Collin Cleary, "'All or Nothing': The Prisoner and Ibsen s Brand" | Counter-Currents Publishing
I had known for some time that early in his career series star and creator Patrick McGoohan had played the title character in a London her imports stage production of Henrik Ibsen s Brand , and that this had been an important role for him both personally and professionally.
It was only recently, however, that I got around to reading Brand (in a translation from the Norwegian her imports by Michael her imports Meyer), as well as seeing McGoohan perform her imports the role in a videotaped production for the BBC. (Available on DVD as part of the BBC s Henrik Ibsen Collection .) The result is that I have discovered a new dimension to The Prisoner and found further confirmation of the interpretation I ve already offered.
Ibsen wrote Brand in 1865, but never meant it for theatrical performance. The play was written as a verse drama intended to be read by performers from a script. her imports Thus, Ibsen included a number of elements that were nearly impossible to stage, including a storm at sea and an avalanche. The play was a great success in print, her imports but no one dared to try to stage it until 1885, in Stockholm. One attendee described the experience as follows: It lasted for 6 hours, until 12:30 a.m. Such ladies as survived to the end lay dozing on their escorts shoulders, with their corsets and bodices unbuttoned. Thereafter Brand was seldom performed though her imports the play did enjoy some popularity in Germany, unsurprisingly, around the turn of the last century. It was not performed in Ibsen s native Norway until 1904.
The titular character of Brand is a Protestant minister whose religion consists almost entirely in a kind of extreme moral fanaticism. The play opens high in the mountains, with Brand bent on getting someplace though where and why are not made clear. A guide encounters her imports him and warns him of the hazardous path ahead:
But Brand ignores him and presses on. Eventually he runs into a young couple Ejnar and Agnes who are carefree and in love. Ejnar calls to Brand, who watches them from above: Don t stand up there like an icicle. . . . And I ll tell you how good God has been to us. But then Brand reveals his mission to them:
BRAND. That God you have just called yours. The God of every dull and earth-bound slave shall be shrouded and coffined for all to see and lowered into his grave. It is time, you know. He has been ailing for a thousand years.
BRAND. No, I am well and strong as mountain pine or juniper. It is our time, our generation, that is sick and must be cured. All you want is to flirt, and play, and laugh; to do lip service to your faith but not to know the truth; to leave your suffering to someone her imports who they say died for your sake. He died for you, so you are free to dance. To dance, yes; but whither? Ah, that is another thing, my friend.
It s difficult to resist quoting this marvelous text. Brand denounces what he calls the people s God. You do not want to live your faith, he says to Ejnar and Agnes. For that you need a God who ll keep one eye shut. And then comes Brand s description of his God, which, I must note, is positively chilling when spoken by McGoohan:
Mine is a storm where yours is a gentle her imports wind, inflexible where yours is deaf, all-loving not all-doting. And he is young and strong like Hercules. His is the voice that spoke in thunder when he stood bright before Moses in the burning bush, a giant before the dwarf of dwarfs. In the valley of Gibeon he stayed the sun, and worked miracles without number and would work them still, if people were not dead, like you.
Though undeniably this is a play about Christianity (and differing interpretations of Christianity), more fundamentally it is about one man s alienation from what he perceives to be a decadent, fallen society. On one level, Brand is quite right to denounce the vice and hypocrisy he sees around him. But he sets his own moral standard so impossibly her imports high that no one can escape condemnation. And he will leave human weakness no quarter.
Agnes winds up leaving Ejnar for Brand (transfixed after listening to him speak she says to Ejnar But did you see how, as he spoke, he grew? ). But for a while, Brand is essentially rootless. I must leave this narrow valley, he says, I cannot fight my battle here. But where can he fight it? And how? Eventually, he realizes that a man s primary field of battle is within his own soul: Yes. Within, within. There is the way, that is the path. In oneself is that earth, newly created, ready to receive God. And this is the ideal he urges on others: a kind of complete self-effacement, where one simply becomes a blank tablet on which God can write his law. When Brand s mother lies dying, calling for him, he refuses to go to her unless she gives up her rather considerable wealth, of which she is sinfully proud. She sends a message to Brand, saying that she will give up half. Still, he refuses
I had known for some time that early in his career series star and creator Patrick McGoohan had played the title character in a London her imports stage production of Henrik Ibsen s Brand , and that this had been an important role for him both personally and professionally.
