PEER: More wine, my friends, more wine? Since man
is made for pleasure it’s a sin
not to enjoy; once gone ’tis gone.
Come now, some brandy? Or stay with wine?
TRUMPETERSTRAALE: Your table is unmatched, Bror Gynt!
PEER: My cook and butler have some claim,
then, to your thanks; as does my mint
of money.
MR COTTON: Well, a toast to them
as well as you!
M. BALLON: In France we have
refined expressions to extol
such qualities. So few who live
en garçon can retain them all.
V. EBERKOPF: A nuance of free spirit we
detect, combined with, here and there,
the true vein of world-citizenry,
a Weltanschauung, echt und wahr;15
a vision through the storm-clouds breaking,
all unconfined by prejudice;
the Ur-natur, divine self-seeking,
Erhebung of the triune Kreis
united at the Krise16-joint.
I think, monsieur, that’s what you meant.
M. BALLON: Quite possibly. It did not seem
so eloquent in French.
V. EBERKOPF: That’s so.
French cannot summarize a theme
succinctly as we Germans do.
The base of the phenomenon
is …
PEER: My dear sir, summed in a phrase:
that I have lived my life alone.
‘I am what I am’ sounds my success:
the man himself and what he has.
Such the legitimate extent
of his concerns. Securities:
how can he have these if he’s bent
with burdens of another’s being?
V. EBERKOPF: And yet, I’d swear, this epic stance
has cost you dearly more than once!
PEER: Indeed, yes; but I left each field
still carrying both sword and shield.
Once only I, in this regard,
came close to fatal self-betraying.
I was a smart, good-looking lad;
and she for whom my young heart bled
came of some royal lineage …
M. BALLON: Royal, monsieur?
PEER [dismissively]:
Well, so to speak,
the kind so common in this age.
TRUMPETERSTRAALE [thumping the table]:
Ennobled trolls, as I’m a Swede!
PEER [shrugging his shoulders]:
Decayed aristocrats, who make
sure to erase plebeian blood
from their escutcheon.
MR COTTON: So the lass
was lost to you?
M. BALLON: Her next of kin
forbade the match?
PEER: Quite the reverse!
[Speaks with deliberation.]
To be as plain
as delicacy permits, there were
circumstances – ahem, monsieur! –
that argued for an early splicing.
I found the prospect unenticing.
In some things I’m fastidious.
I’d rather stand on my own feet.
So, when my pa-in-law-to-be
dropped hints that seemed more like abuse –
that I should change my name and buy
a patent of nobility –
from him, mark you – together with
suggestions that I won’t repeat,
well, I withdrew forthwith, with all
the pride of rank that I could pull,
renounced my bride and bounty both.
[Assumes a look of piety and drums on the table.]
Ah yes, there is a ruling fate;
on that we mortals can rely;
a comfort in our hard estate …
M. BALLON: And there the matter ended, eh?
PEER: Ah, no; indeed, the opposite;
for those with no call to intrude
did so, and raised a hue and cry.
Worst were the youngest of that brood.
Seven duels with seven sons I fought.
It was a time I’ll not forget.
I emerged victor; and though it cost
blood, yet my self-worth increased;
rose in the world’s eyes too. Things point
conclusively to my grand creed:
the hand of fate’s benevolent!
V. EBERKOPF: You are entitled, worthy sir,
to rank among us as world-seer.
While others merely commentate
on that and this and this and that
and fumble when they half-descry,
you bring all into unity;
and by that norm you measure each
and everything that others touch;
and every nut and bolt you tighten
till every detail of research
is something that your gifts enlighten.
You have no letters to your name?
PEER: I am, as I have said before,
an autodidact pure and simple.
To scholarship I make no claim,
but I have pondered here and there
and found such means of working ample,
know a fair bit about most things.
I started late to cogitate,
by which time ploughing through a book
is heavy labour, shifting rock,
rough with the smooth. The rights and wrongs
of history I’ve sampled piecemeal,
no time to put it all together.
And since, in hard times, one especial-
ly needs faith’s consolations,
I took that in the same way rather,
bits here and there, no turgid notions.
It’s easier to swallow thus,
and to regurgitate for use.
MR COTTON: Business pragmatics at its best!
PEER [lighting a cigar]:
Consider also, if you will,
my life’s course: emigrating west –
in steerage – labouring to live
the moment that I first arrive,
all swallowed as a purgative.
But life is precious, even then,
and death most bitter. Luck was on
my side and fate proved flexible,
as I did too – unhexable!
Within ten years all turned to gold.
