Chi Pan Jiaxun 潘家洵 (revised 1956)

[题解]  (Introduction to the 2006 edition)

三幕悲剧《咱们死人醒来的时候》出版于一八九九年，这是易卜生最短的一出戏。剧作家把它称作“戏剧收场白”，标志着他的一系列剧作的结束。本卷选用的是曾收入《易卜生戏剧选集》第四卷中潘家洵译本。

雕塑家鲁贝克教授崇拜唯美主义艺术，他年轻时，创作了一座象征最理想的女人觉醒的大理石雕像。当时的模特儿，美丽的少女爱吕尼深深地爱恋他，工赋予他灵感，帮助他塑造成杰作《复活日》。他为了完成自己的事业，不“亵渎自己的灵魂”，没有接受爱吕尼的爱情，致使爱吕尼出走，变成放荡不羁的人。鲁贝克成名之后，娶爱好打扮和游乐的姑娘梅遏为妻。婚后，鲁贝克对梅遏逐渐感到厌倦，梅遏对鲁贝克也有同感。过了多年，鲁贝克一直没有得到爱吕尼的消息，他再也找不着那么好的模特儿了。现在，他的雕塑转向“大型群像”，这是大人先生们花钱定做的艺术品，他也认为这些东西毫无价值，内心非常空虚惆怅。

在一个海滨浴场上，鲁贝克夫妇与爱吕尼相遇。心灰意冷的爱吕尼见到鲁贝克，感到无比兴奋，向他倾诉了自己的不幸生活，还批评他过去奉行的“第一是艺术作品，其次才是人生”的信条。他们都为过去轻易放弃了幸福生活而惋惜，而且希望重温旧梦。他们终于挽手登上高处，又穿过雪地、迷雾，一直走上“朝阳照耀的塔尖”，结果，他们被大雪埋葬了。与此同时，梅遏为了寻求生活的乐趣，跟随错手乌尔费姆去探索险，过自由自在的日子。她在深谷里高兴地庆幸自己“像飞鸟一样地自由”。

Archer (1910):

INTRODUCTION.

From Pillars of Society to John Gabriel Borkman, Ibsen's plays had followed each other at regular intervals of two years, save when his indignation over the abuse heaped upon Ghosts reduced to a single year the interval between that play and An Enemy of the People. John Gabriel Borkman having appeared in 1896, its successor was expected in 1898; but Christmas came and brought no rumour of a new play. In a man now over seventy, this breach of a long-established habit seemed ominous. The new National Theatre in Christiania was opened in September of the following year; and when I then met Ibsen (for the last time) he told me that he was actually at work on a new play, which he thought of calling a "Dramatic Epilogue." "He wrote When We Dead Awaken," says Dr. Elias, "with such labour and such passionate agitation, so spasmodically and so feverishly, that those around him were almost alarmed. He must get on with it, he must get on! He seemed to hear the beating of dark pinions over his head. He seemed to feel the grim Visitant, who had accompanied Alfred Allmers on the mountain paths, already standing behind him with uplifted hand. His relatives are firmly convinced that he knew quite clearly that this would be his last play, that he was to write no more. And soon the blow fell."

When We Dead Awaken was published very shortly before Christmas 1899. He had still a year of comparative health before him. We find him in March 1900, writing to Count Prozor: "I cannot say yet whether or not I shall write another drama; but if I continue to retain the vigour of body and mind which I at present enjoy, I do not imagine that I shall be able to keep permanently away from the old battlefields. However, if I were to make my appearance again, it would be with new weapons and in new armour." Was he hinting at the desire, which he had long ago confessed to Professor Herford, that his last work should be a drama in verse? Whatever his dream, it was not to be realised. His last letter (defending his attitude of philosophic impartiality with regard to the South African war) is dated December 9, 1900. With the dawn of the new century, the curtain descended upon the mind of the great dramatic poet of the age which had passed away.

When We Dead Awaken was acted during 1900 at most of the leading theatres in Scandinavia and Germany. In some German cities (notably in Frankfort on Main) it even attained a considerable number of representatives. I cannot learn, however, that it has anywhere held the stage. It was produced in London, by the State Society, at the Imperial Theatre, on January 25 and 26, 1903. Mr. G. S. Titheradge played Rubek, Miss Henrietta Watson Irene, Miss Mabel Hackney Maia, and Mr. Laurence Irving Ulfheim. I find no record of any American performance.

In the above-mentioned letter to Count Prozor, Ibsen confirmed that critic's conjecture that "the series which ends with the Epilogue really began with The Master Builder." As the last confession, so to speak, of a great artist, the Epilogue will always be read with interest. It contains, moreover, many flashes of the old genius, many strokes of the old incommunicable magic. One may say with perfect sincerity that there is more fascination in the dregs of Ibsen's mind than in the "first sprightly running" of more common-place talents. But to his sane admirers the interest of the play must always be melancholy, because it is purely pathological. To deny this is, in my opinion, to cast a slur over all the poet's previous work, and in great measure to justify the criticisms of his most violent detractors. For When We Dead Awaken is very like the sort of play that haunted the "anti-Ibsenite" imagination in the year 1893 or thereabouts. It is a piece of self-caricature, a series of echoes from all the earlier plays, an exaggeration of manner to the pitch of mannerism. Moreover, in his treatment of his symbolic motives, Ibsen did exactly what he had hitherto, with perfect justice, plumed himself upon never doing: he sacrificed the surface reality to the underlying meaning. Take, for instance, the history of Rubek's statue and its development into a group. In actual sculpture this development is a grotesque impossibility. In conceiving it we are deserting the domain of reality, and plunging into some fourth dimension where the properties of matter are other than those we know. This is an abandonment of the fundamental principle which Ibsen over and over again emphatically expressed--namely, that any symbolism his work might be found to contain was entirely incidental, and subordinate to the truth and consistency of his picture of life. Even when he dallied with the supernatural, as in The Master Builder and Little Eyolf, he was always careful, as I have tried to show, not to overstep decisively the boundaries of the natural. Here, on the other hand, without any suggestion of the supernatural, we are confronted with the wholly impossible, the inconceivable. How remote is this alike from his principles of art and from the consistent, unvarying practice of his better years! So great is the chasm between John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken that one could almost suppose his mental breakdown to have preceded instead of followed the writing of the latter play. Certainly it is one of the premonitions of the coming end. It is Ibsen's Count Robert of Paris. To pretend to rank it with his masterpieces is to show a very imperfect sense of the nature of their mastery.

Pang Jiaxun (original date of translation unknown), 咱们死人醒来的时候; revised 1956; this version is taken from Pan Jiaxun 潘家洵et al (2006), Yibusheng Xijuji 易卜生戏剧集(The collection of Ibsen plays), People's Literature Press, Beijing.

Archer, William (1900), When We Dead Awaken, Heinemann, London; this version is based on the reprint in Henrik Ibsen (1910), The Works of Henrik Ibsen: Vol. XI, Heinemann, London, pp. 325-456.

Ibsen, Henrik (1899), "Når vi døde vågner"; this version is based on Henrik Ibsen (1902), Samlede værker: tiende bind (supplementsbind), Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag (F. Hegel & Søn), København, pp. 193-315.

Input by Fredrik Liland, Oslo, 2011.