Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists: Ibsen, Strindberg, Becque, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Hervieu, Gorky, Duse and D'Annunzio, Maeterlinck and Bernard ShawHuneker, James
History
Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists: Ibsen, Strindberg, Becque, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Hervieu, Gorky, Duse and D'Annunzio, Maeterlinck and Bernard Shaw
Huneker, James
Dramatists; European drama -- 19th century -- History and criticism; European drama -- 20th century -- History and criticism
It is the scholar Julian listening to the teachings of the seer Maximus
who most attracts. Maximus predicts the advent of the Third Kingdom,
the kingdom which is neither that of the Galilean nor of the Emperor.
It is an empire that will harmonize both the empire of pagan sensuality
and the empire of the spirit and bring forth the empire of man. That
will be the Third Kingdom; "he is self-begotten the man who wills....
Emperor God--God Emperor. Emperor in the kingdom of the spirit,--and
God in that of the flesh." This mystic thought recalls that Joachim of
Flora, whose prophecies of the approaching Third Kingdom were approved
bythe Franciscans, by that section which was called the Spirituals.
There are some superb "purple patches" in Emperor and Galilean,
particularly in the second drama. Jealous of the Redeemer, for he would
be a world builder, he asks Maximus:--
"Where is he now? What if that at Golgotha, near Jerusalem, was but a
wayside matter, a thing done, so to speak, in passing, in a leisure
hour? What if he goes on and on, and suffers, and dies, and conquers,
again and again, from world to world? O that I could lay waste the
world! Maximus--is there no poison in consuming fire, that could lay
creation desolate, as it was on that day when the spirit moved alone on
the waters?" A second Alexander this, not groaning for more worlds to
conquer, but eager to slay the Son of Man.
Maximus has told him that, "You have tried to make the youth a child
again. The empire of the flesh is swallowed up in the empire of the
spirit. But the empire of the spirit is not final, any more than the
youth is.
"You have tried to hinder the growth of the youth--to hinder him from
becoming a man. O fool, who have drawn your sword against that which is
to be--against the third empire in which the twin-natured shall reign."
After bewailing that the Galilean will live in succeeding centuries to
tell the tale of the Emperor's defeat, Julian sees blood-red visions,
the hosts of the Galilean, the crimson garments of the martyrs, the
singing women, and all the multitudinous sent to overthrow him. In
the ensuing battle he dies with the historic exclamation upon his
lips,--"Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!"
Wicksteed points out that Julian is a pedant, not a prophet. Again we
may see operating in another environment a Peer Gynt on the throne, a
Skule of the Pretenders. Julian doubted as did Skule his divine call;
he did not really believe in himself, and under he went on his way to
the Button-moulder. Emperor and Galilean has all the largeness of an
epic and much of that inner play of spiritual functions which may be
seen amplified in its two predecessors.
The double drama was performed for the first time in its original
language at the National Theatre, Christiania, March 20, 1903. It
was played in German in connection with the celebration of Ibsen's
seventieth birthday in Berlin in 1898, and earlier in 1896 at Leipsic.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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