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"When W8, Dead Awaken"
MAXIMILAN HARDEN –4
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“WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN”
***
By
MAXIMILIAN HARDEN
Office of publication :
Rooms 2128–29-30-31 Park Row Building



* WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN.”
Before the gentle youth of Nazareth, whom the Baptist had
hardened in the cold waters of the Jordan, started on his road
to martyrdom, he remained forty days and forty nights in the
wilderness. He desired to be alone with himself, quite alone,
in order to look backwards and forwards undisturbed, and to
listen during the still hours to the enticing voices which called
him from the common companionship of men. He desired to :
ponder whether he should become an instrument in the hands
of John, or live to himself out of his own strength. He
climbed the rocky precipice which shuts in the Dead Sea on
the west, lodged there among the few wild beasts of the wil-
derness, and denied the body all nourishment. The carnal,
all that influences the will which longs for power and joy,
should languish and grow weak; the untroubled light of pure
perception should illumine the road which he must tread.
The spot was well chosen for solemn intercourse with the in-
most soul; there was none more lonely in all Judea. The peo-
ple whispered that it was inhabited by demons, and that dan-
ger threatened those who rested there. And in truth the
tempter drew near unto him, weakened by fasting. He
mocked the youth who imagined himself consecrated by God’s
especial grace, and demanded a miracle from him to prove
his supernatural power in the eyes of men. With wise words
Originally printed in "Die Zukunft,” March 31, 1900.
3.

4. WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
the youth refused to gratify such an expectation. Then the
tempter led him to an exceeding high mountain, showed him
all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and said
unto him: “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall
down and worship me.” But the youth replied: “Get thee
hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Then he went
down from the heights to become the teacher and the saviour
of mankind. From Samsara, from the world of constant re-
generation of lusts and desires, from the delusions of the
senses and changing customs, he parted of his own free will,
as all must do who wish to become spiritually great, and he be-
came a pious citizen of Nirvana, -that calm land where sin-
ful wishes find no voice.
On this wonderful symbol, springing from the inexhaustible
world of the Veda, the gaze of the greatest poet living to-
day, for Europeans, has been fastened since his youth. Hen-
rik Ibsen, a North German from the land of the strictest es-
tablished church, the land of the most intense ecstasy, the
land of wrathful Christians of the stamp of Kierkegaard and
Lammers, grew up hating the pleasures of the senses. Only
in the domain of the morality of the Nazarene—thus the aus-
tere believers around him taught—is there anything worthy to
strive for; only moral beauty is truly beautiful. The boy
believed the doctrine; but in the youth doubt awoke. Should
everything that grows on the earth for our pleasure really be
avoided as evil? Does the sun shine only to warn us to re-
pent in sackcloth and ashes? Is the sweet fragrance of blos-

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 5
soming buds an enticement of the evil one, the union of two
warmly desirous bodies a fall of man? And is the sight of
earthly magnificence and splendor only to try man, for whom,
should he boldly grasp a little bit of happiness and splendor,
heavy punishment is waiting in a hereafter? But still he
doubted. The youth was timid; the first impressions chilled
him; his sharp eye already saw beneath the surface, and still
he did not have confidence enough in himself to venture to at-
tack what had been taught him as the holiest of all. Only the
man had the courage to look up to the God to whom his people
knelt; only the man dared to measure critically the holiest of
all. He saw a weakened race, wandering along crooked
paths, bargaining for little advantages day by day, making
hypocritical compromises; and, when folding its hands in
prayer, it thought only of how it could cunningly lie itself
into heaven. what must the God be like who could be de-
ceived by such human beings? The God of the popular con-
ception was no longer the God of strong Christians. With a
shrill voice the poet called out through the land:
Wie das Geschlecht, ergraut sein Gott.
Als Greis mit dünnem Silberhaar:
So stellt Ihr den Gottwater dar.
Doch dieser Gottist nicht der meine !
Meinerist Sturm, wo Wind der Deine,
Ein Heldenjüngling kuhn und stark,
Kein schwacher Alter ohne Mark!
! Like the race, its God grows gray. You represent the Godhead as an old
man with thin, silvery hair. I cannot accept such a God! My God is the
storm, while yours is but the wind. My God is a young, bold, and mighty
hero, not a weak old man with no backbone.

