The Master Builder and Other Plays

by Henrik Ibsen

  MRS BORKMAN [looks hard at him]: Why didn’t you ever come to me and ask for what you call understanding?

  BORKMAN: What use would that have been – if I had come to you?

  MRS BORKMAN [with a dismissive gesture]: You’ve never loved anything outside yourself – that’s the heart of the matter.

  BORKMAN [proudly]: I have loved power.

  MRS BORKMAN: Power, yes!

  BORKMAN: – the power to create human happiness far and wide around me!

  MRS BORKMAN: You once had the power to make me happy. Did you put it to that purpose?

  BORKMAN [without looking at her]: Someone usually has to go under – in a shipwreck.

  MRS BORKMAN: And your own son? Have you used your power – have you lived and breathed – to make him happy?

  BORKMAN: I don’t know him.

  MRS BORKMAN: No, that’s true. You don’t even know him.

  BORKMAN [harshly]: You, his mother – you took care of that!

  MRS BORKMAN [looks at him with an air of superiority]: Oh, you have no idea what I have taken care of!

  BORKMAN: You?

  MRS BORKMAN: Yes, I. I alone.

  BORKMAN: So tell me.

  MRS BORKMAN: I have taken care of your posthumous reputation.

  BORKMAN [with a short dry laugh]: My posthumous reputation? Well, well! You make it sound as if I’m already dead.

  MRS BORKMAN [with emphasis]: And so you are.

  BORKMAN [slowly]: Yes, you might be right about that. [Flares up] But no, no! Not yet! I’ve come close, so close. But now I’m awake again. Revived. There’s still life ahead of me. I can see this bright new life, fermenting, waiting for me –. And perhaps you’ll see it yourself, you too.

  MRS BORKMAN [raises her hand]: Never dream of life again! Lie still – there where you are!

  ELLA RENTHEIM [shocked]: Gunhild! Gunhild, how can you want this –!

  MRS BORKMAN [not listening to her]: I will raise the monument over your grave.

  BORKMAN: The monument of infamy,5 you mean?

  MRS BORKMAN [with mounting passion]: Oh, no, this will be no ordinary monument in stone or in metal. No one will be allowed to carve scornful inscriptions on to the monument I shall raise. It will be as a cluster of living plants: trees and bushes, densely set, densely set around your buried life.6 All the darkness of what once was will be covered over. Obscured in oblivion from the eyes of men: John Gabriel Borkman!

  BORKMAN [hoarse and cutting]: And you will carry out this labour of love, will you?

  MRS BORKMAN: Not by my own strength alone. I wouldn’t dare contemplate that. I have raised a helper, someone who will dedicate his life to this one thing. He will live such a pure, elevated, radiant life that it will be as though your own pit-life has been wiped out up here on earth!

  BORKMAN [dark and threatening]: If it’s Erhart you mean, say so at once!

  MRS BORKMAN [looks him straight in the eye]: Yes, it is Erhart. My son. Erhart, whom you’re willing to renounce – to atone for your own actions.

  BORKMAN [glancing at ELLA]: To atone for my greatest sin.

  MRS BORKMAN [dismissively]: Only a sin against a stranger. Remember your sin against me! [Looks triumphantly at them both.] But he will not obey either of you! When I cry out to him in my need, he’ll come! Because it’s me he wants to stay with! With me, and never with anyone else – [Suddenly listens, and shouts] I can hear him! It’s him – it’s him! Erhart!

  ERHART BORKMAN bursts in through the hall door into the drawing room. He is wearing an overcoat and still has his hat on.7

  ERHART [pale and anxious]: Mother! – What in God’s name –! [He sees BORKMAN who is standing next to the door to the garden room. He starts and takes off his hat. After a moment’s silence, he asks] What do you want from me, Mother? What’s happened here?

  MRS BORKMAN [stretches her arms out towards him]: I want to see you, Erhart! I want to have you with me – always!

  ERHART [stammers]: Have me –? Always? What do you mean by that?

  MRS BORKMAN: Have you, have you – that’s what I want! Because there’s someone who wants to take you away from me!

  ERHART [takes a step back]: Ah – so you know about that?

  MRS BORKMAN: Yes. Do you know about it too?

  ERHART [surprised, looks at her]: Do I know about it? Yes, of course –

  MRS BORKMAN: Aha, so it’s all been planned! Behind my back! Erhart! Erhart!

