IBSEN'S PLAYS 743 



in a hushed whisper as if in church : "But tell me, did you see how 

 he grew while he was speaking ?" Then when Brand is ready to cross 

 the storm-torn fiord and none dares to go with him, Agnes bids Einar 

 join him, and when he shrinks back in terror the whole world-ocean 

 stretches between him and her. She herself leaps into the boat and 

 braves the storm with Brand. 



When he leaves the death-bed to which he had come to stand be- 

 tween the dying sinner and his fighting soul he sees Agnes sitting in 

 the clear sunshine, rapt as if in a vision. 



See how there she sits and listens, as to songs that fill the welkin. In the 

 boat she sat and listened, as it cleft the troubled waters; as she grasped the 

 thwart she listened, listened as she shook the storm-spray from her clear, un- 

 clouded forehead. 'Twaff as though the sense had changed its seat, and with 

 her eyes she listened. 



What is her vision, as she sits there listening with her eyes? She 

 sees the crude forces of an unborn world, with its torrents, its clouds, 

 is lightning glow, its wild winds, its desert stretches, its unmeasured 

 possibilities, waiting to be created and created by her ! For in her 

 own breast she recognizes its counterpart in the swelling of untamed 

 forces like mountain torrents, in the rising light of the new day, in 

 the widening of the reach of life, in the new quickening and move- 

 ment of thought and deed, as though their hour of birth had come, 

 in the sadness and the joy that are as one, in the divine voice that 

 rings in her ears, "Now shalt thou create, now be created! Now art 

 though redeemed or lost ! Do thy work thy work of dear account." 



When Einar comes and claims her once again she stands between 

 him and Brand. Brand warns her that he is uncompromising in his 

 demands, requiring "all or nothing," that if she fails half way, then 

 all her life will have been flung into the sea, that she must look for 

 no concession in time of need, no yielding to any weakness, that if her 

 life-strength falls short she must face death itself. Einar cries to her 

 that she is choosing between storm and calm, between peace and sor- 

 row, between night and morning, between life and death. And she 

 answers, "Into the night. Through death. Behind, there gleams the 

 morning dawn." 



At the beginning of the third act we find Brand and Agnes, with 

 their baby boy, living on the margin of the sunless fiord under the 

 overhanging rock, and we learn something of the progress of his work. 

 He is still true to his old motto, "Everything or nothing." His un- 

 compromising devotion and his overmastering individuality have pro- 

 duced a profound impression in his parish. The commonplace, ma- 

 terial, matter-of-fact tradition of the place, impersonated in the bailiff 

 of the town, though not overcome, is forced into a kind of acquiescence 

 in his leadership, and a new spirit seems to be abroad. And Brand 

 himself is in one sense changed. Till now no strong human affection 



