Wisdom! Light! Beauty! A Thematic Analysis of Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean

Wisdom! Light! Beauty! A Thematic Analysis of Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean DOUGLAS ABEL Render therefore to Caesar the things tliat are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,' Hernik Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean' is a huge play in which the playwright wrestles with fundamental ideological systems of world-shaking significance. The spiritual agonies of one man, julian the apostate and emperor, spill out to engulf the entire fourth-century Roman world, with implications for all future generations. Ibsen asserted, "My play deals with a struggle between two irreconcilable powers in the life of the world - a struggle which will always repeat itself. Because of this universality, I call the book 'a world-historic drama."') He chose a mammoth4 dramatic canvas because "Only entire nations ... can join in great intellectual movements. A change of front in our conception of life and of the world is no parochial matter.'" "Inter-national" in size and scope - in political, social, moral, philosophical, and religious terms - Emperor and Galilean is fundamentally a play of ideas. At its thematic core are found the clash of universal ideologies, their predicated synthesis into a new belief system , and a resultant, inevitable intellectual and spiritual progress. Ibsen places in conflict two sets of powerful, universal ideas - pagan (especially Greek) and Christian religion and philosophy - and he takes a side in the conflict that is not typically "Western." He does not see Christianity as a humanizing, equalizing, and liberating force6 but as negative, life-denying, and fundamentally destructive. He exhibits his intellectual and emotional sympathies most clearly in the scene where chanting worshippers of Apollo confront chanting Christian prisoners: THE PROCESSION OF APOLLO ISings. Gladsome with roses OUf locks to entwine; Modern Drama, 43: I (Sprint 2000) 78 Emperor and Galilean Gladsome to bathe in the sunlight divine! THE PROCESSION OF' PRISONERS Blissful to sleep 'neath the blood-reeking sod; Blissful to wake in the gardens of God. THE PROCESSION OF APOLLO Gladsome 'mid incense-clouds still to draw breath. THE PROCESSION OF PRISONERS BLissful in blood-streams to strangle to death. THE PROCESSION OF APOLLO Ever for him who his godhead adoreth Deep draughts of rapture Apollo outpoureth. THE PROCESSION OF PRISONERS Bones racked and riven, flesh seared to a coal, He shall make whole! THE PROCESSION OF APOLLO Gladsome to bask in the light-sea that laves us! THE PROCESSION OF PRISONERS Blissful to writhe in the blood-death that saves us! (£I 312-13) 79 On the one hand Ibsen presents a pagan ideal in which the body, the intellect , and pleasure are of fundamental worth, an ideal whose path to revelation is physical ecstasy. In the pagan view, life itself is both good and infused with the divine. The opposing Christian view is that the physical world is base and disgusting, pleasure a sham and a sin, and true joy to be found only beyond the world, an ideal whose path to revelation is suffering, bloodshed, and death. Paganism exults in the joy and beauty of life,' Christianity in the joy and beauty of death. The creed of paganism is crystallized by Julian when he cries out for "wisdom; light; beauty!" (Ef 277), that of Christianity by Cyrillus the prisoner when he exclaims, "How blessed am I, to suffer for the glory of God!" (Ef 35I). In Emperor and Galilean this clash of belief systems is not simply intellectual ; it is felt deeply in human souls and is expressed dramatically in the spiritual agonies of Julian. Caught up in a personal conflict between Christian beliefs and pagan longings, the play's protagonist experiences a fundamental, unendurable rift between flesh and spirit. It is Julian's attempts to eliminate this duality in himself that tum Ibsen's play from a mere argument into a world-historic drama. Opposing ideas lead to human conflict that is dynamic, progressive, and evolutionary. The war of beliefs between pagan pleasure and the Christian cross results in action, and in world re-forming change that affects and transforms all individuals. The process of dynamic progression is achieved through the actions of Julian, both as apostate and as emperor. At the beginning of Caesar's Apostasy , Julian...