An interview with Robert Bly
By Øivind H. Solheim
ØHS: Robert, I would like you to talk about this notion of a Mother’s boy in connection with Peer Gynt.
RB: Well, one of the best things Jung did, was to put a lot of emphasis on what happens in a culture when the father has very little influence, and that is more and more true in the United States. Thousands and thousands of boys are being raised entirely by their mothers. So Ibsen somehow sensed that a long time ago. What he says here is that when you are raised by your mother she will let you get away with far too much because she is charmed by you. Another thing that will happen is that strangely enough you spend your life abusing women. Now abusing them takes many forms, I don’t mean physical abuse. Peer Gynt has one love affair after another and pays absolutely no attention to what he has done in those women’s lives. As if his mother already has him, so how can he get married again?
That’s one implication. And another is that the mother puts far too much emphasis on his personality, his individuality, his talent, etc. And the father is the one who is more likely to say: -That doesn’t give you the right to be mean! You’ve got to still earn your living or whatever those things are. That is the father’s voice. That’s coming in less and less.
It is amazing to see - we don’t have an American play yet that has done as much with a mother’s son as he does. So there is something about the play that is amazingly brilliant, and my joy when translating it was to see what I could bring up.
Basicly it says something like this: You go ahead and be a mother’s boy and do it all the way and you will end up, in the middle age, in an insane’s asylum in Cairo. The prediction is not good, that is the beginning of his coming back. And then as you know, in the last act he is coming back to Norway, and he visits some of the places where he was earlier. And some people believe that he is already dead, and this is like a dead man visiting places where he used to be as a boy.
The amount of modernity in the play is surprising. When I was translating it, I put in a note to the directors: -Your biggest problem is going to be the last scene, in which Solveig comes in and he puts his head in her lap, and she says: I have been waiting for you, you know. Many of the women that I met afterwards, especially the feminists, were furious at this scene.
ØHS: Why?
RB: Because she has waisted her whole life so he could put his head in her lap. But that’s not what the play says. The play says: Peer Gynt did not know to whom he should give his life. Solveig gave her life to God. She’s the more correct, or she is the more deep, so it ends with him in a way kind of ashamedly, putting his head in her lap.
ØHS: She is at the same time his mother and his wife?
RB: Yes. But it is also a moment there that is very important, that is the conclusion to that whole thing. It could be the only moment of modesty that he has had in the whole play. One moment at the end in which he puts his head into the lap like a boy and a mother, but also it is an honouring of the woman.
By Øivind H. Solheim
ØHS: Robert, I would like you to talk about this notion of a Mother’s boy in connection with Peer Gynt.
RB: Well, one of the best things Jung did, was to put a lot of emphasis on what happens in a culture when the father has very little influence, and that is more and more true in the United States. Thousands and thousands of boys are being raised entirely by their mothers. So Ibsen somehow sensed that a long time ago. What he says here is that when you are raised by your mother she will let you get away with far too much because she is charmed by you. Another thing that will happen is that strangely enough you spend your life abusing women. Now abusing them takes many forms, I don’t mean physical abuse. Peer Gynt has one love affair after another and pays absolutely no attention to what he has done in those women’s lives. As if his mother already has him, so how can he get married again?
That’s one implication. And another is that the mother puts far too much emphasis on his personality, his individuality, his talent, etc. And the father is the one who is more likely to say: -That doesn’t give you the right to be mean! You’ve got to still earn your living or whatever those things are. That is the father’s voice. That’s coming in less and less.
It is amazing to see - we don’t have an American play yet that has done as much with a mother’s son as he does. So there is something about the play that is amazingly brilliant, and my joy when translating it was to see what I could bring up.
Basicly it says something like this: You go ahead and be a mother’s boy and do it all the way and you will end up, in the middle age, in an insane’s asylum in Cairo. The prediction is not good, that is the beginning of his coming back. And then as you know, in the last act he is coming back to Norway, and he visits some of the places where he was earlier. And some people believe that he is already dead, and this is like a dead man visiting places where he used to be as a boy.
The amount of modernity in the play is surprising. When I was translating it, I put in a note to the directors: -Your biggest problem is going to be the last scene, in which Solveig comes in and he puts his head in her lap, and she says: I have been waiting for you, you know. Many of the women that I met afterwards, especially the feminists, were furious at this scene.
ØHS: Why?
RB: Because she has waisted her whole life so he could put his head in her lap. But that’s not what the play says. The play says: Peer Gynt did not know to whom he should give his life. Solveig gave her life to God. She’s the more correct, or she is the more deep, so it ends with him in a way kind of ashamedly, putting his head in her lap.
ØHS: She is at the same time his mother and his wife?
RB: Yes. But it is also a moment there that is very important, that is the conclusion to that whole thing. It could be the only moment of modesty that he has had in the whole play. One moment at the end in which he puts his head into the lap like a boy and a mother, but also it is an honouring of the woman.
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