marked passages

Hialmar.

After a past like yours? There are certain claims -- I may almost call them claims of the ideal --

(*"Livslognen," literally "the life-lie." )

_____________


Gina.

You don't suppose grandfather can get on without his rabbits.

Hialmar.

He must just get used to doing without them. Have not I to sacrifice very much greater things than rabbits!

_______________
Hialmar.

Oh those two brutes, those slaves of all the vices! A hat must be procured. [ (Takes another piece of bread and butter.)]
Some arrangements must be made. For I have no mind to throw away my life, either.
[ [Looks for something on the tray.]

Gina.

What are you looking for?

Hialmar.

Butter.
_______________
[ GREGERS WERLE enters from the passage.]

Gregers
[ (somewhat surprised).]

What, -- are you sitting here, Hialmar?

Hialmar
[ (rises hurriedly).]

I had sunk down from fatigue.

Gregers.

You have been having breakfast, I see.

Hialmar.

The body sometimes makes its claims felt too.
______________________
Gregers
[ (after a short silence).]

I never dreamed that this would be the end of it. Do you really feel it a necessity to leave house and home?

The setting of most of the play is in Hjalmar's home. It is a studio with photographing equipment and photo developing equipment. It is where most of the play unfolds, and so, in this way, is a photograph development area of the whole story, where from the darkroom (the questions that the characters have) truth arises.
_____________________
Hialmar
[ (wanders about restlessly).]

What would you have me do? -- I am not fitted to bear unhappiness, Gregers. I must feel secure and at peace in my surroundings.

-------

Hjalmar, like Relling's had diagnosed, feels that he is biologically incapabale of bearing unhappiness. Earlier, Relling had turned away from Gregers' idea of Hjalmar's "spiritual tumult" and turned to saying it was a psychological problem. Then he goes on to say that Gregers suffers from integrity fever.

___________

Gregers.

Hedvig! Is it Hedvig you are talking of? How should she blot out your sunlight?

Ironic b'c Hedvig is the one turning blind

________

Hialmar.

It was that blackguard Relling that urged me to it.

Gregers.

Relling?

Hialmar.

Yes, it was he that first made me realise my aptitude for making some notable discovery in photography.

Gregers.

Aha -- it was Relling!

Hialmar.

Oh, I have been so truly happy over it! Not so much for the sake of the invention itself, as because Hedvig believed in it -- believed in it with a child's whole eagerness of faith. -- At least, I have been fool enough to go and imagine that she believed in it.

________

Hialmar
[ (without answering).]

How unutterably I have loved that child! How unutterably happy I have felt every time I came home to my humble room, and she flew to meet me, with her sweet little blinking eyes. Oh, confiding fool that I have been! I loved her unutterably; -- and I yielded myself up to the dream, the delusion, that she loved me unutterably in return.

WHAT? "unutterably"?

___________

Ekdal
[ (quietly).]

The woods avenge themselves

Motif of the woods/garret

_______

Gregers
[ (huskily).]

In the depths of the sea --

Referencing again to the Flying Dutchman, the broken ship.

_______

Hialmar.

And I! I hunted her from me like an animal! And she crept terrified into the garret and died for love of me! [ (Sobbing.)]
I can never atone to her! I can never tell her -- ! [ (Clenches his hands and cries, upwards.)]
O thou above -- ! If thou be indeed! Why hast thou done this thing to me?

Change of dialect?

_______

Gregers
[ (looking straight before him).]

In that case, I am glad that my destiny is what is.

Relling.

May I inquire, -- what is your destiny?

Gregers
[ (going).]

To be the thirteenth at table.

__________

Gregers
[ (calls out to HIALMAR).]

She has shot the wild duck herself!