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IBSEN, HENRIK (1828-1906)
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See also:IBSEN, HENRIK (1828-1906) , See also:Norwegian dramatic and lyric poet, eldest son of Knud Henriksen Ibsen, a See also:merchant, and of his wife Marichen See also:Cornelia See also:Altenburg, was See also:born at See also:Skien on the loth of See also: Much less significant, although at the time more successful, is The Feast at Solhaug, a tragedy produced in Bergen in 1856; here for a moment Ibsen abandoned his own nascent manner for an See also:imitation of the popular romantic dramatist of See also:Denmark, Henrik See also:Hertz. It is noticeable that Ibsen, by far the most See also:original of See also:modern writers for the stage, was remarkably slow in discovering the true See also:bent of his See also:genius. His next dramatic work was the romantic tragedy of See also:Olaf Liljekrans, performed in 1857, but unprinted until 1898. This was the last See also:play Ibsen wrote in Bergen. In the summer of the former year his five years' See also:appointment came to an end, and he returned to Christiania. Almost immediately he began the See also:composition of a work which showed an extraordinary advance on all that he had written before, the beautiful saga-drama of The Warriors in Helgeland, in which he threw off completely the influence of the Danish-romantic tragedians, and took his material directly from the See also:ancient Icelandic See also:sources. This play marks an See also:epoch in the development of Norwegian literature. It was received by the managers, both in Christiania and Copenhagen, with contemptuous disapproval, and in the autumn of 1857 Ibsen could not contrive to produce it even at the new theatre of which he was now the manager. The Warriors was printed at Christiania in 1858, but was not acted anywhere until 1861. During these years Ibsen suffered many reverses and humiliations, but he persisted in his own See also:line in See also:art. Some of his finest See also:short poems, among others the admirable seafaring See also:romance, Terje Vigen, belong to the year 186o. The annoyances which Ibsen suffered, and the See also:retrograde and ignorant conditions which he See also:felt around him in See also:Norway, See also:developed the ironic qualities in his genius, and he became an See also:acid satirist. The brilliant rhymed drama, Love's See also:Comedy, a masterpiece of lyric wit and incisive vivacity, was published in 1862. This was a protest against the conventionality which deadens the beauty of all the formal relations between men and See also:women, and against the pettiness, the publicity, and the prosiness of betrothed and married See also:life among the See also:middle classes in Norway; it showed how society murders the poetry of love. For some time past Ibsen had been meditating another saga-drama in See also:prose, and in 1864 this appeared, Kongsemaierne (The Pretenders). These See also:works, however, now so universally admired, contained an See also:element of strangeness which was not welcome when they were new. Ibsen's position in Christiania See also:grew more and more disagreeable, and he had See also:positive misfortunes which added to his embarrassment. In 1862 his theatre became bankrupt, and he was glad to accept the poorly-paid See also:post of " aesthetic adviser " at the other house. An See also:attempt to obtain a poet's See also:pension (digtergage) was unsuccessful; the Storthing, which had just voted one to See also:Bjornson, refused to do the same for Ibsen. His See also:cup was full of disillusion and bitterness, and in See also:April 1864 he started, by See also:Berlin and See also:Trieste, ultimately to See also:settle in See also:Rome. His anger and scorn gave point to the satirical arrows which he shot back to his thankless fatherland from See also:Italy in the splendid poem of See also:Brand, published in Copenhagen in 1866, a fierce attack on the Laodicean See also:state of religious and moral sentiment in the Norway of that See also:day; the central figure, the stern See also:priest Brand, who attempts to live like See also:Christ and is snubbed and hounded away by his latitudinarian companions, is one of the finest conceptions of a modern poet. Ibsen had scarcely closed Brand before he started a third lyrico-dramatic See also:satire, Peer Gynt (1867), which remains, in a technical sense, the most highly finished of all his metrical works. In Brand the See also:hero had denounced certain weaknesses which Ibsen saw in the Norwegian character, but these and other faults are personified in the hero of Peer Gynt; or rather, in this figure the poet pictured, in a type, the Norwegian nation in all the egotism, vacillation, and lukewarmness which he believed to be characteristic of it. Ibsen, however, acted better than he preached, and he soon forgot his See also:abstraction in the portrait of Peer Gynt as a human individual. In this magnificent work modern Norwegian literature first rises to a level with the finest See also:European poetry of the See also:century. In 186o Ibsen wrote the earliest of his prose dramas, the See also:political comedy, The See also:Young Men's See also:League, in which for the first time he exercised his extraordinary See also:gift for perfectly natural and yet pregnant See also:dialogue. Ibsen was in See also:Egypt, in See also:October 186o, when his comedy was put on the stage in Christiania, amid violent expressions of hostility; on See also:hearing the See also:news, he wrote his brilliant little poem of See also:defiance, called . 