  ERHART [quickly]: Mother, tell me – what exactly do you know?

  MRS BORKMAN: I know everything. I know that your aunt has come here to take you away from me.

  ERHART: Aunt Ella!

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Oh, listen to me first, Erhart!

  MRS BORKMAN [continues]: She wants me to surrender you to her. She wants to be a mother to you, Erhart! From now on, she wants you to be her son, not mine. Wants you to inherit everything from her. Renounce your name and take hers instead!

  ERHART: Aunt Ella, is this true?

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Yes, it’s true.

  ERHART: I’ve heard nothing of the kind till now. But why do you want to have me back with you again now?

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Because I feel that I’m losing you here.

  MRS BORKMAN [harshly]: It’s because of me you’re losing him – yes. And that is just the way it should be.

  ELLA RENTHEIM [looks imploringly at him]: Erhart, I can’t afford to lose you. You see, I’m a lonely human being – who is dying.

  ERHART: Dying –?

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Yes, dying. Will you be with me to the end? Join yourself to me completely? Be as my own child to me –

  MRS BORKMAN [interrupting]: – and abandon your mother, and perhaps your mission in life as well? Is that what you want, Erhart?

  ELLA RENTHEIM: I’m condemned to die. Answer me, Erhart.

  ERHART [warmly, moved]: Aunt Ella – you’ve been so unbelievably kind to me. With you I was allowed to grow up feeling as carefree and happy as I believe any child could wish to be –

  MRS BORKMAN: Erhart! Erhart!

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Oh, what a blessing it is that you can still see that!

  ERHART: – But I can’t sacrifice myself to you now. It’s just not possible for me to devote myself wholly and entirely to being a son to you –

  MRS BORKMAN [triumphantly]: Ah, I knew it! You won’t get him! You will not get him, Ella!

  ELLA RENTHEIM [heavily]: I can see that. You’ve won him back.

  MRS BORKMAN: Yes, yes – he’s mine, and he’s going to stay mine! Erhart – isn’t that right – we two still have another stage in our journey together, don’t we?

  ERHART [struggling with himself]: Mother – I may as well tell you straight out –

  MRS BORKMAN [tense]: What?

  ERHART: I’m afraid I’ll only be going a short way with you, Mother.

  MRS BORKMAN [stands as though thunderstruck]: What do you mean by that?

  ERHART [summoning courage]: For God’s sake, Mother – I’m young! I feel as if the stuffy air inside this drawing room8 will suffocate me in the end.

  MRS BORKMAN: Here – in my house?

  ERHART: Yes, here in your house, Mother.

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Then come with me, Erhart!

  ERHART: Oh, Aunt Ella, it’s not a whit better with you. It’s different there, but no better for all that. Not better for me. It smells of roses and lavender – stuffy drawing-room air – just like here.

  MRS BORKMAN [shaken, but has regained her composure after a struggle]: Are you saying the air is stuffy inside your mother’s house, is that what you’re saying?

  ERHART [with mounting impatience]: Yes, I don’t know how else to describe it. All this morbid fussing and – and idolization – or whatever you want to call it. I can’t bear it any longer!

  MRS BORKMAN [looks at him with great seriousness]: Have you forgotten what you have dedicated your life to, Erhart?

  ERHART [exploding]: What you have dedicated my life to, you mean. You, you have been my will. I’v
e never been allowed any of my own. But I can’t bear this yoke any longer. I’m young! Remember that, Mother. [With a considerate, polite glance at BORKMAN] I cannot dedicate my life to atoning for someone else. Whoever that someone might be.

  MRS BORKMAN [gripped with mounting anxiety]: Who has transformed you in this way, Erhart?

  ERHART [disconcerted]: Who –? Couldn’t I have done it myself –?

  MRS BORKMAN: No, no, no! You’re in thrall to some strange power. No longer in your mother’s power. And not in your – your foster-mother’s either.

  ERHART [with forced defiance]: I’m in my own power, Mother! And subject to my own will too!

  BORKMAN [moves forward towards ERHART]: Then perhaps my hour has come at last.

  ERHART [with distant, measured politeness]: In what way –? What do you mean, Father?9

  MRS BORKMAN [contemptuous]: Yes, I would like to ask the same question.

  BORKMAN [continues undisturbed]: Listen, Erhart – why don’t you come with your father? A fallen man does not find redemption and restitution10 through the way another man leads his life. Those are just empty dreams, conjured up for you – down here in this stuffy drawing-room air. Even if you dedicated your life to living as purely as all the saints put together – it wouldn’t be of the slightest use to me.

