Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (148 page)

GREGORY.
Interpret it in charity, Julian,

JULIAN.
Oh, you do not know — ! I hate this power without me, terrible in action, more terrible when at rest.

GREGORY.
Be frank, my friend, and tell me whether it is this alone that has led you into all these strange ways?

JULIAN.
What mean you by strange ways?

GREGORY.
Is the rumour true, that you pass your nights in searching out the heathen mysteries in Eleusis?

JULIAN.
Oh, pooh! I assure you there is little to be learnt from those riddle-mongering dreamers. Let us talk no more about them.

GREGORY.
Then it is true! Oh, Julian, how could you seek such shameful intercourse?

JULIAN.
I must live, Gregory, — and this life at the university is no life at all. This Libanius! I shall never forgive him the great love I once bore him! At my first coming, how humbly and with what tremors of joy did I not enter the presence of this man, bowing myself before him, kissing him, and calling him my great brother

GREGORY.
Yes, we Christians all thought that you went too far.

JULIAN.
And yet I came here in exaltation of spirit. I saw, in my fancy, a mighty contest between us two, — the world’s truth in pitched battle against God’s truth. — What has it all come to? Libanius never seriously desired that contest. He never desired any contest whatever; he cares only for his own interest. I tell you, Gregory — Libanius is not a great man,

GREGORY.
Yet all enlightened Greece proclaims him great.

JULIAN.
A great man he is not, I tell you. Once only have I seen Libanius great: that night in Constantinople. Then he was great, because he had suffered a great wrong, and because he was filled with a noble wrath. But here! Oh, what have I not seen here? Libanius has great learning, but he is no great man. Libanius is greedy; he is vain; he is eaten up with envy. See you not how he has writhed under the fame which I — largely, no doubt, owing to the indulgence of my friends — have been so fortunate as to acquire? Go to Libanius, and he will expound to you the inward essence and the outward signs of all the virtues. He has them ready to hand, just as he has the books in his library. But does he exercise these virtues? Is his life at one with his teaching? He a successor of Socrates and of Plato — ha-ha! Did he not flatter the Emperor, up to the time of his banishment? Did he not flatter me at our meeting in Constantinople, that meeting which he has since attempted, most unsuccessfully, to present in a ludicrous light! And what am I to him now? Now he writes letters to Gallus, to Gallus Caesar, to the Emperor’s heir, congratulating him on his successes against the Persians, although these successes have as yet been meagre enough, and Gallus Caesar is not distinguished either for learning or for any considerable eloquence. — And this Libanius the Greeks persist in calling the king of the philosophers! Ah, I will not deny that it stirs my indignation. I should have thought, to tell the truth, that the Greeks might have made a better choice, if they had noted a little more closely the cultivators of wisdom and eloquence, who of late years —

BASIL OF CAESAREA.
[Entering from the right.]
Letters! Letters from Cappadocia!

GREGORY.
For me too?

BASIL.
Yes, here; from your mother.

GREGORY.
My pious mother!
[He opens the paper and reads.

JULIAN.
[To
Basil.] Is it your sister who writes to you?

BASIL.
[Who has entered with his own letter open.]
Yes, it is Makrina. Her news is both sad and strange.

JULIAN.
What is it? Tell me.

BASIL.
First of your noble brother Gallus. He rules sternly in Antioch.

JULIAN.
Yes, Gallus is hard. — Does Makrina write
“
sternly.”

BASIL.
[Looking at him.]
Makrina writes “bloodily” —

JULIAN.
Ah, I thought as much! Why did the Emperor marry him to that dissolute widow, that Constantina?

GREGORY.
[Reading.]
Oh, what unheard-of infamy!

JULIAN.
What is it, friend?

GREGORY.
[To
Basil.] Does Makrina say nothing of what is happening in Antioch?

BASIL.
Nothing definite. What is it? You are pale —

GREGORY.
You knew the noble Clemazius, the Alexandrian?

BASIL.
Yes, yes; what of him?

GREGORY.
He is murdered, Basil!

BASIL.
What do you say? Murdered?

GREGORY.
I call it murdered; — they have executed him without law or judgment.

JULIAN.
Who? Who has executed him?

GREGORY.
Yes, who? How can I say who? My mother tells the story thus: Clemazius’s mother-in-law was inflamed with an impure love for her daughter’s husband; but as she could not move him to wrong, she gained some back-stairs access to the palace —

JULIAN.
What palace?

GREGORY.
My mother writes only
“
the palace.”

JULIAN.
Well? And then — ?

GREGORY.
It is only known that she presented a very costly jewel to a great and powerful lady to procure a death-warrant —

JULIAN.
Ah, but they did not get it!

GREGORY.
They got it, Julian.

JULIAN.
Oh, Jesus!

BASIL.
Horrible! And Clemazius — ?

GREGORY.
The death-warrant was sent to the governor, Honoratus. That weak man dared not disobey so high a command. Clemazius was thrown into prison and executed early next morning, without being suffered, my mother writes, to open his lips in his own defence.

JULIAN.
[Pale, in a low voice.]
Burn these dangerous letters; they might bring us all to ruin.

BASIL.
Such open violence in the midst of a great city! Where are we; where are we?

JULIAN.
Aye, you may well ask where we are! A Christian murderer, a Christian adulteress, a Christian — !

