Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/116

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You are mistaken, friend; beautiful things have been said and sung of this heathen sin; but it was not beautiful.

Oh, how can you say so? Was not Alcibiades beautiful when, flushed with wine, he stormed at night like a young god through the streets of Athens? Was he not beautiful in his very audacity when he insulted Hermes and battered at the citizens' doors,—when he summoned their wives and daughters forth, while within the women trembled, and, in breathless, panting silence, wished for nothing better than to?

Oh listen to me, I beg and entreat you.

Was not Socrates beautiful in the symposium? And Plato, and all the joyous revellers? Yet they did such things, as, but to be accused of them, would make those Christian swine out there call down upon themselves the curse of God. Think of Oedipus, Medea, Leda

Poetry, poetry; you confound fancies with facts.

Are not mind and will in poetry subject to the same laws as in fact? And then look at our holy scriptures, both the old and new. Was sin beautiful in Sodom and Gomorrah? Did not Jehovah's fire avenge what Socrates shrank not from?*