushes down the slope. On the further side of it an old mill shed. It is a hot day in summer.]

      [PEER GYNT, a strongly-built youth of twenty, comes down the pathway. His mother, ÅSE, a small, slightly built woman, follows him, scolding angrily.]

      Åse

      Peer, you’re lying!

      Peer [without stopping]

      No, I am not!

      Åse

      Well then, swear that it is true!

      Peer

      Swear? Why should I?

      Åse

      It’s a lie from first to las

      See, you dare not!t.

      Peer [stopping]

      It is true — each blessed word!

      Åse [confronting him]

      Don’t you blush before your mother?

       First you skulk among the mountains

       monthlong in the busiest season,

       stalking reindeer in the snows;

       home you come then, torn and tattered,

       gun amissing, likewise game;—

       and at last, with open eyes,

       think to get me to believe

       all the wildest hunters’-lies!—

       Well, where did you find the buck, then?

      Peer

      West near Gendin.

      Åse [laughing scornfully]

      Ah! Indeed!

      Peer

      Keen the blast towards me swept;

       hidden by an alder-clump,

       he was scraping in the snow-crust

       after lichen —

      Åse [as before]

      Doubtless, yes!

      Peer

      Breathlessly I stood and listened,

       heard the crunching of his hoof,

       saw the branches of one antler.

       Softly then among the boulders

       I crept forward on my belly.

       Crouched in the moraine I peered up;—

       such a buck, so sleek and fat,

       you, I’m sure, have ne’er set eyes on.

      Åse

      No, of course not!

      Peer

      Bang! I fired!

       Clean he dropped upon the hillside.

       But the instant that he fell

       I sat firm astride his back,

       gripped him by the left ear tightly,

       and had almost sunk my knife-blade

       in his neck, behind his skull —

       when, behold! the brute screamed wildly,

       sprang upon his feet like lightning,

       with a back-cast of his head

       from my fist made knife and sheath fly,

       pinned me tightly by the thigh,

       jammed his horns against my legs,

       clenched me like a pair of tongs;—

       then forthwith away he flew

       right along the Gendin–Edge!

      Åse [involuntarily]

      Jesus save us —!

      Peer

      Have you ever

       chanced to see the Gendin–Edge?

       Nigh on four miles long it stretches

       sharp before you like a scythe.

       Down o’er glaciers, landslips, scaurs,

       down the toppling grey moraines,

       you can see, both right and left,

       straight into the tarns that slumber,

       black and sluggish, more than seven

       hundred fathoms deep below you.

       Right along the Edge we two

       clove our passage through the air.

       Never rode I such СКАЧАТЬ