  ERHART [measured, respectful]: That’s very true.

  BORKMAN: Yes, it is. And it wouldn’t be any use either if I decided to waste away in abject penance. All these years I’ve been trying to survive on hopes and dreams. But that kind of thing is no good to me. And now I want to get out of those dreams.

  ERHART [bows slightly]: So what will – what will you do, Father?

  BORKMAN: I’ll raise myself up,11 that is what I shall do. Start at the bottom again. Only through his present and his future can a man atone for his past. And by working – relentlessly working, for everything that in my youth represented life itself, but now seems a thousand times more important. Erhart – will you join me and help me in this new life?

  MRS BORKMAN [raises her hand in warning]: Don’t do it, Erhart!

  ELLA RENTHEIM [warmly]: Yes, yes, go on – do it! Oh, help him, Erhart!

  MRS BORKMAN: You’re advising him to do that? You, the lonely – dying woman.

  ELLA RENTHEIM: I don’t care about myself.

  MRS BORKMAN: No, as long as it’s not me who’s taking him away from you.

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Precisely, Gunhild.

  BORKMAN: Will you, Erhart?

  ERHART [in great distress]: Father – I can’t do it now. It’s utterly impossible!

  BORKMAN: So what do you yourself want to do, then?

  ERHART [glowing]: I’m young! I want to live life too, for once! I want to live my own life!

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Not sacrifice a couple of short months to light up a poor, fading light?

  ERHART: Aunt, I can’t, however much I’d like to.

  ELLA RENTHEIM: Not even for the sake of someone who loves you more than words can say?

  ERHART: As true as I live, Aunt Ella – I cannot.

  MRS BORKMAN [looking sharply at him]: And no ties bind you to your mother any longer either?

  ERHART: I shall always love you, Mother; but I can’t go on living for you alone. This is no life for me.

  BORKMAN: Then come and join yourself to me, in spite of everything! Because life, life means work, Erhart. Come on, the two of us will go out into life and work together!

  ERHART [passionately]: Yes, but I don’t want to work now! I’m young! I’d never realized it before; but now I feel it coursing so warmly through me. I don’t want to work! Just live, live, live!

  MRS BORKMAN [cries out, guessing]: Erhart – what do you want to live for?

  ERHART [with sparkling eyes]: For happiness, Mother!

  MRS BORKMAN: And where do you suppose you’ll find that?

  ERHART: I already have!

  MRS BORKMAN [shrieks]: Erhart –!

  ERHART hurries over to the hall door and opens it.

  ERHART [calls out]: Fanny – you can come in now!

  MRS WILTON in her coat, appears in the doorway.

  MRS BORKMAN [with raised hands]: Mrs Wilton –!

  MRS WILTON [a little shy, with an inquiring glance at ERHART]: Can I really –?

  ERHART: Yes, you can come in now. I’ve told them everything.

  MRS WILTON comes into the room. ERHART closes the door behind her. She gives a measured bow to BORKMAN who returns her greeting in silence.

  A brief silence.

  MRS WILTON [in a subdued but firm voice]: So it’s all out in the open. I am aware that I stand here as one who has brought great unhappiness to this house.

  MRS BORKMAN [slowly, looks stiffly at her]: You have crushed what little I had left to live for. [In an outburst] But even so – this is utterly impossible!

  MRS WILTON: I quite understand how impossible it must seem to you, Mrs Borkman.

  MRS BORKMAN: Yes, but surely you yourself must admit that it’s impossible. Or perhaps –?

  MRS WILTON: I’d say rather utterly improbable. But nonetheless true.

  MRS BORKMAN [turns round]: Are you really serious about this, Erhart?

  ERHART: This for me means happiness, Mother – all the great, wonderful happiness life has to offer. What more can I say?

  MRS BORKMAN [wringing her hands; to MRS WILTON]: Oh, you have tricked and seduced my unfortunate son!

  MRS WILTON [tosses her head proudly]: No, I have not.

  MRS BORKMAN: What, you’re telling me you haven’t?

  MRS WILTON: No. I’ve neither tricked nor seduced him. Erhart came to me of his own free will. And of my own free will I met him halfway.

  MRS BORKMAN [looks contemptuously down at her]: You did, yes. Oh, yes! I have no difficulty believing that.

