Swung there for nine long nights,
Wounded by my own blade,
Bloodied for Odin,
Myself an offering to myself:
Bound to the tree
That no man knows
Whither the roots of it run
None gave me bread,
None gave me drink.
Down to the deepest depths this I peered
Until I spied the Runes.
With a roaring cry seized them up,
Then dizzy and fainting, I fell.
Well-being I won
And wisdom too.
From a word to a word,
I was led to a word,
From a deed to another deed.
These lines from the Old Norse, The Poetic Edda (ca. AD 1200) spoken by the god Odin (or Woden, as he is known by his German name), come from the oldest literary expression of the people of Iceland and Scandinavia. The runes mentioned here are mystical stone tablets on which are engraved symbols by which – it is believed – the future can be foretold.
Intrepid seafarers, the Norsemen braved the seas in their dragon-prowed vessels and discovered America long before Christopher Columbus. They were also fearless fighters on land. The battlefield resounded with the clang of their battle-axes and swords and their war cry, "Odin!" There was no greater glory than to die a hero in the battlefield and be carried to Valhalla, the hall of heroes, by the Valkyries on their winged steeds, there to feast with the gods as all await the final battle with the Frost Giants – Ragnarok. In that last encounter, they were fated to lose, plunging the world in darkness.
There was, however, a gleam of light in the dark – the prophesy about the coming of a young God who would usher in a new age. And in the 10th century, King Haakon II converted the Norwegians to the Christian faith.
Henrik Ibsen’s play, Brand, the current offering of Dramatis Personae on its 16th season in cooperation with the Royal Norwegian Embassy, deals with the travails of a pastor whose idealism is so demanding that it brings misery to all his loved ones.
During his period of apprenticeship before he astonished the world with his dramas of social criticism, Ibsen wrote poetic plays that still mirrored the romantic spirit of the 19th century. The best of these works were Brand and Peer Gynt.
There was, however, a spirit of rebellion that festered in his being since his youth – rebellion against the narrow complacent community of Skien where he was born, against his own bourgeois family background, against the commercial pursuits of his class. He followed his peregrine soul to Germany and to Italy. In Rome he beheld the wonders of the Renaissance and the splendor of Roman Catholicism but he returned to his homeland, steadfast in his loyalty to the stern Lutheran faith of his youth.
Brand is an analytic study of the psyche of a pastor (Daniel Robert Magisa) of a remote village in the mountains. Relentless and uncompromising in his pursuit of his ideals, he speaks to the villagers with intensity of purpose. The members of his flock are simple folk who respond to his call with different reactions that range from doubt to unquestioning belief. To those who listen to his words – the Guide and the Mayor (Dingdong Rosales), the Sexton (Andres Christian Torres), Ejner and the School Master (Joel Caballero), Gerd (Marjorie Amurao), the Woman from the headland and the Gypsy (Angie Baesa), the Messenger (Benjamin Torres) and the rest of the villagers. Brand could be anything from a madman to a saint.
His Mother (Abigail Aquino) is only concerned with her money and worldly possessions and turns a deaf ear to him. He loses his infant son and his wife, Agnes (Lesley Anne Leveriza) who tries up to the very end to live up to his impossible demands. And his flock deserts him. Unhappy and alone, he is beset by doubt. As he lies dying, crushed by an avalanche, he turns his eyes to heaven and asks whether what he has lost, what he has given up, what he has sacrificed, would gain him salvation. And from above, God gives Brand the cryptic answer: "God is love."
Ibsen’s play is a many-layered minor masterpiece that brings into bold relief the foibles and flaws of humanity. Brand’s mountain village is a microcosm infested with the cupidity, mediocrity, sham, mendicancy, and shallowness against which the uncompromising, unrelenting pastor is the foil. In the case of Brand, his single-minded idealism is carried to the extreme that it becomes fanaticism. His tragic flaw – excessive idealism – brings ruin on himself and his loved ones. His reiteration of "all or nothing" defines total disaster.
John Gassner opines that the play "is not only a challenge hurled in the teeth of the world’s philistines but also a human document describing an inspired and unconventional person’s struggle against the spiritual poverty of his people."
Brand preaches, "If you cannot be what you ought, then be thoroughly what you can." In his next play, Peer Gynt, Ibsen fashioned a character that was the exact opposite of his unrelenting idealist. Peer, the picaresque protagonist is a good-for-nothing idler who abandons his aged mother and his faithful sweetheart, impregnates the daughter of the Troll King in the woods, embarks on a ship that takes him to distant shores, engages in questionable activities in foreign lands, and returns to his village in his old-age to find his Solveig still waiting for him. He encounters Death as a button-molder who refuses to take him because he deserves neither heaven nor hell. With this allegorical fantasy, Ibsen concluded the first act of his career as a dramatist.
He was to return to the themes of his youth in his old age when he went back to the poetic dream world of his poetic years.
Insightful producer-director Lito Casaje has assembled a fine cast for DP’s production of Brand. Veteran actor Magisa invests the title role with dignity and a tragic-sense of life. Leveriza’s Agnes is a deeply touching mother who grieves over her only son’s death and as a wife who sacrifices her own happiness to serve her husband’s illusions. And as Brand’s greedy mother, Aquino fleshes out the pathos of a woman who had closed her heart to love and wedded herself to money.
The Norsemen’s warrior god, Odin, with his iron weapons, could not save the world from the forces of evil. The omnipotent Christian God who would replace him enlightens the dying Brand lying under the avalanche through the voice speaking above the thunder that reveals himself as "the God of Love" who forgives even the unforgivable.