In Charleston, Carolina, I
was Croesus as I bought and sold
at ease with that fraternity.
My shipping line was thriving.
MR COTTON: What
did you carry?
PEER: Chiefly I shipped
Negroes to Charleston; and to China
Buddhas made in Carolina.
M. BALLON: Shame on you, sir!
TRUMPETERSTRAALE: Croesus crapped!
PEER: It seems you find my business ethics
too much for your own moral toothpicks.
I too have felt a like revulsion,
believe me! And yet, once you start,
business becomes its own compulsion.
Thousands depend on you, the cogs
keep turning at a faster rate.
Of ‘give it up’, ‘let it all go’,
‘finally retire’, you know,
it’s ‘finally’ that I most hate.
I, on the other hand, admit
to having always known what’s meant
by ‘consequences’ and ‘black dogs’.
Yes, I concede, ‘crossing the line’
is an old phobia of mine.
Besides, I’d started to find hints
of threatening age – you know, hair tints,
full head of hair but touched with grey?
Although my health was excellent
I sensed that lurking
jeopardy
and flinched from it. Who knows how soon
the hour will strike, the jury-foreman
pronounce the verdict: sheep? or goats?
Dread of that judgement’s only human.
Yet how to stop, I tell you, that’s
the big brain-teaser. My China-trade
ground on, unstoppable. Well, then!
New trinkets on the old machine.
Each spring I still shipped little Buddhas;
each fall, persons in holy orders
(the mission field was thriving), kitted
them out with things well suited:
socks, bibles, rum and rice.
MR COTTON: You made
a decent profit, I presume.
PEER: Goes without saying. The whole time
they laboured, with both zeal and zest;
for every god we shipped out east
they had a coolie deep-baptized,
ensuring equilibrium.
The mission field was never left
fallow; the little gods they sold
from door to door they later reft
back, for John Chinaman’s a child.
MR COTTON: Do tell us, now, your other trade?
PEER: There also ethics won the day.
As I declined towards old age –
no man can know when he’ll conclude
his journey on this pilgrimage,
on top of which there was the rage
of crazed philanthropists at large,
the perils, too, of reef and rock,
revenue cutters and the like –
these things together clinched the deal.
‘Time, Peer’, I mused, ‘to shorten sail,
put well behind you your past errors.’
I bought land at a bargain price
in the Deep South, and took a lien,
bankrupt stock from a cattle-man –
its quality was indeed first class.
Beasts, once I’d put them out to graze,
grew plump and sleek where they’d been thin.
It raised our spirits, theirs and mine.
It’s fair to say I cherished them.
My profit margins soared like steam.
And, on the proceeds, I built schools,
that moral virtue’s stocks and shares
would never fall below a level
controlled by my thermometers.
But now I’ve done with trade-affairs,
have set the ranch under the gavel,
made a fiesta of farewells,
dispensed free grog to men and women;
widows got snuff into the bargain.
The fact is, so I’ve understood,
who does no evil has done good.
If that is not an empty phrase
the errors of my earlier days
are now forgotten; so that I,
more than most others, perhaps may
against fresh virtues weigh past sins
and find myself in credit still.
V. EBERKOPF [clinking glasses with him]:
How grand it is that you’re at pains
to endow life with principle,
with active principle, no less,
purged of malign obscurities,
dark night of Theorie; deliver
from what hypothesis soever …
PEER [who has been drinking heavily from various bottles during the previous orations]:
We of the north best understand
how things get quickly out of hand
and how to bring strife to an end.
The secret is to keep tight-shut
your lugholes so that creepy crawlies
are something that they don’t admit.
MR COTTON: What do you chiefly have in mind?
PEER: A little mean seductive fiend
within the holiest of holies,
[Drinks yet more.]
when what’s in question is the art
of finding how to even start
and how to keep free will of choice
while facing some malign device,
to feel assured that not all days
of battle end in forfeit ways;
that one who’s crossed a bridge can take
at any time the same bridge back.
That adage has for long sustained me,
tinctured my theories of conduct.
The childhood home I left behind me
gave me those standards, still intact.
M. BALLON: Norvégien?
PEER: I was Norway’s child
but hers no longer. Let me be styled
‘Peer Gynt, first citizen of the world’!
Thus, for my glory and my gain
I thank all things American;
my well-stocked library reveals
the strength of Germany’s ‘New Schools’.
From France my waistcoats I acquire,
my poise, my intellectual flair.
And in my willingness to drudge
for profit, to drive bargains hard,
my self-esteem wears England’s badge.