6 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
This young God cannot be contained within the old narrow
church; neither is the broad space of the modern house of
worship sufficient for him. Whoever will feel him, follow
him, must go out into the open air, up to the mountain-tops
which pierce the heavens; there, in the midst of the raging
storm, the strongest of the strong will manifest himself.
That is the reason why Brand, the clergyman who has just
left the established church, throws the key of the house of
God into the river, and starts out with the bravest of his con-
gregation to climb the steep path whose hardships will make
them strong. But for this path of suffering the bravest are
not brave enough. They thirst for pleasure, and there on the
heights it is hard to breathe; their gaze seeks flowers, and
finds only fields of ice; they hope for the delightful reward of
labor, and their austere guide promises them only a crown of
thorns. Then their blunted feelings turn to rage; with stones
they drive away the man who enticed them out of their com-
fortable lowlands and turn back—to the yoke, to every-day
life and servitude. Brand remains alone; he bleeds from
wounds which superstition gave him, and, gasping, he recog-
nizes how the world rewards redemption. To freedom, to the
light, to his own young desires he had tried to lead his con-
gregation; they preferred to sleep in peace; they did not wish
to steel their wills, or conquer salvation for themselves with
their own hands. Wherefore such agony? Salvation had
been promised for a long time. One had suffered for all.
The old doctrine has broken all wills. Brand looks back
down into the valley of those who have no will, stretched out

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
under his eyes like the land of the dead. No fresh, happy
life; no blood-red resolution; not even one great sin, -which,
at any rate, demands courage and strength; only mean, little
merchant victories, mean little commonplace shame! Never
would he go back there! Rather death on icy heights than a
sham life among whispering, haggling dwarfs, who have lost
all will to live. Brand could not hammer the meaning of his
dream into their hearts; therefore he will live it, and living
will set an example to those he could not teach. Was not
this what the Galilean did P. Never would his doctrine have
won the world, had he not watered it with his life’s blood.
As the man ponders these things, the tempter approaches him
as he approached his model, and shows him happy blessedness
according to the common conception,-shows him that the
bow too tightly strung with wishes has always only injured
him who would storm the heavens, and that for poor hunted
wretch, should he lessen his demands on humanity and on
himself, sweet pleasures might yet blossom within certain
limits. All to no purpose; the tempter has no power over the
steely will of this free man. Only a demented man still be-
lieves in him; yet Brand’s will is not broken, Brand’s foot
does not falter. He seeks the sun, seeks the God to whom he
can kneel, to whom he can pray . . . An avalanche buries
him. And over the snow-white grave of this outcast rings
the voice of the Deus Caritatis, who opens wide the doors of
the father’s house to him who fell in the arduous toil of strife.
Brand is not the only character in Ibsen's world whom the
tempter approaches. The Roman Emperor Julian and Rheder

8 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
Bernik, Jarl Skule and Pastor Manders, Rosmer Solness and
Allmers, Frau Helene Alving and Frau Hedda Gabler, the
little Hedwig Ekdal and the little Hilde Wangel, were all
tempted by the evil one. And even the cold woman of the
sea once saw her dream come toward her in tangible shape; it
beckoned and entered into the shoreless ocean, into the never-
resting element obedient only to power and will. Many fol-
lowed the tempter, and suffered the fate of audacious human
beings. Many stopped up their ears at the enticing call, and
crept back into the heap of duties, and languished there, as
did the wild duck wounded in the wing, in the attic room of
Ekdal, the photographer. They none of them amounted to
much. They all sought the joy of life with longing hearts,
that joy which poor Oswald Alving, poisoned by his inheri-
tance, tried to conjure up on his canvas. They all stood under
the ban of a conception of life which, ennobling the mind, yet
makes unhappy, and, to get a little bit of sun, all were forced
to turn to stupefying, deadening medicines. A dark land, a
land without promise, and a humanity deprived by Christian
dogma of the courage with which to enjoy heathen joyousness
and pleasures, a humanity resembling that of which Nietzsche
said: “ The modern man drifts back and forth between
Christian and antique, between intimidated or deceitful
Christian customs and equally cowardly and prejudiced an-
tiquity, and it does not agree with him. The inherited fear
of the natural, and then again the always new charm of this
natural, the desire to have a hold somewhere, the faintness of
his belief, tossed to and fro between the good and the better,

