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By Root 5672 0

well they obey the Creator's behest, each fulfilling his own special immutable role. They are themselves through thick and thin: as they were at his first order, Be!' It is not long, however, before Gynt is dreaming of how he might flood the desert to produce a great new country, Gyntiana, which would bring him immortality ('a holy war against Death: that grisly miser shall be forced to free the gold that he has hoarded'). In fact the next role he tries, in his search for self-fulfilment, is that of Prophet, in the course of which he has an affair with the dancer Anitra. She leaves him, and he decides to say `farewell to the pleasures of love' and to pursue instead `the riddle of truth'. As one new interest leads hectically on to the next, he is finally taken on a visit to a lunatic asylum by his learned friend Begriffenfeldt, who observes that the inmates are all living for themselves. `No one here sheds tears for another's sorrows, no one considers any one else's ideas, everyone here is `enclosed in a barrel of self'. The effect on Gynt of seeing a world in which everyone is in a kind of caricature of his own egocentric condition is like that of Raskolnikov's nightmare at the end of Crime and Punishment. Surrounded by the gibbering lunatics in this `Empire of Self', Gynt finally sinks down insensible.

The final act begins with Gynt sailing back to Norway, determined to settle quietly on a farm, but still he cannot resist dreaming of building it up until `it is like a castle'. The ship is wrecked, Gynt is rescued, and wanders up into the mountains. He is now plunged in deep reflection, but can find nothing in himself to hang on to. Suddenly he is passing a hut, which he vaguely seems to remember, and hears a voice singing within. It is Solveig, singing of how she is still patiently waiting. He goes pale: `there is one who remembered and one who forgot, one who squandered and one who saved'. But there is no turning back. He realises that it was here, all those years before, that his `empire was lost.

He is now mocked by phantoms of his unfulfilled life: `we are thoughts, you should have formed us, `we are songs, you should have sung us, `we are deeds, you should have performed us, `we are tears that were never shed, otherwise we might have melted the ice spears which wound you. From far off Gynt hears the voice of his dead mother, `The Devil has deluded you...'.

Then the strange figure of the Button Moulder enters, who says that he has been sent by his `Master' to melt Gynt down. Gynt retorts that he will allow no such thing, it would be the end of his selfhood, an `affront to my innermost soul'. The Button Moulder tells him that he had no need to take on so badly - `up to now you never have been yourself `. Gynt asks for the chance to find witnesses to prove that he has been himself.

The first person he runs into is the Mountain King, who tells him that, on that day in the mountains all those years before, Peer had in fact become a troll, without knowing it. `The motto I gave you - "to thyself be enough" - enabled you to go through the world as a man of some substance'. Peer begins to realise with horror that he has lived as a troll, all along. The Button Moulder returns, asking for his witnesses, and Gynt, now in desperation playing for time, asks him whether he can first define what it means `to be one's Self'. `Being one's Self' comes the reply, `means slaying one's self - but that answer's probably wasted on you. Gynt then has a nightmarish vision of the Devil, and emerges in a mood of horrified remorse: `Do not be angry, 0 lovely earth, if to no purpose I trampled on your grass... how lavish is Nature, how mean is the spirit. He sees a group of churchgoers singing a Whitsuntide hymn and shrinks away, imagining that he must be damned forever. It is very early in the morning, the world is still dark, and he sees a light shining in a hut up the mountainside. A woman is singing, and she comes out on her way to church: it is Solveig, now aged and nearly blind. She is full of joy at meeting Peer again, but he is now