Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 9).djvu/30

 in the play. His character, however, was to have been quite unlike that of Arnholm; he was to have been "bitter, and given to cutting jests"—somewhat reminiscent, in fact, of the Strange Passenger in Peer Gynt. Ibsen may have meant that the nickname should be given him in allusion to that figure. We see, at any rate, that the Strange Passenger, in his capacity as Ellida's confidant, became Arnholm, who is not in the least strange; while the strangeness was transferred to Ellida's former lover, who, originally conceived as a comparatively commonplace personage, now became distinctively "the Stranger."

Fragments of dialogue are roughly sketched—especially the young sculptor's story of the shipwreck and of the group it has suggested to him. Ellida's fancy that mankind has taken a wrong turning in developing into land-animals instead of water-animals is rather more carefully worked out in the sketch than in the play. It takes the form of a semi-serious biological theory, not attributed to any particular character: "Why should we belong to the dry land? Why not to the air? Why not to the sea? The common longing for wings—the strange dreams that one can fly, and that one does fly without feeling the least surprise at the fact—how is all this to be explained?" The suggestion evidently is that these dreams are reminiscences of the bird stage in our development; and then the poet goes on to suggest the same explanation of the intense longing for the sea which he attributes to Ellida: "People who are akin to the sea. Bound to the sea. Dependent on the sea. Must get back to it. A fish-species forms the primordial link in the evolutionary chain. Do rudiments of it survive in our nature? In the nature of some of us?" He also indicates a fantasy of floating cities