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 9
all this develops a restlessness and a confusion in the modern
soul which condemns it to remain unfruitful and unhappy.”
Is not the land of this humanity, wherein every destroyer of
old tablets is considered a criminal, as still as the kingdom
of the dead, in spite of all the noise of every-day activity?
Does it really live at all, can it live without the will to have
its very own right to life and its very own joy of life, and is
it not simply the shadow of a vanished multitude of dead?
Europe, although appearing so young, yet pants under the
weight of the corpses on her back which she drags along out of
Asia. In broad daylight her children look like ghosts; and,
when the Emperor Apostata (who was not permitted to see his
“Third Kingdom,” the kingdom of glad and beautiful sin-
cerity) has expired in Ibsen's historical Galilean drama, it is
with justice that his Christian nurse speaks about living dead
and dead living.
The dramatist grew older. He had learned to know a
richer, warmer life in the Orient and in the south of Europe,
and returned to his northern home with the slow steps of an
old man. The image of the tempter had not even left him
on “the sunny strands of southern splendor,” and now accom-
panied him northward to the huts of the land of snow. But,
besides this, the dramatist took home with him a world-wide
fame, and he who, like Brand, had been driven out of his na-
tive land with stones saw himself suddenly honored as a hero
by a grateful people. As a hero? The comparison is not
suitable. A hero influences his people, conquers new posses-
sions for them, or at least strengthens their will to further

10 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
deeds. The poet looked around him. What had he accom-
plished? Nothing; or at least nothing that now seemed de-
sirable. The great standard of the moral ideal with which
in earlier days he had endeavored to startle mankind into ac-
tivity he had long ago laid aside, because he had recognized
the uselessness and the danger of this Procrustean task.
Moreover, he had recognized that to-day you cannot accom-
plish much by Puritanical pathos, by preaching a truth which
should be true to all; and that it is better to leave the aver-
age mortal those hypocrisies which serve as stimulating prin-
ciples. The race of men like Peer Gynt will not die out, and
is it right, is it kind to take from this race all that it needs
for its life? Ibsen had done this as a man, and as a boy.
He had thrown the key of the church-door into the water,
weeded out the superstitions dating from the days of their
great-grandfathers, unveiled all conventions and compromises,
even the holiest, and shown them to be deceit and hypocrisy,
and put out all beacon fires, which up to this time in starless
nights had indicated the right direction to him who sought
the safe highway. Had not he himself been a tempter, one
who incited humanity to fly higher than their wings could
carry them? He had tried to make happy, noble men, cour-
ageous and brave men; women giving themselves proudly and
free in their devotion, and conscious of the law of humanity;
a pure, noble nation living in a new beauty. And what did
he see now? Emancipated, masculine women, proud of their
unfruitfulness, jubilantly surrounded their poet, and those who
had not yet escaped from nursery duties displayed their chains

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 11
like poor victims, and with accusing fingers pointed out the
guilty men to the judge. Where were the mothers of the
strong race of the sun 2 And where were the fathers? Herr
Stockmann was still burgomaster, Herr Kroll still rector, Ber-
niks and Werles conducted the great wholesale houses, Stens-
gaards and Helmers pleaded at the bar, at the best a weak
Manders stood in the pulpit, and public opinion was brought
to the houses every morning and evening by the publisher
Aslaksen and Peder Mortensgord and his hirelings. And
people still formed a union, commission, or league to do what
one strong man, prepared for sacrifices, could accomplish.
The “great crooked ones,” always flexible, had won the day.
And the young men with revolutionary tendencies denounced
the old poet as a hypocrite who liked to talk big, but in real-
ity was a true Philistine. And this was the result of his
long life! . . . Life? Oh, the poet had not lived his theories,
had not transferred them from the domain of imagination into
that of the will. Already in earlier days he had asked his
countrymen: “Where is there a man among you, who has not
occasionally felt and recognized in himself an opposition be-
tween word and deed, will and task, theories and life?”
Now he made Solness say: “As I look back, I have really
built nothing, and sacrificed nothing in order to be able to
build. That is the conclusion of the whole matter.” And
in the drama of the master-builder who, seized by dizziness,
falls from the top of the tower of the house he himself had
built, he gives us the tragedy of the poet who cannot climb
to the height of his own proclaimed conception of the world.
-

12 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
Written late in life, the tale of “Little Eyolf” follows
this work, which alone would be sufficient to prove how fool-
ish, how unscrupulous it is, to class the name of any other
living man with that of Henrik Ibsen. At that time, it might
have seemed to superficial observers as if at last the flag
of peace floated over the ice palace of the northern magician;
as if he, who once was inexorable, desired to capitulate, and
save his tired old bones in the fashionable doctrine of com- .
passion. Whoever looked more carefully, and did not forget
that Ibsen's hypocrites must be judged by their deeds and not
by their words, soon noticed that there was no question of
capitulation. The poet showed an unhappy couple, who
lacked the strength and the firm, unfettered faith to live their
own lives joyously regardless of others and to serve the race
in their own way, and who, as a last resort, attempted to hush
their frightened consciences in a compassionate darkness, and
whined again for grace at the throne of the God whom they
had long forgotten. The creator of this gloomy world ap-
peared to say: “That is all that you, with your rotten wills
and incapacity for fruitful action, can do.” And it seemed as
if Zarathustra’s sanctimonious laugh sounded from the gla-
ciers: “Where is greater foolishness than among the com-
passionate?”
Now the path led in that direction. Was it not Jean Paul
who said: “One climbs the green mountain of life only to
die on its icy summit” And that was what happened to
John Gabriel Borkman. In a clearing high up the woods,
he dies in the snow under a withered pine-tree. He, too,