GREGORY.
Denunciations will not mend this matter. What do you intend to do?

JULIAN.
I? I will go no more to Eleusis; I will break off all dealings with the heathen, and thank the Lord my God that he spared me the temptations of power.

GREGORY.
Good; but then?

JULIAN.
I do not understand you —

GREGORY.
Then listen. The murder of Clemazius is not all, believe me. This unheard-of infamy has descended like a plague on Antioch. All evil things have awakened, and are swarming forth from their lairs. My mother writes that it seems as though some pestilent abyss had opened. Wives denounce their husbands, sons their fathers, priests the members of their own flock —

JULIAN.
This will spread yet further. The abomination will corrupt us all. — Oh, Gregory, would I could fly to the world’s end — !

GREGORY.
Your place is at the world’s navel, Prince Julian.

JULIAN.
What would you have me do?

GREGORY.
You are this bloody Caesar’s brother. Stand forth before him — he calls himself a Christian — and cast his crime in his teeth; smite him to the earth in terror and remorse —

JULIAN.
[Recoiling.]
Madman, of what are you thinking?

GREGORY.
Is your brother dear to you? Would you save him?

JULIAN.
I once loved Gallus above all others.

GREGORY.
Once — ? — .

JULIAN.
So long as he was only my brother. But now — ; is he not Caesar? Gregory, — Basil, — oh, my beloved friends, — I tremble for my life, I draw every breath in fear, because of Gallus Caesar. And you ask me to defy him to his face, me, whose very existence is a danger to him?

GREGORY.
Why came you to Athens? You gave out loudly in all quarters that Prince Julian was setting forth from Constantinople to do battle with philosophy, falsely so called — to champion Christian truth against heathen falsehood. What have you done of all this?

JULIAN.
Ah, ‘twas not here that the battle was to be.

GREGORY.
No, it was not here, — not with phrase against phrase, not with book against book, not with the idle word-fencing of the lecture-room! No, Julian, you must go forth into life itself, with your own life in your hands —

JULIAN.
I see it; I see it!

GREGORY.
Yes, as Libanius sees it! You mocked at him. You said he knew the essence and the outward signs of all the virtues, but his doctrine was only a doctrine to him. How much of you belongs to God? How much may the Emperor demand?

JULIAN.
You said yourself it was unseemly —

GREGORY.
Towards whom? Towards God or the Emperor? Julian.
[Quickly.]
Well then: shall we go together? Gregory.
[Evasively.]
I have my little circle; I have my family to watch over. I have neither the strength nor the gifts for a larger task.

JULIAN.
[Is
about to answer; suddenly he listens towards the right, and calls out.]
To the bacchanal!

BASIL.
Julian

JULIAN.
To the bacchanal, friends! [Gregory of Nazianzus
looks at him a moment; then he goes off through the colonnade to the left. A large troop of scholars, with the newcomers among them, rushes into the square, amid shouts and noise.

BASIL.
[Coming nearer.]
Julian, will you listen to me’ Julian. See, see! They have taken their new friends to the bath, and anointed their hair. See how they swing their cudgels; how they yell and thump the pavement! What say you, Pericles? Methinks I can hear your wrathful shade —

BASIL.
Come, come!

JULIAN.
Ah, look at the man they are driving naked among them. Now come the dancing-girls. Ah, do you see what — !

BASIL.
Fie! Fie! — turn your eyes away!
[Evening has fallen. The whole troop nettles down in the square beside the fountain. Wine and fruits are brought. Painted damsels dance by torchlight.

JULIAN.
[After a short silence
.] Tell me, Basil, why was the heathen sin so beautiful?

BASIL.
You are mistaken, friend; beautiful things have been said and sung of this heathen sin; but it was not beautiful.

JULIAN.
Oh, how can you say so? Was not Alcibiades beautiful when, flushed with wine, he stormed at night like a young god through the streets of Athens? Was he not beautiful in his very audacity when he insulted Hermes and battered at the citizens’ doors, — when he summoned their wives and daughters forth, while within the women trembled, and, in breathless, panting silence, wished for nothing better than to — ?

BASIL.
Oh listen to me, I beg and entreat you.

JULIAN.
Was not Socrates beautiful in the symposium? And Plato, and all the joyous revellers? Yet they did such things, as, but to be accused of them, would make those Christian swine out there call down upon themselves the curse of God. Think of Oedipus, Medea, Leda —

BASIL.
Poetry, poetry; you confound fancies with facts.

JULIAN.
Are not mind and will in poetry subject to the same laws as in fact? And then look at our holy scriptures, both the old and new. Was sin beautiful in Sodom and Gomorrah? Did not Jehovah’s fire avenge what Socrates shrank not from? — Oh, as I live this life of revel and riot, I often wonder whether truth is indeed the enemy of beauty!

BASIL.
And in such an hour can you sigh after beauty? Can you so easily forget what you have just heard — ?

JULIAN.
[Stopping his ears.]
Not a word more of those horrors! We will shake off all thoughts of Antioch — Tell me, what does Makrina write further? There was something more; I remember, you said — ; what was it you called the rest of her news?

BASIL.
Strange.

JULIAN.
Yes, yes; — what was it?

BASIL.
She writes of Maximus in Ephesus —

JULIAN.
[Eagerly.]
The Mystic?