BOOKS.

IBSEN'S JULIAN THE APOSTATE.*

MANY months ago, in reviewing the lyrical drama of Peer Gynt, we ventured to hope that its author, the greatest of living Scandi- navian poets, would select for his next work a subject less local than those purely Norwegian scenes which he was accustomed to draw, and which, however brilliantly painted, were to the world at large of comparatively trivial interest. We would not be so presumptuous as to suppose that our advice had an effect on the poet's choice, but, as a matter of fact, the great drama he has since been writing, and which is now just published, is the first -of his books of which the theme has a European importance. This work, originally projected, according to report, as a trilogy, actu- ally consists of two dramas of unusual length, and covering to- gether the period intervening between A.D. 351 and A.D. 363, that is, from the adolescence to the death of Julian the Apostate.

The-subject undoubtedly is a very momentous and tragical one. It concerns itself with the effort of a single brain to carry into effect a kind of religions Renaissance, in opposition to that form of political Christianity which had just found a firm footing in the whole Roman Empire. All the great tragedies that art has known are engaged with the struggle of a gifted and noble nature -against an invincible force to which it is wholly antipathetic. From Prometheus to Faust, the great tragical figures of poetry lave rung the changes on this theme. Ibsen has rightly judged that Julian's struggle against Christ, seen in the light of his slight apparent success and final ruin, collects around it ideas fit for a high philosophical tragedy. In effect he has hardly hit as high as he aimed ; Kejser og Galilmer (" Emperor and Galilean ") is a work full of power and interest, studded with lofty passages, but slot a complete poem. But before discussing the causes of this partial failure, we will briefly analyse the method in which one of the finest minds in Europe has chosen to bring before us the story itself.

The first of the two dramas is entitled "Julian's Apostacy." The action opens at Constantinople. We are introduced to one of the picturesque, vivid scenes that Ibsen understands so well bow -to manipulate. It.is Easter, and outside the church-doors a great throng of citizens is waiting to see the Emperor Constantine II. go in state to mass. Before he appears, the bystanders, who have in the beginning united in beating a few stray pagans, begin to quarrel among themselves, Manicbmans against Donatists, with furious abuse. In this way, at the very opening, the rotten state of doctrine in professing Christendom is laid bare ; the chaos of 'raving schismatics and godless heretics that grouped themselves as Christians in the eyes of men like Julian is made patent to the reader. Constantius, timid, morbid, and moribund, makes his way through the crowd, accompanied by his courtiers, and amongst them Julian, the friendless kinsman whose parents he has murdered. Julian is rather suggested than sketched as a nervous, intellectual youth, of wavering tem- perament and almost hysterical excitement of brain. A lad -of his own age, a healthy young Cappadocian whom Julian in earlier years has converted to Christianity, comes out of the crowd to greet him. They pass away together, and in their dialogue the poet finds occasion to unveil to us the condition of Julian's mind and soul. He has become conscious that a kind of classic revival is being suggested around him, and he is angry at being kept out of the way of it. He hopes to secure his own

Kejser op (Wilmer. Et verdenhistorisk Sknespil at Henrik Ibsen. Copenhagen : HegeL

tottering faith by arguing with the men who are trying to restore the old philosophy. Re accidentally meets the most active of these new teachers, Libauios, who is starting to found a new school at Athens. Julian obtains leave to go to Pergamos, hoping from thence to steal off to Athens, and stand face to face with the dreaded Libanios. In this act Julian is still a Christian, but the self-consciousness of his assertions of faith reveals the tottering basis on which it rests. Ile is wavering ; circumstances and the age are against him, but as yet his difficulties are rather emotional and moral than intellectual.

The second act reveals Julian in the midst of the new school at Athens. He has made a melancholy discovery : "The old beauty is no longer beautiful, and the new truth is no longer true." The efforts of the young apostates to restore the insouciance of clank: times has resulted in mere bestial excess ; Aphrodite and lacchus are gods no longer, and to Julian the Christ also is a god no longer. A new change has come over him. He finds no rest in the sceptical science ; the new philosophers are ambitious, greedy, impure persons, and yet he cannot return to the fold of Christ- ianity. The old religion rots in its open grave, and the new reli- gion seems to him to be false and cold and timid. Libanios dis- gusts him ; he hears of magical arts practised at Ephesus, very much as we now-a-days hear of spirit-rapping, and he starts off in the hope of a new revelation and a new creed.