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 13
had withered long ago. “You are dead,” his wife had said
to him; “lie quiet in your grave, and dream no more of life.”
And this woman, who, however hard and heartless she may
seem, still loved him most and knew him best, recognizes im-
mediately what caused his death. “He could not bear the
1 * *
fresh air He was the son of a miner, and his father often
took him down into the mine, where the ore sings for joy as
the blows of the hammers bring it freedom. By day his ima-
gination awoke to a feverish, dark life. If one could only
mine huge masses of ore, make it useful to mankind by great
enterprises and spread prosperity far and near! That would
be the kingdom, the power, and the glory. An imperial
dream, the dream of a Bonaparte born into the world of great
industry. But a Bonaparte made a cripple in his first battle
would never have become Napoleon, the ruler of the world.
That was John Gabriel’s tragic and comic fate. This Les-
seps in whom a lyric poet slumbers lives in a world governed,
not by will, but by imagination. In his vision he fancies
himself a benefactor of mankind, whose exalted aims must
sanctify every means, and in reality he is seeking power and
dominion only to quiet his ambitious inclinations. Twice the
tempter draws near to him, twice this visionary striver after
the uncommon succumbs to the temptation. He leaves the
girl whom he loves because she is desired by another man
who can aid him as he climbs. To no purpose; the forsaken
girl rejects the other suitor; behind this refusal the latter
scents his former friend, and vows revenge. And, when John
Gabriel stands at the head of a great bank founded by him-

14 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
self, when he has sown factories throughout the land and de-
sires to receive “life’s manifest value” and reap golden
treasures, and lacks the means of fertilization, he then
stretches out his hand toward the deposits entrusted to his
care. Why not? He will, he must, succeed; in eight weeks,
perhaps eight days, the amount will have been restored, and
nobody will know about it. Again to no purpose; the authori-
ties do not permit an industrial chieftain to make use of the
privileges they admire in the kings and emperors of history,
and John Gabriel, honored only yesterday like a monarch, is
imprisoned like a common sharper in the penitentiary. . . .
In his cell, and later, the lonely and outcast man continues
his visionary dream-life in the faded magnificence of a ban-
quet-hall, and reviews his case again. He did what he
should have done, was obliged to do, what was for the com-
mon good; he acquits himself, but not entirely. With new
eyes he looks back at the old deed, and judges that he sinned
against himself alone. He should not have bent before in-
justice and disgrace; as soon as the prison doors closed be-
hind him, he ought to have gone out into reality, into the
growing, swarming life, where there is always enough for a
strong man to do. Poor deluded creature! He cannot stand
the fresh air. Just as long as he lives in the domain of his
imagination, and permits the danse macabre to be played in the
faded magnificence of the banquet-hall, and finds one person
who appears to believe in him, just so long will he consider
himself a victim of the envious philistine morality which al-
ways lays snares for genius. Just so long he, who only revels

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 15
in sentiments and visions, can call himself a sober reasoner,
-
and hope for the “hour of reparation” which will bring him
new splendor and new honor. But the highly-cultivated flow-
ers of his imagination, grown in the greenhouse of delusion
with the aid of artificial heat, soon wither in the cold reality.
John Gabriel never wished to see reality; and, when, for the
first time, he leaves his room and steps out into the open air
again, the cold iron hands of death seize him in their claws
in the midst of a great forest buried in snow. Pertly and
self-consciously he climbed up the green mountain of life, and
now must die on its icy summit.
A supernatural man? No, a visionary man brought up in
the self-deceit and hypocrisy of the enterprising middle-
classes, having an unbounded imagination and no strength of
will for any strong fruitful action,-not even for crime,
which he commits only with a fainting conscience. And
round about him nothing but old withered people, full of ghost-
like illusions. Two women. One lives for the phantom of
an honor which one cannot give oneself, which one can re-
ceive only from society, as it sits in judgment; the other lives
for the phantom of a love to which one must sacrifice every-
thing, inclination, pleasure in work, and desire for knowledge,
and which decides over life and death. When for a few sec-
onds the mist of the illusions blows away, you become aware
that both of them seek but a point of support, a being to be-
long to them alone and able to give the comfort of an imagined
happiness to their inward emptiness. To these gray sisters
there is added an old child, a chancery clerk, who cannot find

