The Theatre of Imagining by Ulla Kallenbach

Author:Ulla Kallenbach
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783319763033
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Having been to America, Peer has traveled to the shores of Morocco on his ship, which is loaded with his entire fortune. Yet just at this point, when Peer dreams of becoming emperor “of the whole world!” and fulfilling his childhood dreams of soaring “On a cloud over the high seas | In royal robes, with a golden sword” (79), he loses it all, first by having his fortunes taken from him by his fellow travelers, then by having them extinguished by an explosion on the ship, his efforts having amounted to absolutely nothing. Instead, he ends up in a madhouse in Cairo (like Christian in The Phantasts), the place where reason is suspended and madness reigns, imagination run riot. “Reason is dead. Long live Peer Gynt!” (114), Begriffenfeldt, the director of the madhouse proclaims, and as Peer collapses crowns him “Emperor Self.”

Finally, in Act Five, returning to Norway as an old man, the shipwrecked Peer comes to the realization that his only empire was that of terror, and that his fantasizing has left him with no self—like an onion without a core. He meets the Buttonmoulder, who has been sent to collect his soul to melt and recast him. His living in the imagination has left him fit for neither Heaven nor Hell, having no true virtues nor vices. “Up to now, you’ve never been yourself;” the Buttonmoulder says, “What difference does it mean if you vanish completely?” (151). However, Peer still does not understand: “What, exactly, is ‘being one’s self’?” he asks the Buttonmoulder at their second meeting, to which the Buttonmoulder answers, “To be one’s self is to kill one’s self” (158). Peer then desperately seeks a witness who can save him from the Buttonmoulder. His savior is Solveig, who comforts him and tells him that he has always been his true self: “In my faith, in my hope, and in my love” (168). Like A Doll’s House, however, Peer Gynt ends unresolved, as it is ultimately unclear if Solveig does save Peer from the Buttonmoulder, who lurks behind Solveig’s house as she sings him to “Sleep, and dream, my home-returner” (169). It is up to the reader/spectator to imagine and choose whether Peer has been fatally cursed by his fantasizing, or if a final redemption is possible.

Fittingly, this play about the imagination was not written for the theatre (indeed, it was not staged until 1876), but to be read and staged in the imagination, where the limits of reality and restrictions of the stage would not impede the flight of imagination needed to truly engage with Ibsen’s dramatic poem. As James McFarlane has written in his introduction to the play:For Peer, the return journey from reality to fantasy and back, from the substance to the shadow and return, requires no frontier formalities. Working and dreaming interpenetrate, fact and fantasy fuse, and all distinctions are blurred. The line between appearance and actuality, between fiction and fact, disappears in one great universe of imagination. Fears are reborn as only nightmares can shape them; desires are achieved as only dream can fulfil them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.