The next act is in the highest degree theatrical, but there is but little development of purpose. Julian is discovered at Ephesus, under the influence of a new teacher, Maximos the mystic. There is a great magic-scene, in which, to the sound of *unseen instruments and under the flicker of resinous torches, a wild ceremony of incan- tation is gone through. Strange shadows cross the scene ; the figures of Cain and of Judas rise to the motions of the wizard's rod ; the whole affair is prolonged to an extreme length, and we do not see clearly the poet's purpose. The result, however, is distinct enough. Julian convinces himself that spirits of the upper world have warned him to restore the old Greek Polytheism. At the moment of wildest cerebral excitement, the Emperor's mes- sengers burst in upon him, with the news that Caesar Gallos, his brother, has been murdered, that Julian is nominated Cmiar, and that the Emperor gives him his sister Helena in marriage.

He reappears in Gaul. After the celebrated victory at Argen- toratum, he returns to Lutetia to Helena. A message from Con- stantius, accompanied by a present of fruit from Italy, reaches the camp at the same time. Helena, who has received him with every display of conjugal affection, eats some peaches which have been carefully poisoned, and rushes on to the scene raving. The passage which follows is as revolting as powerful. English views of propriety scarcely permit us to reproduce the peculiar tenor of the revelations she makes in her de- lirium. Suffice it to say that she proves her married life to have been a grossly unfaithful one, and that she names as the dearest of her lovers a Christian priest, who, by a not un- paralelled fiction, has persuaded her to regard him as an impersona- tion of the Second Person of the Trinity. In an agony of shame and horror, Julian curses the Galilaaan ; this uttermost indignity was needed to give him the power of perfect hatred against Christ- ianity. But for the moment there is no time for reflection. His victory has won him the jealousy of the Emperor, and threatened with the fate of Gallos, he onlk saves his life by leaping out of the window into the throng of soldiers. His appeal to their gratitude turns the scale violently in his favour ; he is elected Emperor, and marches towards Constantinople. The central idea in this act is the moral force which the adultery of his Christian wife and the treachery of the Christian Emperor exert, in concert with circum- stances, in driving Julian into active enmity against their faith.

The fifth act is occupied with the march through Italy. The body of Helena, by reason of her purity, forsooth works miracles, to Julian's infinite disgust. On the other hand, he makes retreat impossible by publicly worshipping Helios, and marches victori- ously eastward. So closes "Julian's Apostacy," having scarcely flagged anywhere in interest and power, and leaving a distinct heroic central figure on the mind.

But the second drama, "Julian the Emperor," from the very outset is afflicted with a sense of flatness and deadness that the author in vain struggles to throw off. The moment we find Julian crowned at Constantinople he ceases to be an heroic figure at all. The vain effort to revive the Pagan callus among the masses of the people, the trifling and annoying passages at Antioch, the intellectual meannesses of Jalian, the terrible fiascos at Alexandria and Jerusalem, have nothing tragical in them. These long acts of Ibaen's drama are not without importance, but their interest is solely historical, or perhaps

philosophical ; they are utterly prosaic. The dramatist has been hampered by an overplus of historical and legendary material. No trifle is spared us, even that slight epigram against Apolinarina, AVE7MY WNW sarepao, is dragged in, losing all

force in its Norse translation. We find little to praise or blame in the first three acts of this long drama, but when the fatal Persian march commences the soul of the poet revives. His spirit remembers its august abodes, and Julian's figure recovers something of heroic dignity. It is almost inconceivable that Ibsen has chosen to dwell on the dirty habits of his hero ; he has not spared us the traditional inky fingers, or the vermin-haunted beard. High talk about Helios and the Phrygian Mother con-

sorts but ill with such terrible details. But with the fourth act our interest revives ; we forget the impotence of the historical Julian in the lofty dreamer and great warrior, who rises to the height of the occasion in the great eastward expedition against Persia. The story is told finely and graphically ; we see the baffled and dejected Emperor push- lag on unflinchingly, stung by the songs of the Christians, gnawed at heart with the sense of his ill-success against their Master, yet, through it all, determined, calm, and resolute. The condition of his mind is illustrated by a dialogue with the mystic Maximos, of which we translate a part :— Maxi/nos. The vine of the world is grown old, and yet you fancy to be able, as before, to offer raw grapes to those who thirst after new wine.