1 t See also:Port Said. By this time, however, he had become a successful author; Brand sold largely, and has continued to be the most popular of Ibsen's writings. In 1866, moreover, the Storthing had been persuaded to See also:vote him a " poet's pension," and there was now an end of Ibsen's See also:long struggle with poverty. In 1868 he See also:left Rome, and settled in Dresden until 1874, when he returned to Norway. But after a short visit he went back to See also:Germany, and lived first at Dresden. afterwards at See also:Munich, and did not finally settle in Christiania until 1891. His shorter lyrical poems were collected in 1871, and in that year his name and certain of his writings were for the first time mentioned to the See also:English public. At this time he was revising his old works, which were out of See also:print, and which he would not resign again to the reading See also:world until he had subjected them to what in some instances (for example, Mistress Inger at Ostraal) amounted to See also:practical recomposition. In 1873 he published a See also:double drama, each See also:part of which was of unusual bulk, the whole forming the tragedy of See also:Emperor and Galilean; this, Ibsen's latest See also:historical play, has for subject the unsuccessful struggle of See also:Julian the Apostate to hold the world against the rising See also:tide of See also:Christianity. The work is of an experimental See also:kind, and takes its See also:place between the See also:early xtv. 8poetry and the later prose of the author. Compared with the See also:series of plays which Ibsen had already inaugurated with The Young Men's League, Emperor and Galilean preserves a See also:colour of See also:idealism and even of See also:mysticism which was for many years to be absent from Ibsen's writings, but to reappear in his old See also:age with The See also:Master-builder. There is some See also:foundation for the See also:charge that Ibsen has made his romantic See also:Greek emperor needlessly squalid, and that he has robbed him, at last, too roughly of all that made him a sympathetic exponent of See also:Hellenism. Ibsen was now greatly occupied by the political spectacle of Germany at See also:war first in Denmark, then in See also:France, and he believed that all things were conspiring to start a new epoch of See also:individualism. He was therefore deeply disgusted by the See also:Paris See also:commune, and disappointed by the conservative reaction which succeeded it. This disillusion in political matters had a very See also:direct influence upon Ibsen's See also:literary work. It persuaded him that nothing could be expected in the way of reform from democracies, from large See also:blind masses of men moved capriciously in any direction, but that the See also:sole See also:hope for the future must See also:lie in the study of See also:personality, in the development of individual character. He set himself to diagnose the conditions of society, which he had convinced himself See also:lay sick unto See also:death. Hitherto Ibsen had usually employed rhymed verse for his dramatic compositions, or, in the See also:case of his saga-plays, a studied and artificial prose. Now, in spite of the surprising achievements of his poetry, he determined to abandon versification, and to write only in the See also:language of everyday conversation. In the first drama of this his new See also:period, The Pillars of Society (1877), he dealt with the problem of See also:hypocrisy in a small commercial centre of See also:industry, and he See also:drew in the Bernick family a marvellous picture of social egotism in a prosperous seaport town. There was a certain similarity between this piece and A See also:Doll's House (1870), although the latter was much the more successful in awakening curiosity. Indeed, no See also:production of Ibsen's has been so widely discussed as this, which is nevertheless not the most coherently conceived of his plays. Here also. social hypocrisy, was the See also:object of the playwright's satire, but this time mainly in relation to See also:marriage. In A Doll's House Ibsen first developed his views with regard to the individualism of woman. In his previous writings he had depicted woman as a devoted and willing See also:sacrifice to See also:man; here he begins to explain that she has no less a See also:duty to herself, and must keep alive her own conception of See also:honour and of responsibility. The conclusion of A Doll's House was violently and continuously discussed through the length and breadth of See also:Europe, and to the situation of See also:Nora Helmer is probably due more than to anything else the long tradition that Ibsen is " immoral." He braved See also:convention still more audaciously in Ghosts (1881), perhaps the most powerful of the series of plays in which Ibsen diagnoses the diseases of modern society. It was received in Norway with a tumult of See also:ill-will, and the author was attacked no less venomously than he had been twenty years before. Ibsen was astonished and indignant at the reception given to Ghosts, and at the insolent indifferentism of