Part 18 (1/2)

For indeed it is not possible to name any book out of which a perverted mind will not draw food for its disease The whole fallacy lies in supposing literature the cause of the disease Evil men are not evil because they read bad books: they read bad books because they are evil: and being evil, or diseased, they are quickly able to extract evil or disease even fro the works of our best authors, at a cheap rate, in the hope that they will drive the Penny Dreadful out of the ood literature at the cheapest driven the middle classes from their false Gods? And let it be remembered, to the credit of these poor boys, that they do buy their books The e

But perhaps the full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-class tickets I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all would not long survive that experiment

IBSEN'S ”PEER GYNT”

Oct 7, 1892 A Masterpiece

”_Peer Gynt_ takes its place, as we hold, on the summits of literature precisely because it means so much more than the poet consciously intended Is not this one of the characteristics of the masterpiece, that everyone can read in it his own secret? In the h Nature is very innocent of symbolic intention) each of us finds for himself the symbols that have relevance and value for him; and so it is with the poelad to coe in Messrs William and Charles Archer's introduction to their new translation of Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_ (London: Walter Scott), because I can noith a clear conscience, thank the writers for their book, even though I fail to find so after all _Peer Gynt_ is a great poereat poe it about to find what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own particular views of life The world's literature stands unaffected, though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths

Not a Pamphlet

_Peer Gynt_ is an extreian folk-lore--the folk-lore which Asbjornsen and Moe collected, and Dasent translated for our delight in childhood Old and new are curiously mixed; but the result is piquant and not in the least absurd, because the story rests on problems which are neither old nor new, but eternal, and on emotions which are neither older nor newer than the breast of man To be sure, the true devotee of Ibsen will not be content with this You will be told by Herr Jaeger, Ibsen's biographer, that _Peer Gynt_ is an attack on Norwegian romanticism

The poem, by the way, is ro situation, and the page for which everything has been a preparation, have to be deplored by Messrs Archer as ”a rohen he wrote _Peer Gynt_” But your true votary is for ever taking his God off the pedestal of the true artist to set hienuine a speci claimed by him for a sermon And if ever you have been moved by _Ghosts_, or _Brand_, or _Peer Gynt_ to exclaier--whose criticis, should be labelled ”All Pure Natural Wool”--to find that you were

Yet Enforcing a Moral

To be sure, in one sense _Peer Gynt_ is a sermon upon a text That is to say, it is written priive a mere representation of life The proble But then the proble in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, _Faust_ In _Peer Gynt_ the poet's own solution of the problem is presented with more insistence than in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, or _Faust_: but the problem is wider, too

The problem is, What is self? and how shall a man be hi lost, gained by being given away”: an answer at least as old as the gospels The eponymous hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, ”the incarnation of a co dread of self-committal to any one course,” a felloho says,

”Ay, think of it--wish it done--_will_ it to boot, But _do_ it---- No, that's pastto action by pique, or by what is called the ”instinct of self-preservation,” an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is the very last that will preserve self

The Story

This fellow, Peer Gynt, wins the love of Solveig, a woman essentially whole-hearted, who has no dread of self-co, in short, stands in perfect antithesis to Peer When Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to his hut in the forest The scene in which she presents herself before Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed ro one of the ures in poetry Peer deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and grows an old wo everywhere and through the wildest adventures the satisfaction of his Self, acting everywhere on the Troll'severywhere his ainst hiliht lines She is now a ed wo in the sunshi+ne outside her door and sings:--

_”Maybe both the winter and spring will pass by, And the next summer too, and the whole of the year; But thou wilt cooest in the world!

God gladden thee, if at His footstool thou stand!

Here will I await thee till thou coain; And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend!”_

At last Peer, an old man, comes hoe which the translators call ”fantastic,”

intending, I hope, approval by this word) the thoughts he has , the ord he has failed to utter, the tears he has hts are thread-balls, the ithered leaves, the tears dewdrops, etc

Also he finds on that heath a button-Moulder with an immense ladle