The Jews have taught me how to bear
whate’er befalls. My dolce far
niente17 came, once, as a gift
from Italy. Caught off my guard
on one occasion, I made shift
to save myself with Swedish steel.
TRUMPETERSTRAALE: I’ll drink to that!
V. EBERKOPF: But to the one
who wielded it I offer Heil!
They clink glasses and drink with PEER, who is increasingly showing the effects of alcohol.
MR COTTON: All this of course sounds very well
but I, sir, wish to hear you talk
of how you’ll put your wealth to work.
PEER [smiling]:
H’m? h’m? Do what?
ALL FOUR [gathering about him]:
Do carry on!
PEER: Well, first, by voyaging abroad;
that’s why I took you four on board
when I dropped anchor at Gibraltar.
You seemed a likely singing-dancing
troupe of topers to set prancing
before my golden calf and altar.
V. EBERKOPF: Amusing, no?
sail to be simply all at sea.
You have – I catch it from your eye –
a vision of some destined coast.
That vision is … pray tell us, sir.
PEER: My goal? To become emperor.
ALL FOUR: What?
PEER [nodding]:
Emperor.
ALL FOUR: Of what?
PEER: The world.
M. BALLON: But by what means?
PEER: The power of gold.
There’s nothing new, when all is said;
it was in everything I did
while still a child. In dreams I soared
across deep waters on a cloud.
With streaming cloak, gold sword-sheath, climbed
to eminence; woke frosty-limbed.
But even so, the good remained
firmer than ever in my mind.
It has been writ in scrolls of fire –
I can’t recall precisely where –
that if you gain the world entire
but ‘lose yourself’, all that you’ve won
is but a withered laurel crown
around a shattered brow. Such words
are not damned poetry’s platitudes.
V. EBERKOPF: The Gyntian Selbst,18 mein Herr? Do please
enlighten us.
PEER: Mein Selbst ist dies:19
the world behind the outward brow
determines that I am the law
unto myself and to no other.
And God is not the devil either.
TRUMPETERSTRAALE: Ah! Now I comprehend
the thrust!
M. BALLON: Sublimity of thought indeed!
V. EBERKOPF: Such poetry outsoars the best!
PEER [with mounting ardour]:
The Gyntian self – that iron brigade
of wishes, passions and desires,
a massive flood that knows no shores,
vortex of impulse, need and claim,
the world that I entirely am.
God grasps our earth that He may be
Emperor of Eternity.
I too have need to grab for gold
to be the emperor of this world.
M. BALLON: But you have wealth!
PEER: Not wealth enough!
Enough perhaps for half a week
if I sat on Lippe-Detmold’s20 throne
and had patience to sit it through.
L’État c’est moi, c’est moi en bloc!21
The Gynt of Gynts and that alone!
Sir Peter Gynt whose toe-caps shine!
M. BALLON [enraptured]:
La belle Hélène, un grand désir!22
V. EBERKOPF: Johannisberger’s23 greatest year!
TRUMPETERSTRAALE: And swords wrought out of Swedish steel
by Charles the Twelfth’s own armourer!
MR COTTON: Nay, all such things are very well,
but first things first: to look about
for a transaction swift and sweet.
PEER: Already done! The newspapers
today are music to my ears.
It is as if good fortune shows
favours to one who dares and does.
Tonight we set sail for the north,
TRUMPETERSTRAALE: Bror Gynt!
M. BALLON Monsieur!
MR COTTON Old chap!
V. EBERKOPF Mein Herr!
ONE OF THE FOUR: We wait with bated breath to hear!
PEER: A late report reads ‘Greece in tumult’.
ALL FOUR spring up.
ONE OF THE FOUR: Praise be! And has the Turk been humbled?
PEER: The Greeks have risen.
ONE OF THE FOUR: In their wrath!
PEER: The Turks, it adds, are in retreat.
Empties his glass.
M. BALLON: Fair Greece! Her gates of glory open.
I shall assist with my French weapon.
V. EBERKOPF: And I with plaudits from the wings.
MR COTTON: While I shall be supplying things.
TRUMPETERSTRAALE: And I shall go to fatal Bender
King Charles’s spurs perchance to find there.
M. BALLON [embracing PEER]:
Forgive me, friend; for a brief while
I had misjudged you.
V. EBERKOPF [grasping his hands]:
I too judged ill,
thought you a scoundrel. I regret
the slur; I am an idiot.
MR COTTON: That’s a bit strong! Maybe a fathead.
TRUMPETERSTRAALE [attempting to kiss him]:
And I thought you a specimen
of Yankeedom’s degraded spawn.