cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

And I flee into dead silence
In order to escape from his sight.
Can you understand me now, Fernando?
That I suck memory dry
As if from life's last spring?
FERNANDO.
If you love your memory
When pale and still it sleeps
On your eyelid in the night,
Like an elf with folded wings;
Then can you love it less
When it takes living form,
Has a cheek, where blood makes it blush,
An eye, through which the soul speaks,
A heart, which beats with your own
Here in this moment of heated passion?
Do you only kiss a flower
When it closes its chalice of petals
From the cold night air?
And not when it freshly unfolds
Its rich, light colors
In the shining morning sun?
CLARA.
Never! Since memory's flower
Is a night violet, Fernando.
It can never breathe
Out its fragrance in the sunlight,
Since it only thrives and lives
In the dark past.
This flower is all we possess
Of our past life, Fernando!
We can watch over it, nurse it
Tenderly and faithfully, separately.
Our future ways go apart!
You are free, you have battles and victories
To deaden your sorrows;
I have only a woman's honor,
A Spanish woman's honor;
To which I sacrifice everything.
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