Julian. Ali! my Maximos, who thirsts? Name me one man, out- side our intimate circle, who is led by a spiritual enthusiasm. Unfor- tunate that I am, to be born into such an iron age I Marines. Blame not the age. Bad the age been greater, you had been less. The soul of the world is like a rich man who has countless sons. If he parts his riches equally to all the sons, all are well-to-do, but none rich. But if he leaves them all penniless but one, and leaves all to him, then that one stands rich in a circle of poor men.

Here we find expressed Julian's hope and his despair. Ever pressing like a weight upon his spirit is the indifference with which the world receives his gift of the new wine. It is the most deadly of his reverses ; it is worse a thousand times than the army of King Sapores, worse even than the untiring zeal of his Christian adversaries. These his persecutions have roused into martyr- heroism and soldered together with brotherly love, but no pas- sionate zeal burns in the dull hearts of the worshippers of Pan and Helios. But his one hope and consolation is that in himself all that is god-like centres, that when all foreign opposition is put down,' the conscious divinity in himself will blaze out, to the dis- comfiture of the Galilseins, and, above all, to the spiritual awaken- ing of the Polytheists. Then follows the burning of the ships, but even till the middle of the last act, Ibsen manages to lose the poet in the religious philosopher. But in describing the last night before the final battle, his genius suddenly takes fire, and he closes the poem in a white-light of imaginative sublimity. By a dark water, in the midst of trees, Julian stands and consults with the faithful Maximos. He clings more vehemently than ever to the belief in his own divinity. He longs to die to become a god ; it even flashes over his brain to slip into the dark pool, and take his place at once "at home in the light of the sun and of all the stars." He is haunted by the unendurable vision of the Crucified. Without terror, without remorse, but with mad- dening hatred and horror, he sees wherever he goes the great figure robed in white stretching its bleeding hands to stop him in his course. In the midst of this weird augury the Persian army bursts at midnight upon the camp. In the darkness the armies meet and thunder together ; Julian unarmed leaps on horseback, and plunges into the foremost fighting. Through the night his unscathed figure is seen in the thickest of the battle, but just at daybreak he looks eastward, and there, where other men see only the crimson dawn shooting along the cold sky, Julian in an ecatacy of horror sees the colossal figure of Christ, robed in imperial purple, circled by singing women that string their bows with the light of his hair, storming down the awakened heavens to crush him into nothingness. He turns to plunge again into the battle, but his old foster-brother, Agathon, now become a furious fanatic, draws his bow, and wounds him deeply in the side. He falls, crying, "Thou haat conquered, Gellman I" Now, to give briefly a notion of the causes that have mili- tated against the positive success of this work. First and fore- most, the technical imperfection of its style ; it is written from first to last in prose. It is hardly credible that Ibsen, a poet who has distinguished himself above all recent writers by his skill in adapting lyrical and choral measures to dramatic themes, should have deliberately abandoned his instrument when he undertook this tragical study. It is as if Orpheus should travel hellwards without his ivory lyre. Every charm of harmony and plastic art was needed to draw the buried figure of Julian out of the shameful oblivion of the ages. We earnestly trust that no idle words of that garrulous criticism which is only too ready to commend the indiscretions of popular poets will induce him to appear again without his singing-robes. But more important than this is the failure to support the heroic dignity of the principal character. If Julian does not fill the scene, who can ? Not Gregory, not Basil, who are mere lay-figures ; not Maximos, who wanes and waxes with the waxing and waning of his master. But perhaps the ultimate reason of failure is to be found in what lies out of the poet's reach, the inherent quality of the theme. Julian- was not the voice of his time ; he was an anachronism. In his brief life was exemplified how much can be done by one whole- hearted man in stopping the civilisation of a world, only to rush on with a fiercer current when he is taken out of the way. Julian attempted to restore what had been tried in the balances of history and found wanting ; he had nothing new to suggest. The gods of /Eschylus had dwindled down to the nymphs of Longus ; the "folding-star of Bethlehem" had glared on them, and they had sickened and fled away. To resuscitate their ghosts was the dream of a morbid scholar, ignorant of the hearts of men, and blind tcs the deeper significance of all the signs of the times.