PEER GYNT
A monologue from the
play by Henrik
Ibsen
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, vol. iv: Peer Gynt.
Trans. William and Charles Archer. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1911. |
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- PEER: It's true--each blessed word!
- Keen the blast towards me swept;
- Hidden by an alder-clump,
- He was scraping in the snow-crust
- After lichen----
- 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.
- 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!
- 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, screes,
- 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 a colt!
- Straight before us as we rushed
- 'Twas as though there glittered suns.
- Brown-backed eagles that were sailing
- In the wide and dizzy void
- Half-way 'twixt us and the tarns,
- Dropped behind, like motes in air.
- On the shores crashed hurtling ice-floes,
- But no echo reached my ears.
- Only sprites of dizziness sprang,
- Dancing, round;--they sang, they swung,
- Circle-wise, past sight and hearing!
- All at once,
- At a desperate, break-neck spot,
- Rose a great cock-ptarmigan,
- Flapping, cackling, terrified,
- From the crack where he lay hidden
- At the buck's feet on the Edge.
- Then the buck shied half around,
- Leapt sky-high, and down we plunged,
- Both of us, into the depths!
- Mountain walls behind us, black,
- And below a void unfathomed!
- First we clove through banks of mist,
- Then we clove a flock of sea-gulls,
- So that they, in mid-air startled,
- Flew in all directions, screaming.
- Downward rushed we, ever downward.
- But beneath us something shimmered,
- Whitish, like a reindeer's belly.--
- Mother, 'twas our own reflection
- In the glass-smooth mountain tarn,
- Shooting up towards the surface
- With the same wild rush of speed
- Wherewith we were shooting downwards.
- Buck from over, buck from under,
- In a moment clashed together,
- Scattering foam-flecks all around.
- There we lay then, floating, plashing,--
- But at last we made our way
- Somehow to the northern shore;
- Swam the buck, I clung behind him:--
- I ran homewards--
- Where's the buck?
- He's there still, for aught I know.
- Catch him, and your welcome to him!
MORE
MONOLOGUES BY HENRIK IBSEN |
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