16 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
his way in life and permits himself to be plundered and mis-
treated by Borkman, because the embezzler encourages him in
his poetic aspirations. Nobody but blundering people, who
cannot rest comfortably because they cannot fill the gulf be-
tween desire and ability. Borkman’s son, the chancery
clerk’s daughter, and Fru Wilton can do it; they do not care
for the weal or woe of any one else; without visions and super-
sensitiveness, they care only for their own advantage. Briskly
and audaciously they go straight for their object, and will
reach it—even if the soft upholstered sleigh in which they sit
does run over one or more of their relatives. Only such cer-
tainty, knowing nothing of the struggle between two souls in
one breast, can overtake happiness in the wild hunt of life.
Pastor Rosmer’s teacher, Brendel, an idealist with debts and
no money to pay them, said: “ Peder Mortensgord never de-
sires to do more than he can. Peder Mortensgord is able to
live his life without an ideal. And that is the great secret
of action and victory. That is the sum of all worldly wis-
dom. Basta! ”
The master-builder, Solness, was tempter and tempted at the
same time. He promised a fairy kingdom to a little maiden,
and with that promise disturbed a wonderful imagination
awakening into womanhood; and, when the maiden claimed
the fulfilment of his promises, he had to acknowledge himself
incapable of their accomplishment. In this—and not only in
this—he resembles the sculptor Rubek, the unfortunate hero
of Ibsen's new drama, “When We, Dead, Awaken.” He
likewise promised two women that he would lead them up on

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 17
an exceeding high mountain and show them all the splendors
of the world (as Satan once did to the youth from Galilee);
and he likewise could not keep his word, because he could not
breathe at such an altitude. He climbs the height, but the
toilsome, steep path kills him, as it killed Solness, Borkman,
and Brand. Death snatches them all from the height which
their power of imagination can reach, but which their will
cannot defend. With the obstinacy of old age the dramatist
constantly returns to this symbol. Is he thinking of the
glassy wall on which Brünnhilde sleeps, according to the
North-German legend; or of the glass mountain of the myths;
or of the golden mountain of the ancient Indian legend, where
the dead taste the bliss of Paradise? Perhaps. But at any
rate this time he says quite plainly that his mountain towers
to the heavens from a land of the dead.
A land of the dead! Not Boecklin's island, whose quiet
majesty is shadowed by gigantic pines, about whose sheer
precipices a breath of brave, heroic beauty blows, and whose
ferry carries the lifeless, lovingly and with gentle splash of
oar, to their last resting-place. A land full of restless, shad-
owy activity, a land without unity of culture, where people
whisper empty words into the early twilight. Here Rubek
grew up; here as a sculptor he sought beauty, passionately,
almost desperately, just as fever patients seek the soothing
draught, and the damned the vanished Eden. At last he
found it. Out of hard stone he would shape a young woman,
awakened, raised from the dead, and in her countenance and

18 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
pose a new race should behold the ideal of a new, inspired,
and pure Grecian beauty. He bore the ideal in himself, but,
young as he was, he lacked the confidence to give it shape
out of his own strength. Then he met a maiden who seemed
as if sent from Greece into the north, –from the crown of her
head to the sole of her foot a wonderful, joyous Aphrodite.
Her name is Irene, and, like the Roman Pax, she becomes to
him the living image of happy peace. The girl listens to his
suit, and leaves family and home to follow the artist, the man.
Really, probably, only the man. The artist she takes, so to
speak, into the bargain. To her it seems but her natural
duty to serve him with her uncovered body, to give him what
he needs for his work. He thinks so much of this work, ex-
pects so much of it; therefore it is well that she can help him
as a model. But no less natural does it seem to her that she
will rest in his arms when the work is done. Why else
would he have wooed her, promised to lead her to a high
mountain and to show her all the splendors of the world? An
enthusiastic girl sees all the splendors of the world only in
returned love. She gave him her body, which only one might
see; he will reward the cheerful sacrifice with a kiss. She
waits in trembling, hoping fear. He is totally unmoved;
he does not see the woman, but only the model; does not think
of lover’s foolishness, but only of the work which is to bring
him fame. He will show how woman, who is closer to nature
than man, made artificial by professional and political cares,
frees herself from the bonds of superstitious delusions, and
awakens to an independent personal life; how out of a helpmeet