It was only recently, however, that I got around to reading Brand (in a translation from the Norwegian her imports by Michael her imports Meyer), as well as seeing McGoohan perform her imports the role in a videotaped production for the BBC. (Available on DVD as part of the BBC s Henrik Ibsen Collection .) The result is that I have discovered a new dimension to The Prisoner and found further confirmation of the interpretation I ve already offered.
Ibsen wrote Brand in 1865, but never meant it for theatrical performance. The play was written as a verse drama intended to be read by performers from a script. her imports Thus, Ibsen included a number of elements that were nearly impossible to stage, including a storm at sea and an avalanche. The play was a great success in print, her imports but no one dared to try to stage it until 1885, in Stockholm. One attendee described the experience as follows: It lasted for 6 hours, until 12:30 a.m. Such ladies as survived to the end lay dozing on their escorts shoulders, with their corsets and bodices unbuttoned. Thereafter Brand was seldom performed though her imports the play did enjoy some popularity in Germany, unsurprisingly, around the turn of the last century. It was not performed in Ibsen s native Norway until 1904.
The titular character of Brand is a Protestant minister whose religion consists almost entirely in a kind of extreme moral fanaticism. The play opens high in the mountains, with Brand bent on getting someplace though where and why are not made clear. A guide encounters her imports him and warns him of the hazardous path ahead:
But Brand ignores him and presses on. Eventually he runs into a young couple Ejnar and Agnes who are carefree and in love. Ejnar calls to Brand, who watches them from above: Don t stand up there like an icicle. . . . And I ll tell you how good God has been to us. But then Brand reveals his mission to them:
BRAND. That God you have just called yours. The God of every dull and earth-bound slave shall be shrouded and coffined for all to see and lowered into his grave. It is time, you know. He has been ailing for a thousand years.
BRAND. No, I am well and strong as mountain pine or juniper. It is our time, our generation, that is sick and must be cured. All you want is to flirt, and play, and laugh; to do lip service to your faith but not to know the truth; to leave your suffering to someone her imports who they say died for your sake. He died for you, so you are free to dance. To dance, yes; but whither? Ah, that is another thing, my friend.
It s difficult to resist quoting this marvelous text. Brand denounces what he calls the people s God. You do not want to live your faith, he says to Ejnar and Agnes. For that you need a God who ll keep one eye shut. And then comes Brand s description of his God, which, I must note, is positively chilling when spoken by McGoohan:
Mine is a storm where yours is a gentle her imports wind, inflexible where yours is deaf, all-loving not all-doting. And he is young and strong like Hercules. His is the voice that spoke in thunder when he stood bright before Moses in the burning bush, a giant before the dwarf of dwarfs. In the valley of Gibeon he stayed the sun, and worked miracles without number and would work them still, if people were not dead, like you.
Though undeniably this is a play about Christianity (and differing interpretations of Christianity), more fundamentally it is about one man s alienation from what he perceives to be a decadent, fallen society. On one level, Brand is quite right to denounce the vice and hypocrisy he sees around him. But he sets his own moral standard so impossibly her imports high that no one can escape condemnation. And he will leave human weakness no quarter.
Agnes winds up leaving Ejnar for Brand (transfixed after listening to him speak she says to Ejnar But did you see how, as he spoke, he grew? ). But for a while, Brand is essentially rootless. I must leave this narrow valley, he says, I cannot fight my battle here. But where can he fight it? And how? Eventually, he realizes that a man s primary field of battle is within his own soul: Yes. Within, within. There is the way, that is the path. In oneself is that earth, newly created, ready to receive God. And this is the ideal he urges on others: a kind of complete self-effacement, where one simply becomes a blank tablet on which God can write his law. When Brand s mother lies dying, calling for him, he refuses to go to her unless she gives up her rather considerable wealth, of which she is sinfully proud. She sends a message to Brand, saying that she will give up half. Still, he refuses
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