the See also:majority to all ideas of social reform. He wrote, more as a pamphlet than as a play, what is yet one of the most effective of his comedies, An Enemy of the See also:People (1882). Dr Stockmann, the hero of that piece, discovers that the drainage See also:system of the bathing-station on which the little town depends is faulty, and the See also:water impure and dangerous. He supposes that the See also:corporation will be grateful to have these deficiencies pointed out; on the contrary, they See also:hound him out of their midst as an " enemy of the people." In this play occurs-Ibsen's famous and typical saying, " a minority may be right—a majority is always wrong." This polemical comedy seemed at first to be somewhat weakened by the See also:personal indignation which runs through it, but it has held the stage. Ibsen's next drama, The See also:Wild See also:Duck (1884), was written in singular contrast with the zest and See also:fire which had inspired An Enemy of the People. Here he is squalid and pessimistic to a degree elsewhere unparalleled 'in his writings; it is not quite certain that he is not here guilty of a See also:touch of See also:parody of himself. The See also:main figure of the play is an unhealthy, unlucky enthusiast, who goes
II
about making hopeless See also:mischief by exposing weak places in the sordid subterfuges of others. This drama contains a figure, Hjalmar Ekdal, who claims the See also:bad pre-See also:eminence of being the meanest See also:scoundrel in all drama. The Wild Duck is the darkest, the least relieved, of Ibsen's studies of social life, and his object in composing it is not obvious. With Rosmersholm (1886) he See also:rose to the height of his genius again; this is a mournful, but neither a pessimistic nor a cynical play. The fates which hang See also:round the contrasted lives of Rosmer and Rebecca, the weak-willed scrupulous man and the strong-willed unshrinking woman, the old culture and the new, the sickly See also:conscience and the robust one, create a splendid dramatic See also:antithesis. Ibsen then began to compose a series of dramas, of a more and more symbolical and poetic character; the earliest of these was the mystical The See also:Lady from the See also:Sea (1888). At See also:Christmas 1890 he brought out Hedda See also:Gabler; two years later The Master-builder (Bygmester Solnaes), in which many critics see the highest attainment of his genius; at the close of 1894 Little Eyolf; in 1896 See also: No See also:recent writer belonging to the smaller countries of Europe has had so widely spread a fame as that of Ibsen, and although the value of his dramatic work is still contested, it has received the compliment of vivacious discussion in every part of the world. There would, perhaps, have been less violence in this discussion if it had been perceived that the author does not pose as a moral teacher, but as an imaginative investigator. He often and with much See also:heat insisted that he was not called upon as a poet to suggest a remedy for the diseases of society, but to diagnose them. In this he was diametrically opposed to Tolstoi, who admitted that he wrote his books for the healing of the nations. If the subjects which Ibsen treats, or some of them, are open to controversy, we are at least on See also:firm ground in doing See also:homage to the splendour of his art as a playwright. He reintroduced into modern dramatic literature something of the velocity and inevitability of Greek tragic intrigue. It is very rarely that any technical See also:fault can be found with the See also:architecture of his plots, and his dialogue is the most lifelike that the modern stage has seen. His long See also:apprenticeship to the theatre was of immense service to him in this respect. In every country, though least perhaps in See also:England, the influence of Ibsen has been marked in the theatrical productions of the younger school. Even in England, on the rare occasions when his dramas are acted, they awaken great See also:interest among intelligent playgoers. The See also:editions of Ibsen's works are numerous, but the final See also:text is included in the Samlede Vaerker, with a bibliography by J. B. Halvorsen, published in Copenhagen, in to vols. (1898—1902). They have been translated into the See also:principal European See also:languages, and into See also:Japanese. The study of Ibsen in English was begun by Mr See also:Gosse in 1872, and continued by Mr See also: Brandes, Bjornson och Ibsen (See also:Stockholm, 1882) ; Henrik Jaeger, Henrik Ibsen 1828—1888 (Copenhagen, 1888; Eng. trans., 1890); T. Terwev, Henrik Ibsen (See also:Amsterdam, 1882) ; G. See also:Bernard See also:Shaw, The See also:Quintessence of Ibsen (London, 1892). In France See also:Count See also:Moritz Prozor carried on an ardent propaganda in favour of Ibsen from 1885, and Jules See also:Lemaitre's articles in his Les Contemporains and Impressions de theatre did much to encourage discussion. W. Archer forwarded the cause in England from 1878 onwards. In Germany Ibsen began to be known in 1866, when John See also:Grieg, P. F. See also:Siebold and Adolf Strodtmann successively drew See also:attention to his early dramas; but his real popularity among the Germans See also:dates from 1880. (E. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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