when we, DEAD, Awaken 19
and mother of men she develops into a human being able to
determine her own fate. What is going on in the heart and
brain of the model does not worry him; he thinks only of the
mimic reflections of the feelings to which he seeks to give ex-
pression; and, if he talks in an inspired strain about the
splendors of the world, he does it merely to catch a hot ray of
sensual happiness for the cold stone. This is the way a poet,
seeking a body for his ideal, would do; he would not ask what
will become of those who try to live up to this ideal. Irene
becomes tired of waiting. She has kneeled to this man, wor-
shipped him like a god, and he is only an artist trying to find
a point of support for his imagination; he tries, measures,
compares, and feeds the flame, which is not to be stilled in
a blessed embrace, but is destined only to fan the dying
embers of his genius into new life. The girl suffering in her
virginity learns to hate the work which steals the man from
her. And when it is finished, and Rubek thanks her for the
--
happy “ episode '' which she has helped him to experience,
she parts her fate from his. For hours and days she stood
uncovered before the man to whom she gladly gave everything
that a young woman can give–and to him she was only a
beautiful episode, a model, a stimulating means to his end.
She disappears. And Rubek remains alone.
He is no longer accustomed to be alone. He had felt the
girl’s desire; but at that time his Greek appeared to him like
the tempter who tries to pull those striving to reach the
height down into gloomy depths. What should he do with a
wife or a child, as Irene desired? In the happiest hours of

20 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
other fathers, would he not be obliged to say with Buddha:
“A child is born to me, a fetter has been forged for me.”
He wanted only his work; and creative power ought not to be
desecrated by any common passion. Now the work is ended;
but where is the ideal? It seems to have fled with Irene.
The ideal! Is there an ideal, a pattern for every one, a
beacon fire in a starless night? Just as little as there is a
truth for all. The sculptor looked at his work and thought it
small,—perhaps unmodern as well. Should a pure girl who
had experienced nothing, suffered nothing, interpret the resur-
rection day to humanity? It was an almost childish idea.
Rubek had reached the age when one locks ideals in a safe,
because they are not to be used in every-day life. A shame-
fully useless exertion, it now seemed to him, to tell human be-
ings what they ought to be; much better, much more worldly-
wise, to show them what they are. Then this man, forsaken
by faith, set to work. The ashlar became broader; it should
represent the bursting surface of the earth, out of whose fur-
rows a swarming humanity rushes to the light, a humanity
with a varnish of culture, underneath which the sharp observer
soon recognizes the claws of animals. The statue of the
young woman was shoved into the background; her victorious
smile was turned into woful resignation. And in the fore-
ground, near a spring, whose running water will cool his hand
and purify him, sits the sculptor himself, a desperate man
who will never regain his firm faith in an ideal. That is
Rubek's resurrection-day. That is the way the man who
once dreamed of a spiritualized Greece now sees the life and
struggle of humanity.

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN - 21
The group meets success, and brings its creator world-wide
renown. And happiness? Whoever conceives such a resur-
rection-day cannot be happy.
Rubek has been chilled in his glorious loneliness. His
aesthetic view of the world has gradually weakened his will
and his power of sturdy enjoyment and new undertakings.
Now he longs for beauty; is it not, according to the expression
of the delicate artist, Stendhal, une promesse de bonheur? He
makes love to a young, lively girl of poor parents; he prom-
ises her, as he did the first, all the splendors of the world,
and carries her home to his glittering cage. • For now he is
rich; little men and little women desire to be portrayed by
him, and he has something to offer a woman. But, after a
time, what he offers is not sufficient for his wife. Her name
is Maja, like the Roman Isis and the false veiled goddess of
India; and she has inherited her womanliness from both of
them. She would like to be a mother and have children, and
a husband for herself alone, and to her dismay she is forced
to observe that in the artist there is too little of the man.
She lives only in Samsara, the land of show and desire, and
sees herself coupled to one governed by a thirst for knowledge
and no longer deceived by the veil of the goddess Maja.
Neither does Rubek find the desired autumnal happiness in
marriage; united to this woman, with her healthy animal
nature, no new wings can grow for him. In her companion-
ship he was able to complete the old group, the statue of
earthly woe, but she cannot inspire him to new courage for
creation. The union was in vain for both of them. So they