  MRS WILTON [controlled]: Mrs Borkman – there are forces in people’s lives that you seem to know very little about.

  MRS BORKMAN: What forces, dare I ask?

  MRS WILTON: The forces that compel two people to tie their lives, indissolubly – recklessly, together.

  MRS BORKMAN [smiles]: I thought you were already indissolubly tied – to someone else.

  MRS WILTON [curt]: That someone else deserted me.

  MRS BORKMAN: But they say he’s still alive.

  MRS WILTON: He’s dead to me.

  ERHART [insistently]: Yes, Mother, he’s dead to Fanny. And besides, this other man is of no concern to me!

  MRS BORKMAN [looks sternly at him]: So you know all about it – about this other man.

  ERHART: Yes, Mother, I know it well – I know all about it!

  MRS BORKMAN: And you can still say that it’s no concern of yours?

  ERHART [with defiant bravado]: All I can say to you is that it’s happiness I want. I’m young! I want to live, live, live!

  MRS BORKMAN: Yes, you are young, Erhart. Too young for all this.

  MRS WILTON [firmly and gravely]: Mrs Borkman, please don’t think that I haven’t said as much to him myself. I’ve laid my entire life bare to him. I remind him time and time again that I am a whole seven years older than he is –

  ERHART [interrupting]: Oh, who cares, Fanny – I knew all that before.

  MRS WILTON: – but none of it – nothing was any use.

  MRS BORKMAN: Really? No use? Then why didn’t you send him packing without further ado? Close your door to him? That’s what you should have done, before it was too late!

  MRS WILTON [looks at her, and says in a low voice]: I simply couldn’t do that, Mrs Borkman.

  MRS BORKMAN: Why not?

  MRS WILTON: Because this, and this alone, meant happiness for me as well.

  MRS BORKMAN [contemptuously]: Hm, happiness, happiness –

  MRS WILTON: I never knew what happiness was till now. And I can’t possibly push happiness away, just because it’s come so late.

  MRS BORKMAN: And how long do you think this happiness will last?

  ERHART [interrupting]: However little or
long it lasts, Mother – it doesn’t matter!

  MRS BORKMAN [in anger]: What a blind creature you are! Don’t you see where all this is going?

  ERHART: I’m not worried about what the future holds. I don’t want to look forward or in any other direction; all I want is to be allowed to live my own life – for once, like everyone else!

  MRS BORKMAN [pained]: And you call this life, Erhart!

  ERHART: Yes, can’t you see how lovely she is!

  MRS BORKMAN [wringing her hands]: And I’ll have to bear this crushing shame too!

  BORKMAN [in the background, harsh and cutting]: Ha – but you’re used to bearing that sort of thing, aren’t you, Gunhild?

  ELLA RENTHEIM [imploringly]: Borkman –!

  ERHART [similarly]: Father –!

  MRS BORKMAN: Day after day I shall have to see my own son with a – a –

  ERHART [interrupting harshly]: You’ll see nothing, Mother! You can put your mind at rest on that point. I’m not staying here any longer.

  MRS WILTON [quickly and decisively]: We’re leaving, Mrs Borkman.

  MRS BORKMAN [turns pale]: Are you leaving too? Together, perhaps?

  MRS WILTON [nods]: Yes, I’m going abroad, to the South. With a young girl. And Erhart is coming with us.

  MRS BORKMAN: With you – and a young girl?

  MRS WILTON: Yes. It’s little Frida Foldal, whom I’ve had living with me. I want her to go abroad and study music.

  MRS BORKMAN: So you’re taking her with you?

  MRS WILTON: Yes; I can’t very well let the young child loose out there on her own.

  MRS BORKMAN [suppressing a smile]: What have you got to say to that, Erhart?

  ERHART [a little embarrassed, shrugs his shoulders]: Well, Mother – if that’s the way Fanny really wants it –

  MRS BORKMAN [coldly]: And when is this august party leaving, if you don’t mind my asking?

  MRS WILTON: Tonight, right away. My sleigh-carriage12 is waiting down the road – outside the Hinkels’.

  MRS BORKMAN [looks her up and down]: Aha! So that’s what the party was all about!

  MRS WILTON [smiles]: Yes, there weren’t any other guests apart from me and Erhart. And little Frida, of course.

  MRS BORKMAN: And where is she now?

  MRS WILTON: She’s waiting for us in the sleigh.