22 when we, DEAD, Awaken
did what married people always do when they are bored,—
they went on a journey.
But in his native home Rubek's thoughts became even more
gloomy. Once he had walked here like a god; now he flut-
ters from corner to corner like a caged bird of prey. No in-
clination for work. Since people saw in his great group only
things which he had no intention of putting there, and did not
understand his real thoughts, he no longer desires to work; -
why should he work for such coarse, pretentious misunder-
standing? His only pleasure now is to jeer at this most es-
-
timable “whole world.” People desire portrait busts?
Very well, they shall have them; nor shall they notice how
like they are to the animals with which they are most famil-
iar. Horses, donkeys, oxen, dogs, and pigs, a little devel-
oped by selection and acclimatized in the kingdom of man
—but then only just a little. And these “artful works of
art” are worth their weight in gold! Rubek takes as much
pleasure in it as a mediaeval monk who has smuggled an ob-
scene stone statue into a corner of the cathedral. Otherwise
he is gloomy, does not sleep well, and yet longs for night, be-
cause the days are so long and empty. And in a sleepless
night there appears to him, for the first time, the ideal of his
youth, and soon she comes to him in broad daylight as well.
She looks differently than in the joyous, blessed resurrection
time; must look differently, because the observer’s eye has
changed. In the world of timid consciences, heathen beauty,
thoughtless and insistent, has an effect like the productions
of a diseased imagination. And Irene walks in a world of

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 23
invalids among exhausted human beings, anxious to be patched
up by the watering-place physician. What would happen to
Aphrodite if, leaving her cheerful temple, she should stray
into a Christian hospital for cripples in body and soul? She
would be thought mad, a prostitute forsaken by all good spirits
of shame and custom, who should be gagged, and, when sub-
dued, permitted to go out only under supervision, because
otherwise she might do mischief. That was what was done
to Irene. The poor ideal was shamefully mistreated. She
was dragged on dirty stages, and forced as a “living pic-
ture” to tickle the vulgar desires of the gaping rabble, -to
suffer the embrace on unclean cushions of men who did not
seek the sanctifying touch of beauty, but only the satisfaction
of their lust. And finally pious people came and put an end
to this immorality, and, after a thorough psychiatric treat-
ment, placed the despoiled beauty under the protection of a
deaconess, who was not permitted to let her out of her sight.
Such experiences leave their traces behind them. Irene still
has a will, but one which has escaped from the dominion of
the intellect and is like a turbulent, disturbing force of nature,
desiring to annihilate all that tries to stop it in its chosen
course. It is the mania sine delirio about which Schopenhauer,
Ibsen's teacher, says: “A will released in this manner is like
the river which has broken its dam, like the horse which has
thrown its rider, and the watch from which the escapement-
screws have been drawn.” In earlier days Irene did not
worry about conventionality; just as little did Hilde Wangel,
or the fishy-eyed tempter of the woman of the sea; and it is

24 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
therefore only natural that Rubek's marriage does not exist
for her. But now every reflective knowledge has disappeared
for her, and only the intuitive remains. She can under-
stand what she sees, but the past and the future are veiled by
a thick mist. She feels herself lowered by the kisses of
smacking lips, although she tried to escape from them. The
statue to which she lent her body becomes to her like a child
she bore to Rubek, and which the unloving father has cruelly
disfigured. She believes that she has always loved this
child, and hated only the artist who would not be a father.
Every unkind word she will punish with a prick of her thin
little knife. She, she alone, has done everything for the
marble statue, sacrificed body and soul to it, and, because he
permitted her to leave him, therefore the sculptor can never
again succeed in a great work. And so mighty is the sug-
gestive power of these hysterical thoughts that Rubek really
believes he owes everything to the assistant of his youth, and
that without her he would have been condemned to be a rest-
less, joyless, and clumsy botcher.
And is it not really so? Can he succeed in anything
great, who has lost his obstinate faith in the ideal and in the
importance of his task, and now is able only to mimic animals
satirically? - -
Rubek desires to keep Irene with him, now that he has
found her again. Frau Maja would not need to be asked a
second time. She is. thoroughly sick of her aesthetic hus-
band, who treats her condescendingly and tells her every day
that she is not suited to him. Once he had told her about his

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 25
plans for the liberation of mankind, and now she would like
to be free too, free as a bird, free as Nora, the tortured sing:
ing-bird that slips out of its cage. And, moreover, a man
free from all illusions has entered in among the sick, a sturdy
hunter celebrated for his strength, who can accomplish super-
human things in the way of eating and drinking, and becomes
most delightfully sentimental when he narrates how a little
toad stuck up its horns at him. At the same time he pro-
claims himself to be a great ladies' man, and quite coolly
makes love to the woman who has been relieved of her obliga-
tions by the unhappiness of her marriage. This fellow has
plenty of strength of will; he is not a nervous artist; with
him one could live happily. Is not Fauna a cousin of the
Roman Majaf Fauna longs for her Faunus. And, when he
beckons with a promising grin, she climbs the mountains with
him. Her husband has no objection.
In a sanitarium, way up in the high mountains where con-
sumptives pump pure air into their lungs, both couples meet.
The marriage ring breaks in two, and great is their joy at
being able to move freely again. Maja hastens to her bear-
killer. And Rubek, instead of tormenting himself any longer
in a damp cold cavern with lumps of clay and blocks of stone,
plans to shape his future life into a beautiful, sunny work of
art. He plans to; but his will is wounded in the wing, and he
can be nothing but the poet of his happiness. He can dream
it, not shape it. Poet; that is what Irene calls him, and puts
into the word the same disdain as that with which Borkman
spoke of the old chancery clerk’s poetic gabbling. The poet

26 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN.
had made himself effeminate: woe to the woman who gave
body and passion to a poet; it would have been a thousand
times better for her, had she borne healthy children to some
strong man. What can the lost life offer to such a woman?
Nothing more than the fleeting intoxication which the Bride
of Corinth found in the room of her lover. The old poet can
play with his ideal, and on a clear summer night can wed it
symbolically on the top of a high wooded peak, but his will
can never equip itself for the activity which liberates and
blesses. He could effect a stony resurrection for his fellow-
creatures, but for himself he cannot carry out the miracle of
resurrection. He has frittered away his life, sacrificed his
happiness, his task, and the strength of his will to his thirst
for knowledge. And now the proud embodiment of his most
ambitious desires is also broken, exhausted and weary from
wandering through an unfriendly world; behind her the dea-
coness, with piercing eyes, steals slowly and noiselessly, im-
puting sin in her every word and motion, and throwing a
black shadow on the brightest sunshine. Irene can incite
her friend higher and higher; on the summit of the green
mountain her foot stiffens in the granulous ice, and neither
the man nor the woman has the hot breath with which to warm
the glacier mist. Frau Maja and her hunter find the path to
the valley before i"is too late. But the couple who have
climbed too high are hurled by an avalanche from the height
on which they could not maintain themselves, and its snow
buries the dead who tried to awaken once again. The dea-
coness, liberated from her guardianship, crosses herself, and
calls after them: Pax vobiscum. /

WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN 27
An avalanche had swept Brand from the summit of a moun-
tain, and over his grave the voice of the Deus Caritatis had
sounded. “Brand has been misinterpreted,” Ibsen said at
--
the time; “it was only by chance that I placed the problem in
a religious atmosphere. I could just as well have carried out
the whole syllogism about a sculptor, or a politician, as about
a priest.” This work, which he has now written thirty years
later, he calls a dramatic epilogue. The name alone indi-
cates that we need not expect to find in it simple characters,
perceptible to our senses; and it need not surprise us if we
reach the icy regions of abstraction. We are led, according
to Schopenhauer’s aesthetics, to the highest and most difficult
summit of the tragic, from where it is intended that we should
recognize the grievous suffering and stress of life: “We are
deeply moved, and the divergence of will from life is sug-
gested to us either directly, or as a sounding harmonious
note.” The poet takes up his old theme again, and, as a
seventy-year-old man, writes the abstractive epilogue to his
work. It is not easy to understand; no easier than the
second part of Goethe’s “Faust”; and the hearer must prick
up his ears in order to be able to follow this “ second-rate di-
alogue,” as Maeterlinck has called Ibsen's words. through
gulfs and by-ways. But through the mists the voice of Bren-
del, the bankrupt idealist, sounds quite plainly to him who can
hear: If you wish to be happy, happy in the meaning of the
sham world of the old goddess Maja, then you must live your
life without an ideal, and never desire to do more than you
can. That is the great secret of action and victory. But,

28 WHEN WE, DEAD, AWAKEN
if you struggle up to the mountain tops, where the tempter
roams, then arm yourselves in good season with a will which
the high altitude cannot affect, and consider well: Velle non
discitur ! There is no worse fate than that of a man who can-
not maintain himself on the height of his conception of the
world. . . . No worse fate? Is the bear-killer with his
Maja, are little men and little women, really so much to be
envied? Is not a moment passed up there worth more than an
everyday life in the valley? The God of the strong is mer-
ciful. He opens wide the doors of the paternal house to him
who falls in the arduous toil of strife, and is not angry with
him who desires to see all the splendors of the world. Who
knows? Some bright morning he may send some one again
who will live his teaching, will frighten away the dancing
ghosts, and awaken slumbering humanity out of their fashion-
ably-arranged graves into a new life.

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